Living Mayors Forum

“I’m glad to be participating in a panel of ‘living mayors.’ For me, it could have gone either way.” Richard Gordan Hatcher, Mayor of Gary, 1968-1986 

 Richard Hatcher, Tom Barnes (holding "Gary: A Pictorial History) and Karen Freeman-Wilson; 

Post-Trib photo by Kyle Telechan

Close to 200 people came to IUN’s Bergland Auditorium for a “Living Mayors” 90-minute forum featuring Richard Hatcher, Thomas Barnes, Scott King, Dozier Allen, and moderator Karen Freeman-Wilson. Beforehand, I presented copies of “Gary: A Pictorial History” to the former Gary mayors. In his opening statement Hatcher mentioned meeting an audience member who was a Hatcherette during his 1967 grassroots campaign and explained that local candidates commonly attended up to a dozen neighborhood get-togethers in a single evening.  The Hatcherettes would show up first to let people know that Hatcher was on his way.  Mayor Freeman-Wilson’s first exposure to America’s first black Mayor was when her parents set up folding chairs in their unfinished basement and hosted such an event.

 Scott King and Dozier T. Allen

Dozier Allen said he first met Hatcher when the two were virtually the only African-Americans at Valpo University, Dozier an undergraduate and Hatcher in law school. With other young black professionals they helped found Muigwithania, which became their political base, and Dozier was a candidate for city council when Hatcher ran for Mayor.  “When I told my friends about my plans,”Hatcher added, “they told me to lie down until I came to my senses.”  Post-Tribreporter Carole Carlson quoted him as saying, “When I decided to run for mayor, it wasn’t something that was easy. During course of the campaign, there were threats, and the city itself was extremely polarized.”  He talked about staying up all night traveling around town to urge people to remain calm in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968 and being summoned to the White House to meet with President Lyndon Baines Johnson as riots were erupting in most major cities (but not Gary), including the nation’s capital. When the President suggested that black leaders urge ghetto residents not to riot, Hatcher bluntly told him that they were not the cause of the crisis. 

Mayor Freeman-Wilson asked her predecessors to talk about the importance of networking downstate and in Washington, DC.  Hatcher complimented her on having been elected head of the National League of Cities and expressed displeasure that a local newspaper criticized her for seeking the post, adding: “I could empathize with that. I would go to Washington and negotiate millions of dollars in grants for our city, and by the time I got back to O’Hare, the local paper was criticizing me. You have to go out of town.”  Hatcher noted that former Indianapolis mayor Richard Lugar was sympathetic to Gary’s problems and helpful when a U.S. Senator. Dozier Allen brought up working with Republican governor Otis Bowen, a physician, on funding to combat sickle cell anemia.  Scott King recalled meeting with Bill Clinton’s attorney-general Janet Reno and securing some $4 million annually for the Community Oriented Policing (COPS) program, which got reduced to almost nothing after Republican George W. Bush took office.  

Thomas Barnes, a classmate of Freeman-Wilson’s mother in Roosevelt’s rowdy Class of 1954, got a big hand when he revealed that his administration rejected awarding Donald Trump’s company a riverboat casino (my friend Clark Metz headed the search committee) “because his record at that time was not a good one” but state officials overruled him.  Scott King, whom Freeman-Wilson first encountered in the courtroom when he was a defense attorney and she was a young lawyer on the county prosecutor’s staff, emphasized that public safety, both the reality and perception, was his top priority when he took office in 1996.  All four mayors emphasized roadblocks from state officials regarding public education, tax and assessment policies and emphasized that, compared to Indianapolis, Gary has been short-changed.

 audience members at Living Mayors forum; Pst-Trib photo by Kyle Telechan

Sitting next to Paul Kaczocha and Mike Olszanski, I brought up needing to renew my driver’s license, which now requires several identification documents (a Republican voter suppression measure, many believe). Oz had problems since he did not use his first name, Sylvester, on his passport of driver’s license.  Until Sylvester Stallone came along, Oz explained, the name got him in several playground fights.

