The Hill We Climb

 We step out of the shade aflame and unafraid, the new dawn blooms as we free it, for us always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.” Amanda Gorman

For many the highlight of Inauguration Day was the recitation of 22-year-old poet laureate Amanda Gorman’s original composition “The Hill We Climb.” As great as she performed, my highlights of what was truly was a beautiful day were former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama promising to help the Biden-Harris administration whenever called upon, something Trump never did a single time. Then I loved the evening concert featuring John Legend, Katy Perry, Foo Fighters, Bruce Springsteen and many more, including Bon Jovi singing “Here Comes the Sun.”

As part of IUN’s Martin Luther King Day celebration, organized by James Wallace, Ken Iwama, and Jeri Pat Gabbert, former Chancellor Peggy Elliott and former IUN Black Student Union president Todd Deloney discussed the roles each played in bringing about observance of that day on our campus and eventually throughout the IU system. In her mid-80s Peggy remained charming and tactful in giving credit to other faculty and administrators who supported Todd’s crusade, including Phil Rutledge, Barbara Cope and Vernon Smith. When Todd revealed that while he was carrying out a lone vigil near campus, a car drove by hurling racist epithets at him, Peggy interjected, “They couldn’t have been our students.” I wasn’t able to join the discussion but left several chats, including that Peggy was excellent at crisis management and, unlike her predecessor, went out of her way to recruit minority students and establish close ties with the Gary community. During one hard winter when there were massive mill layoffs, she worked with Bishop Andrew Grutka and the Richard Hatcher administration to raise money for food pantries by putting on a concert at Gary Genesis Center featuring Whitney Houston and many others, plus an appearance by “Sweetness,” Walter Peyton.

In Distress

    “Lake Michigan should not be taken for granted,” Derrick P. Thames

I received a Facebook message from former mid-Nineties IUN student Jill Semko Underly, who taught Social Studies at Munster H.S. and is now a school superintendent in Wisconsin. “You made a great impression on me,” she wrote. I realize my influence on students pales in comparison to gifted public school teachers, but words of praise from those who still remember me is gratifying. Jill participated in an oral history project that culminated in publication of “Tales of Lake Michigan and the Northwest Indiana Dunelands” (Steel Shavings, volume 28, 1998, my favorite issue). She interviewed Ken Jania, who at age 17 set sail from Burns Harbor en route to St. Joseph, Michigan. Several hours out, a sudden storm descended on them with 50 mile-an-hour wind and a precipitous temperature drop. Ken Jania recalled, as told to Semko:

We went from glass water to 15-foot waves in five seconds. Waves were coming over the boat; it was a driving sleet storm. The storm hit so hard that it took the boat and laid it down. It tried to right itself, but the sail was full of water. When the boat came up, it tore the sail. Within 15 minutes, the top of the boat was covered in ice. The sails were just shredded. Denny [the sailboat owner] had this little dingy that he towed behind his boat, which was gone, probably sunk. We were in distress. Denny’s radio didn’t work because it got covered with freezing water.

The 15-foot seas, going up and down 30 feet, caused everyone except Denny to become seasick and close to hysterical. We were almost thrown overboard every time a wave hit. Denny said we had to get the sails off, in order to turn the boat. He asked me to go up an icy pole and try to get the sails off. I climbed up with this belt and pulled on the sail. Finally, it came down. After we got the sails put away, Denny sealed the cabin, which had about a foot of water in it. Denny, Jack, and I were on deck, and others were working the pumps, trying to get the water out of the cabin.

Finally, with the little 10-horsepower motor running, Denny got the front of the boat in front of the waves, and the boat was actually surfing. The front was out of the water riding the waves and would come down with a crash. Everything would shake. I thought I was going to die. The boat was getting heavier and heavier with water. After surfing about eight hours, we came near the coast, but Denny couldn’t see the lighthouse. It was gone. The wind had destroyed it.

Denny told us to keep an eye out for the breakwall. All of a sudden, BOOM! The back of the boat hit the breakwall. We had surfed right over it into the Coast Guard harbor. It was snowing and sleeting very hard now, and as the front of the boat came down inside the harbor, we landed on a pole. It went right through the bottom of the sailboat and came up on deck. Once the Coast guard figured out what was going on, they rescued us and we called our parents. We stayed there three or four days of repair before sailing back to Burns Harbor.

Party Time

 “Ooh ooh it’s party time

It’s time to get you off my mind

. . . .

It’s time to laugh and pass the wine”

"Party Time," T.G. Sheppard

“Party Time” was the title of Saturday Evening Club speaker Jim Wise’s talk, so I joked beforehand that maybe it was about the 1981 song of that name by T.G. Sheppard or the 1957 rockabilly hit “Party Doll” by Texan Buddy Holly. The Emeritus Professor at VU had planned to discuss whether the decline of political parties was good or bad. Instead, after listing momentous events that happened in early January, such as Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and JFK’s 1961 Inaugural address, he focused on the Trump-inspired deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol led by white extremists duped by the Big Lie of a fraudulent election. None of the 18 attendees defended the president. Wise cited Newt Gingrich’s becoming House Speaker in the 1990s as a turning point when Republican ideologues began treating opponents as enemies, not merely adversaries. Wise mentioned working on the 1972 McGovern campaign, as did Toni and I, and brought up past demagogues such as Father Coughlin, Huey Long, and George Lincoln Rockwell, whom I heard speak while at Bucknell, a pathetic American Nazi with a tiny following compared to current white nationalist groups. My only quibble: he praised Maine Republican Susan Collins' tepid condemnation of Trump; I pointed out that she defended her vote not to impeach by professing the belief that he had learned his lesson. Her naivety was recently matched by Sen. Roy Blount, who claimed that Trump “had touched the hot stove and is unlikely to do it again.” More clear-headed, Mitt Romney after being under siege in the Capitol labeled what happened an insurrection and added: “We gather today due to a selfish man’s injured pride.”

Dean Bottorff commented: The events of the past week – and, indeed, what is expected to take place tomorrow and in the ensuing weeks – raise an interesting question for my friend the historian. How much time must pass before this history can be written? The old cliché that journalists write the first draft of history may be true but what is the role of the historian who actually lives through major historical times? None of us will know how the final hand of Trumpism will play out. Is Trumpism the last gasp of the racial politics that have dominated American history since the Founding Fathers embarked on this experiment? Will the days of "alternative facts" ever end? You and I will never know. A somewhat sad thought, really.