Postponed Reunion

“The life of every man is a log in which he means to write one story and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” James M. Barrie, creator of “Peter Pan,” quoted in 1960 Upper Dublin yearbook

 

With vigils, demonstrations, and riots taking place in Minneapolis, Atlanta, and dozens of other cities, the Covid-19 pandemic is suddenly no longer the top news story.  Even so, yesterday Northwest Indiana reported 11 new deaths even as most area communities started reopening.  The elderly have been especially hard hit.  Although obituaries rarely mention cause of death, the number seems to have ballooned. Here’s an excerpt for World War II veteran Otto Henry Loeffler, a lifelong Valparaiso resident:

    Otto was a fine athlete, playing in the Dodgers minor league baseball system, then becoming a first-rate golfer and bowler.  He played a fine hand of blackjack.  Whether rousting his kids up to go fishing or golfing at 5:00 AM, hosting family get-togethers or spending time with Evelyn (late wife of 60 years) or grandchildren.  Otto was full of positive energy.  His last days were spent in the isolation of the 2020 pandemic, which did not sit well with someone who loved the company of his family and a dog on his lap.

R.I.P. Otto.

 

A few days ago good friend Tom Wade left for Connecticut to see his dying brother.  He posted this eulogy on Facebook along with a photo with his big brother:

    My older brother Dan passed away yesterday after fighting kidney disease for more than a decade. He was an extraordinary human being, holding a variety of academic positions and awards and ending up at Yale for the last 34 years. He, along with Carol, his loving wife of 54 years, were longtime warriors for peace and social justice. They ended their wedding in 1966 with a 10 minute plea for ending the war in Vietnam, and were in the middle of the 1968 protests for peace at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He had a wonderful internal joy about him that warmed all who knew him. He leaves behind his wife and partner in peace Carol, daughters Alyson and Malory, and grandson Luke. Thanks for being such a great example for your little brother, Dano. Love forever bro!    

 

My Upper Dublin “Class of 1960” reunion has been “rescheduled” for October 2021.  As the planning committee put it, nobody wants a solemn affair where masks are worn and old friends must keep six feet apart.  Compared to the momentous events engulfing us during this “plague year,” this is relatively unimportant.  Still, it’s a bitter pill.  I’ve attended every reunion since our twentieth.  I missed the tenth because I’d just begun teaching at Indiana University Northwest and had returned to Pennsylvania the previous week for my mother’s wedding.  The reunions always provide vivid memories and surprises.  In 1980 I smoked out with Gaard Murphy and hubby Chuck in the parking lot, and we’ve been good friends ever since.  I heard Ed Piszak ask Eleanor Smith at the registration desk if Jimmy Lane had arrived and then surprised him when he came up the steps. Still looking young for my age, I was taken aback when some folks hardly recognized me because I’d grown a good six inches since high school.  Lo and behold, I was taller than Suzi Hummel, who asked if I were in touch with Chuck Bahmueller, her next-door neighbor in East Oreland. I danced with a dozen classmates, including Faith Marvill, whom I dated in seventh grade, and Leslie Boone, looking like an absolutely gorgeous high school senior. Dick (“call me Richard”) Garretson got Bruce Allen and me to go into the adjacent bar to watch the Phillies clinch the National league pennant (they’d go on to win the World Series) and tried to persuade us to meet their plane at the Philadelphia airport.  Alas, the team still has a Sunday game.  That’s the last time I saw cool Dick Garretson.  Next day, I talked on the phone with Judy Jenkins for 40 minutes reporting on reunion highlights.

 

In 1990 I mistook Carolyn Aubel for Carolyn Ott and blurted out that I’d had a crush on her in grade school.  Beforehand, Chuck Bahmueller and I argued politics for an hour before sitting with beauties Judy Jenkins, Molly Schade, Suzi Hummel, and Susan Floyd, who asked me to dance to “Proud Mary.”  Judy said she had trouble remembering many classmates.  It helps to get out the yearbook beforehand, I said, momentarily forgetting that because she needed a summer course, Judy, along with a half-dozen others, got excluded from “The Mundockian.”  What administration bullshit!  After a post-reunion gathering (many of us being reluctant to have the night come to an end) Thelma Van Sant gave Bahmueller and me a ride back to our hotel. Just south of U.D. was the Van Sant farm (now gone), where many of us had worked summers and in whose long winding access road made out with dates, in my case once interrupted by Chief Ottinger.

