Homefront

 “Baby baby baby, what's wrong with Uncle Sam?

He's cut down on my sugar, now he's messin' with my ham
I got the ration blues, blue as I can be
Oh me, I've got those ration blues”

         Ration Blues,” Louis Jordan

In Nicole Anslover’s World War II class I passed out copies of Steel Shavings, volume 46 in preparation for my appearance next week to discuss the Gary Homefront. I pointed out short sections for them to read beforehand on Pearl Harbor memories, civil rights activist L.K. Jackson, and Gary in 1942 as portrayed in Kendall Svengalis’ novel “The Great Emerson Art Heist.”  The Pearl Harbor section makes mention of Vic and Midge, 25 on Pearl Harbor Day, and awaiting my birth some two months later.  A fourth selection by IUN student Jessica Nieman about farm girl Jean Schultz Ellis demonstrated that much of Lake and Porter County was rural in those days.  Nieman wrote:

 The youngest of six, Jean gathered eggs, fed the chickens, and brought in the cows.  When Jean was 14, she had her eyebrows done for school picture day, and they swelled up.  “My mom was pissed,” she recalled.  Jean was first in her family to graduate high school.   She said, “At 16 you could stop going.  My older sister would buy me clothes to keep me in school. She wanted me to succeed.”  She was one of 28 graduates in Chesterton’s class of 1943.  Jean had started waitressing at Edward’s Barbecue when just 14.   She learned to drive in her mother’s 1934 Ford.   A Chesterton movie theater had midweek dime shows, which made for an affordable evening out. Jean also loved roller-skating.

above, Jean Shultz at 14; below, Jessica Nieman with "Pally" and Jean

Next I read several passages to demonstrate the city’s wartime blue collar nature and being home to dozens of ethnic groups, as well as Southern white and black newcomers needed in the mills and defense plants.  First I recited Robert Buzecky’s “Steel City, Stone City,” which begins: 

Buzecky, Militich, Rodriguez, Kowalak,

Thousands of Somebodies

From all over the planet.

Names make them different

Blue shirts and steel made them family.

I read brief excerpts from student articles by Lori Van Gorp (about Florence Medellin living in the heart of Gary’s red-light district) and Kristin MacPherson, who learned about her Italian grandparents Wilbur and Margaret from her father Donald Rettig.  Wilbur worked at a title company, drove a taxi, and kept the books for a bowling league.  Margaret worked part-time in the bowling alley kitchen and was famous for a cinnamon streusel coffee cake.  Donald told Kristin:

    My mom loved Dean Martin and Perry Como. The aroma of food was always in the air, with a pot of spaghetti sauce or soup on the stove. Noodles might be drying over chairs or homemade ravioli scattered over the dining room table. I will never forget my mom wringing a chicken’s neck and nailing it to the garage to clean it.  We had the biggest garden in the neighborhood. Everyone helped.  Mom canned tomatoes, beans, and beets and made pickles, jellies, and jams.  At Easter there’d be a lamb cake, and at Christmas containers of cookies were on each step going upstairs. No one ever left hungry.  

    My mother’s sisters would come over to play cards.  They’d speak Italian and laugh for hours.  We’d sneak under the big dining room table in hopes they’d drop some coins.  After bedtime we’d peek through the floor grate and watch them.

 Wilbur, Margaret and Don Rettig

Since Vee-Jay Records co-founder Vivian Carter was on the cover, I explained that during the war she joined the Quartermaster Corps and was stationed in Washington. D.C., broadening her horizons and discovering  musicians that she later recorded.  I explained that many black performers in the 1940s had crossover hits and were popular with white audiences, not only jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington but vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole (my father’s favorite) and harmony groups such the Mills Brothers and Ink Spots that influenced Gary’s own Spaniels, pictured on the back cover. Up-tempo band leaders such as Cab Calloway (who appears in the 1980 “Blues Brothers” film performing “Minnie the Moocher”) and Louis Jordan belted out “jump” music that presaged rock and roll. I had Nicole play YouTube excerpts from “If I Didn’t Care” by the Ink Spots and “Caldonia” by Louis Jordon and the Tympany Five.  The latter begins:

