Outstanding Young Men

“I didn’t start out angry.  I started out a young man wanting adventure,” Andrew Vachss, novelist, attorney, and child protection advocate

 above, Tangelo Rayner; below Trey Sebben winning 110 hurdles

Grandson James, one of 16 Portage seniors competing in the high school’s OYM (Outstanding Young Man) program, was judged on such aspects as academics, physical ability, school activities, judges’ interview, and stage presentation. The candidates included standouts in football (Teangelo Rayner), soccer (Jovan Simakoski), and track (Trey Sebben), as well as members of choral groups and, in James’ case, Thespian Club.  James carries a 4.5 GPA and his forte is acting.  In an ungraded musical performance he brought down the house performing “The Troll Song,” consisting of nonsense syllables.  Dressed in a tuxedo, he strutted across the stage and nailed several amazingly high notes.  I also enjoyed Sayer Norlington playing the Foo Fighters number “Everlong” on guitar and a comedy skit by Trey Sebben (whose dad was a classmate of Dave’s) that included one-handed clapping.    

 James singing "Troll Song" and with Sayer Norrington; photos by Angela Lane

Mr. Downes

Asked on stage who his favorite teacher was, James replied that there were several he deeply appreciated but the most influential was English teacher Mr. (James) Downes, who taught him about satire, to think critically, and not to take life so seriously.  Each person revealed plans to go to college, in James’ case either University of Indianapolis or Valparaiso U.  Sayer Norlington mentioned IU Northwest or IUPUI.  James won the Joe Stevens Award, named for a longtime theater director whom Dave really admired while at Portage.  Kevin Giese took over for Stevens, established the OYM award in his honor, and was in charge of the scholarship program until unceremoniously replaced without cause last year.  There is also a DYW (Distinguished Young Woman) competition. 

A year ago, being a big Philadelphia fan, I was a nervous wreck as the Super Bowl approached featuring the underdog Eagles against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. This year’s match-up, Patriots versus Rams, held much less interest, and the game was nowhere near as exciting. The 13-3 Patriots victory was the lowest scoring contest since the Super Bowl began 53 years ago.  During pre-game I watched a segment on Atlanta’s history of race-relations, featuring interviews with Congressman John Lewis and former mayor Andrew Young.  The existence of prestigious black colleges such as Morehouse and Spellman provided the intellectual underpinning and foot soldiers in civil rights demonstrations that took place in what boosters now call “The city too busy to hate.”   I paid little attention to the much ballyhooed commercials, except for one with a medieval setting touting both Bud Light and the final season of Game of Thrones; but I enjoyed the halftime show featuring Adam Levine and Maroon 5. Before Maroon 5 got the gig, several bands allegedly declined the honor, causing one late night host to list them as Maroon 1, Maroon 2, Maroon 3, and Maroon 4.

 Maroon 5 at Super Bowl; below, Unisphere at 1964 World's Fair

Rereading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” for the first time since the 1960s, I found it filled with sardonic humor despite dealing with the Allied firebombing of the German city of Dresden at a time when the author was a prisoner of war there. As many as 125,000 people perished in the inferno.  In the introductory chapter Vonnegut tells of taking his daughters to the 1964 New York World’s Fair: “We saw what the past had been like according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors.”

Numerous libraries banned Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” because it contained “dirty words.”  The only evidence of that in the first 50 pages is a scene where Billy Pilgrim froze while under fire, prompting Roland Weary to yell, “Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker.”  Then Vonnegut wrote: “The last word was still a novelty in the speech of white people in 1944. It was fresh and astonishing to Billy, who had never fucked anybody – and it did its job.  It woke him up and got him off the road.”

On Saturday Night Live(a rerun) actor Robert De Niro appeared as boogeyman Robert Mueller in Erik Trump’s closet. Upon learning that Mumford and Sons were musical guests, I watched the entire show. The week before, Steve Martin played indicted Trump fixer Roger Stone.  Rapper Meek Mill was the musical guest. I couldn’t understand the lyrics, probably for the best.

