Historic Marker

“We were the pioneer.  Ours was IU’s first major building program.  President Herman Wells insisted that Gary main have a full[-scale auditorium.  At the dedication a play was performed by a cast from Bloomington.” Acting Director William M. Neil

I spoke at a dedication ceremony for the unveiling of a Tamarack Hall historic marker at the site of IUN’s first Glen Park building, known as Gary Main when I arrived in 1970.  Archivist Steve McShane, who nominated Tamarack Hall for the honor and helped write the inscription, presided. The program commenced with Northwest Indiana ROTC cadets posting the colors.  Steve’s welcome statement quoted Bill Neil labeling the new facility a “cultural catalyst” for the Region.  There were brief remarks by Chancellor William Lowe, Faculty Org president Susan Zinner, and IU University Historian James H. Capshew, who noted that IU “extension” courses in Gary began a century ago and that many Glen Park residents opposed bequeathing 26.5 acres of Gleason Park to Indiana University – although he did not bring up the primary reason, fear that it might lead to the arrival of “riff raff” (i.e., blacks) into the segregated community.

 James Capshew at dedication; below, Lowe flanked by SGA President, Laila Nawab and Sue Zinner; 

photos by Tome Trajkovski

In my five-minute talk I recalled Garrett Cope’s children plays that drew thousands to the campus and  summer musicals that Phil and Dave acted in, including “Finian’s Rainbow” and “Hello, Dolly.” I mentioned teaching in Room 93, which held up to 200 students and Faculty Org meetings there listening to Leslie Singer, Jack Gruenenfelder, and Bill Reilly, who frequently employed Latin phrases. In the lounge adjacent to the History Department, I recalled, George Roberts and I met Birch Bayh at a Young Democrats function and the History department held a memorial service for Rhiman Rotz, then planted a tree nearby in his honor.  I told of rescuing Arredondo family photos from my office during the 2008 flood and the annual spring bug infestations.

I helped myself to a sandwich, salad, and cookie embossed with the cream and crimson IU logo.  Business professor Ranjan Kini reminded me that Gary Rotary met in the Blue Lounge, thanks to the efforts of administrator Bill May.  Chancellor Lowe commented on my “Toadies and Bugs” speech, and Gary Chamber of Commerce director Chuck Hughes vowed to ask me back as a speaker.  The impressive turnout included historians Chris Young, David Parnell, and Jonathyne Briggs.  IU Historian James Capshew praised Paul Kern and my history of IUN, “Educating the Calumet Region,” and promised to help secure that an appointment of Steve McShane’s successor prior to his retirement.  Aaron Pigors, sporting an impressive beard, noticed me in the short documentary about Tamarack making the rounds online.  It also features Garrett Cope and Lori Montalbano, a student at IUN and then a Communication professor.

Aaron Pigors

Charlie Halberstadt and I finished first among the North-South couples in the Third Quarter Chesterton Club duplicate bridge championship, scoring  66.22% and garnering 1.75 master points each.  Sally and Rich Will did even better (67.78%) as the top East-West couple.  Beforehand, director Alan Yngve’s lesson was based on not pushing opponents to game unless prepared to double the contract.  I did exactly that on the very first hand, resulting in a high board.  Terry Bauer bravely wore a Cubs shirt even though the Cubbies are mired in a nine-game losing streak. Next day at Banta Center I learned that Ric Freidman’s uncle had been a tennis pro and tournament director in the Catskills and once disqualified young John McEnroe for bad behavior.  Afterwards, McEnroe’s dad thanked him and hoped it would teach the brat a lesson.  Fat chance. Through the uncle Ric got free tickets to a U.S. Open won by Althea Gipson.  I told him I once saw tennis great Vic Seixas play a Davis Cup match against Italian champ Nicola Peitrangeli at Philadelphia Cricket Club.

