Aspire Charter School

Talked to third graders last Friday at Aspire Charter Academy, a K through 8 school located on Gary’s west side. One of 61 schools launched by a group called National Heritage Academies (the first one opened in 1995 in Grand Rapid, Michigan, where son Philip lives), Aspire is sponsored by Ball State University, David Letterman’s alma mater. At the school office I had to get out my driver’s license and put it into a machine to make sure I wasn’t registered as a sex offender. Then the machine took my picture (not a good one) for me to wear like a nametag.

Invited as part of Black History month to talk about Gary’s history, I came armed with a dozen 8 by 10 photos starting with Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who traded with Potawatomi Indians and lived in Northwest Indiana before founding the first permanent settlement in Chicago and ending with a 2005 dance workshop at Emerson School for the Visual and Performing Arts. I found Ms. Melissa Jung’s room (actually an aide walked me to Room 13) and was introduced to about 15 neatly dressed (the kids wear uniforms), curious, well-behaved third graders. I was about to get started when Ms. Jung indicated several additional classes would be joining the group. Shades of 1976 when I was invited to talk to a History class at Lew Wallace High School and ended up being the featured speaker in an auditorium in front of the entire student population at their Friday afternoon assembly. They were celebrating Diversity Week. I went on first, and then the fun entertainment was scheduled to begin. My plan was to talk about four people from Gary – a Slovak woman, a Mexican-American man, a Croatian woman, and African-American mayor Richard Hatcher. I paused after the third one, and somebody clapped. Then a few more people started clapping facetiously, as if to get me to stop. I said, “I’m almost done” and that got a large round of applause. Needless to say, I hurried through my remarks about Hatcher.
With more than 50 kids seated on the floor in front of me, Ms. Jung suggested that we show the photos on a large overhead projector. Though practical, the effect was to make some of the details fuzzy. The kids were great, but with dozens of hands going up, it was hard to achieve the intimacy possible in a small group. The kids stayed enthusiastic, but some spoke so softly that I had to be practically in their ear to understand them, half-deaf as I am. I was impressed that most students guessed that du Sable was a French name. When I told them he was from Haiti, virtually all were familiar with the recent earthquake.

One photo that fascinated them showed Froebel students outside reading from books, including an African-American kid. They wanted to know why they were outside and whether the books were readers or song books. It gave me a chance to mention how Froebel School was once world-famous as an example of Superintendent William A. Wirt’s work-study-play program of progressive education. Viewing a photo of mothers and babies posed in front of Stewart Settlement House during the 1930s and learning these were members of the Better Baby Club, they had interesting comments on what a Better Baby Club might be for. Several had heard of settlement director Frank S. Delaney because there is a housing project named for him. Another photo showed black and white kids sleeping in a cabin. They were members of a WW II school organization, the All-Out Americans, who were being honored for being leaders within their schools. AOA director Mark Roser took a lot of flak from segregationists for planning an integrated sleepover, but he believed that American needed to practice what it preached while battling the Nazis. One third grader asked whether they were in a log cabin (they were). Another wondered why two girls seemed to be occupying the same bed (just for purposes of posing for the photo, I answered). Sadly, when I showed a photo of Richard Gordon Hatcher celebrating with campaign workers on election night, few seemed to know who America’s first black mayor was. All in all, it was a fun experience.

Aspire is just one of several Gary charter schools. Thea Bowman Academy is a junior-senior high school with a formidable basketball team. Ron Cohen has been involved with an elementary school called Charter School of the Dunes. Then there are a couple Gary Lighthouse schools. While these must have eased the funding crisis city school districts like Gary face, I worry that if the most gifted and motivated kids from stable goal-oriented families go to these schools, won't it further erode the quality of the traditional schools as well as undermine union gains?

To change the subject, Portage Historical Society officer Barbara Borg-Jenkins emailed me that the woman who identified herself as Sherril Tokarski’s sister last week when I talked to the group was in fact named Linda and therefore the woman whose husband died in Vietnam. Barb added: “My daughter, Stephanie Byarlay, was also in one of your classes. You did one on Vietnam. I wanted to attend and observe at least one class with her, but never got the chance. We received a lot of positive feedback from the members after you left. Everyone enjoyed your talk very much. Thank you so much for doing this.”

