Jim Tolhuizen

“Now the sun’s gone to hell
And the moon’s riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it’s written in the starlight
And every line on your palm
We’re fools to make war
On our brothers in arms.”
Dire Straits

Chuck Gallmeier called with the sad news that friend and valued colleague Jim Tolhuizen passed away. Twenty years ago, he and I were having lunch in the Indiana University Northwest cafeteria when he started asking me about the Vietnam War course I was teaching. During the ensuing conversation he mentioned some of his experiences as, in his words, a “ground pounder” serving with the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. I listened with fascination and inquired whether he often discussed these things with others. “This is the first time I have ever talked about it,” he replied. After thinking it over, Jim agreed to share his experiences with my students. They were riveted. Henceforth every time I taught the course, he’d agree to make a guest appearance. It was always the highlight of the class. When I’d thank him, he’d say, “I enjoyed it. It’s good therapy.”

Jim always began his remarks with the caveat that every Vietnam veteran’s experiences were unique to the time (for him, 1969-1970) and place (the so-called Parrot’s Beak) he served and that one shouldn’t make generalizations about others’ tours of duty based on what he went through. The mission of Tolhuizen’s unit was to interdict supplies entering South Vietnam from the Ho Cho Minh Trail. That meant being “in the field” on patrol for 24 days straight and then pulling “green line” duty guarding the firebase for eight days. He described the 70 or 80 pounds of gear he had to “hump,” and the arduous task of setting up camp each night after hacking through three-tier jungle all day. His unit being called on to implement President Richard M’ Nixon’s so-called Cambodian incursion, Jim was seriously wounded by an unseen enemy’s round from an AK-47 shattered his thigh. He spent more than a year in army hospitals with other war victims (we were not sick, he emphasized, just grievously wounded). He always answered student questions but did not offer political analysis other than to state the obvious, that by 1969 hardly anyone was for the war or believed it was winnable. Embittered by the needless sacrifices he and his comrades went through, he admitted to the class, “I tell people now not to hold grudges, but it took me awhile to learn that lesson myself.”

Once a student asked Jim if any of his buddies had died in combat. After a moment’s hesitation, he revealed that his best friend Paul was fatally injured by rocket fire during an attack on their fire support base. An hour before, he and Paul were on top of a bunker listening to an audio cassette of the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” that Paul had purchased during R and R in Bangkok, singing along to the words: “Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter/ Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here/ Here comes the sun, here comes the sun/ And I say, it’s all right.” After Paul’s death, Jim was careful to avoid becoming too emotionally attached to anyone. Jim walked with a limp, the scar tissue a constant reminder of war’s personal toll. In recent months he’d ask friends sitting across from him at lunch to hold the table down when he was ready to leave so he could get himself up. A charter member of the Northwest Indiana Symphony Chorus, he sometimes needed a shoulder to lean on in order to negotiate the stage. He loved stock car races and helped found I U Northwest’s Communication Department. J.T., as I called him, will be sorely missed.

Bob Kostanczuk had a nice review of “Maria’s Journey in the Post-Trib. He wrote in part: “At 18, Maria Arredondo was a Mexican immigrant and mother living in a Texas boxcar while her husband worked for the railroad. It was the 1920s. A clothesline was stretched between the boxcar and a straggly tree. "In summer's heat the clothes first hung in the dry dusty wind were dry and ready to bring in before the last of the load was pinned at the end of the clothesline," purrs a passage from "Maria's Journey," a new book about a matriarch's resilience in the face of challenges in her adopted country. Industrialized East Chicago would become home for Maria -- the mother of 10 from the state of Guanajuato in Mexico. She was steered into an arranged marriage at the age of 14. Readers are drawn into a gritty immigrant saga that streams through the rise of steel worker unionization and the evolution of the Arredondos into a well known political family in Northwest Indiana.”
Last Thursday we traveled to Grand Rapids, MI, to see granddaughter Alissa participate in a so-called “Style Battle.” She was the photographer on one of nine teams sponsored by area boutiques (in her case Lamb). Team members included a hair stylist, makeup artist, and five models. In the course of five hours Five of Alissa’s photos of the made-up models would be submitted and shown on a huge screen, and the audience was asked to vote for the three top teams. Lamb should have won, but the winner, Gina’s, had a larger contingent of voters. Still it was fun to watch (kind of like a Sixties Happening), and although exhausting for Alissa, a good experience.

