JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

Last night, Ellis and Viviane Wayne were going to celebrate 50 years

of marriage. Their three daughters had come to their parents’ home in

Newport Beach from the far corners of the nation for the occasion.

But the golden wedding anniversary didn’t take place last night.

Instead, the extended Wayne family and dozens of close friends --

including my wife and me -- attended a very different kind of celebration

Tuesday: the celebration of a rich and full and much too short life.

Ellis Wayne suffered a fatal heart attack on the tennis court three days

before Christmas.

Ellis would have approved of his memorial. His home was packed to

overflowing, the tributes were brief and eloquent, and it was all

presided over by Rabbi Leonard Beerman, who had married Ellis and Viviane

50 years ago and drove down from Los Angeles to offer wisdom and comfort

to all of us who mourned his sudden passing.

The tributes to him from several friends and the members of his

immediate family were wonderfully honest, which is possible only at an

occasion such as this, when the speakers are not only comfortable with

but truly love the person being eulogized. Ellis would have been amused

and pleased by that.

He was our friend, which seems outrageously understated and yet is

true in every full sense of that word. He was the kind of friend who

would come to our house and schmooze when his wife went off on a junket

with one of their daughters. He was the kind of friend who would call up

-- and did frequently -- on a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon and say he

had just made a pot of soup and would we like to come over and share it

and talk politics or theater or family happenings.

He was the kind of friend who would spend post-dinner talk at our

house with our dachshund -- who loved him -- curled in his lap. He was

the kind of friend who would brave the wrath of higher authority to turn

on a football or baseball game, in which he had little interest, during

cocktail hour because he knew I wanted to watch it. Or play big band

music, which I like to believe he loved as much as I do.

Ellis was a quite remarkably sophisticated innocent, which is not an

oxymoron in his case. He was a splendid psychotherapist and teacher at UC

Irvine, a firm and rational father, a highly accomplished musician, a

superb host and he made the best macaroni and cheese this side of

Columbia City, Ind. He had a fairly low outrage quotient and didn’t

suffer fools gladly.

He would often call me and read me blistering letters to minor

politicians or Fortune 500 chief executives or local contractors who had

offended him by doing something stupid. Sometimes he even got answers.

But all this was done in the spirit of the contest of life, which Ellis

thoroughly enjoyed. He was a participant not an observer.

He had two passions beyond the lady to whom he was married for almost

50 years -- and whose superb writing he championed with enthusiasm and

determination. Those passions were tennis and music. The first had come

lately into his life; the second was part of his bone and marrow.

He had a magnificent grand piano on which he played Sondheim and

Rodgers with the same verve and respect and affection that he gave to

Mozart and Beethoven. And he allowed me to sit on the bench with him and

sing show tunes off-key without ever grimacing -- and how can you measure

a friend who will permit that? I will never look at his piano again

without seeing him sitting there, joined at the hip and the heart.

Tennis was an acquired taste that had grown into a passion. He had a

regular group with whom he played, and the member of that group who first

reached him on the court said he was playing his best tennis ever just

before he reached over to pick up a ball and collapsed.

Rabbi Beerman opened the memorial service for Ellis with the familiar

verses from Ecclesiastes that begin: “To everything there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a

time to die . . .”

And I sighed and thought, “Oh well” -- and then suddenly and

wonderfully, the rabbi stood Ecclesiastes on its head by reading a poem

called “A Man Doesn’t Have Time” by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. It

began:

A man doesn’t have time

to have time for everything.

He doesn’t have seasons enough to have

a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes

was wrong about that.

And then as the rabbi read the rest of this poem, it seemed as if our

good and dear friend who lived life so fully and so well was telling us

that life doesn’t fall into the tidy patterns set forth by Ecclesiastes.

Times overlap and get confused and frequently turn out to be inadequate.

And so do seasons.

So in view of this, he seemed to be saying, it would be wise and

fruitful for those of us who seek both quality and quantity in life to

start making the very best use we can of the time in which we are living.

And not to worry about having a season for every purpose.

That’s not a bad legacy to leave behind -- and it’s one of the reasons

we’ll miss the hell out of Ellis Wayne.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.