Don’t recall Barb’s daughter Stephanie but if I found her in my grade book it might come to me. Last week Paul Nelson, who did a documentary on Cedar Lake that I was part of, visited the Archives with an intern named Sarah Holst. She looked familiar and said she had a summer course with me on the Seventies, and I apologized for not remembering her. Then I got out my gradebook, and I could even recall where she sat, near Alex Passo, the son of friends of ours. She hopes to do a documentary on the history of WYIN, so I sent her this email: “Dear Sarah, It was nice to see you again at the Archives. I do remember you now – it just takes me time to visualize my old courses and the students in them. In your Summer class, for instance, an old softball teammate of mine, Steve Kokos was always bringing me and/or the class things to read or watch – he was so enthusiastic about our doing Seventies popular culture. Then there was Nursing student Kim Holland, who made a double CD of John Prine’s greatest hits for me. I could go on and on. The reason for this e-mail has to do with your project. My son Phil worked for Channel 56 after he graduated from IU in the early 1990s and might be a good source for you if you wanted to interview him. The pay at the station was very poor (just a small step above an internship), but Phil got an opportunity to do all sorts of things, from directing the news to doing high school football games. The experience led to his getting his present job at a PBS station in Grand Rapids, Michigan, WGVU (it’s connected with Grand Valley State University) where he has gone on to win two EMMYs. I could give you his e-mail address if you like and once winter is over he comes back to the Region from time to time. Sincerely, Jim Lane”

Toni and I looked at several houses over the weekend. One in Miller near the lake would be great if it had a garage, no septic tank, a dining room, a larger and more accessible lot, and wasn’t so expensive. I also loved a tri-level in Chesterton, but Toni pointed out that it didn’t have a foyer or a short path from the garage to the kitchen (for lugging groceries) and is hoping for a ranch type all on one floor with a finished basement and under $200,000. We saw one with a huge unfinished basement but it, too, wasn’t perfect and needed sidewalk repairs and was close to neighbors who had a trampoline setup just on the other side of the fence. So the search continues.

Played bridge Saturday with Dick and Cheryl Hagelberg, first time we saw them since our return from California and their return from New York. We had grandkids James and Rebecca because Dave and Angie attended the Purdue-Illinois game (Boilermaker star E’Traun Moore went to East Chicago Central, where Dave teaches). We all had Chinese food from Wing Wah and then the kids played Wii games. After we finished cards, I turned on the Olympics and we saw Apolo Ohno win a bonze medal. Normally I’m not a chauvinist when it comes to rooting for American athletes, but I like Ohno, an old vet and 2007 “Dancing with the Stars” winner who counts on guile to defeat rivals. A few days earlier he won a silver after two Koreans wiped out on the final turn. His opponents in this race were two Koreans and two Canadian brothers, who started out in the lead. When Ohno tried to pass them, one brother nudged him and threw him off his stride. The two Koreans at this point burst into the lead. Ohno recovered and crossed the finish line inches ahead of the Canadians.

Page 1 of today’s Post-Tribune has a full=page photo of a scrapbook sent to the Archives by people who rescued it from the trash. It contains letters a WW II veteran from Gary, Irwin Fann, sent to his parents. Sadly Fann was killed during a bombing mission over Norway. Steve McShane worked hard to get the scrapbook for the Archives and is in a second photo on page 3. Writer Jerry Davich was interviewing Steve last week, and we gave him our book “Skinning Cats” containing letters from Seabee Tom Krueger, another Gary native. During the summer of 1984 the National Park Service had scheduled for demolition the Krueger house, which was located near ours within the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. My wife Toni discovered the letters in shoeboxes and scattered on the garage floor. They evidently had been in a footlocker that somebody had taken. We eventually located Krueger and received his permission to publish them in a book.