Walkin’ with my baby she's got great big feet
She’s long, lean, and lanky and ain’t had nothing to eat
She’s my baby and I love her just the same
Crazy ’bout that woman cause Caldonia is her name

Next week, I’ll play “Ration Blues” by Louis Jordan, which contains this verse:

They reduced my meat and sugar
And rubber's disappearing fast
You can't ride no more with poppa
'Cause Uncle Sam wants my gas

Speaking about the war in the Pacific, Nicole brought up the army’s use of Navaho code talkers (above) to communicate in the field, since almost nobody outside the tribe could speak their unique language.   The Japanese could never crack it.  After class a student named Heather had the magazine open to a page containing a photo of M to F transgender Dakota Yorke, a 2016 Portage High School homecoming queen finalist.  “Dakota’s my best friend,”Heather exclaimed, and showed me that she had sent a photo of the page to Dakota, who texted back that she was really excited and anxious to read what I’d written.

above, Dakota; below, woodcut by Corey Hagelberg

At bridge Dick and Cheryl had noticed a photo of son Corey’s woodcut “We All Share the Same Roots” in the new edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History” and inquired about obtaining it.  I offered to trade one for an out-of-print copy of the “Tales of Lake Michigan and the Northwest Indiana Dunelands” Steel Shavings (volume 28, 1998), which they produced three days later.  It contains an interview with a former bowling acquaintance whom I nicknamed “Slick Tom” where he talked about picking up girls along the Lake Michigan shoreline in his cabin cruiser.  The steelworker bragged:

 In the summer I’d trade with everybody to get on straight midnights so I could cruise the beach to see who I could pick up.  A good spot was Lake Street.  Usually I’d take a friend.  By 11 or 12 o’clock, girls would be out sunbathing.  You might pick up one, two, three or four girls.  It was easy.  You just looked to see who was waving their arms.  When a girl starts flagging down a boat, it usually sends a signal that they are ready to party.  You pulled in, and if they weren’t good-looking, you pulled back away.

 Once my cousin and I picked up two pretty-looking girls.  We thought they were in their mid-20s.  We zoomed out about a mile and a half and started drinking some wine.  We were getting out of our bathing suits when I asked one girl how old she was.  I found out the two girls were 14 and 15 years old.  Needless to say, we got them dressed very quickly and rushed them back to shore.

 If we saw a good-looking girl who didn’t wave, we’d get out the inner tube and tie it to the back of the boat. I’d get on it.  Then my buddy would race in close towards shore and spin the boat and make the tube go right into the beach.  I’d stumble up on shore and say, “Hey, my name’s Tom.  We need three people to water ski.  Would you like a boat ride and be an observer?”  That worked like a champ.  Initially, they might say no, they were engaged or married.  Once they were on the boat for a few hours, after some persuasion and some drink, the changes in their demeanor were amazing.

“Tales of Lake Michigan” also contains my interview with Region Dunes artist David Sander (1923-1999), who told me:

 I was in the navy during World War II. After my discharge, I went back to the University of Chicago on the G.I. Bill.  I met and married a classical language student, who was not familiar with the Dunes.  One day we drove to have a look at them.  It just happened that we parked next to a station wagon that had a Chesterton real estate address.  We asked the lady to show us some land.  The first place she showed us, we bought, a 40-acre tract in Beverly Shores at the end of a road that had a house, a barn, and a set of batteries because we were too far for city electricity.

 The former owner was an old Hungarian farmer.  He and his wife lived in a little milk house for several months after we purchased the land. She used to walk to Chesterton and try to sell articles they no longer needed, like a butter churn.  She’d be saying things in Hungarian, and people thought she was crazy.  Finally their son came and rescued them.