 

1995 began a traditional of reunions every five years.  Seeing Kathleen Birchler, star of the U.D. field hockey team, for the first since graduation, I recalled how at Fort Washington elementary school she competed in soccer with the guys at[LJ1]  recess while most girls (and a lone guy) played house in dirt patches.  Kathleen once beat up a kid a year older than her in a fight, making his nose bleed.  She claimed to have no memory of the incident.  I got Wayne Wylie (who never dances, wife Fran warned me) to boogie with me to the Ramones’ “I Wanna be Sedated.”  He lived on a farm in Jarrettown; on summer sleepovers we’d ride a tractor out into the cornfield, pick corn and his mom would cook up four ears each for us.  Ambrosia. 

 

Favorite teacher Ed Taddei came to our fortieth reunion, along with football coach Frank Gilronan and music teacher Robert Foust.  I confessed that I had misbehaved in his class, and Mr. Foust replied, “You weren’t so bad.”  He must have witnessed worse, forced to teach some apathetic groups just once a week.  Bob Reller came to his first reunion with a comely wife.  I danced to a Motown number with Mary Dinkins, married to a preacher, who sat behind me in Latin class; once I turned around to say something clever to Mary when Miss LeVan whacked me with a ruler. The Temptations song caused Mary to close her eyes and show some soulful dance moves.  Dave Seibold and his wife wowed everyone with ballroom dance moves they must have learned at Arthur Murray studios.

 

For the first time in 2005 Toni attended a reunion. Classmates joked that they’d wondered if I’d made her up.  We were returning from the Jersey shore and had Miranda with us.  We sat at a table with John Jacobsen, who offered to give up his seat when it appeared that we were one serving short.  Still ruggedly handsome, John recalled Fort Washington school teachers Miss Worthington, Mrs. Orr, Mrs. Bytheway, and Mr. Johnson, the latter a weasel of a man with a big Adam’s apple that I’d almost forgotten about.  Sultry Miss Polsky (who could get a rise out of me when she called me Jacques), Mr. Bek (my hundred-pound football coach), and Miss Malkus attended as did two cool classmates who for some reason had changed their names, Tony Tucciarone and John Magyar, who once fought chemistry teacher John Schwering in the hallway.  Vince Curll and I would visit Tony Tucciarone on the way to the movies in Ambler and sample his mom’s delicious homemade bread. Eddie Piszek, full-headed and fit, gave overweight Magyar diet tips.

 

Several first-timers made it to the fiftieth, including childhood pal Jay Bumm and homecoming queen Wendy Henry wearing, unbelievably, her tiara. I tried to ask tenth grade girlfriend Mary Delp to dance, but Skip Pollard’s wife, who’d been her neighbor in Naperville, shushed me away.  When “The Bristol Stomp” came on, Alice Ottinger and I showed off some moves and got an approving smile from Jimmy Coombs; then for good measure we slow-danced. Later cameras came out when Alice danced with old flame Jay Bumm.  Marianne Tambourino and star athlete Percy Herder, who worked at the old high school, came onto the dance floor, and later Phil Arnold organized a Stroll line.

 

In 2015 I chatted at dinner with LeeLee Minehart and her husband Bob whom she met in Afghanistan while in the Peace Corps. Among those stopping to chat at our table were Ed Dudnek and Rita Grasso, who looked stunningly beautiful.  I traded Babe Ruth baseball league memories with Eddie Piszek.  Ron Hawthorn’s dad (Mr. Haw-the-Haw) was our coach and Dave Seibold our star first baseman.  Classmate Freddie Scott played hits from 1960, including “The Twist” by Chubby Checker (I preferred the Hank Ballard original), “Go, Jimmy, Go” by Jimmy Clanton, and “Save the Last Dance for Me” by the Drifters.  Although I needed the help of nametags for a few classmates, I recognized most immediately.  Pat Zollo was bald but otherwise hadn’t changed much, holding forth with humorous stories of wilder days.  Coombs, who looked like he could hold his own in a fight, asked whether I was in touch with Penny Roberts (negative) and I countered with questions about the Fad brothers. Barbara Bitting, married to classmate Joe Ricketts, remained blond and beautiful, Connie Heard more youthful acting than in high school almost.  Susan Floyd showed me a photo circa 1969 of her, hubby Joe McGraw and Terry and Gayle Jenkins looking like hippies. In 1969 I had long hair and a beard, too. As Teenagers Susan and I hung out at Terry and Judy Jenkins’ house and shared many memories. Like so many of my classmates, Susan has aged gracefully.  Let’s hope most of us can rendezvous in 2021.

Tree of Life

“You can run all your life

And not go anywhere.”