Bill Pelke and Paula Cooper

At my suggestion former Bethlehem Steel crane operator Bill Pelke will be a speaker during IUN’s Public Affairs Month, SPEA director Karl Besel informed me.  The co-founder of Journey of Hope . . . From Violence to Healing has been on a crusade to abolish the death penalty ever since he made peace with the murder of his grandmother Ruth Pelke in Glen Park at the hands of young teenagers, including 15-year-old Paula Cooper, who initially was scheduled to be executed. I arranged for Pelke to speak on campus about 15 years ago, and he was incredibly moving.  Paula Cooper became a model prisoner, was released a few years ago and was doing good work when she suddenly took her own life.  I wept upon hearing the news, as I’m certain Bill did.  He had forgiven and befriended her, but perhaps she was unable to forgive herself.

Allison Schuette and Liz Wuerffel have submitted our 2019 OHA conference proposal “Do You Hear Race? The Ethics of Interweaving Black and White Oral Histories in Audio Documentary.”  For the 2020 international conference in Singapore I may propose a paper titled “The Professor Wore a Cowboy Hat and Nothing Else: Dealing with Queer Issues in Writing University Histories: IU Northwest as a Case Study.”  Two decades ago a similarly titled paper on “Matters of Sex” I delivered in Rome drew a packed audience.  On the eve of my 77^thbirthday, I believe there’s a couple more Steel Shavingsissues left in me, which would make 50 in my half-century of service to IUN and Clio, the muse of history. 

I may do a special Shavingson the writings of Lance Trusty titled “The Calumet, from the 1930s through the 1980s.”  I’d start with the 30-page Afterword Lance produced for Powell A. Moore’s “The Calumet Region: Indiana’s Last Frontier” and conclude with an essay he wrote for my 1980s Steel Shavings.  In between would be excerpts from his books on Hammond and Munster, plus I’d interview family members and Purdue Cal colleagues and former students for information about his life and influence as a teacher. Lance’s droll humor comes through in all his writings.  Discussing business recovery during the New Deal, for instance, he wrote that by 1937, over 9,000 men were employed in the Whiting-East Chicago refinery complex, “as America’s determination to go to the poorhouse in automobiles kept Whiting and East Chicago out of it.” In 1992 Trusty concluded:

  An era ended in the Calumet in the 1980s.  The age of labor-intensive industries, which had given birth to the ever-smoky Region at the turn of the century, died in a wave of automation and consolidation, leaving behind a variety of huge plants but few jobs.  Relatively low prices and taxes and good schools attracted a steady flow of Chicagoans and South Cook Countians to Munster, Highland, and Schererville.  Like good suburbanites, they lived here and worked there. According to the Indiana Board of Health, the nineties will bring to the Calumet Region an aging population, a younger and poorer urban black and Hispanic population with a high birth rate, and a steady inflow of new residents.  But these factors will be counterbalanced by a steady, four to five thousand person per year out-migration.  Bottom line: few grounds for optimism.

A big, handsome, formidable scholar and charismatic guy eight years my senior, Lance attempted to create a repository at Purdue Cal similar to IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives but viewed his efforts and ours as complimentary, not as competitors.  After Trusty passed away, former colleague Saul Lerner wrote these remarks:

Norman Lance Trusty received his baccalaureate degree from William and Mary College in 1956, his Master of Arts Degree from Boston College in 1957, and his doctorate in history in 1964.  Professor Trusty came to Purdue Calumet in 1964, was promoted to Professor in 1971, and with his retirement in 2003 became Professor Emeritus.  Undertaking graduate study in pre-Civil War American history, on sectionalism, and slavery, Professor Trusty was originally hired to offer courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, Revolutionary history, various classes on early American history, Professor Trusty developed very popular classes on the history of the Calumet Region, contributed significantly to the Purdue University Calumet graduate and undergraduate programs.  A very creative colleague, Professor Trusty developed relationships with colleagues at Indiana University Northwest who were also working on regional history and produced a pictorial volume on the bi-centennial of Hammond, Indiana, a history of Munster, Indiana, presented articles on regional history, including an article on the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, and wrote a history of Purdue University Calumet.