 I started painting again.  Lake Michigan became part of my nature.  Mostly I painted the Dunes.  Without people.  People-less dunes. I found the less I put into a painting, the more original it was.  After all, a painting is a rendering of a subject, not the subject itself.  The details are not the subject of a painting. The true artist creates something which is an amalgam, different and presumably greater than either him or his subject.

I vividly recall scores of dunes paintings scattered all over Sander’s home, seemingly discarded, and not having the nerve to ask him for one or two.  Not long afterwards, he was dead.

 Marcus Brown; photo by Beverly Brown

After winning the first game from 2 L’s and 2 R’s, the Engineers had only one strike in the entire second game and lost by 70 pins, as Marcus Brown bowled in the 240s,well above his average.  I had felt a twinge in my upper leg and briefly considered sitting out the finale.  Then, after a spare, split and missed 10-pin, I strung six strikes in a row and then converted a a spare, finishing with a 221, my highest score since I started at Hobart Lanes.  I got several fist bumps from bowlers nearby.  The Engineers picked up an amazing 17 strikes in that one game to win handily and garner 5 of 7 points.  I edged Joe Piunti, who won game one for us, for most pins over average by a mere 2 pins for the four-dollar pot.  Afterwards, I asked Dorothy Peterson and Gene Clifford how they liked “Shrek: The Musical” Sunday. They enjoyed it, but a woman near them with a young girl was complaining about hearing three curse words.  That was news to me.  They must have been pretty inoffensive.  Gene and Dorothy have tickets for “Million Dollar Quarter” at the Munster Theater.

Dorothy Peterson

Zion Williamson on ground

Nike stock fell more than 1% after Duke star Zion Williamson’s sneaker imploded 33 seconds into a game with North Carolina and he injured a knee.  Nike had signed a lucrative deal with the university that mandated players wear their brand even though they received nothing but free sneakers while Coach K’s annual salary rose to in the neighborhood of 10 million dollars. What a farce.

Umbrella Offenders

“The American people never carry an umbrella.  They prefer to walk in eternal sunshine.” Al Smith

 Al Smith with trademark derby

According to Tanya Basu, writing for Mental Floss,umbrellas were once used almost exclusively by women, and for a man to carry one was considered effeminate.  The Chinese invented umbrellas 2,000 years ago to provide shade for rulers’ carriages.  Some conspiracy theorists believe a mysterious “Umbrella Man” played a role in JFK’s assassination.  Basu provided a logical explanation:

  Shortly after noon in Dallas, as President John F. Kennedy’s car drove past Dealey Plaza, a man opened his umbrella and waved it from east to west. Moments later, a shower of gunshots fell from the sky and killed the 35th president of the United States. Why did he have an umbrella? Was he signaling the assassin(s)? Did he have a gun attached to the umbrella that delivered the fatal wounds? These questions were debated for years but never quite answered until Louie Steven Witt appeared before the House Select Committee on Assassinations a decade later to testify about his umbrella, claiming he’d not only been unaware of the brouhaha but that he was simply heckling the President for his father’s role in working with former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in appeasing Adolf Hitler before World War II (the effete Chamberlain’s fashion accessory of choice was a black umbrella).

New Yorkercartoonist Carolita Johnson told a National Writers Union reporter that practitioners in her profession were underpaid and struggle to make ends meet: 

I’ve had to work nights for a few months at a call center, selling season tickets to the Washington Philharmonic, I think it was. I also earn some of my income trying on clothes for patternmakers—as a junior medium—in Manhattan’s Garment District, which is pretty good work, but I’m getting too old for it, and will soon have to find something else. Anyway, that’s all to say that even the most successful cartoonists at the best publications can’t ever rely on their income from cartooning. Unless they live with their parents or have a rich spouse. As long as I find things funny in life, I’ll sit down and draw cartoons about them, as a matter of desire and habit. I can’t really stop myself until some philanthropic urge possesses me to go dig ditches in a third world country, or feel I can be more useful doing something else. But for now, this is my contribution to the world.

