{"id":39359,"date":"2023-08-12T00:01:55","date_gmt":"2023-08-12T07:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=39359"},"modified":"2026-06-06T05:05:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T05:05:28","slug":"the-superman-at-my-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/the-superman-at-my-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Widowed: The Superman at My House"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"jon-barbara-newhall-wedding\"<\/a>
With the Superman at my house on our wedding day. Photo by Peter Luers<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I didn’t know it on our wedding day, but as a writer I was marrying a perpetual source of story ideas, good ones. My husband Jon had a way of dropping quotable one-liners on me — funny, pithy and, every once in a while, romantic.<\/p>\n

Jon was the personal essayist’s dream spouse. He didn’t care if I wrote about him. He didn’t care if I made fun of him. He was a journalist from a family of journalists. “Whatever it takes to sell\u00a0 newspapers,” he’d say when I told him I was quoting him — again. That is, if I told him. Often, I didn’t bother to tell him what I was up to; time was short, and I knew he wouldn’t mind.<\/p>\n

A Nose for Marital News<\/strong><\/h5>\n

And now, widowed, I’m reaping the rewards of my decades-long nose for marital news.<\/p>\n

Yes. I have photos of Jon from the fifty years of our life together, and that’s great.\u00a0But I also have stories<\/em><\/a>. As a journalist, I was in the habit of making sure I quoted my husband accurately. As a\u00a0 result, I have scores of the marvelously wry statements that Jon actually made about life in general — and me in particular.<\/p>\n

Take for example, our encounter back in 2014 with a sidewalk Superman. (Whose story, I found out much later, came to a desolate ending.)<\/p>\n

That Superman was gorgeous, I wanted to tell the world. But, of the two, Jon was the keeper. He was the Superman at my house. This is what I wrote in 2014 and have rewritten a couple of times since:<\/p>\n

Stalking Superman in Los Angeles<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"the<\/a>
Spotted on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame: My girlhood hero — Superman! On the left, my real-life husband. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There he was. In the flesh. Tall and slender and muscled and oh-so-handsome. Sigh.<\/p>\n

It was Superman. The Man of Steel of my girlhood fantasies. My dream man.<\/p>\n

He was standing on the curb of Hollywood Boulevard, waiting for the light to change.<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a>
Superman crosses the street, cape billowing. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Right next to him, also waiting for the light to change, was Jon, my actual man. The mere mortal that I had married 37 years earlier.<\/p>\n

The light changed. Superman, my dream man, stepped into the street.<\/p>\n

I followed.<\/p>\n

Jon, my actual man, at my side, muttered into my ear, \u201cIf he\u2019s really Superman why was he waiting for the light? Why didn\u2019t he just fly?\u201d<\/p>\n

But I was too busy stalking Superman to listen. I was trying to keep up with him. Superman has long legs.<\/p>\n

I took pictures. Click. Click. Got some good shots of the red cape flowing in the Southern California breeze.<\/p>\n

Just then Superman stopped in the crosswalk to chat with friends. I charged ahead, past him, to the curb.<\/p>\n

On the curb, I turned around and got a good shot of him coming toward me.<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a>
Walking toward me, he spots me taking pictures. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Superman saw me taking pictures, so Jon and I offered him two bucks, which is what you do when you\u00a0take pictures of people parading the Hollywood Walk of Fame looking like Darth Vader or Bat Woman or\u00a0Superman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Man of Steel took the two bucks \u2013 yes, that\u2019s all we gave him, two bucks \u2013 and posed manfully for a photo with me.<\/p>\n

What are those muscles made of?\u201d Jon wanted to know.<\/p>\n

\u201cKryptonite,\u201d said Superman.<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a>
We give him two bucks and he poses for a picture. Photo by Jon Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And with that the two men, my dream man and my actual man, headed off down Hollywood Boulevard together.<\/p>\n

I took pictures of them from the back, chatting.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a nice guy,\u201d Jon told me later.<\/p>\n

Back home in Northern California \u2013 \u00a0five days after our encounter with the Man of Steel \u2014\u00a0 Jon called me into the den to see something on TV.<\/p>\n

There was my Superman on the screen, red cape, red boots and manly muscles, watching as a bad guy was smashing the windows of an LAPD cop car.<\/p>\n

Did he intervene?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not my job to jump in the middle,\u201d my dream man told the CBS-TV reporter on the scene.<\/p>\n

A Superman who can\u2019t fly? Who has fake kryptonite muscles? Who hasn\u2019t the guts to interrupt a crime in progress?<\/p>\n

I thought, I\u2019m sticking with my actual man.<\/p>\n

Years later, curious about the true identity of my Hollywood Boulevard Superman man, I did an online search.<\/p>\n

He was\u00a0Christopher Dennis<\/a>, an homeless actor who\u00a0had died<\/a>\u00a0in 2019.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office ruled that Dennis\u2019s death was accidental.<\/p>\n

He was found entrapped in a charity donation bin. Apparently, he had suffocated while searching for clothing.<\/p>\n

More Los Angeles stories at “Los Angeles. — The Good, the Bad and the Truly Ugly.”<\/a>\u00a0 And, “Wedding Dress Shopping — When Your Daughter Lets You Tag Along.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Actor<\/a>
Headed down Hollywood Boulevard together, Superman and the Superman at my house. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"the<\/a><\/p>\n

The Superman we spotted on Hollywood Boulevard was gorgeous. But Jon, my husband, was the man for me. He was the Superman at my house.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1162,2757,34,191,2758,2759,2760,29,671,689,82,2761],"class_list":["post-39359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-widowed","tag-actor-christopher-dennis","tag-christopher-dennis","tag-dont-miss","tag-grief","tag-hollywood-boulevard","tag-hollywood-superman","tag-hollywood-walk-of-fame","tag-jon","tag-journalism","tag-marriage","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-widows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39359"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48932,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39359\/revisions\/48932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}