“I see a
wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognized
as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right
to be feminine in an inhospitable world.” Julia Serano, “Whipping Girl”
Vivacious transgender Portage senior Dakota Yorke was voted a prom
queen finalist after school officials gave the OK. Jerry Davich publicized her
transformation and had her on Lakeshore Radio’s “Casual Friday.” Last summer Dakota stayed with her older
sister in Wisconsin for a month. Her
mother Dawn told the NWI Times, “Dakota
left a boy and came back a girl.” Dakota
explained: “At some point I decided to be
me. You only have one life to live. I want to be 100 percent who Dakota is.” At the prom, held at Porter County Expo
Center, Dakota finished first runnerup to prom queen Anisa Rayner and received
a tiara and the title “Prom Royalty.”
She told the Post-Tribune’s
Michelle L. Quinn that by the end of the evening her feet were sore from
dancing. One senior said it was an honor
to dance with such a beauty and one so brave. Prom queen Rayner told Jerry Davich: “I
was nothing but happy for Dakota, and I wished her the very best, as she also
did for me. We were friends long before
being on prom court, so I was really excited for her.” (below, Anisa Rayner and Maverick Edwards)
I applaud Portage teachers, students, and administrators for
supporting Dakota and validating her decision.
In her excitement getting ready for the prom, Dakota had left her student
I.D. at home. Chaperones didn’t make her
go home for it. One said with a smile, “We know you, Dakota.”
Combine 2 tablespoons of
butter with three-quarters cup of flour.
Melt in pan and add two and a half cups of milk. Stir until ingredients leave bottom of pan. Add 1 egg.
Let simmer for a few seconds, then add 2 teaspoons of sugar and four
bitter almonds, grated, to mixture before removing from fire. Use a large jello
mold, rinse with cold water. Put mixture
in mold. Let stand still until
cold. Unmold ands serve with vegetable
soup.
Jerome Tachik with wife Susan
On the final week of bowling Mel Nelson got hot,
enabling the Engineers to win game three and series. We lost game two by a single pin to We’re
Here when Henrietta Irwin (whom teammates call Henry) and Steve Huffman doubled
in the tenth. Nearby, Jerome Tachik
rolled a 299. For the banquet I agreed
to bring pickles from Jewel, a big hit at Christmas.
Chuck and Jimbo; photo by Donald Luckett
At an IUN Savannah Gallery reception I greeted former athletic
director Linda Anderson and congratulated Ann Fritz on the large turnout
despite it being an off-week between semesters.
Donald Luckett snapped a shot of me with Chuck Gallmeier, and I joked
that I’m always having my photo taken with someone taller. Donald suggested I stand next to a diminutive
English professor, but I demurred. Next
day I again ran into Gallmeier and wife Barb Schmal at Zoran and Vesna
Kilibarda’s party celebrating their promotions. Zoran mentioned a March field trip to Death
Valley, California, where several students experienced symptoms of heat
stroke. The food roast lamb and
trimmings were great. Surekha Rao asked
me to put together a session for an upcoming Indiana Academy of the Social
Sciences conference at Purdue North Central in Westville. I told Geosciences professor Kristen Huysken’s
husband Harley about a great-uncle Harley, who was Pennsylvania Dutch.
Vesna and Zoran Kilibarda
IUN’s “Little Library” at Thirty-Fifth and Washington resembles a
birdhouse. Inside was Kurt Vonnegut’s
“Look At the Birdie.” Perhaps Fred
McColly donated it in order to share the Indiana bard’s wit and wisdom. I added a copy of my latest Steel Shavings to the free offerings.
In California on sabbatical Neil Goodman, a faithful Shavings reader, wrote
that he loved my weaving together the mundane with the memorable. Paul Kern
offered these comments:
Starting with the cover [photos of Dolly Millender and Claude
Taliaferro], it has a sobering number of obituaries. Your mother (I enjoyed
reading about her life.), Hy Feldman, Tom Higgins, Ray Mohl, Ron Heflin. Sigh.
As you brood, we're moving toward the front of the line. I remember Mohl as a
tireless worker, usually coming to the office on Saturdays and Sundays. Access
to the offices was blocked in those days by steel gates reaching almost to the
ceiling and Ray used to scale the gate to reach his office. He had a wife and
young children at home so the atmosphere there was probably not conducive to
work. He and his wife divorced soon after he left IUN.
I saw a lot of Ron Heflin's Roosevelt games, usually with Leroy
Gray. The most memorable one for me was the state championship game Roosevelt
lost in overtime to Scott Skiles' Plymouth team. It looked like Roosevelt had
it won until Skiles hit a thirty-foot buzzer beater to force OT. Heflin and Earl Smith epitomized a golden age
of Gary basketball. By the way, I saw that 1971 game between West Side and E.C.
Washington Louis Vasquez writes about, having driven down from Chicago to watch
it. The next year, of course, West Side made it to the state finals but lost to
Connersville and then got suspended for a year after some fans went berserk in
the parking lot and vandalized some cars.
It was American Military History that Bill Neil sat in on. The ROTC
program required it so there was a demand for the course and I was pressed into
service because none of the peacenik American historians wanted to teach it. In
a course where I was just barely keeping ahead of the class I was pretty tied
to my notes, thus violating one of Bill's chief pedagogical principles, a
shortcoming for which he gently chided me. Bill had not been able to teach the
course himself because of a long-planned trip. He was a master at the tactful
intervention to make a correction or interesting comment. At the end of the
last day he was able to attend, the class gave him an ovation.
