Memories of Dan Hartman
Dan's brother, David Hartman speaks exclusively to us to share his momories of his brother at Christmas time.
This interview has been transcribed from a recording which was made exclusively for DanHartman.com by David Hartman - November 2011.
Dan and David Hartman, Christmas morning, 1958
I remember when I was about 5 and a half, when my brother was 2 or 3 years old at the time, his birthday’s December the 8th… At that time there was a chimpanzee on television – he was on the Ed Sullivan show and all these little guest shows – His name was Zippy – He wore a yellow t-shirt with the word ‘Zip, in red, across it and somehow they managed to get him to wear a pair of white sneakers and he was popular, all over the place, and was the most popular toy, that year, for Christmas. My brother just adored Zippy and he wanted Zippy (??). My mom said that I could get Zippy for him, using the little bit of money that I earned during the year for emptying the trash, I didn’t really get an allowance but my mother gave me a dime here or a nickel here and all that stuff. And, so the story goes that she told me I didn’t have enough to buy Zippy but she slipped the rest to the lady and I bought Zippy for my brother.
Well, Daniel went bananas over Zippy. He dragged that monkey all over the place. It was a black monkey and the face and the hands and the ears were made of a soft rubber. I don’t know how many times my mother sewed it! The black mat that was the body of it and it was falling apart because he played with the thing constantly.
On Christmas morning, when he opened that up he hugged that Zippy and he didn’t want to open anything else up. He would dance with that monkey, standing him on the floor, his early association with music goes back to that point, my whole family really. My dad had a saxophone and he used to play occasionally and he had bought a piano for my mother and he used to play that, cursing because he always missed chords.
I think the thing that came out the most was that, up to that point, I really looked forward to Christmas for all the goodies I was going to get, I had a list a mile and a half long and we used to go and see Santa Claus – Daniel also loved Christmas, it was such a special time for him, he looked forward to it, he was an upbeat kid all along, but he would really get upbeat during Christmas.
Up until the time I went in to the Service, or he went off to Edgar Winter, the way that he loved Christmas was not because of all the Christmas stuff he was going to get .
We used to take the bus downtown about 3 to 4 weeks before Christmas and we’d go to the stores and everything – as soon as we got off the bus I wanted to head off to the stores because there were several Santa Clauses’ in different stores and my thought was, if I hit all those separate Santa Clauses’ and give them my whole list I’d probably hit the right Santa Claus! Because I knew he couldn’t be in the same place all the time! My brother didn’t really want to go into the stores, he would just look at all the Christmas lights and all the stuff in the stores. Pomeroy’s were on the corner of 4th and Market and they used to do their windows up – they had all kind of animated things there – they put a lot of money into it. They don’t do it anymore, nobody does, but that’s what my brother wanted to see. I’d be freezing my butt off and he’s want to see all these lights and all the decorations in the store windows. When we’d do the tree and be putting all the lights up and Christmas decorations, he’d put a decoration on the tree and then sit there and admire it.
What I learned was that seeing him, so unbelievably happy, with that Zippy, that changed me. Up until that point I wanted everything, and, ever since that time, I realised, looking back on it, down through the years too, I got much more joy out of surprising someone else with something I’d bought them, I would sneak around and wrap them up with nobody seeing and I just loved that. It came from my brother, from him being so unbelievably happy with that monkey. He taught me a lesson without even knowing it.
Many thanks to David Hartman.
Many thanks to Glenn Ellison for making this article possible.
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