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Excerpts

JERRY ORBACH WAS A MAN I knew for his talent and accomplishments before I ever met him. We were contemporaries, and even before Law & Order our paths rarely crossed professionally, I had him "in my sights" all along. He could do things I couldn't, like sing and dance, remember jokes, and tell them. There was plenty to envy and lots to admire: the extraordinary skills, the "touch" that made audiences love him, and the fi rst-class work he was always doing, usually for very long runs in big successes, usually on Broadway.

Meeting Jerry, though, he saw to it that envy was impossible. He was too engaging to envy -- too much fun, too easy to be with, too even keeled and level headed. And he gave you to understand that, even if he was awesome, he didn't want you to be awestruck. He wanted you to join the club, take it easy, share a laugh, take a look at things as they are, and not get too excited about yourself, anything else, or him. The more I knew Jerry, the more my admiration for him grew.

Friendship came easily to him, so easily that you almost didn't notice, as if things had always been that way, and why ever would they not? With him leading, in the same natural way, my wife, Lynn, and I came to know and be friends with Jerry and his wife, Elaine -- to discover her way with laughter, her courage to look things in the eye, that gathered energy of hers that dancers can come with. And we got to see the cleareyed optimism and hope they brought to everything, including especially his long fight with cancer.

And, through all that, we came to know a little about the love that they shared.

It was at Jerry's memorial, when some of the poems he had written to Elaine were read, that I found out Jerry was a poet. And, whether he wanted admiration or not, it was that fact that led me to an admiration I have never gotten over. Okay, he knew how to shoot pool better than I did, how to hit the high notes, and get airborne, and stay on the beat. But reading the poems reveals something extra. They're elegant miniatures from a tall poet. As you'd expect, coming from him, they're clever, they sound like him, they have nice felicities of expression, and they're full of wit, charm, and grace. They also reveal -- so easily that you might not even see it happening -- the size of his heart and the amount of love for Elaine there was in it.

Enjoy.

-- Sam Waterston, 2009

Copyright © 2009 by Elaine Orbach and Ken Bloom