Diamond in the Rough

“Gary remains a diamond in the rough.  Some will say ‘very rough.’  That may be, but the best response is to keep polishing that diamond until it sparkles.” Calvin Bellamy

Civic leader Cal Bellamy wrote the NWI Times to take issue with its publicizing an obscure Business Insiderwebsite article written by two people who’ve never set foot in Gary labeling Gary America’s “most miserable” city – more mischief, in all likelihood, from editor Marc Chase, who has turned his dislike of Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson into a vendetta.  Bellamy cited Gary’s advantages of location and infrastructure and impressive recent developments, including Miller’s South Shore expansion and double-track project and IUN’s new Arts and Sciences Building.  He concluded: “Many fine people make their homes there.  Several neighborhoods show impressive vitality.”  Accompanying the column was a photo by John J. Watkins of Ryne Wellman kite surfing at Marquette Park.

Times correspondent Joseph Pete, who addressed me as sir when he phoned for background information about the 1919 steel strike, wrote an impressive feature article about the important and traumatic event in Gary’s past, which split the city along class and racial lines. On my advice Pete consulted “Black Freedom Fighters for Steel” author Ruth Needleman,  who asserted that during the work stoppage almost all of the 3,000 black workers hired during the war refused to break ranks with their comrades, mostly unskilled foreign-born laborers. “US Steel Board Chairman Elbert Gary’s strategy to divide the workforce along racial lines,” Needleman concluded,  “did not work.  Strong inter-racial solidarity built intentionally to avoid the conflicts developing elsewhere [in Eastern mills] prevented trouble.”

 union march down Broadway

Pete obtained four photos from Steve McShane to go with the piece, but the paper neglected to cite the Calumet Regional Archives as the source and instead simply wrote “Provided.”  After 4,000 army troops rounded up and jailed strike leaders branded as “Reds” and forbade public assemblies, skilled workers gradually broke with the rank-and-file, crippling the effort for an 8-hour-day and decent wages and working conditions.  Pete quoted extensively from “The Autobiography of Mother Jones,” written by a participant in the struggle.  She described World War I veterans marching in solidarity with the workers:

  Some 200 soldiers who had come back from Europe where they had fought to make America safe from tyrants, marched.  They were steelworkers.  They had on their faded uniforms and the steel hats which protected them from German bombs.  In the line of march, I saw young fellows with arms gone, with crutches, with deep scars across the face – heroes they were!  Workers in the cheap cotton clothes of the working class fell in behind them.  Silently the thousands walked through the streets and alleys of Gary.  Saying no word.  With no martial music such as sent the boys into the fight with the Kaiser across the water.  Marching in silence.  Disbanding in silence.

  The I saw another parade.  Into Gary marched U.S. soldiers under General Leonard Wood.  They brought their bayonets, their long-range guns, trucks with mounted machine guns, field artillery.  Then came violence.  The soldiers broke up the picket line.  Worse than that, they broke the ideal in the hearts of thousands of foreigners, their ideal of America.  Into the blast furnace along with steel went their dreams that America was a government for the people – the poor, the oppressed.

I interviewed Patrick O’Rourke about his 50—year union career representing teachers in Hammond and at the state and national level.  A born storyteller, O’Rourke had interesting anecdotes about such personages as American Federation of Teachers president Albert Shanker, Bechtel Corporation CEO Riley P. Bechtel, and conservative Indiana governor Mitch Daniel. Appointed to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards on Shanker’s recommendation, O’Rourke solicited a significant contribution from Bechtel, the nation’s largest construction and engineering company, and so impressed its executives that they offered him a position in public relations that would have made him a millionaire.  He turned it down since as a lifelong Democrat he foresaw irreconcilable conflicts between his philosophy and theirs.  Appointed to the Indiana Governors Education Roundtable by Democrat Joe E. Kernan, O’Rourke expected to be replaced when Mitch Daniels succeeded him but so impressed the governor-elect with his candor and wit that he was re-appointed.  “Daniels and I disagreed on almost all aspects of public education,” he recalled, but added that they respected one another’s intelligence and integrity. At O’Rourke’s recent retirement celebration, Daniels, now Purdue’s president, honored him, as did Cal Bellamy, Mayor Tom McDermott, AFT president Randi Weingarten, and State Representative Vernon Smith, a close friend.