   (Take Away This) Ball and Chain,” Social Distortion

 

Prior to playing “Ball and Chain” for his daily Facebook performance, son Dave wrote that he was feeling a little socially distorted, given the enduring self-isolation caused by the pandemic. In the background was a poster of his high school band LINT. Dave’s previous selection was “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne in honor of co-founder Adam Schlesinger, who passed away from COVID-19.  Also R.I.P., Bill Withers.  “Ain’t No Sunshine” with them gone.

 

Knowing what an acclaimed director Terrence Malick is, I watched “The Tree of Life” (2011), which I found rather pretentious and boring despite stellar performances by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as the postwar parents of three boys.  Scenes depicting the formation of the earth reminded me of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”  Critic Roger Ebert loved tit and summed up the theme of all Malick movies in this way: “Human lives diminish beneath the overwhelming majesty of the world.” Maybe, but the flick could have used more action and some resolution.

My favorite reporter, Chesterton Tribune's Kevin Nevers, has been self-isolating with wife Meredith, Kate and Andie, and their cats for the past two weeks.  In “Thoughts on a Pandemic” he describes himself as “a tired hack who after 23 years at the Tribune has very nearly run out of words, so the slower pace of teleworking suits me just fine.” Erudite without being pedantic, Nevers incorporated the words paradigm and apparatchik, made reference to second mate Stubb on the deck of the “Pequod,” the whaling ship in “Moby Dick,” and wrote: “I’ve always been a homebody, so living in my pajamas and shaving once every five days come naturally to me.”  He described having beers with his best friend in his garage 12 feet from him with hand sanitizer between them.  He predicted that the pandemic will “mutate the DNA of our way of life [and] distort notions of personal space, norms of etiquette, forms of consumption, seismically shift the terms and structures of politics, and transform how we celebrate and grieve, woo and worship.”

 

In “Rabbit Is Rich” John Updike referred to America in 1979 “littered with pull-tabs and bottlecaps and pieces of broken mufflers.” Forty years later, it’s much worse – millions of plastic bags that will scar the earth’s land and seas for centuries.

 

In my current Steel Shavings magazine I wax nostalgic about playing Spin the Bottle at a party Ray Bates held, searching for used Fats Domino records at Montgomeryville flea market, giving girls back rubs (and sometimes having them be reciprocated) in home ec teacher Mrs. Davis’s homeroom, and being interrupted while parking in the Van Sant farm long dirt road by Chief of Police Ottinger. With plans for my 60^th high school reunion in possible jeopardy, this paragraph seems bittersweet:

    In 1980 I shared a smoke with Gaard Murphy and husband Chuck; in 1990 Sue Floyd asked me to dance to “Proud Mary” and I mistook Carolyn Aubel for Carolyn Ott and blurted out that I’d had a rush on her.  In 1995 I got Wayne Wylie (who never dances, wife Fran warned) to boogie with me to “I Wanna Be Sedated”.  Favorite math teacher Mr. Taddei came to the 40^th, Mrs. Polsky and Mr. Bek to the 45^th, and several first-timers to the 50^th, including Jay Bumm and Wendy Henry wearing, unbelievably, her Homecoming Queen tiara. In 2015 I trading senior Little League memories with Eddie Piszek, and deejay Fred Scott played hits from 1960, including The Twist” and “Go, Jimmy, Go.”

Gabby

“Gabby Hayes: It’s half past.

Wild Bill Elliott: Half past what?

Gabby Hayes: I dunno – the little hand broke off.”

         Bordertown Gun Fighter” (1943)

The most famous sidekick in Hollywood Westerns, for Hopalong Cassidy (with the nickname “Windy”), John Wayne, and Roy Rogers, among others, George “Gabby” Hayes (1885-1969) uttered such memorable movie lines as “Yer Darn Tootin’,” “Yessiree Bob” and “Young whippersnapper.”  In the brilliant Mel Brooks satire “Blazing Saddles” a character appears named Gabby Johnson whose gibberish dialogue is a tribute to Hayes.  Hayes was a circus performer and vaudevillian before embarking on a movie career after losing most of his money during the 1929 stock market crash.  Supposedly, he didn’t learn to ride a horse until age 50.

Gab, originally a Celtic word meaning mouth, can connote the ability to speak persuasively, such as having the gift of gab. Such a description fits Gabrielle “Gabby” Frigo, a Lake Central grad and IUN sophomore whom I met at the university’s annual Woman’s and Gender Studies conference.  On Instagram Gabby, an English major with aspirations to study library science in grad school, describes herself as a human female, bad (as in badass?) feminist, and future guardian of free information.

