He’s just reaching his potential!

Someone, anyone, should tell me why we, the British public, are funding thousands of young and mature people in their personal dreams of ‘glory’ in Olympic sporting activities!

I heard this morning in a short broadcast, shorter than normal because I switched the damn voices off earlier than the end, of the prowess and training activities of some of the thirty-odd children who accompanied Sebastian Coe when he made his pitch to the International Olympic Committee in Singapore. Their addition to the cavalcade, replacing the usual politicians on tax-paid junkets, was regarded as a master-stroke of marketing. So we are in the midst of spending some £9,300,000,000, which is quite a rise frrom the original estimate of £2,300.000,000 on the beanfeast spread over seventeen days of the Olympics. Not forgetting the further seven or eight days during the Para- Olympics,when the sick and lame stagger round the track waving at their proud Daddies who incidentally will provide the majority of the audience for that portion of this extravaganza.

But what caught my attention was the entourage which makes up the training cohort for these self-absorbed clowns who all want their ‘moment of glory’. We have to provide a personal trainer, a sports coach, a dedicated medical team (shared) and of course a Mum or Dad who are convinced that their offspring must be the greatest to come down the highway towards that great red marker tape in the sky. We also heard of one young man who had ‘just’ finished outside of the qualifying times, and how his parents had ensured his retrial status (probably by blackmail or physical threats against the selectors). We also heard how he couldn’t even get out of bed early enough to arrive on time for a training event! Sounds to me as though they ought to be trained in how to behave as normal human beings first, and then to find out if they are any good at what ever they choose to do, whether it be lurching, strangling or drowning!

In my time, if any of my compatriots thought that they were any good at sports, they worked hard, got stuck in and never ever dreamed of ‘sponsorship’. It seems a far cry from todays little heroes, who won’t move a muscle until the funding is in place!

And, just as an afterthought, when was it first considered ‘acceptable’ to haul a list around an office or workplace, morally blackmailing all your colleagues to provide funding for some ‘charity’ under the name of ‘Sponsorship’, while performing some unusually sweaty activity which you would have done anyway because you enjoy it?

p.s. When I was approached by a colleague, while on an office-based contract, I told him just to leave me out; and the whispers about the tight-fisted contractor went around faster than any olympic record ever broken! Funny that!

Bah; Humbug!

Remembrance.

I wish to write in remembrance of someone I have never met, never will meet, and in the normal course of events would never have even heard of his name!

Joseph Reina Jr., a manager of operations at Cantor Fitzgerald, met the love of his life in 1996 while on vacation in Cancun, Mexico.

Actually, he first talked to the former Lisa Donoso on the telephone — about bonds — when she worked at Gruntal & Co., Manhattan.

“We realized we were going to Cancun at the same time and thought it was a strange coincidence,” she recalled. “We met at a club, but didn’t meet until the last night — so we didn’t have much time to hang out. Then we were on the same flight home.”

Before they knew it, a relationship was blooming. The couple became engaged in 1998 and married a year later.

On Sept. 11, Mr. Reina gave his half-awake wife, then nine months’ pregnant, a smooch and then kissed her stomach.

It was the same morning routine for almost two years of marriage. But those kisses were the last they shared. Mr. Reina is among those missing from the World Trade Center disaster.

Mrs. Reina, who was home from work for her first week of maternity leave, was asleep that Tuesday when the phone rang at 9:01 a.m.

“All I heard was static — like a cell phone couldn’t connect,” said the 31-year old Annadale resident. “So I don’t really know if he tried to call.”

Mr. Reina, 32, a Brooklyn native, spent 14 years with Cantor Fitzgerald and worked his way up to a manager of operations on the 101st floor of 1 World Trade Center.

“Our lives just started. He just worked so we could have things. The most important thing for him was taking care of us,” said Mrs. Reina, who now works for Bear Stearns & Co.

“He had a great sense of humor. He could turn any bad situation upside down and into a good one,” said Mrs. Reina.

Mr. Reina moved to New Springville in 1984 and then to Annadale when he married in 1999.

A graduate of Port Richmond High School, where he played baseball, Mr. Reina played first base and pitched for the Cantor Fitzgerald softball team. He was an avid Jets and Yankees fan.

“He loved to travel. We’d go on at least three or four trips a year. I’m glad that he went and got to see so many places in his short life,” said Mrs. Reina. The couple’s son, Joseph Robert Reina, was born on Oct. 4. “He looks exactly like his daddy,” said Mrs. Reina.

“It kills me that he never had one second with his son,” said Mrs. Reina. In addition to his wife, Lisa, and his son, Joseph, Mr. Reina is survived by his parents, Rosemarie and Joseph Reina; his brother, Michael; his sister, Joann, and several nieces and nephews.

His life ended as a bunch of fanatics ploughed their jet-fuel laden aircraft into the main core of 1 World Trade Centre.

He died, along with 2,995 other innocents, in the cause of a Muslim fanatic’s mad ramblings; in the name of their god. He died because he was there, because he went to work, because the killers thought it would create the headlines and publicity which they craved.

They got their headlines; they received their publicity, but hopefully, the sacrifice of Joseph Reina Jr. , along with the 2995 others who died on that sad day in September, will be remembered long after the very memories of the hate-filled fools who planned these murders drift away with the winds.

Post created as part of Project 2996.