Several  “Country Music” episodes document the long, remarkable career of “diamond in the rough” Johnny Cash, known as the “Man in Black” whose deep baritone voice embraced rockabilly, blues, gospel, and folk music.  His signature song ”Folsom Prison Blues” inspired Merle Haggard, a prisoner at San Quentin when he witnessed Cash perform it, to change the direction of his life.  Embracing an outlaw image, Cash once explained that his decision to wear black was “for the poor and the beaten down, living in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, but is there because he's a victim of the times.”  Banned from performing at the Grand Old Opry when dependent of pills and booze, Cash cleaned up his life and went on to host a network TV show featuring such controversial guests as Bob Dylan (they performed “Girl from North Country” together) and Pete Seeger (despite threats of censorship).  Seeger sang the antiwar ballad “Osceola’s Last Words” by Floridian Will Mclean, about a Seminole chief imprisoned in a dungeon who declares: “I shall not live among such evil men, who mock the sign of truce, this flag of white.”   Invited by Nixon to perform at the White House in March 1970, Cash refused a Presidential request to sing “Welfare Cadillac” or “Okie from Muskogee” and ended the show with “What Is Truth.”  Here are the final verses:

A little boy of three sittin’ on the floor
Looks up and says, “Daddy, what is war?”
“son, that's when people fight and die”
The little boy of three says “Daddy, why?”
A young man of seventeen in Sunday school
Being taught the golden rule
And by the time another year has gone around
It may be his turn to lay his life down
Can you blame the voice of youth for asking
“What is truth?”

A young man sittin’ on the witness stand
The man with the book says “Raise your hand”
“Repeat after me, I solemnly swear”
The man looked down at his long hair
And although the young man solemnly swore
Nobody seems to hear anymore
And it didn't really matter if the truth was there
It was the cut of his clothes and the length of his hair
And the lonely voice of youth cries
“What is truth?”

The young girl dancing to the latest beat
Has found new ways to move her feet
The young man speaking in the city square
Is trying to tell somebody that he cares
Yeah, the ones that you're calling wild
Are going to be the leaders in a little while
This old world's wakin’ to a new born day
And I solemnly swear that it'll be their way
You better help the voice of youth find
"What is truth?"

At the song’s conclusion, Cash said: “We pray, Mr. President, that you can end this war in Vietnam sooner than you hope or think it can be done, and we hope and pray that our boys will be back home and there will soon be peace in our mountains and valleys.”

The earliest literary reference to “diamond in the rough” is in John Fletcher’s “A Wife for a Month” (1624): “She is very honest and will be as hard to cut as a rough diamond.”  The expression came to mean a good-hearted person of exceptional character somewhat rough around the edges and lacking in refinement. Literally, before diamonds are polished, they lack glitter and sparkle.  In Disney movie Aladdin Jafar addresses the title character in the song “Diamond in the Rough” by declaring that beneath the dirt and patches and under the filth and the fleas, “you’re a diamond in the rough”:

And though you might need finesse,
and perhaps some sniffs disinfecting
You'll be the one who succeeds 

when the lamp of their needs collecting

I met Ron Cohen at an IUN gallery reception for Willie Baronet’s exhibit “This Is Awkward For Me Too,” featuring signs used by homeless victims begging for money, work, or food.  Ron gave me the September 2019 issue of Journal of American History, whose cover features a rally for whistleblower Philip Agee, a former CIA caseworker whose memoir “Inside the Company” (1975) exposed U.S. support for authoritarian Latin American leaders that led to grievous atrocities.  The British government subsequently expelled Agee despite protests from students and Labor Party MPs.  At the gallery I ran into bridge buddy Barb Mort with husband Ascher Yates and Marianita Porterfield, coming from an aquatic exercise class.  Marianita recalled her son J.J. and Phil being in the same class at Marquette School taught by Willa Simmons.

In Fantasy Football I am undefeated since a week one tie with Pittsburgh Dave and in first place a half-game ahead of Phil, whose record is 4-1.  The primary reason is that Carolina running back Christian McCaffrey (above) is having an MVP season.  Last week against Jacksonville he gained 237 yards rushing and receiving and scored 3 TDs. Meanwhile, the overall number one pick, Saquon Barkley has been out since week 3 with a high ankle sprain. Injuries are a crucial factor, so knock on wood that my guys stay healthy.

Old Man Teepee Pole

“Hold on to what is good

even if it is a handful of dirt

Hold on to what you believe

even when it is a tree that stands by itself”

         Traditional Pueblo poem

I ran into IUN Anthropology assistant professor Michelle Stokely, whose contract was not renewed despite her being a popular teacher and respected scholar who has published in such journals as Great Plains Quarterly and is the author of “My Father’s Name Was Zahtah: Constructing the Life History of Alfred Chalepah, Sr.” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003).  Evidently IUN plans to run the Anthropology degree program with adjuncts. When Bob Mucci retired, he was not replaced either.  Michelle also taught Intro to Sociology, but students increasingly are taking that class on-line.  Michelle will probably lose her home and, like Anne Balay, is on the lookout for a job.  For years, the Anthropology Club has been one of the most active on campus, but I doubt it can survive without a faculty adviser. 