 Gabrielle Frigo and Kathryn Clark, Lake Central, 2015

Gabby Instagram photo

In the opening poetry session sponsored by English professor William Allegrezza Gabby Frigo was outgoing and self-confident introducing herself prior to reciting a half-dozen compositions, including her impressions of attending the Women’s March in Chicago, as well as more introspective poems, including a riotous one dealing with embarrassing consequences of living with chronic Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).  I wish I could have had a written copy in front of me so I could have better appreciated the words.  When the session ended early, I asked the participants if they were influenced by any particular writer.  The others had trouble coming up with anyone, but Gabrielle bought up French author Violette Leduc (1907-1972), the illegitimate daughter of a maid servant.  Violette became friends (and lovers, Gabby told me later) with Simone de Beauvoir.  Albert Camus in 1946 published her first novel, “L’Asphyxie” (“In the Prison of her Skin”).  Her 1966 novella “Thèrése et Isabelle” explores a lesbian relationship; in 2015 the Feminist Press published an English translation.

 Violette Leduc

Eliza Haywood

In an afternoon session chaired by faculty sponsor Cara Lewis, Gabby Frigo presented a paper entitled “Fantomina and Feminist Themes.” “Fantomina,” a novel by Eliza Haywood published in 1725, is subtitled “Love in a Maze, Being a Secret History of an Amour Between Two Persons of Condition.”  The main character uses various disguises to turn the tables on a man who raped her, mistaking her for a prostitute. Critic Margaret Chase Croskery wrote that Haywood “refuses to define female sexual virtue in terms of chastity or a victimized sexual objecthood.  Instead, she defines virtuous love in terms of sincerity and constancy.”   Tanice Foltz announced that Gabby will be taking part in an upcoming Women’s and Gender Studies Conference at IU Southeast.  When Anne Balay was at IUN, she’d commonly take a van full of students to that system-wide conference.

Inland Steel Blast Furnace Department, 1920; Calumet Regional Archives photo

NWI Times correspondent Joseph Pete quoted me extensively in an article entitled “Steel workforce aging, getting more educated.”  He wrote:

     In the early days, the steel mills that ring Lake Michigan’s southern shore pulled in immigrants from all over the world.

     That’s the way the bosses liked it.

     “U.S. Steel recruited immigrants from Eastern Europe, particularly central and southern Europe, because it was working employees seven days a week, 12 hours a day,” said James Lane, Indiana University Northwest professor of history emeritus. “Few Americans wanted to work in those conditions.”

     Steel mills can’t be shut down because blast furnaces blaze around the clock and can't be easily switched on and off. Judge Elbert Gary, the first to run U.S. Steel, believed in manning the mill during all hours by having two 84-hour per week shifts – making for a daily 12-hour work shift for every worker – until he was persuaded to add a third, making working hours more manageable, said Lane, author of “City of the Century” and other books about Region history.

     U.S. Steel and other steelmakers recruited heavily from Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Russia, Italy and Slovakia. The steelmaker liked to mix antagonistic groups like Serbs and Croats to forestall unionization, reasoning they wouldn’t cooperate and work together, Lane said.

     “We had relatively open immigration prior to World War I,” he said. “Fares to America were cheap and often underwritten by the steel mills.”

Later in the article Pete wrote:

     Over the years, steelworkers’ kids and grandkids went on to work at the mill. As recently as the 1970s, steel mill jobs were plentiful and people could get them right out of high school.

     “A lot of people who went to college even worked summers at the mill,” Lane said. “It was referred to as mill scholarships because they could make enough in the summer to pay for their tuition.”

     The pay was so good at the mills it was sometimes referred to as the “golden handcuffs” because it made it hard to leave, Lane said.

     “It provided a generation with basically the income they needed to have a middle-class lifestyle,” he said. “The wife didn’t have to work. You could send your kids off to college and afford home ownership. When I came in 1970, it was a very blue collar area. Virtually all my students had a father or some relative who was a steelworker.”

Former Portage math teacher Chuck Tomes provided Barb Walczak with this question for her bridge newsletter: what are the odds of being dealt a hand with no card higher than a nine?  Answer: 1827 to 1. One person guessed one every 48 hands. Walczak quipped, “Sometimes it feels that way.”  At duplicate bridge, I told Tomes that I loved studying probability in high school under a master teacher named Ed Taddei. In addition to coaching basketball and refereeing, often in tandem with a twin brother, Taddei started a high school golf team that I played on.  When he died a decade ago, Rich Fad, one of his top athletes, wrote about the man affectionately nicknamed “Taddei Laddy”: “Ed Taddei taught us all to be good in Math and stay between your man and the basket. That is all we really needed to know to survive out there in the real world.” 

