New Year’s Eve naturally makes one think of Dick Clark, host since 1972 of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. (How long ago was 1972? A recent Associated Press story by David Bauder said Clark’s show was created “as a hipper alternative to Guy Lombardo.”) Clark missed the 2004 broadcast after having a stroke, but is returning for the 2005 show in a reduced capacity, co-hosting with heir apparent Ryan Seacrest.
While looking over Clark’s bio on Who2, we peeked at other people born the same year as Clark, 1929, and got a mild shock: they include Martin Luther King and Anne Frank.
Dr. King perhaps shouldn’t be such a surprise, though it’s hard to believe that he would be only 76 years old today. (He was a shockingly young 39 years old when he was assassinated by James Earl Ray, also born in 1929.)
But Anne Frank seems so much a part of history, so much a part of the distant past, that it’s hard to believe anyone alive today is her contemporary. Or perhaps it’s the gravitas of Frank’s life that makes it hard to pair her mentally with any modern entertainer. (McLean Stevenson and Chuck Barris also were born that year.)
Such are the sands of time.