From Castro Valley to Mission Impossible
In two weeks, the graduating class of Castro Valley High School from 1963 will be holding its 60th reunion. I was a member of that class. We will gather to reunite and look back upon our lives. We have lost friends from among our ranks. That has educated us about the brevity of life. This is difficult to understand when you are young. It is for those of us who have experienced the passage of decades and family and friends. With these thoughts presented, I look back at my own life and wonder about the course it took. My youth was here in Castro Valley. Now, my later years are here as well. I have ended up where I started. In-between, life happened. It is a common feeling for us to share.
As I look back, I recall thinking that I wanted to have an interesting life. Although I did not know what that could be, I nonetheless disembarked. It has not been one of high success or high drama. In retrospect, however, the road traveled contained interesting experiences with interesting people. The lives of my classmates have been similar. Everyone has a story to tell about what they have experienced. This article contains one of my own. It is about a man who became a close friend. My upcoming high school reunion prompts this story. It is also because of the current “Mission Impossible” movie titled “Dead Reckoning.” It is the seventh in a long-running series, which stars Tom Cruise. It is a good movie with a good actor.
With these factors stated, what is not well-known is that the concept of “Mission Impossible” was based upon a real person. That person was a man who took on assignments for our government in the post-WWII era that were considered to be too difficult and sensitive for them to do. During WWII he worked for the FBI in the area of intelligence, which included spying and counter-spying. His success caught the attention of the Director of the Office of Strategic Services, which later became the CIA. With the needs of the Cold War upon our nation, the newly created CIA lacked individuals with the high skills required to meet the challenge. With that, they recruited the aforementioned person to take on sensitive and difficult assignments for our government. His name was Robert A. Maheu. He died in 2008 in Las Vegas. We were close friends and often worked together on things. At his request, I would be the last person he would talk with the day he died.
The fact that Bob Maheu was an interesting person is obvious. The primary keeper of the secrets of the Kennedy family once said that there was no living American who knew more secrets than Bob Maheu. That was high testimony about the life that Maheu led. There has been no movie made of his life. There were two movies made with the title of “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” They were based upon fiction. The title, however, would be most appropriate about Maheu. His life was a real one. One of the aforementioned movies was in 1934 that starred Petter Lorre. The second was in 1956 and starred Jimmy Stewart. They, however, like Tom Cruise, were actors in movies. Maheu acted upon the real stage of international and national intrigue.
As the 60th anniversary of my high school graduation approaches, we will share stories among us about the experiences and people we interacted with during our lives. All of our stories will be interesting to hear and share with one another. Having a close and valued friend that was the real person that the story of “Mission Impossible” was based upon may be one of them.