Echoes of the Past

"   "What is history?  An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.”

     Victor Hugo

The controversy over removing statues of Confederate leaders from public places has expanded to include Spanish colonial monuments in the Southwest.  A bronze statue of Don Juan de Oñate (1550-1626), for example, was recently removed in Alcalde, New Mexico for “safekeeping.” Oñate, sometimes called the “Last Conquistadore,” is infamous as a result of the Acoma Massacre, carried out by his orders while he was the colonial governor of New Mexico. After Spanish troops took food that the Acoma pueblo needed for the winter, a dozen of them were killed in an ambush, including Oñate’s nephew.  In retaliation the Governor ordered the pueblo destroyed.  Close to a thousand Native Americans were slaughtered, and survivors enslaved for 20 years.  In addition, he ordered that the right foot of men over 25 be cut off; historians disagree on whether or not this order was fully carried out or restricted to toes since it would have rendered the victims relatively useless as forced laborers.  In any event Spanish authorities found that Don Juan de Oñate had used excessive force and sent him in exile.  In 1998, four years after its installment, protesters cut off the right foot of the Reynaldo Rivera-designed Alcalde statue. A note explained, “Fair is fair.”  In 2017 the left foot was painted red, and a message read, “Remember 1680,” the year of a pueblo revolt.

 

I recently finished Mari Grana’s “Pioneer Doctor: The Story of a Woman’s Work,” a biography of Dr. Mary Babcock Atwater, the author’s grandmother.  Dr. Mollie, as she became known, left her husband in Osage, Iowa to become a doctor in a frontier mining town in Montana. She eventually became active in the women’s suffrage movement and in public health efforts to provide clean water to Montanans. After her second husband died, Atwater moved to California to be with her only daughter.  She died when granddaughter Mari was just four, but the author was able to find an 88-year-old named Fanny who provided insights into Dr. Mollie personality, including her initial chagrin when she became pregnant.  While Grana invented some details for dramatic effect, she captures the iron determination of a Victorian feminist and healer who fought against ignorance, illness, and bigotry on the western frontier.

The Chesterton Tribune’s “Echoes of the Past” July 1 column reprinted this hundred-year-old item by Eugene W. Flack that first appeared in the Chicago Herald-Examiner:

    After five years of self-imposed solitary confinement in the sandy wastelands of northern Indiana, Miss Alice Gray, more widely known as “Diana of the Dunes,” came up for air.  And with her were six feet two inches of Scandinavian suitor in the person of Paul Wilson.  A half-decade ago, she would have introduced him in effete Chicago society circles as “my fiancé.”  In the wilderness of sandy hillocks and popular groves that border the southern margin of Lake Michigan, Miss Gray acclaimed this giant proponent of primitive life as “my caveman.”

As I noted in “Gary’s First Hundred Years," Alice Gray, a University of Chicago graduate 39 years old in 1920, became in the hands of the press the center of unwanted publicity whose quest for solitude failed because the world wouldn’t leave her alone. In 1922 a drunken deputy sheriff fractured her skull with the butt of a pistol for trespassing on his property; she never fully recovered and three years later died of uremia.  The Prairie Club Bulletin eulogized her as an incorrigible individualist and free spirit who found happiness in the dunes, at least for a time.

 Dorothy Mokry with Professor Raoul Contreras

Dorothy Mokry, who used to work at IU Northwest, recalled taking her husband Larry to Jackson’s Steakhouse on Route 12-20 in Miller when they were first dating.  He was almost six years her junior and got carded and denied a drink because he was only 20-year-old.  Toni and I were in Jackson’s Steakhouse in the mid-1970s when former Gary mayor George “Cha Cha” Chacharis arrived, stopped at every table, and knew virtually everyone’s name, including ours.  I had interviewed him for “City of the Century” and invited him to speak in my Urban History class.  He lived in an apartment near Wilco Foods; once with son Dave I ran into him near Wilco’s bakery section. As we were leaving, I noticed that Dave had a large bag of cookies.  “That nice man bought them for me,” he said.  Chacharis was known for his generosity.  When mayor, he’d give out giant candy bars at Halloween.

 

Dorothy mentioned that  in her 20s she was a key punch operator at U.S. Steel doing shift work and after the 4 to midnight shift would go dancing and partying with co-workers, often ending up at Jackson’s or the Golden Coin nearby.  The Golden Coin had ribs that Phil especially loved, and once we were having lunch there with the boys when young women wearing see-through lingerie walked by on their way to a men-only luncheon. Dorothy once witnessed three attorneys sitting at the bar jump up and beat the crap out of a guy.  High stakes poker games evidently took place at Golden Coin, and this guy must have either welched on what he’d owed or been some sort of snitch who worked with the police.  She added, “Good Ol Gary.”

RIP, Carl Reiner (with wife and Mel Brooks)