The Boy Who Wanted to be Ann Moses

It all started with a Facebook Messenger note from a stranger:

Hello, Ann. Yesterday I was speaking to a journalism class at Arizona State University. As often happens when I speak to students, one of them asked when I knew I wanted to be a journalist. I told her, “When I was 8 years old, I wanted to be Ann Moses.” I discovered Tiger Beat when the Laufer magazines were just phasing out Bobby Sherman and building up David Cassidy. I was less interested in Sajid Khan and Mark Lindsay than I was in the people who were making these amazing magazines. I have made my living as a writer for more than 30 years, and I am embarrassed to admit that it has not occurred to me until now to look you up on Facebook and send you a thank-you note. This was thoughtless of me. Thank you, Ann, for inspiring a little boy to consider a career in writing. It’s suited me well for my entire adult life. I hope this note finds you well and happy. Best wishes, Robrt Pela 4/6/16, 1:30 PM

My reply would start a chain of events that led me to a forever friendship:

OMG Robrt! I’m so glad to hear from you. I live in Gilbert, AZ now and I would have loved to hear your lecture! I’m in the middle of negotiations with a publisher to publish my memoir of those amazing days, in fact, we’re going over the contract with my attorney this afternoon. What kind of writing kept you employed for 30 years????? Well done. Are you a professor at ASU? PS: I am very well and very happy, especially if I can land this book deal! 4/7/16, 10:31 PM

Robrt’s reply:

Ann, I do hope you land your book deal; I look forward to reading your memoir. To answer your question about how I’ve made my career: I dropped out of journalism school in the early 1980s, and launched my own newsmagazine. I owned that magazine for 10 years and during that time established myself as a freelance writer at various national magazines. I have been a columnist at Phoenix New Times for 25 years (I have the cover story in today’s edition) and a weekly correspondent at NPR for almost as long. That newspaper I owned? I did a Q&A feature each issue that was always subtitled “The Tiger Beat Interview.” I’ve published a couple of books along the way. The one that got away was a book about the history of Tiger Beat magazine. This was about 18 years ago or so. I had a contract with a major publisher and the full cooperation of Sterling/McFadden, then-publishers of Tiger Beat, which agreed to license all logos and images to me for one dollar. They also offered me access to their morgue and photo files (Kenny Lieu!). I interviewed Lynn Leatart, Lloyd Thaxton, Judy Weider (my editor at The Advocate, where I was a staff writer for 13 years), and of course Ralph Benner. I spent days and days with Chuck Laufer, who was on a morphine pack at the time for chronic pain. I had an introduction by Davy Jones and a foreword by David Cassidy. And then, halfway through the process and while I was getting up my nerve to track down you (and Liz Dagucon and Laudy Powell and Sharon Lee), Sterling/McFadden sold the magazine to Primedia, which demanded half my royalties and a pay-per fee on each photo I licensed, in exchange for permissions. My publisher tore up my contract, but graciously let me keep my advance. When Scott Laufer bought the magazine a few years later, Chuck called me. “You can do your book now!” But by then the moment had passed. I was busy writing another book, and a recently-published book about 16 Magazine had sold poorly, so I knew there was no point in my writing about my “fave mag.” How amusing that you live now in Arizona. I fell in love with Gilbert’s downtown recently. Such great restaurants. Best of luck with your publishing negotiations. I know your book will be a stunner. I imagine you will cop to your Elvis crush. (Why do I remember this?) Robrt 4/8/16, 8:36 AM 

I don’t have my old email copies (these were thanks to Robrt’s fabulous, meticulous organization!), but I know my next question for him was, can we meet for a cup of coffee? Once I mentioned that to Robrt, he didn’t let it rest as just a coffee date. Once he had “felt me out” and found that I was not a person who felt negatively about gays, he invited both me and my husband, Tony, to lunch at his and his husband’s historic and historically furnished Craftsman house from the 1920s. It was a full-on luncheon – linen napkins, china collected from their favorite shop in England, and while I can’t remember the meal, both he and his husband Todd are gourmet cooks, so dining with them is always delicious and adventurous.

As we got to know one another, little by little, more facts came out about that original confession to the questioner at his ASU lecture. On our first lunch date, Robrt shared the “rest of the story” about wanting to be Ann Moses when he grew up. He told us that when he was in fourth grade at a Phoenix elementary school, he was taking a test. At the end of the test was an “extra credit” question if you finished all the answers early. The question was: what do you want to be when you grow up? He answered in his best fourth grade penmanship: I want to be Ann Moses. Well, that earned him a trip to the principal’s office. The principal, Mr. Cordes, asked him, “Why in the world would you write such a thing on your test?” He blurted out his answer in indignant defense: “We share the same birthday!” (We both were born on February 3rd). Can you imagine hearing this all these years later? This boy wanted to be ME! It still blows me away as I remember my feelings when I first got his email. And it was all real.

