I’m bleary-eyed from going through nine pages of posts, but I don’t think I saw Pat Benatar listed. I don’t know if she’s still considered a Catholic (to avoid the risk of starting yet another shourting match, by that I mean, “Does she list that on forms as ‘Religious Affiliation’?”)
My husband is a big Pat Benatar fan (has been for 25 years!) and I remember reading in Reader’s Digest how she grew up in a working-class neighborhood on Long Island (born in Brooklyn), too poor to attend the parish school (Our Lady of Good Counsel) but attended catechism classes and how it always amazed her how the nuns seemed to glide–no one ever saw their feet.
I also know that her husband, Neil Giraldo, is actually her second husband (her given name was Patricia Mae Andrzejewski–she acquired Benatar from her her first husband, Dennis Benatar, whom she married when she was nineteen and divorced in the late '70s). We just saw her about two months ago when she performed at the Inn of the Mountain Gods in Ruidoso, NM. She’s lost her 4 1/2 octave range, but her voice is still powerful (that show was practically a 2-hour standing ovation… the woman is 54, but she ROCKS!) But what impressed me the most was the way her husband, Neil, watched her while she was singing. The stage had two giant projection screens set up for the benefit of the standing-room crowd in the back, and when I looked up once while Pat was singing, the screen showed Neil, playing guitar and staring at Pat with this look of devotion, adoration, love-struck puupy dog,… I can’t explain it. Like he was looking at the most beautiful thing on earth. For a celebrity couple that’s been married for 25 years, that was quite refreshing!
Anyway, that’s my contribution to the thread.
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