Uncle Jack

 I want to tell you about Uncle Jack since he was an important person in my life. You may not remember him. Some of you never met him. He was the husband of my mother’s sister, Rita. They lived at 468 Riverside Drive, and later 2 Fifth Ave in Manhattan. They had a son, John Alfred, who was five years younger than me. My only cousin. 

John B. Gambling, my Uncle Jack (1897-1947) had an early morning show on radio for thirty-four years. Every weekday at exactly 7:15 a.m. he would say, “Hello John! Hello Nancy!” I sat by the radio waiting for that each day. When he finally retired in 1955, the program was turned over to his son, John A, who eventually passed it  on to his son, John R. They were a famous radio dynasty spanning 75 years. When my Uncle retired, there was a great celebration filling Madison Square Garden. The Mayor of New York City, the Governor of the State, and the archbishop of that Diocese joined thousands of fans who had been waiting in line since dawn to pay tribute to him.

Auntie Rita met Jack, as he was called, on a passenger ship sailing from New York City to New Orleans. That was in the early 1920s. He was the Chief Radio Officer on that ship, very good-looking and charming. She flirted with him, suggesting that he could build a career based solely on his voice and personality. Later when they were engaged, she came to New Orleans again to meet him. He had just given up his job as Radio Officer, intending to find work in the New York area where Rita and her family lived. When she finally found him, he had been badly beaten up in a fight. All of his severance pay had been stolen! She brought him home to her parents’ house in New York.  Her mother, (“Granny”) treated him as if he were her own son. She lent him her son’s clothes, (they just fit), and fed him her delicious Hungarian food. He never forgot that. Many years later he let Granny and Grandpa live rent-free in his Teaneck, NJ. house and always treated her as someone very special.

Radio was just beginning in 1925. Uncle Jack was employed by WOR-AM as a technician. That station could be heard in New York, New Jersey, and parts of Connecticut. One day the man who was in charge of the early program didn’t show up. People in the studio urged Jack to fill in. “You have the gift of gab!” they said. He also had a rich baritone voice with a trace of a British accent, a good sense of humor, and a businessman’s acumen regarding sponsors. That was the beginning of his long successful career. He once said to me, “I try to be a symbol of integrity”. 

His program, which was originally called “Gambling’s Musical Clock,” later called “Rambling with Gambling”, consisted of lighthearted music played by live musicians. Vincent, Rudolph, Frozini and Rastus. He called them “the world’s greatest little orchestra.” Strauss waltzes and operetta music were popular in those days. Some years later, the live orchestra was unfortunately replaced by recordings, due to disputes with the labor union. 

In the beginning he instructed his listeners in doing morning exercises, but the program was mainly devoted to daily news, weather reports and banter. Occasionally he sang an uplifting song such as “April showers” 

When April showers may come your way

They bring the flowers that bloom in May.

So, if it’s raining, have no regrets, 

Because it isn’t raining rain at all 

It’s raining violets.

So, if you see clouds upon the hill

You soon will see crowds of daffodil.

So, keep on looking for a bluebird and listening for his song

Whenever April showers come along.

He always apologized for his untrained singing voice, but he sang very well.

His wife, my Auntie Rita answered all his fan mail, and there was lots of it. He simply added his signature. Although she didn’t like to cook, she made all his favorite dishes, among them Roast Beef With Yorkshire Pudding, a certain pudding with Maraschino cherries whose name I have forgotten, and many others. She catered to him in every way. Granny later said, “Rita has become a shadow of Jack”. But she was the “Rock of Gibraltar”, in good times and bad, upon which his empire was built. In their old age, living in retirement in Palm Beach, Florida he told her “I couldn’t have done it without you.” 

