Grace & Courage

It was the same as a thousand other shows in which the freckle-faced redhead had played up to his vast television audience. There were the same folksy-folksy jokes, the same rasp-voiced sentimentality about things, places and people. But Arthur Godfrey's last appearance last week was on tape; he was in a hospital bed, waiting for surgery on a tumor that turned out to be cancer of the lung.

Under the circumstances, Godfrey's performance was peculiarly moving. When he climbed aboard his palomino Goldie to exhibit his amateur's skill at dressage, the demands of a bad hip made him mount like a drugstore cowboy. Somehow, after 30 years of broadcasting, he knew how to turn the awkward maneuver into an exhibition of grace and courage. "These are the things that keep us alive and kicking," he said, as he turned to his little Arab colt later in the program. "I have to come back to see what he's going to look like next year. Thanks for your prayers and good wishes. God bless you all. See you again soon."

The press showed no such restraint. Black, lugubrious headlines and sob-sister stories followed Godfrey through every trying hour of every trying day: GODFREY

UNDER KNIFE, GODFREY HAS LUNG CANCER, GODFREY TO BE TOLD, GODFREY TAKES

NEWS WELL. Editorials commiserated, and Nick Kenny even contributed a poem:

Discouraged kids have known his smile, His friendly, guiding hand . . . Please help him back to health again And joy will fill the land!

The tough medical facts: the upper lobe of his left lung was cancerous and had to be removed. The cancer, which was suspected from X rays taken two weeks ago when Godfrey complained of chest pains, may have been caught in time. (The survival rate is 35% when the cancer has not spread.)

None of the published stories, though, came up to the statement composed by the self-styled "old cracked-up Irish ruin" himself before he went under the knife. "Mentally, I'm a mess. You've heard of mixed emotions? Man, this is rough . . . If it's a benign tumor of some sort, hurray for our side--no more sweat. If the damn thing is malignant, cancerous, then there's real trouble . . . Never felt better in my life. Then, boom: this horrible, skulking 'thing' visible only as a ghostly shadow on an X-ray negative. This 'thing' that no longer gives pain probably because I can't feel it through the cold, clammy, clutching fear that's gnawing at my vitals."

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