Johnny Mathis

I was thinking about Johnny Mathis today. I guess he was one of the 1st artists I ever listened to. He is one of my mother’s favorites and she bought his original album in 1956 and would play it while working around the house after putting me in the Johnny Jump up hung in the door way. She always told me that as long as music was playing I was a content baby and would sit in that thing for hours.

I remember listening to his Heavenly album in grade school. I know that album is somewhere in the stacks of old LPs that my sister has stored at her house.

I once got a handshake from him a few years ago when he sang here in Seattle; I think that was in either 2004 or 2005.

The chance encounter started in an airport. I was standing at yet another gate in O’Hare Airport waiting to catch a connecting flight to bring me home to Seattle. Up walks an older man in his flannel shirt, Levi jeans, baseball hat pulled down low. He sits quietly in the chairs after learning that the flight would be delayed for a few minutes. It wasn’t the man that made me take notice; it was the group of men around him. If they weren’t already all talking on their cellphones, they immediately pulled them out and started making calls. They were all dressed in the latest trends, lots of bling and black. Four men in their 30 or 40s, very much in charge and important, you know the type.

Once I realized they were with the older man I looked at him again and sure enough it was Johnny Mathis. Now he had seen me look at him and recognize him. I just smiled at him and looked around to see if anyone else had recognized him. They hadn’t and that had been his goal. I went back to what I was doing and waited for my turn to board the aircraft. Soon after that they started boarding and he was ushered toward the gate by his entourage and that was that.

Or so I thought. As I boarded the airplane he was sitting there in first class. I went to go past his seat he stopped me took my hand, looked me in the eye and said thank you with all sincerity. I went to my seat and the flight made it to Seattle with no problems and as I was leaving Baggage Claim to get my ride, he gave me another nod of acknowledgement.

That memory isn’t so vivid because he is a star, but because of his sincerity. I can only imagine how tiring it gets to live a life where it is hard to just be you. Lord, let me see each and every man, woman and child for who there are.