I opened my umbrella walking from the parking lot to IUN’s library.  Most students use hoodies to keep rain off their heads.  Once notorious for losing umbrellas, I’d sometimes fail to find it at Lost and Found and simply claim another black one.  When Al Smith, “The Happy Warrior,” was New York governor during the Roaring Twenties, the outlook was sunny, but the Wall Street Crash was just around the corner, dampening the horizon.  

At Brummitt School in Chesterton I voted in the Democratic primary despite a paucity of competitive races in Porter County. In the smear-stained Republican Indiana Senate race, millionaire Mike Braun defeated two troglodyte incumbent Congressmen, Todd Rokita and Luke Messer, by claiming to be a political outsider like Trump had been.  I plan to campaign for Democrat Joe Donnelly, whom the Republican National Committee is targeting due to Hoosiers having awarded Trump a large majority in 2016.  Ragen Hatcher defeated Jessica Renslow in Indiana House District 3 and will succeed Charlie Brown, a close ally of her dad.  Tired of the drive to and from Indy on hazardous I-65 but not ready to retire from politics, Brown won nomination for Lake County commissioner.

 Hatcher (left) debating Jessica Renslow

At bridge, by the time I was hungry for one of Dottie Hart’s chocolate chip cookies, they were all gone. With six full tables, director Alan Yngve employed a straight Mitchell movement.  Partners starting North-South remained at the same table and those starting East-West played three hands and then moved.  Dee Van Bebber  and I finished second among the stationary players to Rich and Sally Will. In the key hand, with 6 Clubs to the Ace nine, I overcalled Alan’s 1 Diamond bid; Janice Custer doubled, expecting Alan to respond, but everyone passed.  With a 4-1 split against me, I went down 1 vulnerable for -200 points and second low board, as 4 other East-West pairs made partial scores of 140 or 170.  Meanwhile, top board went to the Wills, playing East-West, who bid and made game at 3 No-Trump.

 Walter LaFeber farewell lecture before 3,000 people at Cornell, 2006

Historian Walter LaFeber, 86, the country’s foremost diplomatic historian, and supposedly part of the Silent Generation, replied to mention of him in Steel Shavingsvolume 47.  I had repeated his remark that “Ours was supposedly the generation that never showed up.  But some of us did show up.” I added: “The son of a Walkerton, IN, grocer and a lifelong Cubs, fan, LaFeber treasured a photo of Hall of Famer Ernie Banks inscribed “Keep Going, Walt.”  It adorned his Cornell office, along with a sign warning, “Chicago Cubs Fans Parking Only.”  LaFeber’s email read: “Many thanks for your writing. It was good of you to remember the so-called Silent Generation.  Not as many left anymore, and too many of those who are around are voting for Trump, so that's not exactly bragging about them, I guess.  Best wishes, Walt” A New Left revisionist but neither doctrinaire nor an economic determinist, LaFeber wrote two path-breaking books during the 1960s, “The New Empire” and “America, Russia, and the Cold War,” and in 1989 the standard foreign relations textbook, “The American Age.”  

 Tori with Alissa and T. Haas

Hanging with sister Alissa at the “Study Abroad” booth, on Tori’s freshman orientation day at Grand Valley State University, she took a selfie with popular President Thomas J. Haas, “T. Haas” to students.

 Dakota Yorke

Jerry Davich’s column provided an update on transgender Portage graduate Dakota Yorke, a prom queen nominee two years ago. He seemed particularly interested in asking plumbing questions, reporting, for instance, that she has not yet had any surgical or cosmetic procedures.  Dakota told him, “Genitalia doesn’t define gender, and I constantly repeat that to myself.”  She has been taking hormone treatments, in part to augment her breasts but told Davich, “Unfortunately I haven’t really seen any growth.” Explaining that she has been dating men and exploring her sexuality, Dakota added: “How are you  going to know what you’re into if you don’t try?”

