The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 26

The Boston Globe SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2008 Names XtV-X Mark Shanahan Pays ha Rhone linrl ii Tom and Gisele tying the knot? B12 ,1 We're hearing that after two years of 'i- DAVID KAMERMANGLOBE STAFF I fcp (V IS I Above: Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen in May. Below left: Bundchen's parents with Brady's assistant Will McDonough yesterday behind Brady's Back Bay condo. Below right: Brady outside his condo last night dating, Tom Brady and Gisele Bund-- chen are finally engaged. Gossip site TMZ ratcheted up the buzz vesterdav. rerjortine the iniured i i Patriots QB proposed to his supermodel girlfriend on a private flight from Teter-boro Airport in New Jersey to Boston on Christmas Eve.

Her parents were reportedly along for the ride, along with four dozen white roses and some bubbly. The site reports Brady was nervous before he popped the question, but of course Gisele said yes. A source close to Brady also said yesterday he heard the engagement is a go. But if it's true, Tom Brady Sr. says he isn't in on the news.

"We don't know a thing about it," Tom's dad told us yesterday. "Nobody told me. We talked to him and there's nothing to say. It's rumor, rumor, rumor. It must be a slow news day." His denial surely won't stop the speculation, which had photographers staking out Brady's Back Bay condo yesterday, hoping to glimpse the couple or their family members.

At 3:45 p.m., a black Audi A8, driven by Brady's assist-. ant Will McDonough, pulled up to the back of Brady's Beacon Street home, and out jumped Valdir and Vania Bund-chen, Gisele's father and mother. A short time later, McDonough re-emerged alone and drove off. The couple was seen exiting the condo, but notably Gisele wasn't wearing a ring. Earlier in the day, Tom Brady was spotted in the Pats' training room at Gillette Stadium, but avoided coach Bill Belichick's locker room press conference.

The engagement story doesn't come as a big surprise, as the Web has been abuzz recently with reports that the couple has been out ring shopping and nlannintr a email AarnVi rarArcr in Costa Rica, where Gisele has a vacation home. A few weeks ago, the New York Daily News reported the two squabbled over ring size, with Bundchen telling friends she preferred something "antique-looking and understated," as opposed to a giant bauble. Back in October, In Touch Weekly reported Brady ducked into Carrier in Beverly Hills to check out $145,000 five-carat yellow diamond engagement ring. Still, gossip hounds have weathered plenty of false alarms when it comes to Brady-related nuptial news. Yesterday, airport officials in New Jersey and Boston were unable to confirm the lovebirds' flight, and Pats spokesman Stacey James was mum, as usual.

"Long ago I stopped going to Tom with items of personal interest, after the number of houses he's bought and how many times he's been married," he joked. (Brady has never been married, to anyone's knowledge.) "I'm sure when the time comes that Tom wants the world to know these kind of details, he'll let everyone know." Brady's agent, Don Yee, could not be reached for comment yesterday. The Brady-Bundchen romance began in late 2006, after Brady split with his pregnant former flame of nearly three years, Longmeadow actress Bridget XjfVj t' dx pip IP 1 A r-f Ill Mariana Perrotta and Minnie Mouse at the Frog Pond. Tinker Bell on ice Reading's Mariana Perrotta made a stop at Frog Pond yesterday, before skating the role of Tinker Bell in "Disney on Ice: Mickey Minnie's Magical Journey," which opened at the Garden yesterday. The 20-year-old skater said she experienced "flashbacks" at the pond, where she glided with her family as a kid.

"I saw a girl doing a sit and spin, and I wanted to try that," she remembered. Many lessons and lots of practice followed and guess what? "I got that spin," she said, laughing. Perrotta is currently on tour with Disney, but said performing in Boston is special. "It's so exciting knowing that my friends and family are watching me." Fighting glad Up-and-coming mixed martial arts fighter John "Doomsday" ard (inset) has a big reason to cele- brateinthenew year: a four-fight deal with Dana White's UFC, or Ultimate Fighting The 25- year-old Dorches- ter native, who's trained at local gyms for years and currently hangs his shorts at Wai Kru in Allston, said he'll first take on Chris Wilson at the MGM Grand in Vegas on Jan. 31.

"I almost did a back flip," he admitted, after signing the contract. His broth-v er came up with his creepy name. "I wanted to be someone strong, like Superman. But Superman's a little corny," he said, laughing. To get in the spirit, Howard will host a big UFC night, showing the pay-per-view fights of Forrest Griffin vs.