IUN Diversity director James Wallace launched Black History Month with an impressive program in Bergland Auditorium honoring Dr. F.C. Richardson and others responsible for helping create the university’s Black Studies program 50 years ago, one of the first in the country. The first director, Henry Simmons, trained as a historian, directed students to take my urbanization class, and I reciprocated.  In “Educating the Region,” a history of IU Northwest, Paul Kern and I wrote that on March 27, 1969,students belonging to the recently formed Black Caucus sent a statement to Dean John Buhner setting forth six demands, including increased minority enrollment and financial aid and the creation of a Black Studies program. The declaration concluded: 

  It is high time that students, faculty, and administrators translate talk, and even more talk, into action.  Do  not for one moment regard our language as a threat of destruction or an indication of arrogance.  We are now a dignified group, and our language must reflect our new feelings of pride, self-assertion, and dignity.

Shortly thereafter the Faculty Organization took up the matter.  Black Caucus students gathered in the hall outside to await the results.  A total of 32 faculty voted to establish a Black Studies program.  Nobody voted no, and seven abstained. Sympathetic to the proposal, Buhner, who chaired the meeting, later said: “Many faculty saw us as custodians of IU’s tradition of academic excellence and viewed this as catering to momentary pressures in a way that would lower academic standards.  Others believed we needed to loosen up and enrich our curriculum and that Black Studies was a valid discipline.”

Also honored by IUN’s Black Student Union (BSU) on the program at Berland Auditorium: Todd Deloney, a founding BSU member of the who in 1990 conducted a one-man vigil, walking at the edge of campus with a sandwich board sign calling for the university to honor Martin Luther King Day.  It was a cold and rainy day, and Chancellor Peggy Elliott invited Deloney to her office and promised that she would make his proposal a reality.  Chancellor Elliott recalled: 

  The federal legislation that created Martin Luther King day had originated in Gary (and was sponsored by Rep. Katie Hall), and the day was filled with important events, which all of us wanted to attend. It was not a holiday for the IU system, and President Tom Ehrlich was very reluctant to allow us to have a holiday that no other campus had.  I lobbied hard because it seemed to me to almost be arrogant for us to be the only entity in the city that was not participating in the day.  Finally, Ehrlich’s deep personal commitment to civil rights overcame his concern about a backlash from other campuses, and he allowed the day.

A good crowd turned out for the impressive program, including Chancellor Bill Lowe. I sat with community activists Carolyn McCrady and Jacqueline Gipson, a former student, Valpo Law School graduate, and close friend. After welcomes from Minority Studies professor Earl Jones and Black Student Union chair Toni Dickerson, effervescent professor Patricia Hicks introduced Maxine Simpson’s Jazzy Ladies and Gents Line Dancing Group, seniors who performed a number and then invited audience members to join them for the finale, including Mary Lee, Robert Buggs, and a Hobart H.S, junior.  

 Post-Tribune photo by John Smierciak, Maxine Simpson on left

Keynote speaker Abdul Alkalimat, author on many books, including one of the first Afro-American textbooks, spoke on the topic “50 years and Continuing in an Era of Change.” Dr. Alkalimat’s his great-great grandfather Frank McWorter was a former slave who settled in new Philadelphia, Illinois, in 1830 and ultimately purchased the freedom of his wife and a dozen other family members in Kentucky.  New Philadelphia was a station along the Underground Railroad. Asserting that African Americans, other minorities, and poor whites have common concerns in combating oppression. The 76-year-old urged students to take control of their own education by forming study groups, organizing public forums, and being involved with community groups fighting for black liberation.

NWI Times photo by Steve Euvino.

All attendees received free t-shirts celebrating the establishment of IUN’s Black Studies program 50 years ago.  On the back were the names of the students whose demands led it becoming a reality, including Eddie Buggs, the brother of Robert Buggs, seated near us.  On the front was a clenched fist similar to what black students wore on their caps at my 1970 University of Maryland graduation at a time when the campus was under martial law due to antiwar protests (I wore a peace sign). With an over-abundance of t-shirts, I have a policy of getting rid of an old one every time I get a new one.  I’m parting with one purchased at an International Oral History Association conference in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa inscribed University of Natal. The name is barely readable, and the institution is now KwaZulu-Natal.  Still it has sentimental value, so I’m wearing it one final time.  At the end of the conference I searched in vain for a shirt to purchase; finally an organizer located it, causing many others to want one, too. I often wore it to bowling; nobody ever inquired about it, in contrast to my reaction to interesting apparel.  This fall Bears jerseys were more plentiful than NASCAR shirts, with several featuring Khalil Mack’s name and number.