 Bakker brothers; Post-Tribune photo by Kyle Telechan

Camelia Murry; Post-Tribune photo by Kyle Telethon

Among the 778 students graduating from IUN were three brothers from Cedar Lake, Dakota, Dyllan, and Dustin Bakker. Camelia Murry, 29, who was awarded a master’s degree in social work and hopes to be a school counselor, wore a cap containing family photos and this message: “I did it 4 my boys.”

Prom Royalty

“I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognized as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world.” Julia Serano, “Whipping Girl”

Vivacious transgender Portage senior Dakota Yorke was voted a prom queen finalist after school officials gave the OK. Jerry Davich publicized her transformation and had her on Lakeshore Radio’s “Casual Friday.”  Last summer Dakota stayed with her older sister in Wisconsin for a month.  Her mother Dawn told the NWI Times, “Dakota left a boy and came back a girl.”  Dakota explained: “At some point I decided to be me.  You only have one life to live.  I want to be 100 percent who Dakota is.”  At the prom, held at Porter County Expo Center, Dakota finished first runnerup to prom queen Anisa Rayner and received a tiara and the title “Prom Royalty.”  She told the Post-Tribune’s Michelle L. Quinn that by the end of the evening her feet were sore from dancing.  One senior said it was an honor to dance with such a beauty and one so brave.  Prom queen Rayner told Jerry Davich: “I was nothing but happy for Dakota, and I wished her the very best, as she also did for me.  We were friends long before being on prom court, so I was really excited for her.” (below, Anisa Rayner and Maverick Edwards)

 

I applaud Portage teachers, students, and administrators for supporting Dakota and validating her decision.  In her excitement getting ready for the prom, Dakota had left her student I.D. at home.  Chaperones didn’t make her go home for it.  One said with a smile, “We know you, Dakota.”

At my suggestion Steve McShane put together a window display in IUN’s library/conference center lobby of Gary cookbooks that Judy Ayers donated to the Calumet Regional Archives.  Those from Bethel Lutheran Church in Miller contain numerous Swedish recipes.  Mrs. Hjalmar Lenngren contributed this recipe for Fin Klimp, or dumplings:

  Combine 2 tablespoons of butter with three-quarters cup of flour.  Melt in pan and add two and a half cups of milk.  Stir until ingredients leave bottom of pan.  Add 1 egg.  Let simmer for a few seconds, then add 2 teaspoons of sugar and four bitter almonds, grated, to mixture before removing from fire. Use a large jello mold, rinse with cold water.  Put mixture in mold.  Let stand still until cold.  Unmold ands serve with vegetable soup.

 Jerome Tachik with wife Susan

On the final week of bowling Mel Nelson got hot, enabling the Engineers to win game three and series.  We lost game two by a single pin to We’re Here when Henrietta Irwin (whom teammates call Henry) and Steve Huffman doubled in the tenth.  Nearby, Jerome Tachik rolled a 299.  For the banquet I agreed to bring pickles from Jewel, a big hit at Christmas.

Chuck and Jimbo; photo by Donald Luckett

At an IUN Savannah Gallery reception I greeted former athletic director Linda Anderson and congratulated Ann Fritz on the large turnout despite it being an off-week between semesters.  Donald Luckett snapped a shot of me with Chuck Gallmeier, and I joked that I’m always having my photo taken with someone taller.  Donald suggested I stand next to a diminutive English professor, but I demurred.  Next day I again ran into Gallmeier and wife Barb Schmal at Zoran and Vesna Kilibarda’s party celebrating their promotions.  Zoran mentioned a March field trip to Death Valley, California, where several students experienced symptoms of heat stroke.  The food roast lamb and trimmings were great.  Surekha Rao asked me to put together a session for an upcoming Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences conference at Purdue North Central in Westville.  I told Geosciences professor Kristen Huysken’s husband Harley about a great-uncle Harley, who was Pennsylvania Dutch. 

