Football with Queen Noor's Dad, Najeeb Halaby

Happy Thanksgiving!

Early Thanksgiving morning in 1983, my friend Suzy - shortly to become my boss's wife - called rounding up a gang for a friendly, co-ed football game at the park west of Massachusetts Avenue, just beyond Westmoreland Circle over the DC line in Maryland.  Suzy's angle was to bring a bunch of single folks together and I was living a bachelor existence at the time.  The carrot: "You'll meet my friend Alexa.  Her sister is the Queen of Jordan."

Playing football suddenly sounded like a wise move.

Well, we all got to meet Alexa, who of course was lovely, and I was picked to play on the team quarterbacked by her father, Najeeb Halaby.  What a charming, distinguished and friendly man.  At 68, he had tremendous energy and this hale fellow led us charging up and down the field.  At one point Najeeb and I connected on a beautiful buttonhook-right pattern for a very long TD.  I eventually (much later) learned that my team leader had been at Paul Nitze's side in the formulation of NSC-68, and thus an icon to any anti-communist, cold warrior or neo-con (the term "neo-con" then only recently-coined by Irving Kristol, in his 1979 "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed, 'Neoconservative'.")

Halaby - active in both the Defense and State departments under Truman - later helped form Saudi Arabian Airlines, was eventually appointed by JFK as head of the Federal Aviation Administration (1961-65) and still later became CEO and Chairman of Pan American Airlines.  A record-setting pilot himself and lover of the skies, his bio will fascinate you.  As an aside, Suzy and I had met working at CTM for Robert L. Schmidt, a Georgetown Law grad from the Kennedy White House who'd onetime QB'ed for both Notre Dame and USC (see p.4) in college (the only player ever to do so, and a lefty to boot).  Thanks to Suzy I have the Kennedy / touch football connection with both of these accomplished field generals.

I ran into Alexa a few more times, usually at Suzy and Tim's, and last I heard (ages ago, still in the 80's) that she was in Jackson Hole hiding out with William Hurt.  But that's her Celebrity Romp to tell....