Boys Are Back

“Friday night they’ll be dressed to kill
Down at Dino’s bar and grill.”
“Boys Are Back in Town,” Thin Lizzy

Thin Lizzy is literally coming back to town, Chicago that is. Even though founding member Phil Lynott is dead, two old stalwarts are still around and the word is that they still smoke, having added a member of Def Leppard. “Jailbreak” still gets me going, especially in “Detroit Rock City” when the teenagers break out of school to attend a KISS concert.

Hardworking Savannah Gallery director Ann Fritz launched a new show of Patty Carroll’s work entitled “Anonymous Women.” The colorful pieces look like female shapes shrouded in fabric only they are, I believe, computer generated. I need to examine them more closely. They have interesting titles, something I appreciate.

A relative of Glen and Helene Roames discovered online that the Calumet Regional Archives has 600 pages of their letters in the Carl Krueger Papers written to Helene’s sister Catherine Krueger while in occupied Japan and Korea after World War II. Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy is Xeroxing copies. Catherine and Carl’s son’s wartime letters formed the basis for Steve McShane and my book “Skinning Cats: The Wartime Letters of Tom Krueger.”

Friday night Dave will be playing with Bruce Sawochka’s band Blues Cruise at L.F. Norton’s in Lake Station. I’m urging colleagues to come. We’re going to Three Floyds brewery in Munster following a Faculty Organization meeting where I’ll deliver this eulogy to William M. Neil (1910-2010):

“In 1937, with his family lacking the money to send him away to school, Bill Neil started taking classes at Gary College, the forerunner to IU Northwest, located at Horace Mann High School. Working a day job as a bank messenger, he attended class between seven and nine p.m., and after three years earned an associate degree. At a session of the 2008 Arts and Sciences Research Conference Bill told of meeting Mary, his wife of 65 years, at a Music Club function there. He won a scholarship to the University of Chicago, but a year later WW II interrupted his studies. While serving as a bombardier over occupied Europe, he decided if he got out of the war alive, to pursue a teaching career at the university that had made his higher education possible.

“In 1948, the same year Indiana University took over Gary College, Bill was hired to teach a course at what was then known as IU’s Gary Center, located at the Seaman Hall annex to City Methodist Church in downtown Gary. After he received a PhD from the University of Chicago, he was hired full time. In 1956 he helped draft the first constitution for the Faculty Org and then became its first elected chairman. In an interview Bill recalled the cramped quarters at Seaman Hall: “The library was separated from the student lounge only by steel shelving. Education offered a course on the Elements of Play there, and beanbags used to come sailing over the shelves into the library. We were across from a bookie joint. I’d look out the window and see all these people coming and going.”

“When IUN moved to Glen Park in 1959, Neil became acting director after Jack Buhner went on a two-year sabbatical. During the 1960s Bill built up the History Department to a size greater than today. Starting in 1969 he served as Dean of Faculties for four years before returning to his first love, teaching. He was one among equals in a department dominated by young Turks he himself had hired. Once after he’d used the phrase “follow the yellow brick road” at a meeting, Paul Kern, missing the “Wizard of Oz” reference, said to me, “I’m surprised Bill is familiar with Elton John. He retired in 1985 but was a frequent guest lecturer in Paul and my History classes. He returned to the Faculty Org 11 years ago to deliver a eulogy honoring President Herman B Wells and again last year as part of the festivities “Celebrating Fifty Years” at IU Northwest’s present location. He was a gentleman and a scholar, an avid photographer and gardener, and an inspiration to countless students and colleagues. At a recent memorial service in Valparaiso his children proudly displayed photos of Bill in his WW II uniform, wearing his maroon academic robes, and playing a bagpipe. Bill, you great Scotsman, we miss you.”

At the annual Darwin Day mini-conference put on by the Anthropology Department, I heard David Klamen talk about whether belief in both God and evolution are reconcilable. He gave arguments on both sides and let members of the audience decide for themselves. He made the point that atheists (i.e., David Hawking) and fundamentalists (Moody Bible professors) are in agreement that they are irreconcilable.

Sheriff Dominguez brought a couple boxes of newspaper clippings to the Archives, and we went over last minute additions to his autobiography.

The same team that beat the Engineers a week ago during position round swept us again. We lost game two by five pins; I rolled a 184 and barely missed a double in the tenth. The opposition’s final bowler doubled and then gave the ten-pin the finger when he only had nine on the final ball. Melvin Nelson bowled his best series of the season, 534, but the other team kept stringing strikes and were way above their average.

Traded emails with Karren Lee, who had sent photos of her latest grandchild to her friends. She mentioned that she’ll be reading an excerpt from Simone de Beauvoir at an upcoming Aquatorium event. I wasn’t asked to participate despite the success of my Jean Shepherd reading last year. It takes place the same afternoon as the final performance of “Annie,” so it is just as well. Karren asked how we like Chesterton, and I responded: “We miss Miller, but it was so nice not to be on top of the hill at our old place during all the snow storms. Condo living definitely has its advantages.”