Family and ancestry were everything to him. If you were an Italian from the west side in Rochester, New York, he knew who your grandmother was and where the family came from in Italy. During one of my frequent hospital stays, a woman walked by my room, and my father said, oh, she's a Bonaventura. Sure enough, that turned out to be her maiden name.
The last few years of his life were not happy ones. He needed oxygen occasionally and complained of every variety of aches and pains, constant reminders that he was no longer 25. Most devastating of all, my mother developed dementia as a direct result of a terrible fall, and he could never accept the change in her, which he expressed in anger and impatience. Toward the end, a good antidepressant brought him closer to his old self — he took up his coin collection again, started watching the old Dean Martin shows, and made jokes.
One day, after watching my nephew play ball and talking to my cousin Frank about his trip to the old country and the family he met, he dropped dead. He was 82. Unlike Tyrone at the time of his death, he wasn't King Solomon, but like most of his generation, he was king of his castle. I was out of town and hadn't said goodbye because I'd left so early in the morning the day before. A quick death for him was a blessing; eventually, his pulmonary fibrosis would have progressed and he would have died a horrible death, and death was something he feared. By dying quickly, he never knew what hit him.
When I stood up on Sunday night to introduce the Tyrone Power films Love is News and The Mark of Zorro, I commented that Tyrone Power had left more than a legacy of films. He'd left a beautiful family, and he lived vividly in the memories of people who knew him, loved him, and worked with him, even in those who had encountered him only once. Though it's difficult for his children perhaps to identify with the image they see on the screen, I believe in his way that he has left his emotional imprint on them as strongly as my own father has on me. He is more connected to them than they may think. He's in the face of his son and in the eyes of his grandchildren, he's in Romina's classiness, in Taryn's smile and exuberance, in Ty Jr.'s quirky sense of humor, in their warmth, in their attraction to show business, in their love of animals, in their exquisite manners and politeness. Most of all, his spirit is in their hearts, as my father is in mine, and there always be a thought, a memory, a voice, a smile or a story that brings him back. Like the song "Where Do You Start" says,
One day, there'll be a song
Or something in the air again
To catch me by surprise
And you'll be there again
Tyrone Power's favorite book was Forever, the story of two people who meet, fall in love, and whose love continues in the afterlife. That is surely true of all love. Some bonds can't be broken, even by death.
Article comments
1 - Loren RuhlTyrone friend
Maria...In you I have found a rare jewel..a heart as big as the entire Universe..and a true friend!!!!