Today's Stars: More BVG Connections - Part 2

**Please read Part 1 before reading Part 2.

Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera live in the studio, NBC's Today Show

                                                          Matt and Meredith outside.

                                                This is how close I was to Meredith Viera!

                                             I could see her wrinkles-------yes, wrinkles!!!

                                         But she is a very pretty woman with gorgeous hair.

               Matt didn't work the crowd like Meredith did, so this is as close as I got to him.

I'm glad we were able to get coffee at the famed Dean & Deluca's at Rockefeller Plaza while it was still in existence. For years it was the back-drop for the Today Show. I'm not sure why it eventually closed, given its popularity, but the flagship store in the SoHo District and others around, plus fictional Dean & Deluca stores have been in many movies and TV shows.

And speaking of going to places that have been used in popular culture, in the summer of 1994 my husband and I took our daughter to Mystic Pizza in Mystic, Connecticut, popularized in the Julia Roberts movie, "Mystic Pizza." The small pizza place was exactly as it appeared in the movie. By the time we returned with our two sons in the summer of 1997, Mystic Pizza had been renovated to cater to tourists, with pictures from the movie all over the walls, much like the way Bubba Gump restaurants have pictures from the Tom Hanks movie Forrest Gump on the walls.

And to go one step farther, the 1982 Richard Gere/Debra Winger movie "An Officer and a Gentleman" was filmed in Port Townsend, where my mother was born, where my parents were high school sweethearts and where they married and had five of their six children. In the movie, The Tides Motel was the scene of Richard Gere's character's friend's suicide. That motel is where my brother and my sister-in-law spent their wedding night after their wedding on April 17, 1959. And even more notable, at one point in the movie Richard Gere drives by my Aunt Winnie and Uncle Claude's house.

I don't know if this counts, but perhaps this event set the stage for all my 'close brushes' with stars:

When I was in early elementary school I faithfully watched Stan Boreson's children's TV show, "Stan Boreson's Clubhouse" after school. He had his trusty sidekick, his dog No-Mo (for 'no motion' because he just sat there), and Stan invited his viewers to draw pictures of No-Mo with a sweater on. I drew a big picture and mailed it in to the show. One day he showed my drawing on his show!!! He said my name, and I was so excited---but no one else was home to see it! I'm not sure my family ever believed me.  : (

The next time I was on TV I was in high school and our select girls ensemble was chosen to sing as part of a Christmas program on KOMO-TV. During the filming, the heavy round metal rim of a huge light above us fell off and hit me on my shoulder! The weird thing is I saw it fall while watching the monitor. (They edited it out of the recording.)

And the only other time I appeared on TV was on the evening news during the Gulf War. A TV crew came out to our church in Port Orchard to do a feature story on one of the military families in the church. This family caught the attention of the media because in this case, the wife & mother of toddlers was in the military and was sent to war, while the husband stayed home and cared for the children. The crew was following the husband through his normal routine, and that included coming to church. The funny thing is, it was just our second week at that church, and yet the way they filmed me in the foyer talking to the pastor's wife (she was already my friend), you would have thought I was a founding member of the congregation. This included a full head shot of me. Glad to say I didn't look half bad that day. I have no idea why they chose me. Maybe they knew I was a Bethel Valley Girl?