South Shore Journal

“Grimy streets lined with dirty, hard ice and crusted drifts covered with that old familiar layer of blast-furnace dust,” Jean Shepherd, “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash”

Chris Young was proud and relieved to announce that the South Shore Journal he edited is finally online.  Among the contributors are IU Northwest professors Subir Bandyopadhyay, Chuck Gallmeier, Mark Hoyert, Glenn Lauzon, Anja Matwijkiw, Cynthia O’Dell, Ju Park, Jean Poulard, Raj Selladural, and Chris himself.  (http://www.southshorejournal.org/index.php/issues/volume-5-2013) 

Chris led off with three Region articles, mine entitled “The Dune Fawn: Diana of the Dunes’ Male Counterpart,” a photo essay by Gary Cialdella, and “Public Memory in Gary, Indiana: An Examination of the Elbert H. Gary and Michael Jackson Memorials,” by IUN students Amalia Shanks-Meile and Elizabeth LaDuke.  The latter begins with a description of City Methodist Church (“the epitome of urban decay”), where Shanks-Meile and LaDuke found spray-painted on an inside wall, “M.J.’s home.”  The Judge Gary statue adjacent to City Hall was dedicated in 1958, the year of Michael Jackson’s birth.  It now receives scant attention compared to the monument placed in front of Jackson’s boyhood home at 2300 Jackson Street following his death.  The authors concluded: “Michael Jackson’s early life, in many ways, resembles much of the Gary community’s present.   As a boy, Michael Jackson struggled within the same city that is experiencing similar struggles over 40 years later.  Elbert Gary’s connection to the city, quite simply, is no longer relevant or visible to the Garyites of today.”  The Judge never lived in Gary and only visited a handful of times.

With charming candor Gary Cialdella introduced haunting photos having to do with “The Making of the Calumet Region: An American Place.”  “When I was growing up in the Region, it was one of the country’s largest and most prosperous industrial centers,” he wrote.  “By the time I began photographing the area, it was already sinking into its long decline.  When I left for college in the 1960s, I could not imagine the changes to come, nor the hold this place would have on me.”

above, Gary Cialdella; below, Steve Tesich

Cialdella employs quotes by Region bard Jean Shepherd and screenwriter Steve Tesich (“Four Friends” and “Breaking Away”), who also authored “Summer Crossing” (1982).  Cialdella writes: “Throughout the novel, the Region’s presence hangs over the characters like an unseen hand pressing down on them.”  He quotes this passage from “Summer Crossing": “The air was getting misty and smoggy . . . You could smell the steel mills and the refineries. . .  On certain days you could watch the soot fall like black snow.”  The main character drove his girlfriend to Whiting Beach, where, Tesich wrote, the lights of Inland Steel were visible in the distance and “the water smelled of industry and jobs.”  Cialdella concludes, “With every passing year, pieces of the Region’s distinctiveness disappear.  The familiar is erased, covered over diminishing public memory.  Yet even as the Region has changed, a visit there today puts me in two worlds: the place it is becoming, and the one of my childhood when three shifts comprised a routine day.” 

Gary Cialdella photos: above, Amoco Park, Hammond; below, 129th and Schrage, Whiting 

Fascinated with homes located literally in the shadows of industrial behemoths, Cialdella wrote: “One particular brick facade home on Schrage Avenue in Whiting was emblematic. More than any other single home, it spoke to me of domesticity in the midst of the industrial landscape. The house faced west, its backside to the refinery, a cared for lot and dead end street flanking its sides. The owners took fastidious care of the place, from the perfectly kept yard to the carefully patched driveway. A feature of the house was a Madonna statuette resting in a niche below the draped front windows. Later, it was moved to a garden spot below the garage window. Over the years I have made a ritual of driving past the house. I was reassured seeing it, cared for, stout against the bleak refinery landscape.”    In 2010 Cialdella returned and found only an empty lot.  His hands suddenly trembled, and he felt as though he had lost an old friend.

Mark Hoyert and Cynthia O’Dell examined parallels between public memories and personal “flashbulb” memories of unexpected events, such as the death of loved ones or celebrities such as JFK or Princess Diana.  I have no recollection of hearing about Princess Di’s death but recall vividly first learning that Kennedy had been shot and getting a phone call in 1967 that my dad had died of a massive heart attack at age 50. Hoyert and O’Dell cite as a reference J. Talarico and D. Rubin’s “Confidence, Not Consistency Characterizes Flashbulb Memories,” published in Psychological Science.

Chuck Gallmeier’s review essay, “Civil Religion, and Public Memory,” notes that Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy have entered America’s pantheon of martyred saints, unlike two other murdered presidents, James A. Garfield and William McKinley. Robert T. Lincoln was present at his father’s death bed, witnessed Garfield being gunned down , arrived in Buffalo moments before Leon Czogosz shot McKinley, and rests in Arlington Cemetery in a location within sight of JFK’s gravesite.  Candace Millard’s “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President” blames Garfield’s doctors for the President’s death from infection.  A decade later, as described in Matthew Algeo’s “The President Is a Sick Man,” a competent medical team treated a malignant growth the size of a quarter in Grover Cleveland’s mouth in a clandestine operation aboard a yacht.  After reporter E.J. Edwards broke the story two months later, presidential lackeys vilified him.  H. Samuel Merrill (my Maryland PhD adviser) wrote in “Bourbon Leader: Grover Cleveland and the Democratic Party,” “One of the doctors who assisted in the operation later said that he did more lying then than in all the rest of his active life put together.”

