Bright Lights

Bright Lights
from East Coast by Pat Sellers
Soap Opera Weekly, February 16, 1999

"I know Michael's smiling up there," Maureen Garrett (Holly, Guiding Light) said. "He's back on Broadway!" We were outside the Golden Theatre on West 45th Street after the tribute to her former co-star Michael Zaslow (who played Roger Thorpe on Guiding Light and David Renaldi on One Life To Live). Prior to his career in daytime, Michael was in several Broadway shows, including Fiddler on the Roof. This night, of course, he was back in spirit. The event we'd just attended along with other members of the daytime community, Michael's loving family, and his loyal fans and friends had actually been planned by him as a fund-raiser for ZazAngels adn the ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) Association of Greater New York. But with his death December 6, the evening, which featured a performance of the A.R. Gurney play "Love Letters" by Kim Zimmer (Reva, Guiding Light) and Alec Baldwin, became a memorial to the man and his magnificent, magnanimous work -- under the most daunting of circumstances -- in raising money and public awareness for ALS, the nightmarish disease that struck him just two years ago.

At the cocktail reception preceding the show, Linda Dano (Felicia, Another World) explained why she'd come. "I'm here to tell Michael he's not forgotten -- the fight goes on. At the last ALS benefit I attended I had the pleasure of seeing him and his wife, Susan Hufford, and daughters Marika and Helena. A lot of people showed up, and -- you know what? -- all of us that night believed: He's actually going to do this, he's going to find this cure, and he's going to go on forever. That's why when I got the news he had passed, it was shocking, an enormous blow. And I thought: Isn't that amazing, that the spirit of someone can be that big, that convincing, that overwhelming that you think it's going to happen. And, tonight, people are here because of that energy and that drive and that belief that a cure can be found."

The program, hosted in Michael's stead by actor John Rubinstein, began on a somber note, with Brynn Thayer, Robin Strasser (ex-Jenny Renaldi and Dorian, OLTL), Jane Alexander and Blair Brown reeling off discouraging statistics about ALS, such as the life expectancy of an ALS patient is two to five years; that 300,000 people alive today in the U.S. will die with ALS; and that, as of now, no effective treatment, let alone a cure, has been found. They also read letters from PALS (People with ALS). One said: "This disease is a thief, stealing your ability to walk, to hold your loved ones, to speak, and, finally, to take a life-giving breath. Each one of those losses presents enough of a challenge for one to overcome, but ALS ravages much more than the body. It tries to destroy families, marriages, friendships, dreams, one's sanity, finances and even the will to live."

Though Michael's body was ravaged by the disease, he won all of his other battles against ALS; he never lost his will to live, and through his friends and family, his dream of "A Cure By 2000" continues.