VIEWPOINT: Tragedy Squared

Like many others on the East End during these haunting, reclusive days, my silver-plated, 9-inch-long Cablevision remote control has become my best friend, as I surf Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and 59 channels I never knew existed, mesmerized by the slew of spectacular documentaries, on John DeLorean, Madonna, Clive Davis, Glen Campbell, and even Gilbert Gottfried.

But throughout it all, one show keeps popping up like my flatted penny from Rye Playland: “Everyone Loves Raymond,” starring Ray Romano and his close-knit, Lynbrook-based family — one of whom troubles me.

“The wife is such an angel — sweeter-than-sweet, beautiful, perfect, never … yells!” I said to my daughter the other morning.

“Dad!” Elizabeth answered, raising her voice. “She’s a character on TV, not real.”

“Nah,” I answered, “I’m pretty sure she’s like that in real life.”

“And in real life,” she continued, “she has four kids. Try squeezing them into this bungalow.”

I then quickly turned my attention to Ray’s father, Frank Barone. “And him!” I blurted out. “He’s so annoying, so crude, the way he speaks to his wife.”

“Like I just said, he’s a character on TV, too — not real,” she answered.

“Yeah, but how can anyone relate to him?” I answered. “I’d love to give him a right hook.”

“You can … almost,” she said.

“Wha-?”

“He’s buried down the block,” she answered matter-of-factly. “You can punch his tombstone.”

“That guy’s buried in this town? Why’s he not buried in California, with all his actor buddies?”

“Like many of his actor buddies, he probably owned a house here,” she said.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Peter Boyle. You’ll find him on the left in Green River Cemetery,” she answered, “the same one with Jackson Pollock and others you may recognize.”

“You mean that tiny cemetery behind Springs School?” I asked.

“And if I read in the papers that someone knocked over Peter Boyle’s tombstone, I won’t tell,” she said laughing.

And the next morning, I pedaled my bright yellow Nel Lusso Huffy bike the mile to the Green River Cemetery on Accabonac Road, respectively dismounted, then slowly walked through its sacred grounds, peering at each grave site, looking for “Peter Boyle,” passing Jackson Pollock’s huge boulder, and his wife, Lee Krasner’s, much smaller rock memorial.

On and on and on I strolled, hoping to see the famous names my daughter promised I’d recognize, maybe even Jack Tripper, Clark Kent, the Skipper.

Soon, I came upon his small stone tombstone, lying flat, secured tightly in the soil, unable to kick over. “She was right,” I thought of my daughter’s command.

Satisfied, yet highly disappointed, I didn’t find familiar names. I mounted my Huffy, turned away and pedaled toward the front entrance, but then, for some peculiar, bizarre reason, as if a voice called to me, I turned back and focused to the far left end of the cemetery — at two tall, curved-topped, gray granite tombstones, sitting side by side. I pedaled that way, where I stumbled upon Robert Steel’s and Courtney Steel’s headstones.

“Apparently brother and sister,” I pondered, sadly. “How tragic, both passing together.”

Reading their headstones, though, it wasn’t the case: Robert Steel passed on May 8, 1984, and Courtney Steel died two years later, October 19, 1986.

“That’s tragic,” I thought, “a brother and sister, dying at 18 and 17. But why?”

Robert and Courtney’s passing, at ages similar to my four children, haunted me on my bike ride home. I quickly Googled their names for more sad news:

Robert passed away from a horrible genetic deformity, bone cancer, at the age of 18, while Courtney, age 17, was struck and killed, dragged 200 feet, by a drunk driver on York Avenue in Manhattan, after enjoying a night out with friends at two Upper East Side bars, Dorrian’s Red Hand and the Zulu Lounge, moments before the 3:15 a.m. accident.

Courtney attended the Spence School on East 91st Street, was its student body class president, and was described by neighbor Louis Marx as “an extremely polite, hardworking, totally likable young girl. She was intelligent and of impeccable character — a lovely child of a lovely family.”

Regrettably, the defense team for the driver pointed the finger, and the blame, at Courtney as the culprit, since she carried a fake ID card, identifying her as 25 years of age, and was going out to bars and drinking liquor, even though she was really 17.

With four children who passed through teenage years, I can personally assure you, getting a fake ID is readily easy, yet not a reason to persecute the victim as a demon, even if they fell into their bedrooms stinking of a whiskey that I, too, imbibed 30 years ago.

Perhaps I was called to Robert and Courtney’s resting place, as a stark reminder, an awakening, a flashback, to a reckless time — exactly the same 1986 autumn — when New York City night spots Palladium, Limelight, Heartbreaks and Visage were my sanctuary, too. We then cabbed it to East 86th Street bars Wednesday’s and Barney Google’s, finally capping it off at Dorrian’s Red Hand — possibly even the same night as the tragedy — rolling out, stumbling out, falling out, sometimes into an unknown woman’s car, back to who-knows-where, and along the way could have had the same devastating results as that fated driver, destroying lives forever, never realizing my most God-blessed gift, my four children.

Yesterday, for reasons I’ll never understand, I heard, and felt, Robert and Courtney Steel’s cries from beneath their burial site, a handful of small stones on top, tucked away in the far left corner of an obscure cemetery in Springs, New York, during a curious bicycle ride that I hoped would result in discovering the whereabouts of a fictitious character on TV, but, rather, unearthed a redemptive and thankful me, and the sad history of a family’s Tragedy Squared.

Frank Vespe lives in Springs.