My parents, Donald and Kate Coscarelli, bought their first home for nineteen thousand dollars in a massive new development on the northern tip of Orange County, California. When my family moved in, three thousand homes were under construction along with four new elementary schools in this huge subdivision called Rossmoor. The Korean War was over, war hero Ike Eisenhower was capably president, and it was several years before John Kennedy would be assassinated and several years more before Vietnam would define my generation. It was the late fifties: all the dads were gainfully employed, the moms had beautiful brand-new homes, and we kids had this seemingly perfect landscape to thrive and grow. This was where I grew up and the possibilities for the future appeared limitless.
I met my first best friend on the day I moved into the neighborhood when I was four years old. His name was Darwin Horn and he was bigger, stronger, and a year older. I was like a young Tom Sawyer to his Huck Finn and we did everything together. Rossmoor was our playground and we roamed that suburb far and wide. Everybody called him Little Dar, because his father had the same name. Little Dar and Big Dar. I looked up to Little Dar as he taught me a lot about boy things like fishing, stargazing, and skin diving, but I really looked up to Big Dar. He was unlike the other dads, because Big Dar’s day job was as a United States Secret Service agent. Decades later I would fondly memorialize both Little Dar and Big Dar in my films The Beastmaster and Kenny & Company respectively.
Big Dar had been a football star at Pepperdine, then became a beat cop in the LAPD. Now he worked for the Treasury Department as a Secret Service agent and carried a .38 Special revolver in a shoulder holster. He had spent three years protecting President Eisenhower and had been recently transferred to Southern California to their forgery and counterfeiting unit. I liked Big Dar because he was kind and funny and was never condescending to us kids. Sometimes, with a twinkle in his eye, he would give Little Dar and me what he called “government assignments.” He would come home from work and tell us to get the fireplace going. Then he would hand us a big box filled with counterfeit twenties and hundred-dollar bills. It was then our job to burn this “cash” in the fireplace. As a kid it was so empowering, almost thrilling, to be incinerating thousands of “dollars” in service of our country.
All was not idyllic in Rossmoor. Situated on the border of notoriously arch-conservative Orange County, it was in close proximity to fringe right-wing political groups, including the infamous John Birch Society. The Cold War was at its height and fear of Communism was rife throughout the country. During this tumultuous time my father decided to run for the local school board on a comparatively benign platform that the schools needed better funding. With my loyal younger sister Anne, Little Dar, and his younger sister Diane, we combed the neighborhood delivering campaign brochures out of our little red wagon to all three thousand homes in Rossmoor. It was a big job, but it paid off. My dad won and was promptly elevated to the position of school board president.
Frequently the Birch Society members would swarm and disrupt the school board meetings, demanding all Communist teachers and administrators be rooted out and fired. My dad never carried a gun like Big Dar, but when aroused by injustice, he could be fearless. It would fall to my dad to confront these crazies and many times he was forced to bring in the sheriff to restore order.
Ralph Domino was an inspiring elementary school teacher who drew the wrath of the anti-Communist fringe over, of all things, bike safety. It was Bike Safety Week and Mr. Domino challenged his sixth-grade students to create clever artwork that might connect with their classmates. One of his sharper students painted a cute poster image of a smiling Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, riding a bicycle with a big shiny medal on his chest. The poster tagline read, “He received an award for bike safety, so can you!” The Birch Society freaked out when they heard of this poster and demanded the school board fire Ralph Domino for teaching Communist propaganda. I can proudly say that, in the face of furious protest, my dad and a few other courageous members of the school board voted down these wackos and Ralph was able to keep his job. I was ultimately the beneficiary as I had the honor and great fortune to be able to spend an entire year in the classroom with this brilliant and gifted teacher. I was proud to later memorialize Ralph in my film Kenny & Company with actor Reggie Bannister portraying a teacher much like him.