In the next few weeks I’ll have a dedicated website to showcase the books I’ve written. Lisa Twining Taylor of Dancing Goat Web Design is working on it as I write this. We’re both very excited.
The website address will be YellowBalloonPublications.com. For those of you who read my 2001 book DeForest Kelley A Harvest of Memories, My Life and Times with a Remarkable Gentleman Actor, you know the symbolic meaning behind the domain name.
(An aside here: the new 2016 edition, expanded with 55+ pages of additional anecdotes and with many additional pages of never-seen-before images, is called DeForest Kelley Up Close and Personal, A Harvest of Memories from the Fan Who Knew Him Best; the old edition is out of print and insanely expensive to buy at Amazon! And the new 50th Anniversary edition is better!!!)
For those of you who didn’t get the 2001 edition, here is the story:
When De was in the hospital, I sent one of his poems, “The Yellow Balloon”, to William Shatner so he could read it at an upcoming Star Trek convention at which both were scheduled to appear. (Because De was approaching the end of his life and couldn’t appear at the convention, Shatner asked De to send one of his poems so he could read it for him. De sent his three Star Trek-themed poems, but Shatner said they were too long and to send something shorter, so De asked me to fax him “The Yellow Balloon.”)
It took me literally hours to get it faxed over; the fax machine at the hospital was giving me fits–either it wasn’t sending or Shatner’s fax wasn’t receiving! I ended up cussing and just about blowing a head gasket. When it finally, finally went, I knew I would never, ever forget De’s *%!#@*! Yellow Balloon poem!!!!
When I finally got back to De to let him see how frazzled and relieved I was to finally be done with that chore, he had to chuckle. “It really wasn’t all that important,” he said. “NOW you tell me!” I shot back, and we both laughed.
Well, just days after De passed away, I asked for some kind of divine “sign” to let me know that he was okay now. The very next day as I was driving the 405 freeway to sit with Carolyn at the hospital, a free-floating yellow balloon passed directly over the freeway ahead of me about thirty or forty feet in the sky! My mouth flew open and I started crying right then and there!
A month or so later, my neighbor and I were taking our routine 3-mile walk around North Hollywood. She was well aware of the yellow balloon story and the sign I’d received. I was yakking to her about something when suddenly, in awe, she pointed.
“Kris, look!”
I looked in the general direction her finger was pointing and saw a yellow balloon floating in the air about thirty feet above us and pretty far off to our left, across the street and next to the Burbank (now Bob Hope) Airport.
I said, “Oh, my gosh!” At which time–cross my heart!–the yellow balloon began to descend and head in our direction. We were both speechless and almost breathless as it approached in our direction, dropping lower and lower as it came.
Finally, the string hanging from it came within inches of my up-stretched fingers. I jumped to catch it two or three different times, but it floated up again…and away! Alice, tears in her eyes, said, “You weren’t supposed to catch it, Kris. It’s De, flying free!”
I lost it again, smiling through my tears.
So that’s why, on the back cover of my first book, there is a yellow balloon in the foreground of the pic of De and me. In the interest of space, I had to take out some of the anecdotes to include new ones, and the Yellow Balloon stories, I believe, got the axe, as did some of the stories about Carolyn and how she handled De’s passing. (I wanted the new edition to be mostly upbeat and about his life, not about his death and the hole it left in our lives.)
But the yellow balloon communications I received (and still receive from time to time) are forever a part of my heart and some of De’s fans–among them Billie Rae Walker–have picked up on the “sign” and have sent me a “yellow balloon” bouquet or card from time to time…
Another De sign: I also get frequent “hellos” at 3:33, day and night.
As you may or may not know, De was in a Roddenberry pilot called 333 Montgomery Street, and by some coincidence (I prefer act of God), 3:33 was the time of day that De or Carolyn often called me at work or at home on weekends, so 3:33 has always been “Kelley time” to me. It still is. I’ll find myself looking up at my clock or at my watch at 3:33 on far too many days and nights for it to be mere coincidence–waking just at that time, looking at my watch just at that time, as if by some unspoken command. I’ve never “tried” to catch 3:33; it just happens.
So in naming my book domain Yellow Balloon Publications, I am tipping my hat and my heart to the man who launched my writing career, who blessed it by giving me permission to write about him, and who proclaimed himself (according to my landlord’s wife) my “biggest fan”.
Although very few of my books are Kelley-based, they were all birthed because DeForest Kelley believed in me and my writing abilities long before I did. His encouragement is what made the difference after I left high school. If not for him, you would not be reading anything with my name on it–and those of you who use my writing services are equally indebted to him.
De made sure I believed in myself enough to stand up, stand out, and stand tall. Whatever legacy I leave as a writer when I’m shoveled off this mortal coil will have been influenced, shaped and blessed by the REAL McCoy, #DeForest Kelley!
