Fan mourns Jackson’s death

By Joe Pinchot
Herald Staff Writer

SHARON June 26, 2009 10:45 pm

— Shelly Blue was sitting on her front porch Friday afternoon when a gray minivan pulled up to the stop sign in front of her home with the Jackson 5’s “ABC” blasting out of the open windows.
“See, listen,” the Sharon woman said. “They’re playing Mike.”
“Mike” is Michael Jackson, and Ms. Blue knows his music is being played all over the world to mourn his passing.
“His music is going to hit new heights,” she said. “It’s going to live on. There’s never going to be another Michael Jackson. He was a natural, God-given talent.”
Ms. Blue spent Thursday and Friday crying over Jackson’s death, and remembering meeting him twice, seeing him in concert during the Jacksons’ 1984 “Victory” tour — the last time Jackson toured the United States — and watching the premieres of his new music videos.
“If there was a way to get to Los Angeles for the funeral, I would be there,” she said. “I wouldn’t have to be inside. To be in the vicinity would mean the world to me.”
Ms. Blue, 39, said she was a fan of the Jackson 5, but her attraction to Jackson intensified when he went solo.
“I thought he was so cute,” she said. “His talent, the singing, the dancing. His videos were like little movies. It was just everything about him.”
Her bedroom was wallpapered with pictures of Jackson, and she collected his recordings. She wore Jackson buttons and even adopted his one-glove fashion statement.
Even after all these years, “I can’t go a day without listening to Mike,” she said.
Ms. Blue, a Sharon native who moved back to the city three months ago after 13 years in Miami, was manager of the FYE music store at the upscale Aventura Mall in Aventura, Fla., when she met Jackson the first time. She heard a ruckus coming from an upper floor on May, 1, 2003, and told her employees to mind the store while she went to see what was going on.
She got to the second floor and found “a sea of people,” she said. A security guard friend said Jackson was shopping in one of the stores. She ran downstairs, grabbed a copy of his “Invincible” compact disc, headed back to the second floor, and pushed her way into the store her guard friend said Jackson would go to next. As soon as Jackson entered, the gate was closed on the store.
“I got locked in with him,” she said. “I was panicking — ‘Oh my God. Oh my God, it’s him.’
“He was so nice. He listened to me ramble on. He was so sweet. He was so humble.”
She told him about seeing him on tour and keeping her ticket stubs from the show.
“He gave me a hug and said, ‘Thanks for being afan,” ’ Ms. Blue said.
She still has the marker he signed her CD with, and plans to display the marker, the CD and her ticket stubs in a shadow box.
About a month later, he came back to the mall, but entered her store this time, she said. Jackson didn’t remember her, but that didn’t bother Ms. Blue.
“He was just as nice,” she said. “He sees so many people.”
Through all the bizarre turns Jackson’s life has taken, Ms. Blue has not wavered in her admiration of him.
“That didn’t bother me,” she said of the tabloid headlines. “I stayed a fan. I really never thought he was guilty of the allegations. The one thing I think he was guilty of was being too caring. He was taken advantage of.”
Whitney Houston was in Ms. Blue’s store when one of her bodyguards broke the news that Jackson was arrested on child molestation charges.
“We were both in the store in tears,” she said.
She was the same way Friday when a friend texted her that Jackson had had a heart attack, and she found out later he had died.
“Shock was an understatement,” she said. “I cried so hard. Words don’t describe how I was distraught.”
She spent the rest of the day, and much of Friday, glued to the television and her computer looking for news updates.
“Anyone who liked music, it’s an emotional, sad day,” she said. If you were a music lover, who didn’t Michael Jackson touch?”
With Jackson gone, Ms. Blue is taking on the task of handing down his legacy to a younger generation, including a cousin and her daughters.
“My kids know all the songs,” she said. “They listen to all the stories.”

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