 Vesna and Zoran Kilibarda

IUN’s “Little Library” at Thirty-Fifth and Washington resembles a birdhouse.  Inside was Kurt Vonnegut’s “Look At the Birdie.”  Perhaps Fred McColly donated it in order to share the Indiana bard’s wit and wisdom.  I added a copy of my latest Steel Shavings to the free offerings.

In California on sabbatical Neil Goodman, a faithful Shavings reader, wrote that he loved my weaving together the mundane with the memorable. Paul Kern offered these comments:

Starting with the cover [photos of Dolly Millender and Claude Taliaferro], it has a sobering number of obituaries. Your mother (I enjoyed reading about her life.), Hy Feldman, Tom Higgins, Ray Mohl, Ron Heflin. Sigh. As you brood, we're moving toward the front of the line. I remember Mohl as a tireless worker, usually coming to the office on Saturdays and Sundays. Access to the offices was blocked in those days by steel gates reaching almost to the ceiling and Ray used to scale the gate to reach his office. He had a wife and young children at home so the atmosphere there was probably not conducive to work. He and his wife divorced soon after he left IUN.

I saw a lot of Ron Heflin's Roosevelt games, usually with Leroy Gray. The most memorable one for me was the state championship game Roosevelt lost in overtime to Scott Skiles' Plymouth team. It looked like Roosevelt had it won until Skiles hit a thirty-foot buzzer beater to force OT.  Heflin and Earl Smith epitomized a golden age of Gary basketball. By the way, I saw that 1971 game between West Side and E.C. Washington Louis Vasquez writes about, having driven down from Chicago to watch it. The next year, of course, West Side made it to the state finals but lost to Connersville and then got suspended for a year after some fans went berserk in the parking lot and vandalized some cars.

It was American Military History that Bill Neil sat in on. The ROTC program required it so there was a demand for the course and I was pressed into service because none of the peacenik American historians wanted to teach it. In a course where I was just barely keeping ahead of the class I was pretty tied to my notes, thus violating one of Bill's chief pedagogical principles, a shortcoming for which he gently chided me. Bill had not been able to teach the course himself because of a long-planned trip. He was a master at the tactful intervention to make a correction or interesting comment. At the end of the last day he was able to attend, the class gave him an ovation.

I noticed you and Dave had a nice meal at Casa Blanca. Julie and I used to go there often. We also liked Taco Real in Hammond and Jalapena's in Schererville. None of the Mexican restaurants around here are as good as the ones in the Region. You mourn the passing of some old landmark restaurants. The economic history of Lake County can be traced by restaurant closings. When I came for my interview at IUN, Bill took me to lunch at a restaurant in downtown Gary. Several years later when I began to join his group at lunch occasionally, that placed was closed and they were eating at a diner at Broadway and Ridge Road in Glen Park. After that place closed, they moved to a couple of restaurants on Broadway in Merrillville. By the time Jack and I were the only ones left standing, we had to go all the way out to Round the Clock on Highway 30.

Becca stayed overnight after attending a Discovery Charter School Hawaii-themed dance.  She in a band and her favorite group is Panic at the Disco.  The Las Vegas band’s new song is “Don’t Threaten Me with a Good Time.”  This summer they’re touring with Weezer.  I’ve got Weezer on heavy CD rotation along with Titus Andronicus, Hüsker Dü, Cracker, and the BoDeans.  Alissa and Beth arrived to be with Toni on Mothers Day.  Toni made delicious omelets.  Alissa is off for Tanzania in three days.

 Pegg Sangerman with Eric Brant

The production of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” at Memorial Opera House really picked up with the appearance of Pegg Sangerman and Anne SharpTree as hot British divorcees Gwendolyn and Cecily Pigeon.  Oscar (the slovenly roommate) had arranged for a double date, but Felix (a finicky neatness freak) began blubbering about his kids and wife who threw him out. He wins the Pigeon sisters’ sympathy and moves in with them.  Pegg Sangerman’s daughter Samantha, a childhood friend of Alissa, is pursuing a theatrical career in New York.

