Decay Devils

“We plan on being in the forefront of protecting and preserving historical landmarks throughout Northwest Indiana. Through our travels and connections with our partners, we believe we can be the catalyst for change.” Decay Devils

 Union Station photos by Anthony Zaragoza

below, Decay Devils president Tyrell Anderson

When Anthony Zaragoza of Evergreen State in Tacoma, Washington, visited the Calumet Region this week, he photographed the work that the Decay Devils have done to beautify Gary’s long-abandoned Union Station.  Formed in 2011 by 14 photographers, artists, and urban explorers who enjoyed visiting urban ruins, the Decay Devils took on the mission of attempting to beautify and ultimately restore Union Station. Here’s a statement that appears on the Decay Devils website:

In order to support the thousands of workers moving in from around the country, the city of Gary immediately needed a new passenger and freight rail station. Architect M. A. Lang designed and built the two-story Union Station in 1910, between the railways of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway and Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Constructed in a "Beaux-arts Style” which utilized the cast-in-place concrete method in which, after pouring, the steel reinforced concrete was scored to resemble stone. Union Station was closed sometime in the 1970s. Since then it has been featured in an episode of Life after People, and the movie Original Gangstas and Appointment with Danger.  Several plans have been made in efforts to reuse the facility, including some plans that called for the station to serve as visitor center and gateway to the National Lakeshore as the station’s strip of land connects to the Indiana Dunes to the East. 

On the Decay Devils website is a list of “what we achieved":

·       Transforming Lake County Grant through John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Donor Advised Fund at Legacy Foundation

·       Downtown Gary History Walking Tours

·       Gary, IN Blight Day Participant

·       Gary Union Station Revival Project

·       St Monica St Luke Oral History Time Capsule Project

·       Marquette Beach Clean-up w/ the Alliance for the Great Lakes

 Thomas Frank; Post-Tribune photo by John Smierciak

Zaragoza at oil spill near Gary Airport; photo by Thomas Frank

BP tar sands  photo by Anthony Zaragoza

abandoned West Calumet Housing Complex; photo by Anthony Zaragoza

Indiana harbor shipping canal; photo by Anthony Zaragoza

Prior to arriving at the Calumet Regional Archives, Zaragoza hooked up with environmental activist Thomas Frank, 53, who took him on a “Toxic Tour” of area industrial sites. Formerly director of Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal and a member of East Chicago’s redevelopment commission, Frank has participated in protests at BP refinery and West Calumet Housing Complex.  Steve McShane and I told Zaragoza about our many environmental collections, and he promised to send me “Toxic Tour” photos.

IUN History professor Jonathyne Briggs is teaching a Fall seminar on World War I and is considering an Archives assignment.  Steve McShane mentioned that the Fosty Bela Papers contain Gary Works Circle publications going back to 1916 that include references to wartime Americanization campaigns.  If we could borrow from Gary Public Library microfilm of Gary newspapers (the Evening Post and the Daily Tribune) during the war years, student could each tackle a month’s worth of issues for war-related references.  Even though the downtown Gary library remains closed, in the past we’ve either been able to use their material on campus or at the nearby W.E.B. DuBois branch. I also suggested that students could peruse material in Steel Shavings issues on Portage, Cedar Lake, and Gary.  Census figures for 1910 and 1920 may also be useful.  Jonathyne invited me to attend class as often as possible.

Gary Galloway’s wife Paula donated a large collection of the former Post-Tribune reporter’s writings.  During the 1970s and 1980s Galloway was the paper’s star columnist, whose specialties were crime and corruption.  He hung out at a Glen Park biker bar, where his beer of choice was Stroh’s (“fire-brewed in the Motor City”).  He once interviewed me in the Post-Trib conference room, using a tiny pad that held no more than two of three sentences per page.  He kept scribbling down quotes and flipping pages. Playing to a white suburban audience, Galloway turned virulently (and unfairly) anti-Mayor Hatcher, much to my chagrin.  In 1984 Galloway won the Baltimore Sun’s prestigious H. L. Mencken Award. Post-Trib metropolitan editor Paula L. Ellis (presently married to Galloway) said at the time:

He’s a hot poker in the seat of politicians.  That’ exactly what he does every day and we’ve got the lawsuits to prove it.  He knows the sub-terrain of this area, a place with an old political culture.

Calling Galloway’s forceful work reminiscent of Mencken, Sun managing editor James Houch claimed: “He calls the police chief a liar.  He calls the mayor a fake.  The man is brave and gutsy and has remained out of jail.”  Now 81 years old, Galloway is suffering from Alzheimer’s.

In “Trajectory” Richard Russo wrote about Nate, a semi-retired professor in his 60s who speculates that he might have been happier had he embarked on a different career path, such as construction worker.  Regarding his shallow, narcissistic brother, Nate ruminates: “Say this for Julian, a career salesman: he’s lived the life he was meant to live and followed the only trajectory that truly suits him, from start to finish.”  Toni’s father’s last name was Trojecki, and sometimes I’d call her “Trojectory” until she began objecting.  She and other women in her family went by Trojecka with an “A” and pronounced it “Tray-yet-ska.”  Try as he might, my father could never master the pronunciation. 

 I Love my Librarian winners (Barbara Weaver second from right)

The most moving recitation during the Portage Historical Society program was between Jeff Manes and librarian Barbara Weaver, who suffered 90 percent hearing loss upon contracting meningitis at age three.  She worked at Lake County Public Library, at IVY Tech, and was a recipient of the national I Love My Librarian Award.  Growing up, she learned to play the piano (“I can feel the music through me hands”), loved Nancy Drew mysteries (“every Saturday with my allowance I’d buy another story for $1.25”), and became a big Indy 500 fan (“Mario Andretti signed a life-sized poster I had purchased”).  When Barbara applied to library science grad school, an admissions officer questioned whether she could succeed in the profession.  Barbara recalled telling her:

  I’ve done well in school.  I’m an avid reader who graduated sixth of 123 and was on the National Honor Society.  I had great role models.  My parents loved me, and I have a brother I look up to.  I don’t see why I cannot achieve my dream of becoming a librarian.

I reread Manes’ column in volume one of “All Worth Their Salt” and learned that Weaver broke down in tears when she first related that information.

 Richard Goldstein in 1967 and 2015

In an issue of Rock Music Studies given to me by Ron Cohen (he’s on the editorial board) appeared “Present at the Creation” by Richard Goldstein, who wrote about rock music for The Village Voice for five years beginning in1966. He was in a limo with the Rolling Stones when girls hurled themselves onto the hood, got stoned on LSD with the Beach Boys, sat in the front row at the Monterey Pop Festival, and hung out with Janis Joplin at a New York City kosher restaurant frequented by hippies.  And much more.  Admitting to spectacular errors in judgment, he initially panned the Doors’ “Light My Fire” and the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album and wrote (with only slight hyperbole) that a Judy Collins performance “would put Jesus to sleep on the cross.”  When he heard that Janis Joplin had died from a heroin overdose in 1970, he recalled, “I was so traumatized that I became unable to write, and that block lasted several years.”