A beacon of light shines all through the night just for me (Susan Cowsill)

Wie geht's?

Ron Howard and his brother, Clint Howard, have been a constant in my life.

I've just finished their Hollywood and family memoir The Boys and I felt again a real kinship to Ron as I read it.

[Although I also grew up watching Clint on Gentle Ben, I can't relate to him in the same way. I have never been drawn to excess, apart from record collecting, so his story of alcohol and drugs is completely alien to me].

But Ron, he's like my older brother (he is three years older than me and Clint is like my own brother - two years younger).

Although a world away in America there are some similarities:

• Loving parents who stayed together until our mothers passed away.
• The family dynamic is similar - Ronny and I are the older brother, with no other siblings.
• Ron and I have both sustained long marriages to one person, and we both have had families of four children.
• I even feel our personalities are similar - calm and even tempered, driven to succeed. but retaining our moral compass and values.

Of course, I've grown up with him as well thanks to the medium of Television.

My early memories of the sixties include watching The Andy Griffith Show on NZBC's one channel. Ronny Howard (as he was billed then) was my buddy - Opie Taylor. Or he would have been if he was real and lived in my Royal Oak neighbourhood.

My friends at Royal Oak Primary were all like me and Opie - friendly, quiet, generous with affection, funny, caring, sporty, respectful to our parents and adults in general, and not so clever at our schoolwork.

Then came American Graffiti (1973) and Happy Days when I was a teenager. I was a regular viewer of Richie, Potsy, Ralph and The Fonz.

Richie was again like me as I related to my friendship group: not the smartest tool in the shed, a bit vague and clueless but still like Opie grown into a teenager, battling all the things teenagers always battle. 

Reading The Boys, reminded me again how I am intertwined with other guys like Nick Hornby and Ron Howard - guys who I'll never meet, yet they feel like family.

Love and peace - Wozza