"Sugar" Rashad Evans and Antonio Rodrlgo Nogueira vs. Frank Mir, among others, at Oliver's at the Cask to Flagon tonight. Let's bring it on! Big shot A shout-out to Western Mass. artist Susan Mikula, girlfriend of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. Mikula, whose work explores the idiosyncrasies of the Polaroid camera, just opened her first show in New York.

"I'm so proud of her," Maddow told us the other day. The show at CHC Gal- lery in Chelsea is up until Jan. 24. Last year, Mikula exhibited a few of her large-scale digital Duraflex prints at the State House. Names can be reached at names gbbe.com or at 61 7-929-8253.

us and draw inspiration Cruise, ontheUtePaviNewman J'iW-. 7-' v. (' J.PAT CARTER AP FILE His recollection that the couple first 1 a camp ience nas oeen questionea. BILL BRETT Moynahan. Before the baby-mama drama, the Pats star had a squeaky clean, good-boy image, despite having reportedly dated hard-partying Tara Reid and Playmate Layla Roberts, as well as former Boston publicist Laura Kinsman.

Many predicted he and Moynahan were altar-bound. (Bundchen, too, was coming off a long relationship, with actor Leonardo DiCaprio.) Brady and Bundchen immediately began canoodling around the globe (early on, the couple was snapped in Paris together), even as a reportedly I 1 JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE fuming the QB as he gimps from Gisele's NYC townhouse door to his car.) The latest is that the couple shelled out about $1 1.7 million for property in a gated community in Brentwood, near the estate of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Moynahan, who happens to be filming a TNT cop drama in Boston with Donnie Wahl-berg, also calls the West Coast home, as does Brady's family. The theory goes that Brady and Bundchen hope to build a home closer to baby Jack. PAYSHA RHONE 4 Herman Rosenblat and his wife, Roma.

met on opposite siues oi a conceniraiion When things get tough we need to be able to look at another person who's gone before from the way he handled his difficulties. Having someone like this in your life is a Tom Author and publisher defend a disputed Holocaust memoir FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE shell-shocked Moynahan worked through her pregnancy solo in California. Since the birth of son Jack in August 2007, Moynahan and Brady appear to be parenting together, and the little guy has even been spotted out and about with dad and his potential future step-mom. After blowing out his knee this fall, Brady's had plenty of quality time for Bundchen so much so that he's become a paparazzi punching bag for doing her errands and walking her dog. (TMZ particularly loves harassing and and have been the subject of a children's book, Laurie Friedman's "Angel Girl." A feature film is scheduled to begin production next year.

But scholars, some of whom were quoted in a recent story by The New Republic, have been highly skeptical, saying the layout of the camp Schlie-ben, a sub-camp of Buchenwald made it virtually impossible that Rosenblat could have approached the fence without being spotted. According to maps of Schlieben, the area where he and Roma might have met was located next to SS barracks. "Some serious historians as well as other historical sleuths have done some pretty serious research on this story," Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, wrote on her blog on Dec. 15. No one questions that Rosenblat was a prisoner, but Lipstadt worries that Holocaust deniers would be encouraged should his meetings with Rosa be disproved.

"There are also survivors who are very upset about this story," she wrote. "They just don't believe it." ByHiUelltalie ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK The author and publisher of a disputed Holocaust memoir defended the book's story of love between two survivors, but also called it a work of memory and not of scholarship. "This is my personal story as I remember it," Herman Rosenblat, 79, said in a statement issued through Berkley Books, which will release his "Angel at the Fence" in February. Berkley added its own comments, noting that a leading Holocaust expert, Michael Berenbaum, had found the story credible, but also saying that "any memoir based on the memories of a survivor is verifiable only by him or her alone." Rosenblat's book is based on his well-publicized story embraced by Oprah Winfrey among others of how he met his future wife, Roma Radzicki, on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence at a Nazi concentration camp. Scholars have questioned whether such an encounter could have happened.

"The events that are its background are part of history; the book, however, reflects my memories of how the events affected my life. I was a young child at the time my family was caught up in the Holocaust, and I saw things through a young child's eyes. But I know and remember what I saw" Rosenblat said in his statement. "What I offer in this memoir are the images, sounds, smells, and feelings that have stayed in my mind for some seven decades." As the Rosenblats have recounted on numerous occasions over the past decade, he was a teenager in a concentration camp in Nazi-controlled Germany and she was slightly younger, her family pretending to be Christian and living nearby. They met at the camp's fence, where for months she would sneak him apples and bread.

Rosenblat was eventually transferred to another camp and lost track of his friend until years after the war, when both were living in New York and met on a blind date. Upon talking about their lives, they recognized each other and were soon married, in 1958. The couple live in the Miami area. Since going public with their story in the 1990s, the Rosenblats have been celebrated by Winfrey, among others,.