Tuesday’s Tribute: Clint’s Fans

Jay and Deb’s writ­ing exer­cise, Tuesday’s Trib­ute, chal­lenges blog­gers to pause and remem­ber that it is not all about them. Rather, each Tues­day, par­tic­i­pants “shine a light on some­one else.”

When we spoke, he always inquired about the mem­bers of his Fan Club, and asked me to send them greet­ings, best wishes, and his thanks for their unwa­ver­ing sup­port. Good pub­lic rela­tions, to be sure. But so much more.  Clint knew that he was blessed with loyal fans whose admi­ra­tion of his work and affec­tion for him were both gen­uine and endur­ing — and appre­ci­ated each of them, many of whom he met over the years at var­i­ous functions.

I had not planned to write a Trib­ute this week. Frankly, I haven’t felt like writ­ing, although I spent quite a bit of time on the com­puter this past week­end read­ing trib­utes to and com­ments about Clint. So many times I started to reach for the phone to call him and say, “Honey, you have to hear these lovely words that a fan wrote about you.” He would have been so touched by the bound­less expres­sions of sad­ness about his depar­ture and appre­ci­a­tion for his work that have been pub­lished in the past week or so. Like these com­ments from Ms. Lolly:

I was intro­duced to the fine cit­i­zens of Llan­view at the ten­der age of eight. The moment Clint appeared on the screen it was love at first sight and that affec­tion never waned in the inter­ven­ing 26 years. The char­ac­ter of Clint Buchanan was a won­der­ful mix of intre­pid news­pa­per man and rough and ready cow­boy. He was played to utter per­fec­tion by Clint Ritchie whose real-life cow­boy ten­den­cies brought an authen­tic­ity to the role.

I met Clint Ritchie once. And while my gig­gly fan girli­ness I’m sure must have made me seem insane, he was absolutely delight­ful. What I remem­ber most was his smile. It was one of those rare times when the per­son behind the char­ac­ter not only lives up to your expec­ta­tions but exceeds them.

Mar­i­anne said:

It is the end of an era. An era, where a man treated a woman as a lady instead of his lat­est ho. Clint Ritchie was a throw­back to the days of Cary Grant. A true gen­tle­man. I felt his pain when I read how they had changed his char­ac­ter and he decided to walk away. This shows what char­ac­ter he had.

I never got a chance to meet this won­der­ful man.… To all of you who got to meet him, you are so lucky. A man like him only comes around once in a life­time, if ever. He truly was one of a kind. I know he is with God and his fam­ily now. This world is now a sad­der place that such a man is no longer part of it.

Nor­rth­pier paid trib­ute to Clint this way:

[A] mythic man and mas­ter sto­ry­teller who fed our imag­i­na­tions, who gave us hope and laugh­ter, and whose work we loved with­out mea­sure, you will be missed. Thank you for shar­ing your time, and your tal­ents with us. They were and always will be con­sid­ered trea­sured gifts.

If you think that all of the fans sad­dened by Clint’s pass­ing are women, you are quite mis­taken. Mar­lena de la Croix reminded her read­ers that

[t]he real Ritchie, a cow­boy who had been a Hol­ly­wood con­tract TV and movie player, gal­loped into soaps dur­ing the Dal­las mania in 1979. The Buchanans — Clint, his heart-throb younger brother Bo and his hilar­i­ous cur­mud­geonly father Asa — may have been deriv­a­tive of prime­time, but they still became a total day­time sen­sa­tion. Even if the meet­ing of these three actors and the tim­ing turned out to be serendip­ity, at least some­one at ABC knew what they had. A medium that cen­tered on women and was all about romance needed some very manly men.

Clint delighted in the fact that he could not walk down the street in New York City, board a plane or, most impres­sively, walk into a truck stop in the most remote part of Wyoming with­out being rec­og­nized by the male patrons and employ­ees who watched One Life to Live because of “The Buchanan Men” and tried to pry plot details out of him.

Lis­ten­ing to a ques­tion dur­ing his 1998 Fan Club Lun­cheon in New York City.

Clint was the com­mon denom­i­na­tor that drew together diverse folks with vastly dis­sim­i­lar back­grounds liv­ing all over the coun­try. Many of us found each other through his Fan Club and, later, online. The affec­tion, warmth, and con­cern that his fans expressed for him was matched by and inspired the friend­ship, coma­raderie, and sup­port they have shown each other over the years. I count among my best friends sev­eral of the women I met because of Clint, and know that, although the man who served as the cat­a­lyst for our inter­ac­tions is gone, we will remain con­nected. That is also part of Bucky’s legacy.  It is said that “fame is fleet­ing.”  If that is true, the fact that so many peo­ple never lost inter­est in Clint, his work — or each other — is noth­ing short of remarkable.  

In recent days, I have also spent some time work­ing on Clint’s Offi­cial site which was launched in 1998 almost as a dare.  When I told Clint that he needed a web­site, his reac­tion was some­thing like, “A what?” You see, Clint never did learn how to use that com­puter he bought so many years ago. When he retired, he talked about tak­ing a com­puter class or two, but never got around to it as too many projects at the Ranch and a few trips back to New York City kept him busy. I some­how found myself autho­rized to cre­ate an offi­cial site for him, even though I had never built a web­site and had no clue how to start. So I went to the book store, picked out the most easily-understandable book on HTML I could find, got a free domain on Geoc­i­ties, and went to work. Over the years, the site grew and evolved. Big­Bob accused me more than once of being obsessed with it, but I was deter­mined to keep improv­ing it.  Even­tu­ally, I secured his name as the domain. A cou­ple of years ago, I con­verted the old sta­tic web­page into a blog and focused my efforts on con­vert­ing more video­tapes than I can count into dig­i­tal files so that I could burn DVD’s. I have uploaded quite a few clips on You Tube for view­ers to enjoy.

This past Sat­ur­day, I logged onto the old server and was stunned to see just how much infor­ma­tion was stored there that I had for­got­ten about, so I’ve decided to trans­fer it all to his cur­rent site. Re-reading some of his inter­views so many years later, for instance, was inter­est­ing as I didn’t remem­ber many of the details. I responded to an inquiry this morn­ing by explain­ing that because I was Clint’s friend, I designed and main­tained the web­site, and, at his request, kept his Fan Club going. But I never spoke for him and see no rea­son to start now. Rather, his own words will remain on his site which will stay online per­ma­nently as a last­ing trib­ute to our cowboy’s life and work.

And to his innu­mer­able loyal, lov­ing, stead­fast fans.  I salute each and every one of you because you are a remark­able group of peo­ple, and a pro­found reflec­tion both of the man to whom you gave your time, atten­tion, and affec­tion — and each other.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Clint Buchanan, Clint Ritchie, One Life to Live, Tuesday’s Trib­ute

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