Bye Bye Bobby Rydell

A Talented Teen Idol Leaves the Room

The last time I saw Bobby Rydell was less than two years ago, in a Zoom meeting July 14, 2020. He was the special guest at the ninth birthday celebration for the Gift of Life Family House, which offers help with food, lodging, and support to families going to Philadelphia for organ transplants. Rydell, after years of alcohol abuse, had life-saving kidney and liver transplants in 2012. Rydell died Tuesday at age 79 of pneumonia in Abington, Pa., a Montgomery County township that borders on north Philadelphia.

In 1995, when she was nine months old, my daughter Jackie had a liver transplant in Philadelphia. We got involved with the Gift of Life Family House in 2012, the same year as Rydell's surgeries. Jackie was one of 10 or so transplant recipients  to receive a college scholarship from the Jessica Beth Schwartz Foundation of the Gift of Life Family House at a luncheon gala in King of Prussia, Pa.

I was two years sober. It was one of those moments when the enormity of what my family, an…