I noticed you and Dave had a nice meal at Casa Blanca. Julie and I
used to go there often. We also liked Taco Real in Hammond and Jalapena's in
Schererville. None of the Mexican restaurants around here are as good as the
ones in the Region. You mourn the passing of some old landmark restaurants. The
economic history of Lake County can be traced by restaurant closings. When I
came for my interview at IUN, Bill took me to lunch at a restaurant in downtown
Gary. Several years later when I began to join his group at lunch occasionally,
that placed was closed and they were eating at a diner at Broadway and Ridge
Road in Glen Park. After that place closed, they moved to a couple of
restaurants on Broadway in Merrillville. By the time Jack and I were the only
ones left standing, we had to go all the way out to Round the Clock on Highway
30.
Becca stayed overnight after attending a Discovery
Charter School Hawaii-themed dance. She
in a band and her favorite group is Panic at the Disco. The Las Vegas band’s new song is “Don’t
Threaten Me with a Good Time.” This
summer they’re touring with Weezer. I’ve
got Weezer on heavy CD rotation along with Titus Andronicus, Hüsker Dü,
Cracker, and the BoDeans. Alissa and Beth
arrived to be with Toni on Mothers Day.
Toni made delicious omelets.
Alissa is off for Tanzania in three days.
Pegg Sangerman with Eric Brant
The production of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” at
Memorial Opera House really picked up with the appearance of Pegg Sangerman and
Anne SharpTree as hot British divorcees Gwendolyn and Cecily Pigeon. Oscar (the slovenly roommate) had arranged
for a double date, but Felix (a finicky neatness freak) began blubbering about
his kids and wife who threw him out. He wins the Pigeon sisters’ sympathy and
moves in with them. Pegg Sangerman’s
daughter Samantha, a childhood friend of Alissa, is pursuing a theatrical
career in New York.
Merrillville history book club member Lee Christakis
reported on William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”
(1960). My main contribution was
summarizing criticisms from historians regarding the author’s assertion that
Nazi totalitarianism was a logical phase in Germany’s authoritarian national
development – that there was, in effect, a continuum (known as the Sonderweg interpretation) from Martin
Luther to Adolf Hitler. Shirer was obsessed with the sexual behavior of high
Nazi officials and has been taken to task for equating homosexuality with
perversion.
At Gino’s was Paul Giogi, whose father was a pioneer
physician in Gary. My guest Chris Young
will speak on Andrew Jackson in July.
When I announced that Chris will be teaching a Fall seminar on Abraham
Lincoln, several folks inquired about auditing it. In September Roy Dominguez will be reporting
on a book by Austin Craig on Filipino nationalist José Rizal, executed by a
Spanish firing squad in 1896. Roy has
indicated a desire to teach a SPEA course and I suggested one on Cold Cases
both innocent victims wrongly convicted and, with the help of DNA advancements,
solving crimes committed in years past.
While Dominquez was Lake County sheriff, his staff solved several cases.
West Point is investigating whether 16
African-American graduates violated a regulation forbidding the making of
political statements while in uniform.
While they were merely celebrating their accomplishment, killjoys
claimed their gesture indicated support for Black Lives Matter.
Sharon Eng's parents George and Gwenneth Lousheff
Breanna Eng interviewed her mother, 59 year-old Sharon Eng,
born to Gwenneth and George Lousheff.
Gwenneth’s parents were English immigrants, and she grew up in Gary,
attending Emerson School. George’s
parents were Macedonians, and he attended Gary Horace Mann. George and Gwenneth lived in Tolleston. Gwenneth worked for Bell Telephone and could
walk to work. George was a carpenter
with local union 599. He and Gwen bowled. He played in a dart league, competed roller
derby, and was in a group called the “Unpredictables” that would dress up as
women and put on hilarious skits. Son
Gregory was born in 1955 and Sharon a year later. The family moved to Hobart when Sharon was
four. George had a brush with death when
he fell 25 feet through scaffolding, breaking both legs, his nose and wrist,
and suffering memory loss. Breanna Eng
wrote:
Sharon attended Mundell
School and Emmanuel Lutheran Church. Her
family moved to Merrillville when Sharon was in fifth grade after her dad and uncle
built a house from the ground up. The family went camping in an RV every summer. They played a half-dozen card games and a
dice game called 10,000. At 15 Sharon worked at Breslers Ice Cream shop
in Merrillville with four friends. They had a blast. Workers next door at Broadway Cinema on 61st
traded movie passes for ice cream until the bosses caught on. Sharon got into a
fight with a girl who spit on her. Sharon retaliated by singeing her hair with
a match. Sharon’s lost her best friend
over a boy, and they did not speak for over 30 years. Shortly after Sharon’s brother Gregory
graduated high school in 1953, he was riding a bicycle with his best friend on
the way to their senior camping trip when a drunk driver killed him. Sharon misses her brother every day.
Sharon and David Eng
bonded at a Luther League retreat. David
was a grade ahead of her. They started dating in Sharon’s junior year. David moved to Georgia for a year but then
came back. Sometimes on weekends they’d
drive up and down Broadway munching on pizza and drag racing in souped-up cars borrowed
from David J.’s older brother, who owned an auto shop. After graduation Sharon
worked at Summerfield Truck Company, at Gariup Construction, and then at Gary
National Bank. After a long engagement
Sharon married David on August 9, 1978.
They moved to Portage and bowled and played softball together. After taking several years off to be with her
kids, Sharon worked for a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. Sharon and David had their
fights and almost divorced but eventually worked through their problems.
Sharon (fifth from right), with children, husband and mother
Breanna Eng, top right, with family
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