      Vic Seixas and Nicola Peitrangeli     

The Ken Burns “Country Music” episode on the 1930s opens with the Mavis Staples gospel number “Hard Times (Come Again No More)" written by Stephen Foster in the mid-1850s.  Its concluding lines:

'Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
'Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore
'Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave
Oh! Hard times come again no more.

Burns highlighted the film career of Gene Autry, the “singing cowboy” whose popularity spawned a hundred imitators, including Tex Ritter and Roy Rogers, real name Leonard Slye, who sang in The Sons of the Pioneers and appeared in an Autry movie before becoming a box office attraction rivaling his mentor.  After distinguished service during World War II flying cargo planes over the Himalayas to China, Autry had a successful TV series in the 1950s whose theme song was the Autry hit “Back in the Saddle Again.”  In the 1960s the “Singing Cowboy,” whose yodeling style imitated country legend Jimmie Rodgers, became owner of the California Angels.  When the team won their first (and only) World Series in 2002, four years after Autry died at age 91, strains of “Back in the Saddle Again” came over the public address system.

A whistleblower has exposed Trump’s attempt to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into gathering dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, by holding up military aid approved by Congress in an attempt to besmirch the Democratic Presidential frontrunner.  He wants to run against Elizabeth Warren, which he has accused of being a socialist – and worse. Trump once claimed he could shoot somebody in the middle of New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose his base.  Now he’s convinced the entire Republican Party is beholden to him. We will see – I’m not holding my breath that much will change prior to the 2020 election.  I still think Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar has the best chance to beat him. 

Bowling teammate Ron Smith greeted me with the Bugs Bunny refrain, “What’s up, doc?”  When an opponent made light of the whistleblower hearings on TV, Smith ridiculed Trump’s contention that he’d had a “perfect” telephone conversion with the Ukrainian president.  Joe Piunti was the only Engineer to bowl above average, but we took two games from Frank’s Gang despite Mike Reed’s 570 series.

Discussing our upcoming oral history conference “Flight Paths” session in Salt Lake City, I alerted Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette that the audience will question them about the validity of their narrators’ recollections of leaving Gary during the Sixties.  Most describe a dramatic racial “breaking point” (a home invasion, their kids’ accosted, a brick through a window) that precipitated the decision while downplaying other push and pull factors. Distorted negative images of Mayor Richard Hatcher often play a prominent role in these narratives.

Despite my proposed talk, “A Queer History of IU Northwest” having been rejected, as anticipated, I attended the two-and-a half-hour “Celebration of Faculty Research” hosted by Assistant Vice Chancellor Cynthia O’Dell.  I ran into Pat Bankston entering the A and S theater, whom I had sat next to the day before.  “If we sit together again, people will start talking,” I joked. Dean Mark Hoyert was in charge of the clock warning speakers when their time was up.  The program got off to a great start with Bill Allegrezza reciting nine poems within his allotted eight minutes.  One began, “I grew up dreaming of a post-earth people.”  Another based on recurrent dreams of wrestling with a water buffalo concludes, “But I didn’t let go, as I should, as we all should.” One written after getting divorced about his daughter coming to him with a broken toy ends: “Some things, once ruptured, are broken forever.”

Subir Bandyopadhyay showed excerpts of a an IUN digital scrapbook  featuring photos and film from the Calumet Regional Archives and narrated by Steve McShane. Monica Solinas-Saunders spoke movingly about the mounting numbers of women being incarcerated, most the victims of abuse, mentally scarred and drug offenders.  A prisoner Monica worked with recently took her own life during a weekend furlough.  “Our circle was broken,” she concluded. Mark Baer told of being part of the Gary Shakespeare Company, which stages plays throughout the Region. Showing a photo from Macbeth, he joked that his Theater students are familiar with his expression. 

