TV Radio Mirror (Jan - Jun 1963)

"We had a big gang fight there, and the whole fire department came out and they washed everybody up the street. I was only fourteen, but I was the ringleader." That was when Jack Ging's anxious mother sent him off to the Christian Brothers Boarding School in the Santa Fe mountains. Jack was sure he'd been packed off for discipline, that this would be another house of strangers. But what he found was to surprise him. When he arrived, he was just as much a brawling tough as he had been on the streets of Albuquerque. He managed to get into three or four fist fights the first week. But the brothers seemed to know what he was fighting for. They didn't ship him out. They included him in. "I was accepted and they liked me, you know," he says, still incredulous. "I was somebody. Obviously, it was a need in me that had never been satisfied before." The depth of Jack Ging's appreciation may be an indication of the acuteness of his need. "Going to that school," he declares, "was the greatest thing that ever happened in my life. I found a whole new way of life. I'd lived in different people's homes and stuff like that. And all of a sudden I go to this boarding school, I get my own room. And I'm part of the school, of the tradition, whatever. "I found a real home there. I found love there. The Christian Brothers took a real interest in me. I found religion. I became a Catholic. Weekends, we never went to town. I spent the weekends on camping trips, skiing in the winter, that kind of stuff. It was a great life for a boy. "I even stayed in the summer. Most of the kids went home for the summer. Of course, in boarding schools like that, half of them are from rich families, parents who are wandering around. I had nowhere to go for the summers, and I used to stay with the Christian Brothers and help paint things at school, go on great camping and fishing trips with them. Hell, it was my home." It was during those happy years that Jack first channeled his drive and energies into athletics. It was then he discovered, almost giddily, that it was a way to popularity, if not to love. "I loved sports and excelled in them," he says. "That's where I was always accepted, because I could always do very well athletically. Young men, young boys, if they're good at athletics, are always accepted." Acceptance became the spur. It continued that way when, because of his mother's illness. Jack had to move back to Oklahoma. He was enrolled at Alva High School and promptly became its star athlete and all-time football hero, going on from there to make football history at the University of Oklahoma. The search for love "As long as I can remember," Jack Ging says, narrowing his eyes, considering his drive for perfection first in football and later in acting, "I've felt there just isn't any other way to live. Just try to be the best in everything you do. It's not the thing of just being good. It's the only satisfaction there is. I wouldn't enjoy being just like everyone else. "That's probably an inadequacy in me," he speculates, "or an unfulfilled part of my life. Maybe it's because I had no family life, really, growing up the way I did. Maybe it's my way of making up for not having had my father. You see, well-adjusted people usually have a very good home life. They don't have to prove anything to get love — so they usually don't bother proving anything. But you know that they know they're loved." Jack Ging takes a long bead on that observation. He drags slowly on his cigarette and watches the smoke trail toward the ceiling. "I think everybody needs love," he proclaims. "I don't give a damn who they are. Even Castro, you know. Or Khrushchev. Everybody does. And when you're young, the environment you're in, the way you live, if it doesn't come out of the home, then you reach out for it other places." What Jack Ging missed in the dressing rooms of the football stadium at Alva High, he found on the campus at Oklahoma University. That's where he met Gretchen Graening, the attractive, sensitive girl he married six years ago, after a three-year courtship. With Gretchen, he has known love. When Jack Ging gropes for a way to describe the closeness and approval he yearned for as he watched his teammates accept the plaudits of their proud fathers, it's the thought of Gretchen that suggests an analogy. "It's like what a wife does for you later," he says. "It's what everyone needs." He doesn't find it easy to break down to specifics, but he gives it a try. "I don't really pay too much attention to what a lot of people say about me and my work," he says, his independence still intact. "I figure my taste is as good as theirs. But I do listen to Gretchen. When she brags on me, I'm really complimented. "Two things — she cares about me, and she's honest." But crusted patterns are not easily broken. Jack Ging never did learn how to let go, never did break the habits he formed when he assumed manhood at ten. "I've never been dependent on Gretchen like I know she's wanted me to be sometimes," he says. "When I'm really troubled, I never discuss it with her. I always tell her about the good things. I like to share them. But serious things, I never really rely on anyone, not even on Gretchen." Jack Ging has not been able to cut his ties with his lonely boyhood, those years he had to stand on his own feet while other kids were able to grow in their parents' shadows. "That's the way I am," Jack Ging shrugs. "I like it that way. I don't want to lean on anyone. Yeah, there have been times when I probably wanted someone to turn to and go to, but I never trust myself to do it." — William Tusher Jack co-stars in "The Eleventh Hour," NBC-TV, Wed., 10 to 11 P.M. EDT. OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOU For ad rates, write PCD 549 W. 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