Merrillville history book club member Lee Christakis reported on William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” (1960).  My main contribution was summarizing criticisms from historians regarding the author’s assertion that Nazi totalitarianism was a logical phase in Germany’s authoritarian national development – that there was, in effect, a continuum (known as the Sonderweg interpretation) from Martin Luther to Adolf Hitler. Shirer was obsessed with the sexual behavior of high Nazi officials and has been taken to task for equating homosexuality with perversion.

At Gino’s was Paul Giogi, whose father was a pioneer physician in Gary.  My guest Chris Young will speak on Andrew Jackson in July.  When I announced that Chris will be teaching a Fall seminar on Abraham Lincoln, several folks inquired about auditing it.  In September Roy Dominguez will be reporting on a book by Austin Craig on Filipino nationalist José Rizal, executed by a Spanish firing squad in 1896.  Roy has indicated a desire to teach a SPEA course and I suggested one on Cold Cases both innocent victims wrongly convicted and, with the help of DNA advancements, solving crimes committed in years past.  While Dominquez was Lake County sheriff, his staff solved several cases.

West Point is investigating whether 16 African-American graduates violated a regulation forbidding the making of political statements while in uniform.  While they were merely celebrating their accomplishment, killjoys claimed their gesture indicated support for Black Lives Matter.

 Sharon Eng's parents George and Gwenneth Lousheff

Breanna Eng interviewed her mother, 59 year-old Sharon Eng, born to Gwenneth and George Lousheff.  Gwenneth’s parents were English immigrants, and she grew up in Gary, attending Emerson School.  George’s parents were Macedonians, and he attended Gary Horace Mann.  George and Gwenneth lived in Tolleston.  Gwenneth worked for Bell Telephone and could walk to work.  George was a carpenter with local union 599.  He and Gwen bowled.  He played in a dart league, competed roller derby, and was in a group called the “Unpredictables” that would dress up as women and put on hilarious skits.  Son Gregory was born in 1955 and Sharon a year later.  The family moved to Hobart when Sharon was four.  George had a brush with death when he fell 25 feet through scaffolding, breaking both legs, his nose and wrist, and suffering memory loss.  Breanna Eng wrote:

Sharon attended Mundell School and Emmanuel Lutheran Church.  Her family moved to Merrillville when Sharon was in fifth grade after her dad and uncle built a house from the ground up. The family went camping in an RV every summer.  They played a half-dozen card games and a dice game called 10,000.   At 15 Sharon worked at Breslers Ice Cream shop in Merrillville with four friends.  They had a blast.  Workers next door at Broadway Cinema on 61^st traded movie passes for ice cream until the bosses caught on. Sharon got into a fight with a girl who spit on her. Sharon retaliated by singeing her hair with a match.  Sharon’s lost her best friend over a boy, and they did not speak for over 30 years.  Shortly after Sharon’s brother Gregory graduated high school in 1953, he was riding a bicycle with his best friend on the way to their senior camping trip when a drunk driver killed him.  Sharon misses her brother every day.

  Sharon and David Eng bonded at a Luther League retreat.  David was a grade ahead of her. They started dating in Sharon’s junior year.  David moved to Georgia for a year but then came back.  Sometimes on weekends they’d drive up and down Broadway munching on pizza and drag racing in souped-up cars borrowed from David J.’s older brother, who owned an auto shop. After graduation Sharon worked at Summerfield Truck Company, at Gariup Construction, and then at Gary National Bank.  After a long engagement Sharon married David on August 9, 1978.  They moved to Portage and bowled and played softball together.  After taking several years off to be with her kids, Sharon worked for a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. Sharon and David had their fights and almost divorced but eventually worked through their problems. 

Sharon (fifth from right), with children, husband and mother

Breanna Eng, top right, with family