To celebrate Jesse's life I'm sure many of us can relay some great memories of the man. May I tell my favorite Jess story? It is about work on his chimney. I'm sure he never told this one on the air, but it gives some incite into what a good guy he was. He was living on the south shore with his family in the early days and the chimney needed to be re-built. Jess said that he had finally been making good money after many salad years and so he bought a better than average car. The men who arrived to build the chimney arrived in beat-up dilapidated vehicles that were barely road worthy. They seemed to be poor men from latin countries working in the frigid cold doing chimney brickwork and getting by on what they could. So Jess didn't want to drive out to work in his fancy new car! He didn't want these men to feel bad. Here he was, finally successful and these men had very little. I don't know how he got to work the first couple of days but by the third day the chimney was almost done and he decided to finally take the car out of the garage and drive in to HDH. You had to hear him tell it, but he said "As I slowly pulled down the driveway I looked over my shoulder and saw these poor guys hanging on the chimney in the cold staring at me and my big rich man car. But on to work I drove. When I arrived home, to my shock there was a horrible word painted on the chimney! There scrawled in white paint about 3/4 the way up the chimney was the word '****!'" Jess was horrified. One of the workers wrote a hateful derogatory word up high on his chimney! If you knew the way Jesse thought he now added worry about the hurt any Jewish people would feel seeing such a thing to the worry about the extremely poor work guys who toiled up there in the cold, and how he didn't want to make them feel bad by driving out of his garage in a fancy new car. That was Jesse. I know he cared and things like this really got to him. He told us, "I knew I shouldn't have taken that car out." So back to the scene where Jesse is staring up at this in total shock, horrified. He thought of friends who would be coming over that day and there was no missing the hateful graffiti! Why would someone even write such a thing? Some how Jesse frantically locates the contractor who sends over the worker who had written it. The worker meets Jess on his lawn face to face. "All my anger dropped away as this small man who spoke no English, smiling broadly, pointed up at the chimney he had built. He couldn't understand me nor could I, him. Together we got the contractor on the phone to translate. All this time the worker is smiling as if I should be really pleased. I told the contractor on the phone to relay in spanish how upset I was, and to ask why this smiling man would do such a thing!" The contractor and the workman spoke in spanish and the explanation came back: "Jesse, this is the first chimney he has built in America. The man is so proud of his workmanship, that he signed his name on it. ****. His NAME is **** (pronounced Kee-kay in spanish, a very common name)." I don't tell it nearly as well as Jesse did.
He spoke a lot at work about his family. He was very proud of his kids and of his wife's work as an artist. He was a hell of an actor, I saw him at the Lyric stage a few times. Jesse kept many friends from when he was on Broadway in Stalag 17. He NEVER spoke of his Silver Star from the war unless forced to, and then did nothing more than acknowledge it (again only when forced to). John "Pudge" Flynn as his producer knew him best and can better speak on this, but I believe Jesse volunteered to try and reach help for his pinned down unit. Many of the WWII vets didn't talk much about their bravery. He had a heck of a voice, didn't he? He was close with Jack Hynes from way back at the Notre Dame station. Last time I saw him I was walking down Beacon Street and he was sweeping with a broom in front of his townhouse. I was surprised to bump into him that day and yelled "Hey Jesse Cain!" "SHHH! SHHH! Keep it down," he said using his actor's body language, "I don't want everyone to know who I am." Then he thought about that for a second and he burst out laughing at how absurd that was. I hope others will honor him with their remembrances. RIP Jesse. To his family, I'm very sorry for your loss. Just know that he spoke of you all very often when I knew him.
