From The Past: May 19, 2004
Sadly, actor Tony Randall died yesterday at the age of 84. He did a wonderful job on The Odd Couple and he was very entertaining in the many interviews that I saw him in. But, to me, Tony Randall brings up an important issue. That issue would be: how old is too old to become a parent?
He and his wife, Heather were 50 years apart in age. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like. To me it’s no different than when Anna Nicole Smith married that man in his 80’s. What does a girl that age see in a man that old? Do I believe there can be love between people with such an age gap? Yes. But would I want to put myself in the position where I was pretty much assured that he was going to die first? No! I would be worried every day.
Tony became a father for the first time when he was 77. Okay, so you’ve gotten married to someone who is 50 years your junior, but do you really need to be having babies at 77? Some people would argue that he wanted to be a father so it doesn’t matter how old he was. Even though he’s gone now, one of his children had him for seven years and the other for five. That all may be true, but I don’t think it’s fair to the children. At seven and five these kids aren’t going to remember their father, who he was, or how he was with them. By the time they reach adulthood, all of the memories they have now will be faded into almost nothing. Sure, they can watch his show on TV or see him in video, but they won’t remember the way he was with them personally. This boy and girl will grow up with no father and I don’t think it was fair of their parents who knew that this would happen. I mean, what was the probability that he was going to live to be 100?
You might say that many dads die every day in freak accidents when they are very young and that you never know when someone is going to die. That’s true enough, but those are accidents. Tony knew that he was elderly and that most men don’t live that long anyway. I think it’s selfish to have babies when you’re that old.
Another argument is that he wanted to leave his legacy to someone. To that I say: he was married before this for 54 years! If he was that worried about leaving a legacy, he should have thought about it in those 54 years.
Oh well. What’s done is done and it cannot be changed. It does make for an interesting topic though 😉