The late Diahann Carroll’s husband Robert DeLeon rests in my mind as Bob DeLeon - former Newsday reporter. That was significant to me, especially at the time of DeLeon’s 1977 death, which was widely accepted to have been a suicide.
I would go to become a reporter at Newsday. He lived in the spooky subsurface as voice, for me and a number of blacks there.
My connection to DeLeon went beyond that. A year after his death I would become editor of the New York bureau of Ebony Magazine, where DeLeon also been a top editor. Amazing.
I would have called Les Payne to chat about all this. But Les is there with the other heroes now, laughing at us and waiting. But I am going to reach to former Newsday brother and colleague Sidney McNatt Cassese Sidney Cassese, who’s among my silent FB friends. Sidney, like Les, was at Newsday back in the ‘70s.
What sayest thou, Sidney? Brother, where art thou?
Here below is a 1975 Jet Magazine piece on Robert and Diahann’s wedding. It mentions Robert’s background with Newsday. It’s in GoogleBooks, so you have to scroll for it. (In addition to Ebony, DeLeon had been a writer for Jet, sister publication of Ebony, under the extraordinarily popular and influential Johnson Publishing Company. He apparently had written about Diahann before they hooked up in romance. He left his wife for the much older Carroll.)
https://books.google.com/books/about/Jet.html?id=H1sDAAAAMBAJ
A question might be: Would Carroll have wrapped her glowing arms around ME, given these similarities, if I’d had the opportunity to write about her?
Stop laughing, Damn it!
RIP, Diahann Carroll, and please hug Robert DeLeon for me.
Between us, Carroll: Ask him if he’s related to the DeLeons on my mother’s (Baker) side. I’ve wondered from time to time.
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