The downtown Holiday Inn was across the street from the impressive Gerald R. Ford presidential Museum, which I visited. Loved the replicas of the oval office and cabinet room. Ford’s biological father was evidently an ogre whom his mother divorced when he was a baby, and his stepfather owned a paint store in Grand Rapids. A special exhibit entitled “School House to White House: The Education of the Presidents” contained photos and home movies of presidents going back to Herbert Hoover. In a taped interview from “60 Minutes” First Lady Betty Ford candidly endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment and a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. She got her husband to appoint a woman to his cabinet and hoped he’d appoint one to the Supreme Court. On the wall were photos of dozens of white men who served on Ford’s team, no African Americans, and a lone woman, Secretary of Housing and Urban development Carla Anderson Hills.

Outside the museum were entries in the open air Art Prize contest going on all over the city. Other venues included Flanagan’s Irish Pub, the Department of Corrections, and a refurbished warehouse nicknamed The B.O.B. (for Big Old Building). Top prize is $250,000 and more than 1,700 people entered pieces. One finalist was a gigantic replica of a Lincoln coin consisting of thousands of pennies. Artist Wander Martich is a 34 year-old woman originally from the Dominican Republic. I only saw a tiny fraction of the entries but hope she wins.

Arriving at Phil and Delia’s, I got out to move a garbage container and tripped over the open top lying on the ground, somehow opening a gash behind my ear that took nine stitches to close. Phil and Toni took me to an Urgent care facility, and the doctor joked about my wearing an Indiana University t-shirt since IU was playing Michigan later that day (IU lost 42-35, unable to stop the Wolverines’ running game).

Missed seeing Miranda run cross country or play in her high school marching band, but Alissa had two indoor soccer games and Anthony an outdoor game Friday. Both Tori and Anthony had games again on Saturday, a morning so cold that I wore my winter jacket and was still shivering. Thanks in part to Phil’s good coaching moves, Tori’s team prevailed, 2-0, against an opponent that had beaten them handily two weeks before. In the next contest Anthony scored a sweet goal by positioning himself perfectly for a rebound shot.

Went one for four in Sunday gaming, winning Amun Re by a single point, then barely losing Acquire. My Fantasy team took a blow when the Eagles’ Michael Vick got injured and his sub didn’t throw to my speedy wide receivers Jeremy Maclin and De Sean Jackson. The Giants humiliated the Bears, sacking Cutler a record nine times in the first half and limiting their offense to a putrid 100 yards.

CNN fired Rick Sanchez after he called Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart prejudiced and scoffed at the intimation that the Jewish Stewart was a member of a minority group. The Cuban American Sanchez sneered, “Yeah, very powerless people. Please, are you kidding me? Everyone who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart. And a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart.” Sanchez picked the wrong minority group to insult, that’s for sure.

Actor Tony Curtis died at age 85. He once said, “I wouldn’t be caught dead marrying a woman old enough to be my wife.” Today that sounds unbearably chauvinistic. I will say that his daughter Jamie Lee is a middle-age fox. Curtis was part of a movie generation that over-acted. Like with Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Kathryn Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and others, you always knew it was Curtis on the screen rather than becoming lost in his character. He’s best known for roles in “The Defiant Ones” and “Some Like It Hot.”

Rolling Stone magazine has Obama on the cover and a Matt Taibbi article about the Tea Party movement. Their College Radio chart had Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs” listed at number one. Their movie reviewer called “Social Network” – about the Harvard student who started Facebook - the movie of the year so far. I tend to agree, and Justin Timberlake almost stole the show as Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster. Jesse Eisenberg succeeds in playing Mark Zuckerberg as a real jerk who basically stole the idea for Facebook and double-crossed his original partner.

George Bodmer sent me photos he took while walking around the Rogers park neighborhood in Chicago of sidewalk imprints mentioning the construction companies that laid the concrete. He wondered if I knew of any studies of “such ephemera.” Maurice Yancy, an Archives intern, said that he thinks a study of Bricks was done in Hobart, which once was known for its brickyards.