Summer of '87

"Born in secrecy during the summer of ’87, the child of lofty idealism and rough political bargains, the Constitution is a story that will continue as long as the nation does,” David O. Stewart

At Monday’s History book club meeting Joy Anderson gave away books, including “Maria’s Journey,” which Ray and Lorenzo Arredondo gave a report on last year. Handing it to Barbara Wisdom, there with her sister and friend Rock Ferrer, I told her of having edited it and written the afterword. I took home David O. Stewart’s “The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution” and started it while getting an oil change and 30,000 check-up at Lake Shore Toyota.  Stewart introduces George Washington, eulogized in Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Valiant Ambition,” in this manner, describing a 1784 meeting at his Mount Vernon plantation with fellow Virginian George Mason:

  Known to crack walnuts with a single large hand, the strongly built Washington had thrived on outdoor living and battlefield dangers.  At 53, he retained the grace and power of a splendid horseman and dancer, but it was something from the inside that made him the master of every room he entered. Certainly, he was a Virginia gentleman of courtesy and integrity, but so were others. Equally, he had his flaws, including being “addicted to gambling . . . avid in the pursuit of wealth, . . . a most horrid swearer and blasphemer ,” and unrelentingly ambitious.

  Washington’s force came from the antagonistic qualities he blended.  His “gift of taciturnity” radiated dignity and calm, yet he simultaneously implied, in the words of one admirer, “passions almost too mighty for man.”  No one who saw Washington’s rage ever forgot it. The combination of steely discipline and powerful drive generated a charisma so compelling that, by one account, every king in Europe “would look like a valet de chamber by his side.

end-of-summer party; Phil and Dave on both ends: below, Dave and Toni at IU

During the summer of 1987 the Lane nest was emptying, as son Dave prepared to join his older brother at IU Bloomington, where Phil participated in celebrations touched off by the Hoosiers winning the NCAA championship.  It was a memorable summer at Maple Place, with visits from friends and relatives and a lively end-of-the-summer party featuring friends of our college-bound sons.  I was 45, Toni 43, and our lone home companion was Marvin, a cat inherited from Suzanne Migoski, also off to school. I don’t recall suffering from “empty nest syndrome,” then or since. Nine months later, granddaughter Alissa came into our lives.  In the news: President Ronald Reagan accepted responsibility for the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Senate rejected reactionary Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

At Chesterton YMCA Alan Yngve’s lesson dealt with being overly aggressive when your hand doesn’t justify a game bid.  On the hand he demionstrated from last week, I went down one in 4 Hearts, but others get set two and three tricks.  Against Carol Miller and Barbara Larson, I was dealt 7 Clubs, Ace, King, Queen, 4 Spades, a doubleton in Hearts, and a void in Diamonds.  Carol, on my left opened 3 Diamonds, Alan bid 3 Spades, and Barbara bid 5 Diamonds.  In short, to bid Clubs, I’d have had to go to the 6 level.  Instead, aware of going against Alan’s lesson but convinced it was a good sacrifice, I bid 5 Spades, and Alan went down one.  Another couple bid and made 5 Spades doubled, the double allowing the declarer to correctly guess whom to finesse.  Our worst score, against Kris Prohl and Barbara Mort, began when Alan opened one Diamond.  With 17 high card points, I jump-shifted to 3 Clubs and, much to my chagrin, he passed. All other pairs bid and made game, either 5 Clubs or 3 No-Trump.  Alan suggested I should have said 2 Clubs, evidently a demand bid. I’ll have to learn that  system, known as New Minor Forcing.  We finished right around 50%, fifth out of 11 couples, with Chuck Tomes and Tom Rea the winners.

Dee Van Bebber and Chuck Tomes achieved a 75.66% at Charley Halberstadt’s Valparaiso game, Barb Walczak’s Newsletterreported.  Chuck recalled: “Not only is Dee a lovely lady but also a solid, experienced player from whom I’ve learned a lot, especially about bidding. We plussed 18 of 27 boards with 9 tops and 3 tied for top.  We made no major mistakes and got a lot of good breaks.”  Dee added: “Chuck is one of my favorite players, never critical and always complimentary.  We were in sync all afternoon.  Of course, we had our share of good luck – making for a memorable day.”

