March 14, 2024
Volume 54 - No. 11
by lyle e davis Sometimes we just don’t know where life is going to take us. Sometimes one little decision, one little series of events, will shape our lives forever. Fortunately, for all of us, Dick Cavett made a decision to go into Omaha, Nebraska, to take the College Boards, rather than participate in a major gymnastics competition in which he was likely to have wound up as champion. A brilliant gymnast, he had already won the state’s gold medal in the pommel horse and was thought to be a sure winner in the upcoming meet. He not only qualified for college but got a full scholarship to Yale University. “One of the happiest days in my life was standing on my porch, reading that amazing letter of acceptance from Yale to be part of the class of 1958,” he remembers.
Had he gone to the state gymnastics meet in Lincoln, Nebraska, we might well have had another Olympic gymnastic champion . . . but we would have been denied the years of pleasure Dick Cavett has given us as, arguably, the premiere television host, interviewer, commentator, humorist, and wit. Cavett appeared regularly on nationally broadcast television in the United States in five consecutive decades, the 1960s through the 2000s. Cavett became interested in show business early in life. Like at four or five years of age, before kindergarten. “Mom used to stand me up on a chair and have me recite things,” he says. “She had required me to learn bits of Shakespeare and I would recite them. After completing my recitation I would then say, ‘Everybody crap.”
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I had trouble pronouncing my “l’s” and all the neighbor ladies would come to the recitations just to giggle and comment, ‘wait till he gets to the end.’ They apparently were not so taken with the works of Mr. Shakespeare but for me to say, ‘everybody crap.’ Dick’s mom and dad were both educators and “sometimes obnoxiously got me involved in writing, reading and education.” Cavett was born on November 19, 1936, in Kearney, Nebraska. He grew up in a town called Gibbon. To my great surprise, Gibbon does not have a big sign at its city limits saying, “Gibbon, Nebraska, boyhood home of Dick Cavett.” I was also surprised that the house in which he grew up in has been torn down or moved. One would think, given his celebrity and many awards, they would have preserved
the house as a tribute to ‘their favorite son.’ Particularly in a small town like Gibbon. “We lived in a big white house facing the grain elevator, where there was a sugar beet pile. I spent hours playing; there. It was across from the grain elevator which was owned by a man named Alva Zimmerman. The big white house is gone now, as is, I suspect, Mr. Zimmerman.” Great question for Jeopardy: “Dick Cavett, famed television personality has the same middle name as Thomas Edison. What is that name?” Answer: Alva Richard Alva Cavett has a number of Alva’s in his family line. His dad, Alva B. Cavett, and his his paternal grandfather, Alva A. Cavett. “In fact,” says Cavett, “Carol Burnett was amused by my middle
Cavett
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