Cache Creek Cemetery

Archives volunteer Martha Letko showed me how to access Findagrave after I inquired whether she had written about her ancestors.  On that site I discovered this information on Native American Alfred Chalepah, Sr.:

  He was born Nov. 2, 1910, in Boone, on the allotment of Old Man Archilta, to Alonzo and Rose Maynahonah Chalepah. He received his name from his grandfather, Apache John. His Indian name is "Soo-tho-sche-yon," meaning Old Man Teepee Pole. He married Leota Evelyn Apoyatt on Sept. 26, 1934, in Hobart. He spent 42 years serving the government of the tribe, and after his retirement, participated as a cultural consultant and respected role model. He served as chairman of the tribe from 1978 to 1980. He also served as translator for the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Business Committee in the 1930s. He was knowledgeable about the Blackfeet Military Society, Apache language and Native American Church. At 97, he still participated in all Apache Ceremonials and participated in consulting the government of the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma. He was the father of 16 children, and elder to 121 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren.  A smoking ceremony will be held at the Chalepah home.  Prayer service will be at the Comanche Community Center, followed by an all-night wake.

If I changed my name, a top candidate would be Old man Teepee Pole.  In Native American culture, old men are venerated, and a teepee pole is like a pillar of one’s home and family.

Hollis Donald paid tribute to the recently deceased mother of Clyde Robinson, who works with Anne Koehler in IUN’s library’s inter-library-loan department.  Donald wrote:

  Her touch was so tender; the voice will forever linger.  The honor that you built your lives upon, the sound that renewed your spirit – those days of joy will never be forgotten.  She was the family’s favorite dancer and singer – how could you forget?

Cal Bellamy

Rick Hug was on campus for a meeting of Cal Bellamy’s Shared Ethics Advisory Commission.  I mentioned having appeared on radio show panels with Bellamy, and Rick told me that Bellamy had written an award-winning article 16 years ago in the prestigious journal Public Administration Review.  I looked it up, and its title is “Item Veto: Dangerous Constitutional Tinkering.”  Bellamy frequently writes guest columns for the NWI Times.  In a 2014 effort he summarized the work of his commission:

  Northwest Indiana has always been a heavy industry, meat and potatoes type place. Our people come from all backgrounds and points of view. Sometimes, we are a little rough around the edges. Over the years, our families, churches and schools have helped to polish us, but more could be done. As president of the Shared Ethics Advisory Commission, I preside over a group of volunteers who train municipal employees on ethical decision-making.

Eve Gomez

Friday evening I attended a community forum sponsored by ALMA, IUN’s Latino student organization, entitled “Defending Immigrant Rights.”  Ably moderated by WLTH radio host Eve Gomez, the panel included IUN Minority Studies professor Raoul Contreras, former UBM (Union Benefica Mexicana) president Tony Barreda, and Reverend Cheryl Rivera, representing the Northwest Indiana Federation of Interfaith Organizations.  Barreda and Rivera have been active in protests that forced GEO Corporation to withdraw its proposal to build a for-profit immigrant detention center on property near Gary Airport.  The speakers pointed out that the existence of such a facility would lead to raids against undocumented people in order to fill its cells and maintain its profitability and inevitably split up families.  Rather than provide good-paying jobs for local residents, most work inside GEO prisons is carried out by inmates making about 13 cents an hour.  Tony Barreda emphasized that Mexican immigrants are not taking people’s jobs away.  He talked about growing up in Texas and working alongside immigrants hauling boxes of pineapples and bananas and picking cotton from sunup to sundown in hundred degree temperatures.  Eve Gomez said that she hated the designation “illegal alien” and that her father had once been an undocumented worker.

Tony Barreda and Rev. Cheryl Rivera

I was looking forward to hearing Reverend Rivera, who is from East Chicago and knows my son Dave, and she did not disappoint.  She talked about growing up in segregated Georgia and first encountering discrimination at a picnic when a policeman tried to separate her mother from her family, thinking she was white.  She identified herself as descended from slaves as well as a German Jew and that her husband is a first generation Puerto Rican immigrant.  She said she became an activist at age 15 when high school administrators tried to prevent a classmate from becoming homecoming queen because she was an unwed mother.  Rivera and others, including members of the football team, threatened to boycott homecoming unless school officials relented. 