Anne Balay’s students discussed how girls are trained to be quiet and conforming in school while boys are encouraged to speak up and their aggressive behavior is generally tolerated. The subject of cooties came up, an insult hurled most often at girls, especially those poor, shy, disabled or different.”  I’m still ashamed that I didn’t defend Louise Jester against such harassment.  This still goes on, according to students.  I made the point that the modern classroom is much different than when I was in school and that good teachers (I mentioned son Dave and E.C. Central music director Leon Kendrick) can make a big difference in breaking down gender stereotypes, despite the over-emphasis on standardized testing.  Students recalled teachers who had made a difference in their lives; Anne recalled a lesbian ex-nun in seventh grade who encouraged her to be outspoken.  My favorite teacher, H.M. Jones, turned out to be a pervert, sad to say.

Dick Meister was in the Archives seeking material for a pictorial history of Ogden Dunes.  I suggested he check out the Brown Museum and Westchester Library in Chesterton, and the files of the Chesterton Tribune.  Meister’s PhD dissertation on Gary during the 1930s was very valuable when I was researching “City of the Century.”

Ron Cohen sent along Michael Hirsch’s review of Penny Lewis’ “Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory.”  The “myth” is that blue-collar America supported the war.  Hirsch agrees with Lewis’ conclusion that, while the movement began on elite campuses with support from pacifist and leftist organizations, it grew to encompass “mid-level trade union officials and rank-and-file union members bucking their war-abetting union leaders.”  Here’s how Hirsch, who once attended a party at our Maple Place abode, described himself: “Michael Hirsch, the first in his family to attend college, was a campus antiwar leader, a college professor in Boston as long as he could stand it, then a steelworker in Indiana until the mass layoffs of the early 1980s. Since 1985, he has worked as a labor editor and writer for three New York-based labor unions, as well as a contributor to numerous publications.”

Dave, who started teaching today, asked on Facebook, “Where the hell did the summer go?”  Mike Darrow said it was in Arizona, while Nephew Bob said it was in California, where the living is easy.  Beamer Pickert wrote, “Winter is coming,” causing Tatiana Brito to quip, “I really hope that was a Game of Thrones reference.”  My wake-up call about summer’s end came from Frank Shufran, who reminded me that bowling starts a week from Wednesday.

A statue in IUN’s Library Courtyard of a young woman entitled “Dance of Awakening Day” had bird droppings on the woman’s face, breasts, and left leg, leaving it looking rather obscene.  Fortunately the Pino Conte sculpture “Woman in the Sun” in front of Raintree Hall, donated by Alvina and Saul Cohen, is unsoiled.

Ann Fritz held a reception at Gallery Northwest for Ken Schoon’s new book featuring photos and paintings by contributors to “Dreams of Duneland.” Those in attendance included Chris Meyers, David Larson, and Carol Wood from Technical Services, who took a photo of ice mounds along Lake Michigan.  Ken used two photos of Mount Baldy by biologist Zoran Kilibarda, showing sand accretion or movement over a two-year period.  Many photos are by Ron Trigg, a frequent visitor to the Archives.  In fact, Ken used much material from the Calumet Regional Archives.  Ken thanked organizations whose financial help allowed the price of the coffee table book to be, at $30, so affordable, mentioning that Cara Spicer of the Legacy Foundation was on the phone with him from her hospital bed shortly before she died. He had no idea she was critically ill.

photos of Mount Baldy by Zoran Kilibarda in November 2008 (above) and November 2010

Attending the reception with Bookstore textbook manager George Klepper were former IUN students Bob Wilcynski and Mike Halpin.  Bob played tennis with Paul Kern, John Haller and me in the 1970s, and his daughter was one of my best students.  When I was chair of the History Department, the Nursing Division invited me to its annual pinning ceremony.  Knowing Bob’s daughter would be there, I accepted, only to discover that the invitation wasn’t for dinner.  Bob insisted I sit with them anyway.  I kept waiting for no-nonsense Hazel Malone to grab me by the ear and drag me out. 

Mike Halpin, now an attorney, was a founder of IUN’s Student Unity Movement that formed in 1970 following the Kent State and Jackson State killings.  The group lined up speakers for a week long event called Relevancy Week and as the culmination of a march down Broadway presented a petition to U.S. Steel demanding that the company stop discriminating against blacks and polluting the environment.  Mike lived in Edgewater, and his dog Charlie frequently visited us; in fact, Charlie often roamed as far away from home as Jackson Steak House on U.S. 12.  Angie once let Chuck inside their house on Shelby and Lake Shore Drive, thinking it was lost until I told her he could find his way home.

Drove home on Route 12 to avoid construction on 80/94.  Temperature was 88 at IUN at 6 p.m., 76 at Burns Harbor close to the lake, and 81 at our Chesterton condo.  Popped a beer and listened to Joe Jackson’s “Friday” and the Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love.”