Youthful-looking Biology professor Ming Gao claimed that the DNA of humans and fruit flies are 77% identical and their germ cells a fruitful field of study. It’s always a treat witnessing Spencer Cortwright’s enthusiasm, whether about frogs and salamanders or efforts to preserve the Region’s natural habitat – dunes and swale, oak savanna, and tall grass prairie. Yllka Azemi explained marketing strategies to attract lifelong customers to Gary businesses.  Cara Lewis discussed her upcoming book, “Dynamic Form: How Intermediality Made Modernism,” and described the 1920s cross-fertilization between visual artists and writers. 

At the reception I spoke with IUN Fine Arts student Casey King, whose work I had highlighted in the lastSteel Shavings issue.  His father owned a sign business and Casey is interested in an area sign in front of a Frank-N-Stein Restaurant where 12 and 20 come together west of Miller, a popular hangout during Gary’s heyday.  Inquiring where he could get more information,  I suggested consulting Gary city directories in the Archives and contacting realtor Gene Ayers.  Dr. Surekha Rao appreciated my mentioning Garrett Cope during the Historic Marker dedication.  When she and her husband, Computer Information Systems chair Bhaskara Kopparty (who remembered James from IUN summer STEM camp), first started teaching at IUN Garrett took them on a tour of the area and made them feel welcome.  Chris Young appreciated my memories of Rhiman Rotz and asked the location of the tree planted in his honor.  His most vivid memory of Tamarack Hall during its last days was his books becoming moldy after a month in his office near the overgrown west wing courtyard.  I told Dean Mark Hoyert, a fellow Marylander, that I missed his introductions of new Arts and Sciences faculty at Faculty Org September meetings.  Recently, he told me, he’d learned that a new English professor had been struck by lightning and had the audiences in stitches describing its probable effect. I brought up Herman Feldman, who hired him, and he mentioned taking off an earring and getting a haircut before the interview.

Pet Sounds

“Wouldn't it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn't have to wait so long?
And wouldn't it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong?”

    Beach Boys, “Wouldn’t it Be Nice?”

The 1966 album Pet Sounds, the brainchild of the Beach Boys’ troubled genius Brian Wilson, is considered a classic progressive pop concept album, but initially it received a lukewarm reception in the United States by those who foolishly dismissed the group as past its prime.  It opens with “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” – also the title of Brian Wilson’s 1991 autobiography – and most songs deal with various issues of teen angst.  Its sophisticated production resembled Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound and Beatle album “Rubber Soul,” which Wilson admired and hoped to surpass in sheer brilliance.  The track “Pet Sounds” is an instrumental, and one band mate joked that the obscure title came from Wilson being able to hear animal sounds that others couldn’t, while another claimed it referenced the sounds couples made when they were making out below the neck - petting.

    Isobel Crawley: Oh, just one more thing.  The dog.  What should we do to stop Isis getting into the patients’ room?”

    Robert Crawley: I can answer that.  Absolutely nothing.”

    Scene in Downton Abbey TV series referring to a convalescent ward the Earl of Grantham was funding

Several dogs appeared in the series “Downton Abbey” over the years as the Earl of Grantham’s constant companion, including yellow labs Isis and Pharaoh and then Teo, a present from the Dowager Countess played by the magnificent Maggie Smith. In the recently released movie, which Toni and I saw over the weekend, Teo is back by his master’s side to greet King George V and Queen Mary when they pay a visit.  The film tied up several loose ends, was utterly charming, and drew a large audience, which applauded when the credits came on.

 portrait of Great Britain's Queen Anne

 “The Favourite” (2018), now on HBO, stars Rachel Weisz as Lady Sarah Churchill and Emma Stone as Abigail Masham vying for the affection of England’s Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), who reigned for 12 years beginning in 1702 at age 37.  The last Stuart monarch, the daughter of James II, she endured 17 pregnancies that ended with miscarriages, stillborn births or the baby dying in infancy except for one who succumbed at age 11.  By that time she was overweight, suffering from gout and poor eyesight, and barely able to walk.  The rivalry between Sara and Abigail was based in fact.  Jealous over being replaced, Sara did accuse Queen Anne of having a lesbian relationship with her successor as head of the royal bedchamber.  In “The Favourite” the Queen has a menagerie of 17 bunnies representing the children denied to her, evidently a flight of fancy on the part of the director since rabbits were then considered garden pests sometimes eaten but not fit to be pets.  

