Yale Glee Club Brings Holiday Cheer To Train

There was a shampoo commercial back in the 80's in which a freshly showered Heather Locklear holds a bottle of Faberge Organics Shampoo.  She says that it was so good that she told two friends about it...and they told two friends, and they told two friends...and so on, and so on...

I know the feeling.  In December of 2015, I posted a silly video of me while working as a railroad conductor, musically "conducting " The Yale Glee Club aboard my train.  This video went viral and at this writing has over views on 3,348,126 Views on Facebook, and 52,321 people shared the video with their Facebook friends.  These numbers don't account for the thousands that watched/shared it on YouTube, or those who saw it on their nightly news programs across the globe.  Not bad for a silly video that I just wanted to post to a few Facebook friends.

Here's how it happened:

On December 4th, 2015, I was the conductor on the 2:45 PM Metro North train from New Haven to Grand Central Terminal in New York City.  A few minutes before leaving time, a swarm of college  kids headed toward the back of the train.  The rear two cars were closed, so I quickly opened them to accommodate the extra crowd.  We pulled out of  New Haven Station and I began collecting tickets.  I soon learned that the 80 students were on a single group ticket. I was directed to a gentleman who looked not unlike a professor.

"What group is this?" I asked.

"The Yale Glee Club." He responded.

Now I've had the legendary Yale Whiffenpoofs on my train before, as well as other assorted singing groups from Yale, but for some reason, it never occurred to me to ask them to sing.  But here it was, the holiday season...and I really wanted to hear a Christmas Carol.  I asked the professor (who turned out to be Jeffrey Douma, Yale Choral Director), if they would sing me a Christmas Carol.  He prompted them and they then sang the most beautiful version of "The Wassail Song" that I'd ever heard.  It sent shivers down my spine.  I thanked them for sharing their talents with me as they poured out of the train and into Grand Central.

Later that night I was boarding the 10:06 PM train from Grand Central to New Haven.  I heard  singing in the terminal, and sure enough, The Yale Glee Club rounded the corner, walked through the gates and down the ramp toward my train.  I quickly walked forward to the head of the train to open more cars.  On the way I chatted up some of the students.  I told them I had an idea for a Facebook video in which I'd say,"I'm the conductor, let me conduct."  They all laughed, and Dan Rubin, one of the Glee Club Presidents said, "Tell us that we're singing it all wrong and that you need to conduct us."  I loved that idea....but we still didn't know which song to do.  One of the students yelled "Carol of the Bells".  I knew this song pretty well from the dozens of Christmas CD's my wife continuously plays from Thanksgiving to December the 25th, so I said "I love it!"

When we pulled out of the station, I quickly ran through and picked up all the tickets. I then told my assistant conductor to take over the ship, I had something to do in the head end.  As I walked forward, I collected the group ticket from Professor Douma.  I asked for permission to borrow his glee club for a Christmas carol I liked to "Conduct".  He gladly gave permission and even offered to stand behind me to do the real conducting. "Okay," I said, even though I had no intention of using him.

This is what happened next:
I was floored by how amazing they sounded, and I was a little self-satisfied with my less than stellar choral directing.  You can see that I messed up at the end of the song when I raised my arm in a flourish, thinking the song was over, then realizing we weren't done.  I was a little embarrassed by this and briefly thought about yelling "Take two!"  But any subsequent execution would have lost the videos spontaneous feel.

I walked back to the rear of the train after the performance, and by the choral director Douma.  He asked me when he was needed to conduct the song.  "We already did it." I told him.

The next day I got an email from Greg Suralik with the video attachment.  I watched the video and was delighted...and a little abashed for being such a ham. I briefly thought about posting the video to my Facebook page, but I wasn't sure how well it would be received by my employer.  I decided that I better not post it in fear of getting myself into trouble.  I replied to Greg's email, saying it was great, but I was too chicken to post it.

That weekend, my family went up to visit my younger daughter at her college.  I hadn't shown anyone the video, but decided to pass my iphone around as I drove through Willimantic, and let them have a gander at it.  They all loved it.

"Dad, you HAVE to post this...you'll be on Ellen." said my daughter Caitlin.

I told my family of my trepidation about posting the video, and they all seemed to think I was being overly cautious.  Two days later, I sat at my computer, watched the video again...and decided to post it.  Almost immediately, people started "liking it" and sharing it.  By the time I got to work that day, I had something in the neighborhood of 250K views.  The next morning it was over 1 Million views then my phone started ringing.

