Attention must be paid

David Cassidy died when I was in Las Vegas. There is no overestimating what he meant to my girlfriends and me when I was in junior high. We all watched The Partridge Family. We read about him exhaustively in the pages of 16 and Tiger Beat. We all got upset when grownups said Shirley Jones, his mom on the show, was his mom in real life. PUH-LEEZE! David's parents' divorce when he was very young was one of those secret heartaches that we believed infused his music.

Bobby Sherman of Here Come the Brides was my personal fave rave, and he was always sunny. I appreciated that Donny Osmond was a better all-around performer -- able to sing and dance with his brothers. But David was the romantically tragic one. The Heathcliff of Bubblegum.

In retrospect, I think he probably would have been a good serious actor. I think that earnestness and intensity is what we little girls were responding to, and he probably could have parlayed that into an acting career if he'd had better guidance. (Think I'm kidding? Don't forget Johnny Depp began on 21 Jump Street and Leonardo di Caprio was on Growing Pains.)

I know Cassidy had a difficult transition from teen dream to adult performer. I know he suffered financial setbacks and more than his fair share of health problems. I'd read that he was awaiting a liver transplant when he died.

I hope he is at peace now. He brought a lot of us a lot of happiness once and he remains a bit player in the soundtrack of some of our lives. That should count for something. And so I post this in honor of the beautiful and achingly sincere boy I was once a little in love with.