Our friends Dean and Joanell Bottorff raised dairy goats when they lived in rural Valparaiso and distinguished between pets, livestock, and wild animals.  Never name goats you might later slaughter for food, they advised from experience, as we prepared homemade pizza topped with sausage made from a goat we once knew as Buttercup. 

Listening to a CD by Carly Rae Jepsen and reading Hanif Abdurrzqib’s  essay titled “The Weekend and the Future of Loveless Sex” in “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” suddenly I heard a dog barking upstairs.  It was Maggie May, arriving with Dave, Angie, Becca, James, and two new friends, Asher and Kaitlyn, from Valparaiso University.  After pizza and ice cream we played Telestrations, where you alternatively draw and guess pictures passed around the table and see how far the final drawing has changed from the original.  For example, three Little Pigs morphed into Three Blind Mice and ended up resembling billy goats, the eighth person thought.  I’m pretty bad at it and often was a source of confusion, but it’s mainly for laughs , with no winners or losers.  It was great seeing James and meeting Asher and Kaitlyn, roommates who graduated from Indianapolis Ben Davis, named for a railroad executive who in the 1880s obtained a railway stop for his Marion County community. 

Over the years I’ve had many pets, beginning with the family dog Smokey, which I remember mostly from old photos. When Hurricane Hazel flooded the street in front of our home in the Philadelphia suburb of Fort Washington, Smokey got caught in the current and finally escaped two blocks away.  I was in college when the news reached me that he had passed away of old age.  During Phil and Dave ‘s childhood we had a dog Slaughter that an asshole neighbor shot and killed when he wandered onto his property and a cat that I ran over when he was under our parked car.  Lasting longer were a dog Ubu that was scared of its shadow and a fearless outdoor cat Marvin that knew to be wary of racoons but fought any stray cat that invaded his territory, often necessitating trips to the vet.  Pets belonging to various family members are frequent guests, but Toni and I have resisted all efforts to take on the responsibility of another pet.   

The grand 16-hour Ken Burns documentary Country Music opens with a shot of Thomas Hart Benton’s mural depicting musicians playing the fiddle, banjo, mountain dulcimer, and guitar as well as dancers, gospel singers and in the background a riverboat and train.   The banjo player is African American is playing a version of an instrument brought to America by slaves, and beyond the railroad tracks a group of black women can be seen dancing by the riverbank.  Benton painted the mural at age 84 for the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville and meant for it to be enjoyed  by those who do not normally visit art museums. Burns discusses the influence of legendary black blues performer DeFord Bailey.  Born in Smith County, Tennessee, Bailey learned to play the harmonica at age three, and developed a distinctive style while bedridden for a year with polio.  Listening to stray animals and trains passing by, he developed an uncanny ability to imitate their sounds. During the 1920s Bailey became the first black musician to appear on the WSM radio program Barn Dance, which morphed into the Grand Old Opry.  He performed “Pan American Blues,” named for a train that ran between Cincinnati and New Orleans in 24 hours.  In 1928 Bailey recorded “John Henry” for Victor Records, which was released both in its “hillbilly” and “race” series. 

ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” paid tribute to the incomparable Cokie Roberts, who appeared on the program for many years with David Brinkley, Sam Donaldson, and George Will.  As Cokie once quipped, “They were looking for a skirt” and got much more than they bargained for.  Cokie more than held her own, as Donaldson’s anecdotes made clear.  Once when questioned about rumors of his womanizing, Texas Senator John Tower asked Donaldson to define womanizing.  As he was having trouble answering, Roberts simply said, “You know it when you see it.”  An attorney for President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal was trying to explain Clinton’s argument that oral sex wasn’t really sex, and Cokie interjected, “Would your wife buy that?”  The guest was speechless as the blood drained from his face. Donaldson recalled that when Clinton asked Cokie’s mother Lindy Boggs, retired from Congress and in her 80s, to serve as Ambassador to the Vatican, she was cool to the idea until Cokie said, “Take it, you can do two things you love, go to Mass and attend parties.”  Lindy accepted the assignment.