I first got a call from a company in Los Angeles that wanted to buy the rights to the video from me.  They told me they'd give me a percentage of the profits.  I told them I didn't own the video, it that it belonged to a Yale undergrad named Greg. The phone continued ringing, we were asked to appear on Good Morning America (couldn't work out the logistics).  The next morning I did a radio interview with Vinnie Penn on a local radio station. Two local news stations interviewed me, one whilst following me down the aisles of my train with a camera.  The New York Stations set up a press conference in Grand Central, but my train broke down on my way in from New Haven, and it was cancelled. 

I became quite famous that Christmas season.  It seems the video went all over the globe. Passengers wanted to take selfies with me, I even got a few autograph requests.  Suddenly, my regular pizza shop stopped charging me for my daily slice of pizza, and friends I hadn't seen in years began calling and leaving messages.  I had hundreds of new Facebook friend requests.

 Months later I discovered I had a spam filter on my Facebook page and that I'd missed tons of interview requests from media all over the globe.  I also got love letters from Sweden and Hong Kong, but most were just thank you messages for brightening people's day.  I even got a special thank you from Lynda Carter, aka Wonder Woman. 

It really was a once in a lifetime chance meeting...or so I thought.  Here we are again a year later in 2016.  Again unplanned....it must be fate.

September 13th, 2001

It was dusk when my train rolled round the curve in the South Bronx and headed over the blue railroad bridge that traverses the Harlem River into Manhattan. It’s from this vantage point that an engineer gets his first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline. Directly ahead he can see The MetLife Building. To the east stands the art-deco crown of the Chrysler Building. The needle of The Empire State Building rises further to the south, and just beyond that stood the twin towers of World Trade Center. But not this day…this day was different. It was September 13th, 2001, and the world had changed forever.

This was my first trip into the city after the terrorist attacks and because of a morbid curiosity; I craned my head out of train’s cab window to see what had become of the city I’ve come to love. The first thing I noticed was an acrid smell that had permeated the September air. A haze had settled over the twilight sky and gave a strange beauty to the sun as it set over the Hudson River. I scanned the horizon, searching for the spot where the towers once stood only to find angry plumes of white and black smoke billowing in the distance.

It had been an easy run from New Haven that day. The train was half full, and the commuters, (normally a loud and boisterous lot) were unusually quiet and subdued. They seemed shocked from the events of the previous days and not their usual selves. When we reached Grand Central everyone was strangely polite and they didn’t push their way off the train as they normally do. It seemed that everyone had slowed down and maybe appreciated just how precious life is.

When I entered the main concourse in Grand Central, I noticed that the building services department had hung a huge American flag from the center of the terminal’s famous teal and gold-leaf ceiling. A random passenger (who obviously had operatic training) put down his briefcase and looked up. He then spontaneously broke out into the most beautiful version of The Star Spangled Banner that I had ever heard. It was like something out of a corny 1930's movie, but I'll never forget it.

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.O say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet waveO'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

I gave him a round of applause and wiped a tear from my eye. I continued on to find that a kiosk/bulletin board had been erected in one of the terminal’s corridors. It was covered with flyers and pictures of missing people from the Trade Center Buildings. Most gave a description of the missing person and what floor they work(ed) on in the Trade Center. I noticed that most worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm that suffered a direct hit from one of the hijacked planes. Bouquets of flowers and prayer cards littered the floor beneath the kiosk. Several people stopped to read the heart-breaking messages that were posted there. Nobody walked away dry-eyed. The missing were old and young, rich and poor, black and white and yellow. It seemed the terrorists did not discriminate.

Loud crowds, taxis, car horns and construction, these are the sounds of the city, but that night all was quiet…too quiet. Todd, my engineer, recommended we go the nearest White Castle burger joint for a bite to eat. I had never been to a White Castle before (or since) but their tiny burgers are part of New York legend and I was eager to try them.
The restaurant was on 5th Avenue, across the street from the Empire State Building, and when I looked up I saw that it was illuminated red, white and blue. Along 5th Avenue, the merchants had left burning candles in front of their businesses to pay tribute to those who had lost their lives in the attack. In the distance I could see the same ominous clouds of smoke that I had spotted earlier in Harlem. Now the clouds loomed closer and looked even more threatening. The odor wafting through Midtown now smelled toxic, as if plastic was burning. It was starting to get to me.

After picking up donuts at Krispy Kreme in Penn Station, (we were on a health kick that night) Todd and I headed up to Times Square. If the sound of silence was eerie earlier, here it was down right frightening. The usually festive lights of Times Square now seemed garish and inappropriate in this time of mourning. The crossroads of the World was virtually empty, and the few people who were there were looking up at the Fox News banner that wraps around the building on 42nd Street. Others watched Peter Jennings deliver a special report on the giant TV screen that's displayed on the 1 Times Square building. Nearby, a street peddler sold T-shirts that read: I survived 9-11. Although tacky, in some way it was comforting to see that capitalism was still alive and well. Todd bought a T-shirt for “ posterity sake.”

