“I'm here because I stand on many, many shoulders, and that's true of every black person I know who has achieved.” Vernon Jordan, National Urban League President, 1971-1980
At one time I had planned to write a book titled “On Their Shoulder” about the parents of successful Gary personages, including musicians Michael Jackson and Deniece Williams, football greats Hank Stram and Alex Karras, and mayors Richard Gordan Hatcher and Karen Freeman-Wilson. I have used the material in Steel Shavingsissues and Tracesarticles plus have given talks on the subject. The debt most of us owe our parents is particularly central to the immigrant experience, as I conveyed in books on Mexican-Americans Maria Arredondo and Rogelio “Roy” Dominguez. In preparing a talk on Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay Records I took pains to note her parents emigrating from Mississippi to seek better economic and educational opportunities for themselves and their children. The daughter of a steelworker and restaurant manager, Vivian attended first-rate, albeit, segregated schools. I’ll also describe the deep roots of black music and performers who blazed a path for the breakthrough artists whom Vivian recorded during the 1950s.
Allison Schuette wrote these impressions of Gary pictorial history photos depicting bigwigs at a 1907 Gary Commercial Club banquet and a South Side ethnic family in 1908:
The historian may have wished to make a point or sharpen our attention.
Two photos, one atop the other.
Two photos, one atop the other.
In the first, a banquet thrown by the Gary Commercial Club
to celebrate the opening of the Hotel Gary.
In the second, an immigrant family from Eastern Europe.
The banquet is packed, tables so close the men would
have had trouble getting out of their seats once in.
Dressed in their finest, beneath chandeliers and before linen and china
(aperitif at the ready), they rest on the cusp of tremendous influence.
They will occupy rooms in the Hotel for years to come,
relocating when it rebuilds,
solidifying the voice of U. S. Steel,
the voice they will walk up Broadway to City Hall.
A decorative flag fills the wall behind the dais,
one guesses it holds 45 stars within its folds
— Oklahoma entered the union just one week prior.
The immigrant family stands before a pile of large fallen branches,
surrounded by others eager to have their photo taken.
Their long boarding house is just visible in the background.
Snow is on the ground.
The husband and wife put on smiles for the camera.
Their infant standing on a chair in front of the mother has not held still,
face a blur,
hands raised and fisted at its chest.
There are more genuine smiles on some of the others,
broad grins arising spontaneously.
One young immigrant raises his fist in a salute.
Next to him another young immigrant sours—it’s cold
and he’s just woken for a twelve-hour shift
and he thinks the man who rents the bunk with him has lice.
Two other young men are caught at the edge of the photo.
Their expressions belie emotion less than presence,
one cautiously watchful,
the other edging toward curious.
The historian knows there is influence here, too, of another order,
less controlled, more disruptive,
erupting out of the ways we find our way, inch by inch.
Anne Balay (above) wrote: “Bill Tortat, one of the steelworkers whose story shaped my first book [Steel Closets],has died. He spoke to me for at least 8 hours at his home in Wisconsin. When I left and began my drive home, I had to pull over to the shoulder to cry because his fire -- his intense, campy, articulate, chilling heroism -- shook my soul. I knew I would never be the same. Thank you, Bill, and Rest In Peace. I will never forget you.”Former IUN secretary Dorothy Mokry responded: “As we say in Serbian,“Memory eternal!” “Вјечнајапамјат!”
Serbians settled in Gary to work in the steel mills from its earliest years. St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church, first located at 13th and Connecticut, was founded in 1913. Former student Nick Tarailo wrote about grandfather Nikola from Montenegro, who on the very day in 1909 when he arrived in frontier Gary found work laying an open hearth foundation at Gary Works. Next he became a machinist’s drill press operator at American Bridge and then back at the mill a rail straightener. By 1917 he sent money for his sweetheart to join him in America; he eventually retired from U.S. Steel after 47 years.
James P. Muldoon River Center House
Steel Shavingssubscriber James P. Muldoon made a generous donation to IU Foundation on the magazine’s behalf. The Gary native and Lew Wallace grad (class of 1956) served in the air force, graduated from the University of Maryland in 1966, three months before I entered grad school at the College Park campus, worked as an assistant to Indiana Senator Birch Bayh, and founded the Washington DC firm METCOR. Among his numerous honors is the Nathanial G. Herreshoff Award, US Sailing’s highest honor. His biography states:
Mr. Muldoon has been actively involved in international sailing or boat-related organizations for over 35 years and has accrued over 100,000 miles of blue water ocean sailing. As skipper of s/v DONNYBROOK (80ft) he raced with a competitive amateur race crew along the coast of North America and in the Caribbean.
Muldoon served eight years as chairman of the board of trustees for St Mary’s College of Maryland. Its James P. Muldoon River Center houses marine biology labs devoted to studying the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal rivers.
proposed Hatcher statue
Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson expects that a statue of Richard Hatcher will be unveiled at City Hall prior to her leaving office at year’s end, defeated in a bid for a third term by the Lake County Democratic machine candidate, to become the position of CEO of Chicago’s Urban League chapter. When plans were first revealed in November of 2017 at West Side Academy, Reverend Jesse Jackson and Minister Louis Farrakhan spoke, Jackson exhorting those in attendance to pledge support and promising a sizeable donation. Gary native Deniece “Niecy” Williams sang her 1984 hit “Black Butterfly.” Here are the first two verses:
Deniece Williams
Morning light, silken dream to flight
As the darkness gave way to dawn
You've survived, now your moment has arrived
Now your dream has finally been born
As the darkness gave way to dawn
You've survived, now your moment has arrived
Now your dream has finally been born
. . .
While you slept, the promise was unkept
But your faith was as sure as the stars
Now you're free, and the world has come to see
Just how proud and beautiful you are
But your faith was as sure as the stars
Now you're free, and the world has come to see
Just how proud and beautiful you are
I have written about Mayor Hatcher in many different contexts, but what most excited him was my 2012 Traces article on his father, “’Every Tub Its Own Bottom’: The Odyssey of Carlton Hatcher.” He was teaching an IUN class when I presented it to him, and he teared up.
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