Ethyl Ruethman with Jordan Ramos; NWI Times photo by Steve Euvino; below, Greta Thunberg

A hundred supporters attended a Youth Climate Strike rally at the open-air pavilion in Portage, the NWI Times reported.  Organized by IUN student Ethyl Ruethman, it was part of a worldwide demonstration in advance of the United Nations Summit on Climate Change inspired by 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.  Ruethman indicted the industrial plants, killing Lake fish, and  polluting the Calumet Region’s air, land, and water resources.  As her sign declared, “Time is running out.”  When Thunberg spoke in front of world leaders at the UN, she told them, “You have stolen my childhood with your empty words. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth – how dare you!”

In Nicole Anslover’s class on Fifties Baby Boomers I discussed coming of age during the birth of rock and roll.  Like most of my peers I preferred the rhythm and blues originals of such songs as “Goodnight Sweetheart” by Gary’s Spaniels to lame cover versions by the Maguire Sisters and, worse, Pat Boone (shudder) butchering Little Richard’s “Tutti Fruitti.”  I told of seeing Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show from only the waist up singing “Hound Dog,” originally Big Mama Thornton tale and about a cheatin’ husband, not a lazy hunting dog.  Presley’s version of the 1957 hit “One Night” was first recorded by Smiley Lewis with the line “One night of sin is what I’m paying for” changed to “One night with you is what I’m praying for.”  To his credit, Elvis sang the original lyrics at live appearances and acknowledged his debt to black blues and gospel forebears.  According to writer Peter Page, Elvis was devoted to pets over the years, “including a turkey named Bowtie, a mynah bird that repeated the excuses he heard for Presley being unavailable (‘Elvis is asleep,’ ‘Elvis isn't available,’ ‘Elvis isn't here.’), two wallabies from Australian fans (he donated both to the Memphis zoo), various farm animals and many dogs - Sherlock, Brutus, Snoopy, Edmund, and Get Lo, a Chow he once had flown back and forth to Boston on his private plane for kidney treatment. He often gave dogs as gifts, such as the poodle, Honey, to his wife, Priscilla, for Christmas 1962.”

Cousin Tommi Adelizzi, 83, sent me a jpeg of a Lane Christmas card from when I was a teenager.  Tommi (Thomasine) would have been named James Buchanan Lane IV had she been a boy.  Instead, I carried on the name, of my great, great, great uncle, the country’s fifteenth President.   My grandson insists on being called James rather than some nickname. I haven’t seen Cousin Tommi since I was a kid and she a sophisticated teenager when her family came east from San Diego, California, where Uncle Jim had was a co-founder of Chicken of the Sea Tuna Company.  She planned the family reunion in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the home of Wheatland, President Buchanan’s estate, then was unable to  attend.  It was nice to see Smokey in the picture, one I  had forgotten about.

Nelsons

 “Someone opened up a closet door and out stepped Johnny B. Goode

Playing guitar like a-ringin' a bell and lookin' like he should
If you gotta play at garden parties, I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang, I rather drive a truck

And it's all right now, learned my lesson well
You see, ya can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself”

    “Garden Party,” Ricky Nelson 

Ricky Nelson (1940-1985) began an unlikely career as an actor and pop singer at age eight on the radio program “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” starring his parents (a former band leader and vocalist) and also featuring older brother David.  Five years after the show became a successful TV series in 1952, Nelson made his singing debut, a cover of Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’,” and the following year enjoyed his first of 19 Top Ten hits, “Poor Little Fool.”  In 1959 Nelson co-starred in the Howard Hawks Western “Rio Bravo” with John Wayne and Dean Martin. One summer when in high school, I caught a glimpse of him leaving a concert at Atlantic City’s Steel Pier mobbed by fans.  A girlfriend told me I looked like him, quite a flattering comment, I thought, if perhaps an exaggeration. Around the time of the 1964 British Invasion, the hits stopped coming for Nelson, except for 1972’s “Garden Party,” which he wrote in disgust after being booed at an Oldies show when he sang new country-oriented material rather than stick to mostly lame former hits. 