We continued getting to know one another, as we all had enjoyed our lunch so much, it was my turn to have Todd and Robrt over for dinner at my house. Of course, I considered it a challenge to dazzle these fabulous cooks with my dinner party. I don’t remember what I cooked that night, maybe it was beef short ribs in red wine sauce served over polenta, but they’ve always raved, so I must have chosen the menu and prepared it well. What I did not expect was a beautiful, homemade gift of four glass coasters with images from old Tiger Beat’s! I love them! We ended up having dinner parties regularly and in the last year, Robrt and I meet for brunch just to keep updated on each other’s lives. Ever since that time we’ve celebrated our birthdays together, as we will do this year.

It was funny how our connection was immediate. After only a few months, I could rely upon Robrt for advice as we neared out publishing date. I had only one offer from a publisher, and it was pitiful, so after studying self-publishing, we chose to self publish my book so it would be out in the world and I had my voice exactly as I wrote it – no unknown editor changing my book. Once I realized what an incredible writer Robrt was/is, and because he is a published author, I asked him if he would consider doing a final edit on my book. He didn’t hesitate and after cutting a number of passages, which he said “didn’t move the story forward,” we had a tighter and more polished story while keeping in all of my original stories. We had received complaints from a few publisher queries that the book was too long. Robrt remedied that without losing any of the soul of my story.

Robrt continues to surprise me. I told Robrt that I had purchased his book “Filthy: The Weird World of John Waters.” So, when we were together next I asked him to autograph it. When he handed it back to me, he turned to the Acknowledgements page and showed me how I was thanked in his 2002 book! You can’t make this stuff up!

It was such a treat to invite Robrt and Todd to see the Monkees perform at the Mesa Performing Arts Center in September of 2016. It was supposed to be Micky and Peter only, as Mike was not scheduled for their 2016 tour. I had planned to do some interviews before the show, but it was that afternoon that Peter was called home for a family emergency. Amazingly, Mike had flown in that day to sub for Peter, so he and Micky spent the afternoon rehearsing and didn’t have time for interviews. As it turned out, Micky and Mike put on a fabulous show and my guests were so excited to be taken down that nostalgic road. As I’m come to expect, Robrt had pulled out a groovy shirt from the 70s (that still fit very well!) to wear that night.

Robrt was there for me at a very significant event in my life. My brother called me from his vacation to let me know my mom, who was in an assisted living facility, had gone to the hospital for a few days and asked if I come and take care of her when she was released. Since I was “fired” (it’s a long story!) from my last job before retirement, I certainly had the time – I had spent the first two months after my “firing” going to see a psychologist to try to understand why this injustice had happened.

So I immediately flew out to California. I spent the next two weeks with my mom and my big brother had asked me to determine if mom needed 24 hour care going forward. We had such a wonderful time together because her hospital stay was brief, she was in good health and we made the most of our time together watching old movies on TMC, reminiscing about my childhood, my sons and how they had grown into men. Yet I was unsure of what would be best for mom. So I called Robrt. He has been caring full time for his mother who is 94 and has had Alzheimer’s for the past 10 years. His advice was simple and speaks to the man he is. “No one will care for your mom like her own family will.” Didn’t I already know this? Not really. Mom had been so active throughout her 80s and 90s, still traveling to China in her 80s and going on cruises in her 90s. But once she was alone, after her gentleman partner moved to another state to live with his daughter, she was delighted to move into assisted living where she made friends and loved having her meals prepared and going on group activities. She was not delighted to be living alone at 96, as she had fallen (without injury) once and was afraid it would happen again.

When I said to mom, “Would you like to come home and live with me?” she just started crying as she told me, “yes, that would be the most wonderful thing.” Two weeks later we had moved her to Arizona. My last weeks with mom were some of the most meaningful in my life. It was only then that I wished I had done this sooner. And observing mom in her last days was more than I could have ever dreamed of. One morning mom was sleeping and I went into her room and told her it was morning, and asked if she would like to get up. She smiled at me, and I asked her how long she wanted me to let her sleep in, and she answered “forever.”

My brother and I always knew how mom wanted to pass to the next dimension. Her grandmother and her mother had passed away in their 90s, in good health. Her grandmother came home one day, laid down on the couch, asked for a blanket and told my mom and her mom “I just want you to leave me alone.” A week later she was gone, peacefully. Mom had told us this story many times over the years, and we understood why. Once my mom moved in with us and was at peace, she just went to sleep one night and did not wake up. Her wish had come true.

My foremost thought after she passed was if I could spend my final days as she did, with only half the grace and gratitude my mom did, I’ll consider myself lucky. She impacted my life throughout my life, but never more than in her death. Thank you, Robrt, for encouraging me, knowing what that time with my mom would ultimately mean to me.

Thank you, Tiger Beat, for bringing me together with strangers who have become friends.