I donated copies of my latest Steel Shavings to attendees and was pleased that student Ava Meux was in the audience, who’s in volume 44 several times.  She wants to do an independent study project with me, and I suggested doing an oral history of her grandmother, an accomplished pianist and youth choir director.  Representing ALMA was the son of Eugenia Arredondo, and I introduced myself as one who had helped edit “Maria’s Journey,” about his family’s matriarch.  Samuel A. Love, who first fought GEO’s scheme to locate a prison in Hobart, was pleased to see me.  He and Ava Meux appeared together on Jerry Davich’s radio show during that fight.

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind, but now, I see.

            “Amazing Grace,” John Newton (1779)

President Barack Obama climaxed the most important week of his presidency by singing “Amazing Grace” at Reverend Clementa Pinckney’s funeral service in Charleston, South Carolina, before 5,000 people.  Watching the ministers on the podium behind him was especially poignant.  Rather than settle for being a lame duck, Obama seems finally to be coming into his own, being comfortable being himself.  In his moving eulogy he repeated the names of the other victims gunned down at Mother Emanuel Church – Cynthia Hurd, Tywanza Sanders, Sharonda Singleton, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, De Payne Doctor, and Reverend Daniel Simmons -  and hoped that their martyrdom, and Pinckney’s, would lead to the Confederate flag’s removal from the South Carolina State capitol grounds.  Earlier he defied his own party by persuading Congress to push through a Pacific trade bill.  The Supreme Court upheld a challenge to the Affordable Care Act and decreed that same-sex marriages were valid throughout the 50 states.  Obama praised the decisions and ordered the White House illuminated in rainbow colors on the eve of Gay pride parades in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and elsewhere

Off to Palm Springs, California, for my mother’s 99th birthday, during the first leg of the trip a woman wanted to trade seats so she could be closer to her full-grown daughter, but I declined to relinquish the aisle.  A guy whose shirt read “SNOT” (WTF?) gave in to her and later told a flight attendant she was gorgeous.  Deplaning, a passenger saw me carrying “Breathing Lessons” and said that Anne Tyler was her favorite author.  I finished it during the trip.  Good-hearted busybody Maggie, failing to patch things up between her son and daughter-in-law and about to take youngest daughter Daisy off to college, asks hubby Ira: “What are we two going to live for, all the rest of our lives?”

Mary “Midge” Roberts (my mother), who can hardly move on her own, has a perpetually sore butt, and is ready to die, asked my brother and me to help plan her memorial service.  A hospice care minister named Debra, who has a PhD in Urban Anthropology, met us at Mirage Inn.  Midge wants the theme to be family and vetoed group singing.  Reverend Doctor Debra suggested piano selections, including “Amazing Grace.”  Midge wants her ashes placed next to Vic’s grave in Pennsylvania.  At lunch Midge’s meal companion, 89 year-old Barbara, assured me she was looking out for her dear friend.  She’s filling a void left by 100 year-old Shirley, who died in her sleep.  Midge is hoping to go that way.

I had planned to spend a night at the Yucca Valley Best Western and catch a live band at Pappy and Harriet’s, but an out-of-control fire burning in the San Bernardino Mountains caused Pioneertown to be under voluntary evacuation, so I remained at the Rancho Mirage Holiday Inn.  Toni read about it in, of all places, the Chesterton Tribune.  The AP article stated:

  At Pappy and Harriet’s Palace, a landmark restaurant and music venue, owner Linda Krantz got updates on the fire from forest rangers in parked trucks.  She could see a huge plume of smoke from the fire that ran onto a wildlife preserve just five miles away.

At Applebee’s for Happy Hour, longtime bartender par excellence Natasha showed me photos of her three children.  Good-looking, charismatic, and super-efficient, she reminds me of Adam Benjamin, Jr., the son of our late Congressman, who bartended at Country Lounge.  Some thought it a shame that he didn’t make more out of his opportunities, but he was great at his job, apparently happy at what he was doing, and brightened the lives of countless customers.  At Applebee’s a postal worker who delivered mail to Mirage Inn said he’d close the door before putting mail in the various slots because so many folks wanted to chat.

