History repeats itself

To the editor: What goes around comes around. While it is devastating that Anna Nicole Smith’s son passed at such an unfortunately young age of twenty on the same day she gave birth to a baby girl no less, I can’t help but get the feeling she is just beginning to receive the grief she has given unto others; in particular Pierce Marshall the son of Howard who’s life she tormented until his death. I can empathize with Pierce Marshall as I too had an octogenarian dad that was not thinking with a full deck when he decided to marry a 28 year old woman imported from Italy. It was 1957 when another woman I know (my mother) elbowed her way into another elderly man’s estate (my father) for nothing but profit and personal, selfish financial gain. She tricked him into having another child (at age eighty-five no less) for the purpose of wrestling the estate away from existing children for her sole control. Her story might make Anna Nicole’s pale in comparison. Thank God my older brother at the time was on to her and one step ahead, and had him rewrite his will which prevented not all, but much of the damage she was planning to inflict. I have experienced first hand the lifetime of familial stress selfish actions have on children and their descendants for decades if not centuries that follow. While the stakes were far more humble as my dad was only a barber with modest holdings he struggled a lifetime to accumulate, the resulting impact was just as severe to the existing children. Imagine being fifty years old, and having to call your eighty-one year old dad’s twenty-something wife “mom” when she is half your age. I can’t help but find people like Anna Nicole despicable, low-class, self-centered and plain old dumb and stupid. As hard as I try I can not find any good in her. Poor Daniel Wayne Smith. He didn’t stand much of a chance being raised by his nutty mother. And while it remains to be seen what her contributions to his death were if any the results would not surprise me whatever the outcome of the autopsy. While everyone was mesmerized with her shenanigans publicly aired all over the national airwaves I doubt one person bothered to reach out to Daniel and ask if he needed any help from his mother’s lunacy? Anna Nicole is a classic example of all that is wrong with Hollywood and American values. As for me there is one bright side, I decided to manage and run my life the complete opposite from the manner I observed my mother handling hers. I married one woman for love and nothing other than love in 1989. I’ve thanked God every single day for my wonderful wife who remains by my side and for two beautiful children we’ve been blessed with. I hope and pray if I ever even reach the “crazy eighties” God will provide me the strength to avoid the devil if he comes dressed as an “Anna Nicole.” Frank Risalvato