the REAL legacy

As most of you know Larry Hagman (AKA J.R. Ewing) died this week at the age of 81. It was great to read about all that he had accomplished in his career and to be reminded of all those roles with which we associate him, but as I was reading the different news articles, I ran across a detail that almost seem BURIED in the midst of everything else....

So I went to look at his Wikipedia entry and sure enough, it was kind of buried there too....
So then I went over to one of my favorite Hollywood guy's Wikipedia page because I know that there is a fact about him that is very similar to this fact about Hagman, and sure enough....BURIED! And it bothered me enough to write a blog entry about it.... So that for once, the greatest accomplishment of these two men (and I am sure, others like them) will be SUNG FROM THE ROOFTOPS.... or at least from madsandkelli.com! 

Yes, Patrick Swayze and Larry Hagman were ICONs in Hollywood. You cannot hear their names without conjuring up images of "I Dream of Jeannie", "Dirty Dancing", "Dallas", or "Ghost". And their successful careers should be celebrated and remembered!

But did you know that EACH of these men were married to the same woman for just about all of their lives??!

Patrick and his wife Lisa were married for THIRTY-FOUR YEARS! And Hagman and his wife, a mere FIFTY-EIGHT! 

But neither of these facts gets a very prominent place in their bios! It is more about what they "accomplished", but oh my goodness, how could this "accomplishment" not come at the TOP of the list in the biggest font possible?!

In a day and age where divorce stats sometimes seem to outnumber marriage stats, accomplishments like a Marriage of 34 years and a Marriage of 58 years should be CELEBRATED....or at least noticed. The struggles and the trials that these two couples faced and overcome when so many of us would have walked away are the things that real stories are made of....

So yes, Larry and Patrick I thank you for "Johnny Castle" and "JR Ewing", but even more than that, I thank them for being the kind of man who is quite a lot like another man I know (Dad, AKA Mike Rogers).... the kind of man who wakes up every day choosing to LOVE HIS WIFE and stay with her no matter how rough things get!

THAT is the STUFF for the biographies and Wikipedia entries!