Letters to the Editor: A reader recalls a memory that runs antithetical to James Gandolfini’s most famous role

To the editor: Back when my now 30-year-old son was a teenager, he and I went to Magic Mountain for a day of roller coaster riding. As we prepared to get on a ride, the line was held and from the other side of the platform, a very shy-looking James Gandolfini, along with two young boys, were seated on the coaster first (“James Gandolfini [and Tony Soprano] would have hated this biography,” April 28). We were then seated at the very front, a couple rows ahead of him. It was a wild ride and I could hear Gandolfini behind us laughing and screaming like a little kid. We saw him later a couple times in the park just being an unassuming dad, dressed in dad clothes and a rumpled sailor hat. I thoroughly enjoyed him as an actor, but the image I have of him from that day is the one I will always remember.

Jacob Furgatch, Newport Beach