You who don’t remember him from Palm Beach or never met him, may wonder what he looked like. He was of medium height, slender as a young man, heavier with age, but always well-dressed and always smoking his cigarette. His dark hair was neatly parted and slicked down. He bought his clothes at the best men’s clothing store in Manhattan. In those days men wore hats, not baseball caps.  He wore his gray felt hat at a jaunty angle. He wore a white silk scarf with his gray overcoat. Very elegant in a conservative way. He drove a beautiful, baby blue Cadillac convertible with white-walled tires. After retiring to Florida, he wore bright colors as everyone down there did. A bright pink jacket, plaids and such. Very different from his New York look. Whether in New York City or Palm Beach, Florida, I always felt proud and grateful to be in the company of such a well-dressed, famous personage. He always treated me in a kindly manner. We were on the same wave-length. He was the only man in the family who interacted with me, since my father had moved away, my Navy uncle was always abroad, and my Grandpa had no interest in us young people. 

My Uncle Jack was born in Cambridge, England and remained British in many ways. At home he was quiet and sedate, sitting in his big comfortable armchair with his feet on the footrest, doing his Sunday Times crossword puzzle from which he learned a lot. He took afternoon naps every day, since he had to get up every weekday morning at 4 am. He read a lot, including Winston Churchill’s autobiography. He was completely self-taught, having run away from home at fifteen to avoid being trained to take over his father’s Nursery business. Lying about his age, he joined the British Merchant Marines where he had a very rough time. He was later assigned to a British minesweeper in World War I and eventually became the Chief Radio Operator on American passenger ships. He, who had escaped a career in horticulture, proudly showed me the tomatoes he was growing on the penthouse deck at 2 Fifth Ave. Later, in Manhasset, for income tax purposes he and his assistant grew acres of beautiful pink and red azaleas. He obviously enjoyed doing that.  

My Uncle Jack was a perfectionist and a “symbol of integrity,” also as a ship’s Captain. The happiest memories I have relating to Uncle Jack, have to do with his boats. His first boat was called “John B, I” a small cabin cruiser, and later the “John B II” a forty-foot cabin cruiser with “flying bridge”. I loved sun-bathing on the “flying bridge”. Occasionally he would let me steer the ship, pointing at the red and black buoys. He said I had good eyes. I was in heaven. Having been a sailor since his early teens, he knew all about boating, and learned what else he needed to know. I always knew that our Captain would know what to do in any situation. 

John B II had two very narrow bunks in the bow, where John Alfred and I slept, a tiny kitchen where Auntie Rita prepared our meals and washed the dishes, and a small carpeted passage-way with collapsible table at which we learned to play poker. The benches on the sides of the table made into a bed at night. I used a miniature carpet-sweeper to pick up the crumbs on the bit of carpet under the table when the Captain told me to do it. There was also a dinghy (small rowboat) on which my cousin learned how to sail. 

We took two weeklong trips on the John B II, which I will never forget. In fact, I still have my handwritten Ships’ Log from 1941, with a picture of the beloved boat. (See pictures). The first trip was through Troy locks to Lake Champlain. The second was encircling Long Island (see map). Both were made in mid-summer, hot and muggy in the city, but delightfully cool on the boat when we were under way. 

Both trips started at Englewood Basin by the Palisades, where Uncle Jack moored his boat. The so-called locks lifted the boats from one water level to the next, going up, and to the lower level returning. My cousin John, then perhaps nine or ten years old, had the job of jumping ashore to make fast the line. At one lock he fell into the water, but was quickly rescued. When we reached Lake Champlain we stayed there for a few days. We swam in the chilly water before breakfast every day and played poker and double solitaire. 

The second trip, a year or so later, consisted of encircling Long Island, dropping anchor every night at various yacht harbors, going ashore in the dinghy for dinner, and exploring the little waterfront harbor towns. On the way back to Manhattan, I remember sailing under many bridges from which people waved or threw things at us. 

My Uncle Jack was a very special person, a perfectionist, a remarkable self-made man. Every day for thirty-four years he cheerfully helped thousands of people to start a new day. He was admired and loved by all of them, and by his family, which later included grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I felt honored to be a part of that family.