 Ed Taddei 

A note in Barb Walczak’s latest newsletter honoring Chuck and Marcy Tomes for scoring 71.11% at a game in Valparaiso contained this quote:  

When we started playing two years ago in the ACBL club games, we would get a bad result whenever we played experienced players on boards with competitive part-score bidding. We have improved the worst part of our game by being more aggressive and by learning when to push our opponents and when not to push. Chuck has been studying “To Bid or Not To Bid — The Law of Total Tricks” by Larry Cohen. The law is mathematically fascinating
and helpful. We have learned that you
obviously improve by playing more
bridge. Retirement is great for the bridge game – and vice versa.


At Dunelands YMCA I played with Helen Boothe because Charlie Halberstadt and Dottie Hart’s regular partners were both back from vacationing in warmer climes. We did quite well despite being unfamiliar with how each other bid.  We got top board on a hand where I opened 1 Heart, Helen jumped to game (4 Hearts), and an opponent doubled with five little Hearts and an outside Ace. After I won the opening trick with a free Spade finesse, I played 5 rounds of Hearts and then 4 more winning Spade tricks, plus two of the final three tricks.  Being vulnerable and with two overtricks we garnered 1190 points. On the down side, in another hand, after Helen opened a Heart, an opponent pre-empted 2 Spades. I had 5 Diamonds and 3 Hearts to the Queen and bid 3 Diamonds.  Helen jumped to 5 Diamonds, and I won all but one trick for 620 points.  Two other players played the hand in Hearts and made 5 for 650 points.  I told Helen afterwards that I should have put her in 5 Hearts.

 Al Koch; photo by Jeff Manes

Jeff Manes interviewed Al Koch, 76, who taught special education students at Thornton Fractional North and then Lake Central High School.  Koch told Manes:

  At T.F. North eighty percent of the kids I had in behavioral disorder class couldn't read past the third-grade level. They were 17 or 18 years of age.

I had one young man walk up to me and ask, “Where's your rules, man?”  I said, “What are you talkin’ about?” He says, “The school I was at last year had 18 rules written on the chalkboard and I broke every one of them.”

I says, “Well, I'm gonna save you a lot of work. I don't have any rules. But I have one suggestion. You do whatever you think is best and I'll do whatever I think is best.” Those kids called me The White Tornado. We spent the whole day together in that room. I took 'em to the washroom and ate with 'em because they were too unruly to eat in the cafeteria. They went home in cabs every day because they were too aggressive to ride the school bus.

These were sharp kids, but one of their disabilities was their language. Everything was “F” this and “F” that. I told them, “Look, there's over a million words in the English language. If you guys as a class can go one week without using the ‘F’ word, I'll buy you as many White Castles as you can eat.” I told them that the first week of school in August. I did not buy White Castles until the third week of May. But I got there. I spent $125 on sliders and fries for those 11 kids. I got there.

I can think of no greater teaching and learning moment than that.  Imagine – rewarding good behavior!

Ray and Phyllis Smock unveiled a photo wearing hats Phyllis knitted along with the comment, “We must keep the Arc of Justice bending toward freedom.”  The so-called “Pussyhats” were popular during the Women’s March, referencing crude remarks Trump made in 2005 about groping women.  Ray commented: “I didn’t think ALL PINK was for me, so she accommodated my desire to have a black one with the appropriate ears.  There are so many ways to make a fashion statement these days.”

Bucknell, my alma mater, defeated Lehigh, Terry Jenkins’ alma mater 81-65  in the Patriot league basketball finals to make the NCAA tournament for the first time in four years. In 2005 the Bisons upset number-3 seed Kansas, 64-63, a game I saw on TV while in California visiting my mother.

Corey Hagelberg and Samuel A. Love put together a 16-page booklet of poetry about Gary in connection with the Calumet Artist Residency.  Board member Divina Stewart’s "Where I’m From" captures “the beauty and tenacity of everyday people,” as she so eloquently puts it.  Here are two of its five parts:

III.

Where I’m from

unemployment rates brow beat

drugs, poverty and violent crime

into a steady stream of headlines

and the beauty and tenacity

of everyday people is rarely mentioned

and credited with holding the tenuous strings

of this crossroads city together.

V.

Black men over 60 can still be seen

mowing lawn

pushing grocery carts up and down aisles

catching up with neighbors on the latest news

in a routine as old as the setting of the sun

they and their wives’ relationship short-hand

crafted and perfected over the20, 30, 40 year unions

make you long for companionship and long life

with gnarled pecan hands

caressing charcoal laugh lines for eternity.

Calumet Artist Residency workshops