AM 670 (The Score)sports jocks Dan Bernstein and Connor McKnight claimed that Dodger pitcher Clay Kershaw’s great-uncle was on the team of astronomers that in 1930 discovered Pluto, the so-called dwarf planet. Located in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune, Pluto’s solar orbit takes 248 years.  Tom Wade has a t-shirt defending Pluto against detractors who in 2016 argued that it wasn’t a real planet.  One thing about Dan Bernstein, dating back to his afternoon show with Terry Boers, he often abruptly hangs up on obnoxious callers.

Weather has remained summery, sunny with highs in the 80s, but the daylight hours are markedly shorter. At lunch with Mike Olszanski, I discovered the veggies I had packed were missing. Later I found them on the ground near the Corolla.  On a library elevator a half-dozen students were peering at someone’s phone.  I asked what interested them; Apple was unveiling new products. 

Nicki Minaj and Cardi B got into a shoving match at a New York Fashion Week event after Cardi had called Nicki a bitch.  In retaliation, Minaj evidently stepped on Cardi’s dress, causing it to rip in the back.  After security teams separated the two rap divas, Cardi threw a shoe at Nicki, who kept it as a souvenir. The New Yorker’s Carrie Battan believes that Minaj epitomizes rappers’ tendency toward self-mythologizing and braggadocio:

 It feels cheap to draw a parallel between Minaj and President Trump, but the attitudinal similarities – the obsession with winning, the instinct to dismiss critics as losers or liars, the paranoia, the rabid fixation on the initial    victory rather than the ensuing work – are too obvious to ignore.

East Chicago Central grad and friend of the family Denzel Smith wrote: “I remember when I had a speech impediment. Now I’m doing speeches in front of Presidents. Honored to have been asked to lead the invocation for the Bethune Cookman Annual President’s Assembly at the Mary McLeod Bethune Performing Arts Center.”  Son Dave was one of his mentors.

below, former coach and AD Earl Smith praising Rod Fisher

Both the Post-Triband The Timescovered protests at a Gary school board meeting regarding the unjust termination of longtime West Side girls basketball coach Rod Fisher. Supporters of Fisher plan to present a petition (I’ve signed it) to the Indiana Distressed Unit Appeal Board. West Side principal Marcus Muhammad praised Fisher’s extraordinary career but claimed a woman could relate to “the young ladies we have today”better than a man.  Former athletic director Earl Smith called Muhammad’s statement “asinine”and predicted that this would have a negative effect on the community. Smith said, “He dedicated his life to the West Side Cougar family and former players love Coach Fisher.”  Smith added that during the 14 years he was AD, Fisher “never asked the athletic program for anything.  What he couldn't do raising (money) with the parents, he took out of his pocket. You find me another coach that's any more dedicated than that.”  Fisher’s wife Linda told supporters, “They didn’t just tale away his job, they took his life” and asked, “Is he too old, too successful, too white?”  My Facebook coverage generated numerous emoji responses, including sad and angry. 

Times photos by Ed Bierschenk (above) and Jonathan Miano

The third edition of Ron Cohen and my “Gary: A Pictorial History” arrived, looking great. The photos covering the past 15 years are in color and more vivid than I’d hoped for.  In ones by Timesphotographers Ed Bierschenk and Jonathan Miano of protestors at City Hall opposing efforts to open an immigrant detention center near Gary Airport I recognize Miller activists Ruth Needleman and Tom Eaton and possibly Jim Spicer and Carolyn McCrady. Cohen’s updated bibliography even includes Leonard Moore’s 2018 book on the 1972 National Black Political Convention at West Side High School. At my suggestion chapter 8, “Looking Ahead, 2004-2018” begins:

     On the evening of July 14, 2005, Gary’s Centennial Committee held a gala at the Genesis Center.  Waiters on loan from Dean White’s Star Plaza served hors d’oevres. The Roosevelt High School band marched through the crowd playing “76 Trombones” from “Music Man.”  Emerson students put on a moving skit.  The musical group Stormy Weather, whose members were self-proclaimed “region rats,” entertained with doo wop hits and a stirring, a capella version of the national anthem.  Not since Mayor Hatcher’s “Evenings to Remember “was there such a glittering party. More important, U.S. Steel pledged $400,000 toward a “Fusion” statue and other efforts.  President of the Centennial Committee, appropriately, was First Lady Irene Scott-King, who stated: “It’s important to understand where you’re come from in order to see where you are going and move ahead in the future.  It’s critical to enlighten and give young people the foundation they need to one day take over the reins of the city.”

