Memories of My Father BING CROSBY

THE LEGENDARY ENTERTAINER’S SON RECALLS A LOVING DAD WHO PUT FAMILY FIRST

- Ron Kelly, Lindsay Hoffman

As a small child, Nathaniel Crosby had no idea his dad was a world-famous entertainer. "I think my mom explained it to me when I was a kindergartner or first-grader, [and] I promptly told everybody at school," Nathaniel, 62, tells Closer with a laugh. "I got the note home saying, 'We know how great Nathaniel's dad is, but he doesn't need to tell everybody!"" To be fair, Bing's fame was hard to ignore.

Nathaniel, the youngest of Bing's three children with his second wife, actress Kathryn Grant, recalls being on the road at 15 with his dad when they were approached by a tipsy woman at a Mexican restaurant. "She yelled, 'You're Bing Crosby! I lost my virginity to you!' You could hear a pin drop," Nathaniel shares, noting she repeated it three times before clarifying: "I lost my virginity at age 16 listening to you singing 'Moonlight Becomes You.' Everybody took a big sigh of relief," he adds of that favorite memory, seeing "Dad being totally awestruck and not knowing what to say."