(Here’s a list of all 4 installments of this article: Siyahamba -1st Installment, Siyahamba – Sao Paulo – Installment 2, Siyahamba – Cape Town-Installment 3, and Siyahamba – Norm Bleichman / A Most Inspirational Man – Installment 4)

Yesterday was an amazing day.  The Siyahamba Project that I’ve been working on for the past 4 months and that has recently been performed at the Annual Meeting of the Christian Science Church in Boston was posted on YouTube.  I sat at my computer amazed at the outpouring of gratitude and affection coming from hundreds of people as their letters poured in from across the world for both my wife, Julia Wade, and myself.

Many people worked together to make this project become the success that it is, but one man was its leader – and very few know about his work because he took no credit.  He is the Producer of the Annual Meeting for the Church and the Executive Producer and visionary of the Siyahamba Project.

I have known Norm Bleichman for over 4 decades now and am blessed to call him my good friend.  We were roommates in college and shared many of the same interests in music, sports and show biz in general.  We also had a popular college campus radio show back then called The Blinkman Show where Norm and I with a cast of total morons would perform send-ups of Superman and Batman comics complete with musical underscoring.

We laughed a lot.  We discovered the Beatles together.  We MC’d many of the campus shows as a stand-up comedy act – he the funny guy, me the straight man.  I say with complete sincerity that Norm Bleichman is the funniest guy I’ve ever known.  He has kept me laughing throughout a lifetime and that’s a lot to say for a friend.

After college he went off to fight for our country in the Viet Nam war while I became a draft dodger.  After the war, he came home to work at his dad’s plastic factory while I came to NYC and started a successful show biz career.  I’ve always said that one of the best things I’ve ever done was to help convince Norm that he could be funny on a national scale and get him to finally quit plastics and go to work as a successful comedy writer in Hollywood.  Doing this, he kept millions of people laughing for many years.

For the past couple of decades he has worked at a myriad of jobs for the Christian Science Mother Church, it’s worldwide headquarters in Boston.

Over the years we’ve gone back to our college and re-lived our college days doing our stand-up act at reunions and celebrations.  We made ‘em laugh and joyed in our pro abilities to knock our old friends dead.  I, of course, stood by deadpanned while Norm kept ‘em laughing with his special wit and cornball antics.

Comedy, for me, has degraded lately into how dumb can I be and how much like a toilet can I be.  I could get up on my soapbox and discuss the loss of wit in comedy today, but I won’t bore you with that.  Suffice it to say that Norm’s sense of humor, which is astute, is always about wit, the intelligent and obtuse, and the offbeat, but sensitive special sense of funny.

Occasionally I’ve been asked to write comedy.  Whenever that happens, I always just try to channel Norm and think the way he thinks.  Between Norm and Neil Simon, I’ve learned a lot about what makes funny.  It’s a gift – to make people laugh.

One story I’ve always enjoyed telling:  I shall preface it for you youngins with this fact: “Fanny” was a 1961 film drama that was adapted from the 1954 Broadway musical “Fanny” and starred Leslie Caron, Horst Buchholz, Maurice Chevalier, and Charles Boyer.  It received multiple Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor in a Leading Role.

Norm and I, in high school, sang in Jack Eyerly’s chorus together.  One tense night as we all stood on stage perched on our chorus risers waiting for the curtain to go up at the beginning of a performance, the curtain kept getting held, for god knows what, for a ridiculous amount of time.  The longer we waited, the more Mr. Eyerly fumed.  The more Jack fumed the more nervous the 60 of us got.  As the tensions mounted on stage and the joy of the performers was threatened, suddenly Norm stepped out of the front row of the choir and walked over to the piano.  He turned and faced the choir.  “I shall now play the love theme from Fanny” he announced.  At that, he sat down hard on the piano keys.

Of course the high school choir broke into gales of laughter, the tensions completely evaporated in Norm’s A flat augmented added 6th, 9th and 13th demented butt chord, the curtain opened, and the show began.

Even Jack Eyerly laughed.

That was Norm.  They say that great comedy is in the timing and he’s always had it.  It’s a big part of a good laugh.  Norm is a deep appreciator of the technical side of comedy.  As a pro he has studied it and considered it deeply.  He works at his craft still every day making those around him laugh and, while they’re at it, see the brighter side of life.  When we’re together he makes me think funny and we’re constantly trying to make each other laugh with our wit.  I’m the amateur; he’s the pro, but when I can get a laugh out of Norm, it makes my day.

And so when he first called me to discuss the Siyahamba project, I jumped at the chance of working with him once again.  This was not to be a comedy, but an intensely inspirational event.  But working with him, he kept us all laughing.  The experience was always joyful.  He’s a well-organized, totally pro producer and the work reflects his leadership.  He also was the videographer on several of the segments and directed the video portion of the project.

Ultimately, he was the visionary.  He pointed the way and the rest of us followed.  He inspired all of us with his gentle loving touch, his specificity of organization and his solid sense of humor.  It was a great experience in the making.  And along the way we had more than a few laughs.

That laughter, Norm’s touch, is reflected thoroughly in the project.  The joy that one feels in watching it is the same joy we all felt in making it.  It pours through the music and the images and the spirit of the people.  It is about unity.  It could not have come together without Norm’s leadership.