Strath Haven's David Letterman Club

In February 1988, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a story about the coolest club we had at Strath Haven High School in Wallingford, Pa. Yes, indeed, we had a David Letterman Club, in which students gathered after school to watch VHS tapes of his shows on a rolling AV cart.

The Inquirer story was reported and written by Gloria Hoffner¹, with a group photo that was taken by Al Tielemans. I'm way in the back of the photo and clearly in need of a haircut. This wasn't my only appearance in the Inquirer. I was also mentioned numerous times, in conjunction with the Steve Jeltz Fan Club, in Jayson Stark's Baseball Week in Review. And a ridiculous full article about that club, with a photo of me wearing a tie, was published by the Inquirer in, I think, the summer of 1990. I'll have to dig that one up.

Here are some excerpts from Hoffner's article:

• Each Wednesday afternoon, about 20 Strath Haven High School students gather around a TV set in science room 211. But instead of of watching the usual educational-television fare, they watch stupid pet tricks.² Did someone sabotage the videotape? Nope. It's Late Night with David Letterman, and it's no mistake.
• Armed with a fast-forward control button, the club members search past the commercials³ for the meat of the programs. They say their favorites are the animal acts and the sports foul-ups.
• Rick Kosel, a Strath Haven science teacher and the club's adviser, said that "about three or four years ago" Jamie Hooper, a resident of Swarthmore who is now attending Dartmouth, asked if we could have a club to watch taped videos of David Letterman because the show comes on at 12:30 p.m., and he didn't want to stay up that late. "We have a school policy that if a student comes up with a club idea, has 10 interested students and an adviser, then it can be considered an after-school club," Kosel said.
• "When I heard about the David Letterman Club, I thought it was a good idea because there are many students from one-parent homes or from homes where both parents are working, and this was a place they could go while waiting for their bus," [Activities Director Charlotte] Higler said.
• [Higler] said the David Letterman Club costs the district about $200 a year — the cost of Kosel's adviser's salary of $11 per hour. Kosel pays for the tapes, and the school already owned the videotape player.
• "I think it is a good thing because this way the kids who love David Letterman don't stay up until 1 a.m. watching, and it keeps their minds on their homework rather than on TV," Higler said.

That was 37 years ago. In 1993, Letterman left NBC's Late Night with David Letterman and began hosting Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. He retired in May 2015 after more than 4,200 episodes at CBS, including being the first talk show to return after 9/11. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert took over the famed Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan after Letterman retired, and Colbert was still going strong when CBS abruptly announced Thursday that his show will be canceled effective May 2026. There are strong indications that CBS's announcement represent a form of appeasement to the president of the United States, who has long expressed disdain for Colbert. Silencing comedians who poke fun at you is apparently what we do now in our democracy.

Speaking of the president, this is what David Letterman himself had to say about him way back in an interview with The Associated Press published on July 10, 2017:

QUESTION: Speaking of the current administration, late-night seems to have become mostly Trump jokes and tirades. Do you miss not being part of that?

LETTERMAN: "Here's what I keep saying: We know there's something wrong, but what I'm tired of is people, daily, nightly, on all the cable news shows telling us there's something wrong. I just think we ought to direct our resources and our energies to doing something about it. And other people have made this point: If the guy was running Dairy Queen, he'd be gone. This guy couldn't work at The Gap. So why do we have to be victimized by his fecklessness, his ignorance? But it's just the behavior is insulting to Americans, whether you voted for him or not — and I feel bad for people who did vote for him because he promised them things that they really needed and one wonders if he's really going to come through. I know there's trouble in this country, and we need a guy who can fix that trouble. I wish it was Trump, but it's not, so let's just stop whining about what a goon he is and figure out a way to take him aside and put him in a home."

That was eight long years ago. Which paradoxically seems even longer ago than when I was watching Letterman VHS tapes at Strath Haven in 1988.

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Footnotes

1. What a cool story Gloria Hoffner has! Here's an excerpt from her About the Author page on Amazon: "When I was a little girl my dream was to be an astronaut. So in 7th grade I wrote to NASA to ask what I needed to study in high school and college to travel into space. NASA sent me a form letter. It said study Latin and German, the language of scientific papers at the time, to study physics, math etc. Then as I reached the bottom on the page, in blue ink, handwritten, was a note that said, 'Of course we do not accept women into the space program.' It was 1967 and discrimination against women was legal and accepted. So, I turned to my second love, science fiction, and decided I would be the next Jules Verne. I read and wrote stories constantly(asked my teachers, family and friends to read them) and planned my career. I met a science fiction writer in high school and applied to college. I realized that I needed a full time job as I worked towards a career in fiction, so I majored in journalism." That led her to a career at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and later she published the award-winning book Science for Seniors: Hands-On Learning Activities.

2. Some "Stupid Pet Tricks" trivia from Wikipedia: "When Letterman left [for CBS], NBC asserted their intellectual property rights to several of the most popular Late Night segments. ... Notably, however, 'Stupid Pet Tricks' originated on Letterman's 1980 early morning show The David Letterman Show, to which Letterman, not NBC, owned the rights. This meant 'Stupid Pet Tricks' was able to cross over to the CBS show with its name and concept unchanged."

3. Nowadays those commercials would make those VHS tapes (if they still exist) pure gold. VHS tapes are making quite the comeback, as I plan to delve into later this summer. But even more valuable and collectible than certain commercial VHS tapes are home recordings of shows, movies and live sporting events onto blank tapes. They can contain commercials, news broadcasts, bumpers and other content that would otherwise be long lost. If you have these from the 1980s or 1990s, they usually sell for a decent price on eBay.