 Harriet Lane portrait at Coast Guard Academy

Belated Christmas presents from the Hagelbergs included a Kidstuff Playstations hoodie that came in handy as the temperature dipped into the teens and a children’s book about Harriet Lane, my great-great-great Uncle James Buchanan’s First Lady.  In her early 20s when hostess for the future bachelor president, who was appointed U.S. Minister to the Court of St. James in 1853, she favored low-cut dresses then fashionable in Europe that showed off her ample breasts, attracting the attention of the Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne, and many suitors.  Authors Ginger Shelley and Sandie Munro wrote:

  Harriet was enormously popular. Uncle James and the famous poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, were to receive the honorary Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford University.  Harriet accompanied her uncle to the grand festivities.  When the students at Oxford saw Harriet, they greeted this fashionable woman with cheers and much whistling.  She became the center of attention at an event which was supposed to be for her uncle and the English poet.

Grandson James’ paper on Sinclair Lewis’ “Babbitt,” titled “A Midlife Psychoanalysis,” is beyond awesome.  It begins, “Most people experience what is known as a midlife crisis in their lives.  Doing the same mundane routine day after day can cause someone to desire change and/or excitement.  Thoughts like these can cause people to make rash decisions in an attempt to, as they say, ‘make up for lost time.’”  In the case of George F. Babbitt, this includes, James points out, questioning both his political views and bourgeois lifestyle.  He quotes Babbitt as thinking, “I’ll be 50 in three years.  60 in 13 years.  I’m going to have some fun before it’s too late.”  His new personality led to friends and business acquaintances shunning him, forcing Babbitt to realize, James wrote, “the hopelessness of not having any choice, making his return to his previous beliefs and social acceptance bittersweet.”  James used the word exegesis (meaning critical interpretation), which he said was a word the class had recently learned. 

I binge-watched Sally4Ever, an English comedy series on HBO co-starring Catherine Shepherd, whose life is in a rut until she has a torrid affair with Emma (Juliette Davis), a free-spirited bohemian actress whom she meets on a commuter train.  When her boyfriend of ten years asks why she is leaving him, she replies that she found their sex life boring for the past seven.  One reviewer wrote: “This is a portrayal of a woman's midlife crisis going horribly wrong but in a hilarious fashion. Julia always likes to go way beyond the boundaries and that is what black comedies are all about. Julia Davis does it so well and really you need to just accept the dark and shocking humor or just don't watch it if you are easily offended. It's as simple as that!”  I loved Davis in “Camping” as the free-spirited Jandice and her portrayal if Emma is similar on the surface but much, much darker and controlling.

 scene from "The Day the Earth Stood Still"

Trump seems eager to exploit the government shutdown as a means of proclaiming a national emergency in order to build his stupid wall at our Southern border.  Ray Smock wrote:

  When the classic science fiction film of 1954, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” was in theaters, the nation was experiencing the frenzy of the fear of communist infiltration of our government, led by the demagoguery of Senator Joseph McCarthy. It was the Cold War and we were in an atomic arms race with the Soviet Union. In the film, a spaceman comes to Earth to warn us that if our petty squabbles and war-like tendencies spread too far, our planet would be reduced to a cinder.  To demonstrate his awesome power, Klatu, the spaceman, made the world come to a complete halt for 30 minutes to get the attention of Earthlings. Our military forces, shocked and dismayed by their impotence, announced that the president was going to declare a state of national emergency! 

I watched the film again as the president seems on the verge of declaring a national state of emergency, as if the aliens were indeed from outer space and only his unilateral action to find the money to build a wall to stop the hordes would solve the problem and save the nation. Never mind that it might take ten years to build the wall, we need the money NOW! We need the money because President Trump wants it to prove he is boss of America. 

  Trump, like Klatu the Spaceman, thinks he can stop the world to make his point. Well, maybe not the world. But Trump has stopped the government of the most powerful nation on Earth for a political whim. As the scientist in the movie, played by Sam Jaffe, says to the spaceman, “I didn’t know such power exists.” 

  To think that a single man, even though he may be the President of the United States, can shut down the government to score a political point. I thought the job of the president was to run the government, not shut it down.