Taylor Nathan loved to travel. He loved comedy, the byproduct of growing up with a comedian for a father. And, most of all, he loved his daughters, 10-year-old Carly and 8-year-old Natalie.
“He had a really good heart,” said Gene Perone, Nathan’s father and a 62-year-old Penn Hills resident. “He just wanted to make people happy, and he had a great intellectual and spiritual curiosity. He had a mind that wandered, thought and wondered.”
Nathan also suffered from an addiction that ultimately cost him his life. He died on Jan. 5, 2019, from an upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage due to alcohol consumption.
“He was super, super what appeared to be happy for most of his life,” said Laura Nathan-Perone, 70, also of Penn Hills. “He wanted to show his girls that there was a big world out there. ... He was just a really good kid.”
On Oct. 22, Nathan’s parents will be honoring their late son in a manner that felt the most right to them. The First Annual Taylor Nathan Memorial Comedy Show Fundraiser will take place at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh in Squirrel Hill with Perone — who performs under the stage name Buddy Flip — emceeing an evening of laughter featuring veteran comics Jeffrey Paul and Sheba Mason, the daughter of late comedian Jackie Mason.
Tickets for this event are available for $30 via ComedyForTaylor.eventbrite.com. All proceeds from the Taylor Nathan Memorial Comedy Show will go toward the Highmark Caring Place, which offers free services and programs designed specifically to help children and their families who just experienced a loss work through their grief. The Caring Place will be matching dollar for dollar the amount brought in through ticket and concession sales.
“We are all about raising awareness about the needs of grieving children,” said Krista Ball, a Caring Place program manager. “I love the idea of a comedy night because I think that one of the misconceptions about grief is that it’s always sad. ... The children at the Caring Place have taught me that when you’re grieving, there is room for the really hard feelings and hope, laughter and happiness.
“It’s not an either/or. They both can exist at the same time. To have a comedy night benefitting the Caring Place, that’s the perfect way to spread the message that life, laughter and happiness continue.”
A few months after Nathan’s death, his parents ended up at the Caring Place for help working out everything they were feeling. It turned out that their daughter-in-law had independently sought out the Caring Place as well for assistance in guiding their grandchildren through their own healing processes.
Perone and his wife, a Squirrel Hill native, have been together for about 25 years now. They met online in the 1990s and lived in New York City before relocating to Pittsburgh so they could be closer to their granddaughters.
Nathan-Perone said the JCC has always been a special part of their family. Nathan “was there so much of his life” that no one was surprised when he got one of his first jobs there. Their granddaughters now also frequent JCC facilities, and Nathan-Perone said the family held a memorial for Nathan at the Squirrel Hill JCC about a month after he died.
It was a natural fit to host the Taylor Nathan Memorial Comedy Show at one of Nathan’s favorite childhood haunts, just as it also was to connect an event in his memory to an organization such as the Caring Place.
“Thank you for the opportunity to honor and help to carry out the legacy of their son,” Ball offered as a message of gratitude for Nathan’s parents.
For her part, Mason was more than happy to headline a show such as this. She has known Perone since she was a 19-year-old waitress working at the New York Comedy Club and still pursuing a career in theater. Perone was that establishment’s manager and also taught comedy classes, which he let Mason take for free. As she put it, Perone “had a major effect on the course of my life.”
This show will be Mason’s first time performing in Pittsburgh. She only met Nathan and his twin brother, Justyn, once briefly in New York City. She said that after everything that family has been through over the last few years, “I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
“Even if I didn’t know them, I’d want to do the show,” she said. “My heart goes out to them, and it’s really an honor that they asked me of all people to do it. ... We always take pain and try to put laughter to it. You’re helping grieving people through laughter.”
That’s exactly what Nathan’s parents are hoping to accomplish through the First Annual Taylor Nathan Memorial Comedy Show Fundraiser. Perone emphasized the “great potential” that evening will have for giving back to the Caring Place, and Nathan-Perone reiterated how grateful she is to everyone involved for granting them the opportunity to highlight their son’s life in such a special way.
“It’s not going to make a difference if there’s one person there or 400,” she said. “We’re still celebrating him.”
First Published: October 16, 2022, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: October 16, 2022, 12:31 p.m.