In Central Park, honoring John Lennon 45 years after his murder

On Dec. 8, 1980 — 45 years ago — Howard Cosell interrupted the broadcast of a "Monday Night Football" matchup between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots to tell the audience about "an unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the west side of New York City, the most famous perhaps of all of the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival."

About 100 people gathered on a frigid afternoon Monday in Central Park to commemorate the life of the musician and activist, not far from the Dakota, the Upper West Side apartment building where Lennon lived and where he was killed. Some were young, born decades after the fact. Some, older, remembered where they were when they heard the news.

"I was here," said Bruce Collins, 73, a retired college economics professor from Harlem. "I lived in the Village at the time. Howard Cosell, on Monday Night Football, mentioned it, so we all came up here."

Music for a lifetime

Collins said he had gone to Central Park a week later at the urging of Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, who asked for a memorial gathering.

"As we were walking out, it started to snow without a cloud in the sky," he said. "It was eerie."

Collins said he bought his first Beatles album when he was 12 with money he’d earned on his newspaper route.

"I listen to the Beatles every day. I exercise and I put on Revolver or Rubber Soul. It’s a continuity in my life ... It makes me feel good. It makes me feel complete. It integrates me across my lifetime. It reminds me that, in the 1960s, we had a 43-year-old president, the Kennedys were alive, King was alive. And at the end of the decade, we were adults and Richard Nixon was president, the Beatles broke up."

Were Lennon alive today, "he’d be out protesting, writing songs," Collins said.

He was one of the crowd at the Imagine mosaic at Strawberry Fields, the Central Park memorial to Lennon established in 1985. The people huddled, backs to the cold, around an informal tribute band — drums, one melodica, one ukulele, close to a dozen guitars — working its way through a version of Beatle George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun."

'Good vibrations'

Art Rees, 75, a retired CPA from Syracuse, said he’d driven five hours to take in the experience.

"There are really good vibrations," he said. "I’ve met so many people here — from New Zealand, from London, from all over the States."

He’d gotten the news of Lennon's death not from Howard Cosell but from the DJ when he got into his car to drive to work the morning after and turned on the radio.

"It completely sickened me," he said. The man he remembered "only had 40 years on this planet and touched so many hearts."

The man who shot and killed Lennon, Mark David Chapman, now 70, is serving a sentence of 20 years to life in a maximum-security prison. Chapman was denied parole a 14th time in August, The Associated Press reported. His next parole hearing is February, 2027.

Patrick Alwyn 22, an actor from London, and Aidin Hayre, 22, a recent college graduate from Seattle, sung along with the crowd at Monday's memorial in Central Park to Beatles classics "Something" and "Happy Xmas (War is Over)." Lennon, said Alwyn, "stood for some beautiful things which need to be held on to today. You don’t see people coming together singing in general," but the memorial provided an occasion.

Donna Petrone, 51, a care manager from Astoria, said she’d been coming for more than 20 years. Todd Costa Rica, 40, of Chicago, — "I work at Burger King by day, but by night I’m a rocker" — was making his first trip.

Costa Rica had been on the ukulele. "I just came, went in and did my stuff," he said. Now he was warming his fingers.

After some prodding from a friend, he said that he’d written a children’s book about the Beatles. He said of Lennon: "He gave us a moment of hope and lots of love," he said. "To see all these people here together singing his songs, it’s a great connection."

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.