Charlton Heston Calls USMC Wife-This Day In Norwood History-January 23, 1984

Husband in Beirut

Wife gets Heston’s call

After dinner on Monday, Sharon Curtis was expecting a call from her Sister-in-law.

But when the phone rang, the voice on the other end sounded more like Charlton Heston.

“At first I said, ‘Is this a joke?’’’ recalled the 26-year-old Norwood native. “But after I heard his voice I knew it was him.”

Curtis was one of 250 wives and mothers throughout the country who received a call last week from Hollywood’s version of Ben Hur, assuring them that their loved ones were safe in war-torn Beirut.

Heston recently visited the American troops in the Lebanese city, and met her husband, George, a 34-year-old Marine Master Sergeant aboard the U.S.S. Guam.

“Mrs. Curtis, this is Charlton Heston,” began the voice that once parted the Red Sea. “Your husband asked me to give you a message, he sends his love and he’s alright.”

After frantically waving her son and nieces from the noisy room, she tried to make small talk with the legend of the silver screen.

“My heart was beating really loud,” remembered Curtis, her eyes widening, as she looked back on the conversation from her parent’s home on Nahatan Street. “I kept saying, ‘Wow it’s really him.”

“I asked him if he enjoyed his trip to Beirut and he said he did,” she recalled, adding it was “the only thing intelligent I said.” They spoke for 5 or 10-minutes, said the woman who was once named Webber. “I said thanks, thank you for calling me,” she continued, “I got off the phone and said, ‘What did I say to him?”’

While her husband has yet to be informed of the famed phone call, his wife received a letter detailing his meeting with Heston.

“George said he was awed,” she said, and he wrote that the film star “was such a big man.” “I thought it was nice that he even went over there.”

An 18-year veteran of the Marine Corps, George once headed the recruiting station in Norwood and has been in Beirut since October, journeying there direct from Grenada, where he also saw action.

“He’s really proud to be over there,” she said of her husband, adding that criticism of the American presence “makes George really mad.”

His letters told of “the kids who couldn’t go to school” in the midst of all the fighting. “They’re just like George,” she said, pointing to her 8-year-old son, the couple’s only child. “They have to live with bombs going off and families killed.”

But there have been nerve-wracking times for her, she said, the worst of which happened most recently. She received a letter from her husband dated Jan. 9, telling of a routine flight with a Marine guard team. “We landed, dropped off the 10 Marines, and started taking fire from everywhere,” he wrote. “Well one of the Marines we dropped off got killed by sniper fire.”

The Marine was a Quincy native.

Letters are the only way they keep in touch. George has been able to call only twice since he arrived in the Mideast.

“I’ll just be glad when it’s all over,” she said quietly, a comment repeated by more than one wife with a husband in uniform.

Curtis is used to having Marines around though. Her father, Russ, was a World War II Marine, and her brothers Todd and Richie, were in the Corps. And George’s father and brother were Marines.

But until George returns in the spring, she will have the memory of a phone call from a living legend. When she finally placed the phone receiver on the cradle that night, she could barely contain her excitement.

“Guess who I’ve been talking to, Charlton Heston,” she said to her brother, Todd, who only had one comment.

“Why didn’t you let me say hi?”

(All articles originally published in the Norwood Messenger)