Camilo Vergara's Vision

“In urban America I found the challenge of my life.  I became so attached to derelict buildings that sadness came not from seeing them overgrown and deteriorating – this often rendered them more picturesque – but from their sudden and violent destruction, which often left a big gap in the urban fabric.” Camilo Vergara

A neighbor had a garage sale (allowed by the condo board, although “yard” sales are forbidden).  Wanting to be neighborly, I searched through her used books and bought Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” for a dollar.  I’ve read it twice but no longer own the charming classic.  Describing the fictional “tired old town” of Maycomb, Alabama, Lee wrote: “Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning.  Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o’clock nap, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting of sweat and sweet talcum.”

above, Patrick Lee; below, Charter School of the Dunes. Post-Trib photos by Jim Karczewski

Lead story in the Post-Trib was dedication of the new Charter School of the Dunes building near Route 20 and Old Hobart Road in Miller.  A few months ago, when Ball State failed to renew its charter after ten years, things looked grim, but Calumet College stepped into the breech and agreed to be its sponsor.  Patrick Lee’s company built the environmentally friendly structure at a cost of 12.4 million dollars.  Ron Cohen is one of many Millerites involved in the school since it opened at the Naval Reserve Center at the north end of Lake Street.

Multi-million dollar budget shortfalls resulted in Purdue Cal laying off several non-tenured assistant professors.  Purdue president Mitch Daniels, no friend of regional campuses nor liberal education in general, apparently is content to let Purdue Cal deteriorate.

Miller Garden Walk coordinator Judy Ayers came down with Lyme Disease, due to a deer tick bite, so Bill Payonk wrote the Ayers Realtors Newsletter Summer “Home on the Range” column.  He and Terry bought a Pat Lee townhome on Locust Avenue 16 years ago.  Terry, he recalled, “was not inclined to look initially, but after entering and seeing the attention to detail, as we were leaving she began telling other potential buyers to ‘Take your shoes off!  I don’t want the floors of my new home damaged.’  Twenty-eight days later, we took possession of our new dwelling.”

Legacy Foundation recently met with Miller neighborhood organizations to ascertain how it could help the community.  How about a Legacy Foundation grant to fund room and board for visiting Miller Beach artists in residence, say five $12,000 stipends covering summer months.  The Foundation donated a considerable amount of money for an air conditioning system for the Gardiner Center. 

I met Corey Hagelberg, looking years younger beardless, at a “Line Drawing” exhibit of new works by Ball State professor Hannah Barnes.  Hannah’s pieces at first glance appeared to be simple forms but had grace and sophistication.  Grade school kids would love them.  Hopefully Elementary Education majors have been exposed to the products of her imagination.  With Hannah was Susan Klein, who teaches Fine Arts at Grand Valley State.  I told her that son Phil works its PBS affiliate, granddaughter Miranda goes to school there, and that granddaughter Alissa has a job with its overseas program.  It turned out that Susan and Alissa often take the same shuttle bus to the Allendale campus.

drawings by Hannah Barnes

Alissa’s mother Beth Satkoski rented a large, comfortable house in Saugatuck, Michigan, and I joined 13 other family members Sunday for fun and games that included Texas Hold ‘em and SOB (Alissa won both).  In fact, I stayed up till 1:30, way past my normal bedtime.  Josh Leffingwell, whose musical tastes are similar to mine, had The Hold Steady and Arcade Fire playing in the background.  Both my mother and Toni’s loved the artsy town and nearby beaches, and since Saugatuck is about 90 miles from our place and just 30 miles from Phil’s, the location was ideal.  Miranda, for instance, had to work at a Hollister store Sunday but could basically commute there.  On Monday most of the gang went on a dune buggy ride, something that has become almost an annual tradition.  Phil was wearing his "Berkeley's," sunglasses he found in the water during a tubing excursion.

Phil, Miranda and Toni on dune buggy ride

At lunch Beth LaDuke reminded me that it is the final week of Summer II and she’ll officially be graduating after grades are tabulated.  I’ve been invited to give Fall semester talks in Nicole Anslover’s Sixties course as well as Chris Young’s seminar on Public Memory, and Jonathyne Briggs’class on the History of the Sexual Revolution.  I was hoping I’d see her in one or more of them.  Maybe I’ll dust off the paper I delivered at an oral history conference entitled “The Professor Wore a Cowboy Hat (And Nothing Else): Ethical Issues in Handling Matters of Sex in Institutional Oral Histories: Indiana University Northwest as a Case Study.”  Or, I could offer to deliver it as the keynote at an Arts and Sciences conference.  That should draw a crowd.

I worked up a proposal for a Gardner Center event on August 28 and passed it on to Corey Hagelberg and Samuel A. Love.  We’re hoping to bring students there from Wirt/Emerson.