I also added this final peroration to Cohen's draft:

 Though a tough environment, especially for those struggling to find work and raise families, Gary in the past has afforded opportunities for a host of athletes, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs, and other notables who have achieved success elsewhere.  Even more impressive are those who stayed or returned and became community pillars. While some lament what Gary has lost, there is potential for a bright future, not only in the development of the lakefront but in commercial possibilities associated with airport expansion, an academic corridor along Thirty-Fifth Avenue (anchored by IU Northwest and IVY Tech’s new building on Broadway), and downtown revitalization (exemplified by the newly refurbished main library).

IU Bicentennial

“Sometimes it's best to brave the wind and rain
By havin’ strength to go against the grain”

         Oak Ridge Boys, “Goin’ Against the Grain”

I interviewed former Lake County surveyor George Van Til at the Calumet Regional Archives as part of IU’s Bicentennial project. Another motivation was to convince Van Til to set up an Archives collection in his name. Although discussing events a half-century old, he recalled vividly how influential the campus experience was to his intellectual growth and subsequent political career.  Although his father never went to college due to financial exigencies, books and Newsweek magazines were in the house and dinner table discussion often centered on a pastor’s Sunday sermon.  A Political Science class offered by Fedor Cicak transformed his life. He signed up for it because he’d heard all one had to do was keep abreast of current world events, something George did anyway.  On the day of the first exam, George had come from visiting his father, who had just endured open heart surgery, and feared he’d fared poorly.  Later, as Cicak was returning the blue books, he read from Van Til’s and after class recruited him for the Political Science Club.  George rose to a leadership position and gained confidence that carried into other endeavors.  A Speech course also proved invaluable, as did an offering by Gary Mayor Richard Hatcher, who taught at IUN for more than 40 years and, shamefully, has never been awarded an honorary degree due to fears of alienating alumni donors.

 IUN Young Democrats in 1970 (from left, George Van Til, Ted Bownowski, Sandi Weissbuch, Patti Puplava, Linda Mosorx, Mike Reza, Joe Ciesielski, George Sufana

Political Science professor Fedor Cicak

Cicak had a distinctive Eastern European accent and organized student trips to the Mideast.  He frequently invited students and faculty to his home in Hobart.  Prior to my first visit, he told me to turn right after passing the Dough Boy.  He was referring to a World War I statue, but at first I thought he meant the Pillsbury Poppin’ Fresh Doughboy. As I recall, before I went to Saudi Arabia for three weeks to teach a course on the History of American Ideas, Cicak briefed me on what to expect in that Muslim monarchy.

 above, Dough Boy Memorial; below, Oak Ridge Boys

Van Til attended the Oak Ridge Boys annual Christmas concert at the Star Plaza, the final event before a wrecking ball demolishes the 40-year-old landmark.  The Oak Ridge Boys are the only group to have performed there every single year of its existence and a total of 111 times.  The group dedicated “I Guess It Never Hurts to Hurt Sometimes” to Bruce White, whose father Dean built the Star Plaza, and ended with “Amazing Grace.” Eloise Valadez of the NWI Times wrote: “The group stepped back to wait for the curtain to close as a number of Star Plaza Theatre personnel joined them onstage. Audience members then watched with tears in their eyes as the familiar red curtain slowly started to move.”

Having never visited the Archives, Van Til was impressed by the variety of our holdings, including a picture of IUN’s former Calumet Center in East Chicago and painting of steel baron Elbert H. Gary.  He noticed a 1977 union poster touting labor leaders Ed Sadlowski and Jim Balanoff during their Steelworkers Fight Back campaign and recalled that Balanoff’s wife Betty was a historian and the old warhorse’s complete opposite in demeanor but, like him, devoted to the rank and file. 

Videotaping Van Til’s comments in the Ronald Cohen Room of the Archives was Samantha Gauer, a recent graduate from Miami University in Ohio, who I’m hoping to use for subsequent interviews with IUN grads Congressman Peter Visclosky and Lake County Auditor John Petalas. Helping her set up was Aaron Pigors, director of Instructional Media Services, who accompanied me to a FACET conference in French Lick, where I interviewed more than a dozen celebrated educators from across the IU system in a single day.  I reminded Aaron that he’d hurried back to his wife, who’d recently given birth.  The child is now almost 8 years old, he said.  How time flies.  The following year, son Phil was my FACET conference camera man and won 50 dollars spinning the wheel at French Lick’s casino.  My prize was a French Lick t-shirt that I still wear on occasion.