On the way back to Grand Central we passed several newly installed concrete Jersey barriers that now surrounded the terminal. Vanderbilt Avenue, which served as Grand Central’s taxi stand, was cordoned off and filled with a large variety of police vehicles.
On the way to my train, I passed several camouflaged covered, machine gun toting, National Guard members and police in riot gear. I remember thinking that things would never be the same.

When I set up my train for the way home, I set aside two cars exclusively for the exhausted emergency workers at Ground Zero. These cars were filled with firemen, EMTs, police officers, ironworkers, clergy members, doctors, nurses and Red Cross volunteers. Some of them had been at the site for more than 24 hours, either digging through rubble or offering care and comfort to the rescue workers. Their clothes and shoes were covered with the white powder, which they tracked on the floor of the train. These cars soon filled with the smell of wet plaster and smoke that was imbedded in the clothes of these workers. Most told me that the images on television did not do justice to the immense destruction they encountered. They used the media’s new favorite word: “Surreal.” One ironworker had a new digital camera and he showed me some of the pictures he had taken. It was the first time I had seen a digital camera and I was very impressed

When my assistant John and I began loading the train, a group of five college-aged, bearded Pakistani/Indian looking men walked past us and boarded the rear car. They did not look unlike the photos of the terrorists that graced the cover of the New York Post that day and I must admit that John and I were a little panicked. So were our passengers. As soon as the five men boarded, several people gathered their belongings and got off the train. On the way out they asked us the departure time for the next New Haven train.

One of our company trainmasters (supervisors) stopped by our train to ask how things were going. We told him about the five guys that just boarded and how we had several worried passengers. The trainmaster asked if they had box cutters or in any way acted suspicious. We said that; "no, we hadn't seen box cutters," and "no, they hadn't acted suspicious," but that we still felt uncomfortable. He told us that there was nothing we could do, we were racial profiling.

Almost immediately after pulling away from the block in Grand Central, one of the five guys pulled out a camcorder and started videoing out the window. He was taping the Park Avenue Tunnel that leads out of Grand Central. John asked the guy to please stop taping, especially in view of the events of the past few days. The guy said that it was very important for him to tape and he refused to stop. John came and told me what had happened. I deemed this as “suspicious activity” and called for the police.

The police pulled these guys off the train in Stamford for questioning. I later found out that they were architecture students from India and that they were only interested in the design of Grand Central.

They picked the wrong week to do it.

On the way home I looked out over the sea of cars in each of the station parking lots. I wondered how long these cars had been sitting there, and if their owners would ever return. Unfortunately, many of them never did.

House of Wax

Wow! What a whirlwind day. This "Derailed" blog thing has really taken off. One of my readers invited me over to her estate on 42nd St. for a dinner party. I wasn't in the door more than two minutes when Larry King accosted me.

"Hey Conductor to the Stars!"

"Hey Larry!"

"What brings you here?"

"The lady who owns this joint reads my blog, I think her name is Madame Tussaud, anyway she says she loves my stuff and she invited me over to hobnob with "the beautiful people. "

"Well we're pleased to have you here. Ya know... I hear good things about 'Derailed.' I hear book deal. I hear movie deal."

"Yeah Larry...From your lips to God's ears."

"No, really! Woody and I were just talking about you. I think he has something in mind. You should go over and talk to him. He's sitting over there in the corner."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained... I guess. Thanks Larry! Oh, by the way...You need a mint!"



"Woody...Woodman...Woodster! Woody, I love ya babe."

"Well then... you're the only one. Ever since the Soon-Yi thing, I've become a parhia at these parties. Yoko Ono gets a better reception than me!"

"Well then, I guess we'll have plenty of time to talk. Larry King tells me you're thinking of developing a project around "Derailed." Is that true?

"I'm very interested. In fact I was just trying to convince Robin Williams to portray you.

"Woodman, Ya know I love ya, but I really don't think Robin and I look anything alike.



I really have someone else in mind. Someone who can better capture my soul. Someone like...



"No really Sam. I think you'd be perfect for the part!



I wasn't at the party long when I started to hear people muttering things like: "That's HIM!" and "Conductor to the Stars" and "Movie deal." Before I knew it, I was surrounded.




"Julia baby, don't embarrass yourself. I'm a married man!"



"I'M HOT! Oh I bet you say that to all the boys."


"Wow, I must be hot. I even met Baby Suri."



"Baby, I don't know if 'Chicken of The Sea' is chicken or tuna either. What I do know... is that you'd be perfect as my wife (In the movie of course!) Have your girl call my girl. We'll do lunch!