Going Away Party

Chancellor Lowe a group called the Student African American Brotherhood (SAAB) hosted a farewell party for Vice Chancellor for Diversity Ken Coopwood, who accepted a position in Missouri. On hand was Fred Chary, who presented me with his recently published history of Bulgaria. It looks great and reads well. The emphasis is on the past 100 years. Historian Dolly Millender asked us to pose with Lowe and Coopwood for a photo that she intends to include in her Legends of Gary book. I was quite flattered. Former A & S Dean F.C. Richardson attended, and I told Dolly that he was a historic figure who helped start at IUN one of the first Black Studies programs in the country in 1969. Chris Young asked me if I wanted to participate in a forum about the 1962 Freedom Riders and if I would proofread his latest article. I said yes to the latter and remained noncommittal about being a panelist, suggesting most should be African Americans. During the program a SAAB member who couldn’t be present delivered via the Internet a moving poem about how important Ken was in stressing academic achievement as the best path to success. The sound and picture weren’t in sync, which was disconcerting until I closed my eyes and just listened.

Walking across campus, I spotted Geologist Bob Votaw examining rocks along a path that he had designed years before. After five years in retirement he started teaching one course a semester three years ago. I told him I was thinking of doing that. Now that his book is out, Fred Chary ought to consider conducting a seminar, too. The department hasn’t offered an Eastern Europe or Soviet Union course since he retired.

Steel Shavings checks are still coming in, the latest from the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago. As many of my “Standing Order” people die or move away without leaving a forwarding address, libraries are my most faithful subscribers.

I’ve written a draft of a chapter about the parents of Timothy H. Ball (Hervey and Jane), Northwest Indiana’s first historian, for my “On Their Shoulders” book. The first paragraph goes something like this: “The parents of Reverent T. H. Ball, Northwest Indiana’s preeminent nineteenth-century historian, were transplanted New Englanders whose ancestors emigrated to America in the seventeenth century. Most originally came from England, but Ball’s mother’s side of the family included French Huguenots. Tenacity, Christian faith, and love of adventure abounded in both sides of the family, perhaps Hervey and Jane Ball’s most important legacies passed down to their children, including the Reverend T.H. Ball, teacher, preacher, and scribe in the service of Clio, the muse of history.”

LeeLee liked my latest tiara paragraphs and suggested I produce something on Jay and Sissy’s teen romance. So here goes: As much as he was looking forward to seeing Susan, Jay was even more eager to be with Sissy again. She was his first real love, and even though they chatted at the reunion, time went by so quickly that their conversation in retrospect seemed to lack intimacy. Even so, she had a spiritual, Earth Mother quality that was completely in keeping with his vivid memories of her and, in fact, her entire family. He first knew her as Molly’s little 13 year-old sister, a tomboy who once broke her arm falling from the shoulders of someone messing around on a bike. He was next to her in the back seat when her mother rushed her to the hospital, and her salty tears wet the arm of his shirt endearingly as she leaned against him. The experience excited him and left a lasting impression. A couple weeks later, after playing in the Schady Acres woods, the gang decided to bike to Ambler for hoagies, and he offered Sissy a ride. With her good arm around his waist and her body pressed tightly against him, she exuded a pleasant odor that reminded him of a wood nymph. During games of hide and seek in the Schades’ spacious house, she often followed him into dark places where they would hover together so close he could hear her heart beat. Three summers later when one of Jay’s friends questioned her out to the movies, he realized he was jealous. How did your date go, he asked her the next day. Uncomfortable, she replied. She confided that the guy positioned his hand on the top of her seat so that his fingers were touching her far shoulder. She sat forward in her seat, so both of them were in awkward positions the entire time.

A few weeks later Jay got up the nerve to ask Sissy if she wanted to go to Willow Grove Amusement Park with him and another couple. She exclaimed, “On a date?” Trying not to blush, he nodded. On the Ferris wheel, they were at its apex when the ride suddenly stopped to unload passengers. Noticing Sissy shiver slightly, Jay put his arm on the seat behind her and touched her shoulder with his fingers. “You’re silly,” she laughed and lowered her hand to her waist, snuggling against him. Before the summer was out, they returned twice more to Willow Grove, where on the Ferris wheel they kissed for the first time. It almost took Jay’s breath away, and he was relieved that they didn’t have to exit the ride for another five minutes. She talked him into getting tickets for the Tunnel of Love, and in the dark she made moaning sounds as if Jay were ravishing her. To his embarrassment, at the end of the ride, people in the adjacent boats clapped. Afterwards, they found a photo booth advertising three candid shots for 25 cents. Sissy made him use up a dollar’s worth of quarters mugging in front of the camera and at one point sticking her tongue in his ear. He wondered whether Sissy still had those pictures. What he wouldn’t give to see them again.