My favorite characters in Richard Russo’s “Everybody’s Fool” (2016) are African Americans Clarice, assistant to Police Chief Doug Raymer, and octogenarian Mr. Hymes, seen most days in a roadside chair waving a small American flag to passersby.  Both are witty and have common sense.  After Clarice invites Raymer for a dinner of lamb chops and wine, he fears he’s insulted her by falling asleep. Apparently most everyone in Bath knew Raymer’s wife was having an affair with Clarice’s twin brother Jerome but the Chief.

Dee Van Bebber and I picked up 2.04 master points by winning at bridge with a score of 70.83%, my first time reaching that milestone.  We had a bye in the final round, so I left early and didn’t find out until the following morning.  As usual, what I mulled over afterwards was a hand where I got set down two doubled when Joel Chandelier trumped my good Heart trick before I could get the lead and then took my Queen of Spades as a finesse failed.  I could have minimized the damage to down one, which would have given us a decent board.  We did extremely well, however, against the two runners-up, Chuck and Marcy Tomes and Terry Bauer and Dottie Hart.  A day later, Dee and Chuck finished first at Charlie Halberstadt’s game in Valpo. 

Ray Smock wrote:

    The president promised the nation a Christmas present and he will deliver it. It should be clear to all but the GOP that this monstrous tax bill was not written by Santa Claus and his elves, but by Satan and Mammon, Satan's dark prince of Money and Greed. I can't remember the last time I used Satan in a sentence. But this is bad stuff. You don't kick 13 million people off health insurance rolls and call it a Christmas present.

    You don’t give the richest people in America a trillion dollars in tax savings and talk about Christmas in the same breath.  This is the largest single legalized theft in the history of this country. It is a big gift of charity for the very group of people who don’t need it.  It is only Christmas for billionaires like our president. The Trump family will be most merry indeed this year.

    Trump has no idea what is in the bill. But he will sign it with glee and great fanfare. He will be proud of this colossal theft, the greatest in his long career as a con man.

As Hollis Donald wrote in the poem “This Town Won’t Last Too Long”:

Those on top are talking ill will

Efforts to kill the little man are going on still

At the library pot luck luncheon, I pigged out on rib tips, chicken wings, a tamale, baked beans, spaghetti, salad, and deli pickles (my contribution to the cause). Betty Wilson suggested I try the frappe she made, which turned out to be Sprite with rainbow sherbet added.  I sat with Scott Sandberg, who has asked me to participate in a roundtable discussion of Martin Luther King’s Nobel lecture, “The Quest for Peace and Justice.”  He has submitted a Humanities Grant proposal for that purpose.  Also at our table was Cele Morris, who worked in the library for 18 and is married to emeritus Physics professor John Morris.  She reported that he recently messed up a knee falling down steps; in a previous spill, he had injured the other knee.  I knew him when he was first hired and couldn’t believe it when he retired. I recall Dean Mark Hoyert reading off a list of Morris’ scholarly publications that produced laughs because they were so arcane, including “Fermionic and Bosonic Stabilizing Effects for Type I and Type II Dimension Bubbles” in Physical Review.

At the Holiday bowling banquet a day later, I sat with Gene Clifford, who explained why a record number of snowy owls have flocked to Northwest Indiana in what experts call an eruption.  They feast on lemmings, field mice, and other small rodents and often hang out atop utility poles.  Gene spotted one near Lake Shore Toyota in Porter. Henrietta Irwin joined us, and we compared cheese cake recipes since she brought one with cherries on top. We both had an ample share of corn pudding, a specialty of my great Aunt Grace.  I almost told her she reminded me of Aunt Grace, being about the same age as she was the last time I saw her, but feared she might take it the wrong way. I once told sister-in-law Maureen she looked somewhat like actor Robert Mitchum, a handsome guy with bedroom eyes, but she didn’t seem to appreciate the sentiment.  Electrical Engineer teammate Bob Robinson, who has been on the DL all year with cancer and pretty much incommunicado, came with his wife, who I’d never met.  She called me Professor Lane and said she’d earned a master’s degree in Mathematics from IUN during the 1980s.