Rick Nelson died when his private plane, a DC-3 formerly owned by Jerry Lee Lewis, crashed bear De Kalb, Texas while his band was en route to a concert during a “Comeback tour" after a fire erupted in the cabin.  After toxicology reports found drugs in Nelson’s body, rumors spread that the fire was due to passengers free-basing cocaine; but the likely cause was a faulty in-cabin heater. Rick’s twin sons Gunnar and Matthew subsequently formed a band called Nelson.

The name Nelson, of English, Scottish, and Scandinavian origin, has been both a first and surname; in some cases, it literally denoted son of Nels. Examples of the former include South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela and New York governor Nelson Rockefeller; famous people with the last name range from British naval hero at Trafalgar Viscount Horatio Nelson and actor Judd Nelson to performers Nelson Eddy and Willie Nelson. Sports stars include infielder Nellie Fox and grappler Battling Nelson.  Two popular wrestling holds are the half and full nelson, which involve locking a hand on an opponent’s neck in an effort to turn and pin him.

On the way to Jon Becker’s freshman seminar on the fourth floor of IUN’s Hawthorn Hall, I dropped in the offices of poet Bill Allegrezza and Brian O’Camb, now English department chair and a former lunch companion, along with Jonathyne Briggs and Anne Balay.  Becker gave me an inscribed copy of “The Flunked-Out Professor: Six Steps for Turning Big Failure into Bigger Success” about turning his life around after then girlfriend and future wife Kate warned she didn’t want to marry a bum.  The book contains inspirational advice by the likes of Star Trek’sCaptain Jean-Luc Picard (“Let’s see what’s out there”)and Martin Luther King (“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the entire staircase”).Heading a section advising students to start a reading program was this quote from President Harry S Truman: “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers”- sadly inapplicable in rudderless America at present.

 Becker family in 2016

Becker introduced me as his Vietnam War summer class professor 32 years ago in which he received a “D.”  He’d just gotten married, Jon explained, and had other things on his mind. In discussing the history of IUN, I explained how “Educating the Calumet Region,” which I had given each of them the previous week, was in large part a social history employing oral testimony by students, staff, faculty, and administrators. I spoke of Ruth Nelson’s 60-year stint with the university, beginning as secretary for Gary College director Albert Fertsch and continuing after retirement as a library volunteer.  In 1970, my first year at IUN, Nelson was IUN Bookstore manager.  By then directors of admissions, registration, and financial aid had been hired to oversee functions she once handled for a tiny fraction of their combined salaries. I first interviewed her for a Post-Tribune column later included in my history of Gary, “City of the Century.”  Ruth told me:

    In 1934 I graduated from Horace Mann and after my father broke his neck at a July Fourth picnic became secretary to Director Albert Fertsch.  The salary of $55 a month was paid by the New Deal agency FERA and helped put food on the table. When my father got a job as a watchman, my wages were reduced by ten dollars.  The only time I spoke to Superintendent William Wirt was to request a raise.  He turned me down, saying, “The class of people you are dealing and working with should compensate for the lowly salary.”

    Tuition was five dollars for the first five hours, four dollars for the next five, and three dollars for any over that.  The father of Alexander S. Williams, who became Lake County’s first black elected official, walked from Gary’s southside every week to pay part of the tuition.  Sometimes he’d pay as little as 50 cents.  A student once asked Mr. Fertsch whether he had a physical education program. He replied, “Do you walk to school?  That’s your hour of physical education.”

