Mary Tyler Moore's Lifetime of Challenges
Parade Magazine
by Kevin Sessums
Here Is A Sneak Preview.....
Publication Date: 03/22/2009
Emmy Award-winner Mary Tyler Moore discusses the joys and pitfalls of fame and admits her personal regrets as a mother.
Mary Tyler Moore swings open the door of her Greenwich, Conn., home, and I am suddenly greeted by her four dogs. Her laughter is a lovely counterpoint to the barking all around us and calms the canine brood. It calms me, too. This lightness is one of the secrets of her appeal. Another is her still-balletic carriage at age 72 as she walks to her favorite fireside chair for an afternoon chat.
Moore’s light touch has helped leaven a surprisingly difficult life. In her newest memoir, Growing Up Again, Moore chronicles her 40 years of living with type 1 diabetes. Proceeds from the book will go to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, of which she is the international chairman. “I’ve had the fame and the joy of getting laughter—those are gifts,” she tells me. “Now I want others to learn how I fell down and picked myself up.”
Moore also has been public about her alcoholism. She says she hasn’t had a drink since 1984. Her mother was an alcoholic and her father an emotionally distant man whose approval she never felt she achieved. She has been divorced twice. The original “cougar,” she has been married to her third husband, Dr. Robert Levine, for 25 years. He is 18 years her junior. In 1980, her only child—Richard Meeker Jr., from her first marriage—died at 24 from an accidental, self-inflicted gunshot wound.
We talk about all this and, as Moore stares into the fire, I ask if she has finally forgiven herself for not being... “...a good mother?” she quietly finishes my question.
“No, I haven’t. I still feel as if I weren’t a good enough mother. I didn’t break any rules. I didn’t cause my son any pain. But I did bring to my life some of my father, who was very controlling and very remote. I was working a lot. I wasn’t there enough.”
“Do you still want to work?” I ask.....
Related: Photos of Mary Tyler Moore Through the Years
PLEASE SEE:
03/07/2009 - Scene . . . Sports columnist Mike Lupica was seen having dinner at Valbella restaurant in Old Greenwich the night of Feb. 28 along with Regis and Joy Philbin.
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