“The Dream Continues”

Remembering Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech 50 Years Later

Wednesday, I p.m., August 28, 2013

Marshall J. Gardner Center for the Arts

Miller Beach Arts and Creative District, Gary, Indiana

Open to the Public, No Admission charge

On Display will be a dozen prints of photographs by Camilo Vergara

of murals depicting Martin Luther King, Jr.

After introductory remarks by IU Northwest Professor James B. Lane, and examination of the murals, there will be a screening of the “Eyes on the Prize episode “No Easy Walk” pertaining to the March on Washington and Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Award-winning documentary photographer Camilo Jose Vergara, who received the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2002, was born in Chile in 1944, received degrees from Notre Dame and Columbia University, is the author of numerous books, including The New American Ghetto, American Ruins, Unexpected Chicagoland, and How the Other Half Worships.  During many visits to Gary, he has taken hundreds of photographs, many of which appear in his books.  Vergara’s photos are on a website entitled Invincible Cities.

Describing “The Dream Continues” project, Vergara wrote: “The Dream Continues is a poster show of my photographs of popular, transitory murals depicting Martin Luther King, Jr. that I encountered when documenting the urban inner city over a period of forty years. The U.S. Department of State prepared one thousand copies of the thirteen 20” x 30” posters for travel around the world, and ten for me to do with as I wish.  My plan is to exhibit those ten sets of posters in locations around the U.S. in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington.” 

We are very proud that Vergara chose Gary as one of these sites, starting at the Gardner Center and then traveling throughout the city.

Camilo Vergara and his photograph of Gary youth pick-up game

New Republic reprinted novelist John Steinbeck’s open letter to Adlai Stevenson 60 years ago, encouraging him to remain in the political arena despite losing the 1952 Presidential election to Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Steinbeck wrote: “Having a brother in politics was quite a bit like having a sister in a brothel.  Then, in a few short months, you, an unknown man to the great body of the people, changed that picture.  You made it seem possible for politics to be as it once ha been, an honorable, virtuous and creative business.  You let light into a dark and musty room.”  I always thought Stevenson was somewhat of an elitist.

Indiana Supreme Court Justice Robert D. Rucker agreed to be on the program “From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin: A Conversation about Race and the American Justice System.”  IUN’s Minority Studies department and Richard Hatcher’s National Civil Rights Hall of Fame co-sponsored the event.  There are similarities and differences between the killings of the two teenagers.  In 1955 segregationists kidnapped, tortured, and brutally murdered14 year-old Till several days after he supposedly whistled at a 21 year-old woman.  While what George Zimmerman did was both wrong and tragic, I don’t think his killing Trayvon was premeditated.  He should have been charged with manslaughter and, if sued by Martin’s family, may lose in civil court, where the legal standard is not “beyond a reasonable doubt” but “preponderance of evidence.”

Former Gary mayor Richard Hatcher opened the program by plugging “his baby,” the National Civil Rights Hall of Fame, a vision he first had in 1968 while speaking with grieving widow Coretta Scott King.  He remarked that August 12 is National Civil Right Day, thanks to legislation Congressman Peter Visclosky sponsored in 1986.  He introduced daughter Renee, moderator for the panel discussion, saying her godfather was Reverend Jesse Jackson and her middle name, Camille, was to honor Bill Cosby’s wife.  I wish a historian had been on the panel instead of just lawyers.  There was almost no mention of the Emmett Till case.  Justice Rucker, the most eloquent of the speakers, quipped that the audience shouldn’t expect attorneys to be brief – for them brief is a 50-page legal document.  Lorenzo Arredondo used a Richard Pryor line about black people referring to “justice” as “just us.”  Half the speakers claimed not to have followed the George Zimmerman trial, and none seemed particularly outraged by the verdict save for Valpo Law School dean Ivan Bodensteiner, who repeated president Obama’s moving comments about Trayvon Martin and also slammed the Supreme Court for striking down part of the Voting Rights Act.  I was pleased to see Chancellor Lowe in attendance as well as several faculty, including DeeDee Ige, Jack Bloom, and Thandabantu Iverson.  Minority Studies chair Earl Jones was busy taking pictures.

George Malis, my student 30 plus years ago, greeted me warmly and said he had some photos for the Archives.  In my 1920s Shavings is an article he wrote about Clarence Joliff becoming a mechanic.  In 1918 the 16 year-old passed a single-car garage on Ridge Road in Gary and peeked inside.  Joliff told Malis: “In those days they didn’t have a hoist or pits but had to jack up the car.  The mechanic would be under the car and he’d see me watching, and he’d say, ‘Hey kid, go over to the bench and get me this wrench.’  I didn’t know for sure which wrench was the one he wanted, so I’d take him a whole bunch and he’d give me a nickel or a dime.”  Later Joliff worked for a Chevrolet dealership, Grantham’s Motor Sales Company, at 545 Washington Street.