    Gary College had a picnic at Marquette Park.  A policeman interrupted the festivities and ordered the lone black student to leave.  I just couldn’t believe it. It hurt me so much that I said to him, “Wait a minute.  If you have to leave, I have to leave.”  So we left together.  The picnic went on without us.

    Indiana and Purdue both vied for Gary College when it was about to cease functioning, but it was no contest. Mr. Fertsch had no love for Purdue because of the negative survey their educators did of Dr. Wirt’s work-study-play plan.   

I traced the careers of historian Bill Neil (a part-time student at Gary College who became Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs) and Chancellor Peggy Elliott (a former Horace Mann English teacher who started at IUN as a lowly adjunct) as exemplifying changes that took place during their long tenures with the university.

Bill Neil and Peggy Elliott

groundbreaking at new campus site, August 29, 1957, President Herman Wells at microphone

From the outset I encouraged discussion of such matters as why a century ago Bloomington started offering “extension” courses” in the Region, reasons behind demands for programs in Black, Latino, and Women’s Studies, and how much independence should be given editors of university newspapers. Turning to photos in “Educating the Calumet Region,” I explained that President Herman Wells, shown at a groundbreaking ceremony for the initial building (Gary Main, later renamed Tamarack Hall) at the present Glen Park site, ended segregation on the main campus and took heat for supporting Alfred Kinsey’s sex research. On the cover was a 1967 shot of IUN’s first commencement as a four-year institution. It took place outdoors, a practice that ended soon after Jon Becker’s graduation in the late-1980s.  Pointing out an illustration showing Chancellor Elliott holding Mary Ann Fischer’s baby during a visit by child psychologist T. Berry Brazelton, my voice broke slightly as I told of Peggy spotting Toni on campus holding granddaughter Alissa when she was an infant and breaking away from Bloomington muckedy-mucks to gush over how cute she was.  Students were amazed at how inexpensive tuition once was compared to the present and asked why no student dorms, something legislator Charlie Brown fruitlessly advocated for years.

In my latest Steel Shavings, Becker came across a photo from Halberstadt Game Weekend of Jef and Evan Davis playing Terraforming Mars, Jon’s favorite board game.  He mentioned owning the many upgrades to Ticket to Ride.  When I told him the version using the map of Pennsylvania was my favorite, he exclaimed, “Mine, too.”  He hadn’t noticed his being mentioned in “Educating the Calumet Region,” where former Mathematics professor John Synowiec lamented 15 years ago that most administrators held Arts and Sciences in low esteem but that his department seemed in good hands because of excellent young faculty such as Iztok Hozo, Vesna Kilibarda, and “an IUN graduate, Jon Becker.”

Lorraine Hansberry and Chance the Rapper (Chancelor Jonathan Bennett)

In advance of music critic Hanif Abdurriqib’s speaking engagement at the university, IUN is holding discussions on “They can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.”  The first will deal with the first five essays, including “Chance the Rapper’s Golden Year” and “The Night Prince Walked on Water.” about the “Purple Rain” genius’s incandescent Superbowl XLI performance that included renditions of Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” and Foo Fighter’s “Best of You.”  A common theme is the search for moments of joy in “the vicious and yawning maw”of a country where mass murders have become commonplace and a “xenophobic bigot”occupies the White House.  The author quotes Chicago native Lorraine Hansberry: “I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations and generations.”Abdurraqib compared Chance the Rapper’s album “Coloring Book” to the poetry of fellow Chicagoan Gwendolyn Brooks, who also captured the triumphs and failures of ordinary black folk.  In an endless and sometimes unbearable age, Abdurriqib wrote, “we are nothing without our quick and simple blessings, without those [like Chance the Rapper] willing to drag optimism by the neck to the gates of grief and ask to be let in, an entire choir of voices singing at their back.”

