Raising Two Americans

Henry Kissinger once dated Murphy Brown.

I took the Jeopardy online test tonight. This marks the third year in a row I’ve taken the test in an effort to compete on the show.

I wish I could say I felt like I was progressing. The first time I took it was a disaster. Last year was better, but obviously not good enough to move on to the second step in the process.

This time, I feel like I may have gotten half of the questions. I just can’t see that being good enough.

Each year, there have been questions I knew the answer to that I have failed to get the correct response typed in the 15 seconds provided for each of the 50 questions. And I know I have just dropped the ball on questions.

Tonight, I simply could not remember Henry Kissinger’s name. I knew he was the answer. I could see his face. But the name was a blank.

So as a response, as I often do when I miss a question at trivia or don’t know something for some reason, I spent some time reading about Mr. Kissinger.

Most of it is and was old hat for me.

He was a German-born Jewish refugee who fled to the United States with his family when Hitler took power. Harvard educated. Advisor to Lyndon B. Johnson. Secretary of State for both Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford. Crafted détente with China. Supported coup in Chile. Supported Pakistan in Bangladesh war despite genocide. Won 1973 Nobel Prize for peace  process in Vietnam. Still alive.

But as I was reading about Kissinger on the wonderful World Wide Web, there were three facts I had never known that I found quite interesting.

1. In his younger years, Kissinger was quite a ladies man before marrying. Among his celebrity girlfriends was Candice Bergen. That’s right, … Henry Kissinger dated Murphy Brown.
2. After being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943, Kissinger completed his basic military training at Camp Croft in Spartanburg, S.C. This fact may not be stunning for most, but I lived in Spartanburg for 15 years. Camp Croft was an important U.S. Army training post in World War II that has not existed for decades. It is gone. There are no remains. It’s a state park, and if you’ve been there, you’d be hard-pressed to prove thee was a military base there. I’m always a little surprised anytime I find out someone did their basic training there.
3. And last but not least, in 1976, Kissinger became the first honorary member of the Harlem Globetrotters. An obvious choice, I think. If you had Kissinger in the pool, enjoy the spoils.

And that’s all I’ve got. I mean, it’s Henry Kissinger.