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.