One of Abdurraqib’s essays is “Carly Rae Jepsen Loves You Back,” about the Canadian singer’s concert appearance at Terminal 5 in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood singing selections from the 2015 album “E-MO-TION.” Abdurraqib credited Jepsen with being able to convince a room full of people – teenagers, hipsters in their early 30s, blacks in their 20s, couples kissing passionately during “Warm Blood,” to, in his words, “set their sadness aside and, for a night, bring out whatever joy remains underneath – in a world where there is so much grief to be had, leading the people to water and letting them drink from your cupped hands.” I picked up “Dedicated,” Carly Rae’s most recent CD, at Chesterton library and especially enjoyed “No Drug Like Me” and “Right Words Wrong Time,” which contains these lyrics:

Took a million miles to feel the final separation

Don’t you tell me now you know what you need

I need to find a love to love me with no hesitation

Don’t you tell me you’re ready for me.

At bridge 87-year-old Dottie Hart had a new partner.  I held Dottie’s arm and said, “I hope you are in good hands.”  "I am now,” she joked.  At Charlie Halberstadt’s urging I tried  a new system called “Reverse Drury,” used after two passes and with a hand containing just 10 or so points but with good Spades.  The experiment did not end well. At bowling the following day, Jerome Tashik, on the DL last season, rolled a 715 series, winning the pot for high game over average all three games.  As Frank Vitalone announced after the final game, “We have a triple winner”– unprecedented in the years I’ve been in the league.  A 715 is a hundred pins higher than my best series ever.

Toni and I represented IU Northwest at the Dunes Learning Center’s annual banquet, “A Dunes Affair,” held at Sand Creek Country Club (only a mile from us as the crow flies), as did IUN Dean of Education Mark Sperling and wife Sandy, where Gary native Ken Schoon was the recipient of the Green Apple Award; the citation stated:

 Ken is a Northwest Indiana native and professor emeritus of science education at IU Northwest.  After 22 years as a middle and high school teacher, he joined the faculty at IUN, retiring 23 years later as a full professor and associate dean.  His research interests center around science misconceptions and local studies.  Ken is a founding board member and past president of Dunes Learning Center, an adviser to Shirley Heinz Land Trust, secretary of Munster Education Foundation, a member of the IUN Science Olympiad steering committee, and a member of the Indiana and Munster historical societies.  He has published three books about regional geology and history.

One of his publications is a book about Swedes who settled in Indiana’s Lake and Porter counties, which includes several Nelsons, including one of the founders in 1874 of Bethel Lutheran Church in Miller, Christina Maria Nelson, prohibited from signing the original charter due to her sex.

Ken Schoon at IUN, September 2017

Greeting us at the door was event committee member Bill Payonk, a former nontraditional IUN student who wrote a Northwest Phoenixcolumn called “The Old Guy.”  Diane Brown introduced herself to Toni as a former next-door-neighbor to Evelyn Passo’s mother, and recalled meeting her when Toni and granddaughter Alissa were visiting with Evelyn and her two sons.  A short film showed children visiting Dunes Learning Center, including  a group from Marquette School with teacher Tom Serynek, a friend and former president of Save the Dunes Council.  In accepting the award, Ken related having been a history major at IUN when he took a class with Mark Reshkin and became hooked on geology and dunes preservation. He credited Lee Botts as a mentor to whom one does not say no. Several items were auctioned off that each went for over a thousand dollars, including a ten-course meal for 8 prepared by chefs who came to your home and “Before the Sun Goes Down,” a painting by Porter, Indiana, landscape artist Mark Vander Vinne.

 below, Hakim Laws

Former Philadelphia firefighter Hakim Laws helped rescue babies from a burning apartment by catching them when they were tossed down to him.  Afterwards he told reporters that he was more sure-handed than Eagles receiver Nelson Agholor, who dropped several passes in a loss to the Detroit Lions.  The comment went viral, and Agholor called him a hero and offered him tickets to Philadelphia’s next home game.  Classy.