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Issue link: http://tempus-magazine.epubxp.com/i/131305
There is a commonality among people who reach celebrity status. They live a life of popularity that most "normal" people never attain. They often have to overcome traumatic problems from early in life. They have to put themselves out there in front of the public without fear of failing. They live a life we may want to lead. When it all comes crashing down, it is too often with fnality. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, for the next thousand words, JOHN BENTLEY WRIGHT. He has lived and loved the life of celebrity without thinking of himself as a member. He was also convicted by the political correctness police and learned one of today's life lessons. The truth doesn't always set you free, unless you consider being forcefully unshackled from the yoke of an extremely lucrative contract being set free. For those of you who don't readily recognize the name, Ben Wright, as he is known, was a popular member of the CBS golf broadcasting crew. He verbally jousted on air with fellow announcer Gary McCord. The two were perfect foils for each other: Wright, the haughty Brit, versus McCord, the laid back-Californian with less than a mainstream view of the world. The two were egged on by producer Frank Chirkinian. They flled the frequent lulls in the action of a golf telecast with ad-libbed humor that helped propel CBS to the top of golf broadcast ratings. This phenomenon didn't happen overnight for Ben Wright. In fact, as a child living outside of London during World War II, life almost came crashing down on him…literally. "I grew up in Luton about thirty miles north of London," Wright recalls. "There was a Vauxhall factory in town, and it had been adapted to making Churchill tanks. This of course drew the attention of the Germans." It also created a cottage industry for Wright and his fellow entrepreneurs that would have made Fagin proud. "Occasionally, there'd be a German Stuka shot down in the area, and we were really evil children," Wright says. "We'd sneak into the wreckage before anyone got there and scavenge for wallets, watches, gauges, anything we could sell on the black market. I will say that the pilots were always dead, although, I won't lie to you, there were some who were warm. It was not the way a ten-year-old should act." Wright and friends were in fact more a product of their environment than they were a gang of coldhearted pregrave robbers. "I spent six years of my youth sleeping in a solidly built airraid shelter," Wright says. "My sister and I slept there nearly every night during the war. From listening to the planes overhead, I could tell what type of aircraft Young Ben Wright's childhood photo, circa 1939.