PD and former BJ pop culture critic and extraordinary author Mark Dawidziak and on-stage and off-stage co-star Sara Showman Dawidziak are celebrating their 35^th wedding anniversity today – October 9.

When I did the research for this article I realized that, to do justice to this “run of the play contract” for life, it would rival the Encyclopedia Brittanica in length. Since, as a BJ editor, I didn’t allow my reporters to do write that long, I won’t.

The Love Story of Mark and Sara (without the “h”) began in Tennessee in 1981 when they appeared together in Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor.” A year later, there was a Mark-Sara wedding in Johnston City, Tennessee, where Mark was working on the Kingsport Times-News.

Another year later that’s where the BJ plucked Mark in 1983 as David Bianculli’s replacement for TV critic. And Mark “lucked into” me as his editor. As Humphrey Bogart said to Claude Raines, “It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship” that, like Frankenstein’s monster, “It’s alive!” today.

Before the BJ & the PD, Mark's career took him to the Kingsport Times-News in Tennessee,
the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia, the Associated Press’ Washington bureau and Knight-Ridder Newspapers’  Washington bureau.

The Cuyahoga Falls couple’s photos, in many instances, were taken by their daughter, Becky, who may have a career in portrait art.

Mark was born in Huntington, New York (think Long Island), on September 7, 1956, a son of World War II Army Air Corps captain/navigator Joseph Walter Dawidziak, buried in Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, and Claire Dawidziak. Later, Joe married Bernie Dawidziak.

Mark’s siblings were Joe, Jr., Jane, Aileen and Michael.

When he’s not writing more than a dozen books about Mark Twain, Columbo, Twilight Zone he’s performing the works of Twain, who is the spitting image of Dawidziak, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Dashiell Hammett (who gave birth to detective Sam Spade, played so admirably by Humphrey Bogart) and the Civil War, with Sara often alongside him on the stage for their Largely Literary Theater Company productions.

He has been Mark Twain at, honest to God, the Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, at the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, McKinley Birthplace Memorial Auditorium in Niles and the famous Barter Theatre in Virginia. He gave Hal Holbrook a run for his money when it comes to Twain impersonation.

He gets around, locally and nationally:

"A Christmas Carol," the Kent Stage.
"Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War," Zoar. 
"Everything I Need to Know I Learned in The Twilight Zone," Broome County Forum Theatre, Binghamtom, New York.

"Twain By Two," The Thurber House, Columbus.

"A Force of Nature," scenic overlook at Ledges, Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

The Big Read in Wayne County at the Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster. 
And Paula and I have witnessed Mark and Sara’s performances at libraries in Akron, Cuyahoga Falls, Massillon and Hudson.

Mark’s email address includes tributes to H.L. Mencken and Groucho Marx.

Mencken’s most famous quote trotted out today with Donald Trump in the White House: “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may have been channeling Mencken when he put the M label on President Trump.

Not to be out-done, Groucho said: “Behind every successful man, there is a woman. Behind her is his wife.”

That takes care of President Clinton, Monia Lewinsky and Hillary Clinton.

Despite his tremendous achievements, Mark will never need a larger hat size. He’s as comforting and entertaining as a Twain quote.

Mark is justifiably in the Cleveland Press Club’s Journalism Hall of Fame.

And it is impossible for the reports of his life and love of Sara to be “greatly exaggerated,” if I may borrow from Mark Twain’s denial of his demise.

Rod Serling, one of the many geniuses in Mark’s spotlight, once wrote: ““Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.”

Dawidziak is a writer who performs his lines in the public auditorium. But his skull is crammed with amazing talent.

One of my great pleasures in life was to work with and, in retirement, enjoy reunions at Primo’s Deli and at area performances by Mark and Sara, with Becky’s camera always at the ready.

Lights, camera, action – for Act IV of Mark, Sara and Becky.