Midge’s birthday celebration took place in a special section of the Mirage Inn dining hall.  Nephew Bob and family showed up, as did three friends of my brother who had spent Thanksgiving dinner with Midge.  One of them blows glass with Rich and is a former adult film director.  At Rancho Mirage Children’s Museum after lunch Addie and Crosby, Bob and Niki’s kids, got on a motorcycle, painted an old Volkswagen, went grocery shopping, and made pretend pizzas.  I helped Addie make a worry doll, while Rich’s wife Catherine (whom the kids call Gilbert, her last name) worked with Crosby.  According to Guatemalan folklore, if a person tells his worries to the doll and puts it under his pillow at night, his worries go away.  Addie said she worries about fire, in the news often.  One a few years ago forced her family to evacuate their San Diego town house.

On CNN I watched an interview with Evan Thomas, author of “Being Nixon: A Man Divided.”  How such an introvert became a successful politician is confounding.  I learned that Tricky Dick bowled with his tie on and told Jackie Kennedy Onassis at Dr. Martin Luther King’s funeral, “I guess this brings back memories.”  The author’s grandfather was Norman Thomas, and Nixon, learning of this, called the Socialist Party leader a great man.  Thomas admitted that Georgetown liberals, including his own father and the owner of the Washington Post, hated Nixon and gave him no quarter. 

I re-watched Olive Kitteridge, the best depiction of a marriage ever filmed, and loved the final part where Frances McDormand and Bill Murray (as cantankerous widower Jack Kennison) connect.  As insufferable as Olive could be, she had a good heart.   Married to a decent but boring spouse, she never consummated her attraction to self-destructive English teacher Jim O’Casey.  Some of the minor characters are unforgettable, including one of Olive’s former math students who comes back to Maine bent on committing suicide, and a lounge singer who ends up performing in a nursing home. 

I finished a USA Today crossword puzzle, thanks in large part to knowing the answer to “Pilgrim VIP” (William Bradford).  Another answer, a-bed, describes many Mirage Inn residents; yet some were playing blackjack and bingo and get around, usually with the help of walkers.  Checking sports results daily, I lamented that the Cubs lost five in a row against the Dodgers and Cardinals.  Up at 4 a.m. to catch flights to Phoenix and then Chicago, I left a cold beer in the Holiday Inn fridge and “Breathing Lessons” on a table.  Years ago, I purposely left a book at an airport in Amsterdam; within a few minutes someone had gobbled it up, just as I had hoped.  Had I done so in Palm Springs, chances are that due to airport regulations it would have been thrown away.

Back home Dave and Angie’s dog Maggie greeted me warmly.  She’ll be with us while my son’s family is in Florida for Becca’s dance competition and then several days at Universal Studio theme park.  It was good to be in my own bed, as the trip took a toll on my neck and back.  I was saddened to learn that while I was gone daughter-in-law Delia’s father Gonzalo “Gun” Soto died.  The former steelworker lived longer than anyone predicted.  I enjoyed playing dominoes with him.  Miranda posted that she’ll always remember his admonition that “God is great, people are crazy, and beer is good.”  As John Newton wrote over 200 years ago:

                       ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

                       And grace my fears relieved.”

Awaiting me at IUN was a book from Indiana Magazine of History to review, Ray Boomhower’s “John Barlow Martin: A Voice for the Underdog.”  Growing up in Indianapolis, Martin graduated from high school in 1931 at age 16 and as a journalist took a special interest in society’s outcasts.  JFK’s Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, he became close with President Juan Bosch, ousted in an American-inspired coup after Martin resigned following Kennedy’s assassination.

Joe Pellicciotti being congratulated by Rep. Bill Fine (Republican, Munster) as Chancellor Lowe looks on

I attended a ceremony honoring Joe Pellicciotti for receiving the Sagamore of the Wabash Award.  Indiana State Representative Bill Fine noted that while the honor “Kentucky Colonel” is named after warriors,  “Sagamore of the Wabash” stands for a Native American chief known for wisdom and tact.  Pellicciotti’s son Michael, in from Seattle, took a summer Geology course with Bob Votaw and worked on an Archives project about Congressman Earl Langrebe.  I said hello to Cal Bellamy, President of the Shared Ethics Commission, on which Pellicciotti served.  Twice I’ve been on local radio shows with Bellamy, whose comely wife once worked at Purdue Calumet, as did Pellicciotti’s, down the hall from Peg Schoon.

Archives volunteer Dave Mergl and I both had on green shirts, in my case one he’d given me.  Green is his favorite color, and he informed me that he had 19 others at home.

The young lad who delivers our Chesterton Tribune had three friends on bikes with him.   Are you training them or paying them, I inquired.  When he said no, I replied, “Then they must be interns.”  He had no rejoinder.