Skyline Pigeon

“Turn me loose from your hands

Let me fly to distant lands

Over green fields, trees and mountains

Flowers and forest fountains

Home along the lanes of the skyway.”

         Elton John, “Skyline Pigeon”

 Ryan White; hospital visit by Elton John

The March 2016 issue of Indiana Magazine of History contains Allen Safianow’s “The Challenges of Local Oral History: The Ryan White Project.”  A teenager in Kokomo, Indiana, White, a hemophiliac, contracted AIDS from contaminated blood transfusions and in 1985 was prevented from attending high school after protests from parents.  When his mother fought the School Superintendent’s decision, her car tires were slit and malicious rumors spread that Ryan had caught AIDS from her.  Another falsehood claimed that Ryan had spat at adversaries who shunned or insulted him.  At Easter services members of his congregation refused to shake his hand and consigned him to the back pew. At Ryan’s request, the family ultimately moved to Cicero, Illinois, a community that welcomed him.  During the lengthy legal fight, Ryan became nationally famous and befriended by singers Elton John and Michael Jackson and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. Elton took Ryan on a private tour of Disneyland, paid the down payment on their house in Cicero, and started the Elton John AIDS Foundation.   At his funeral in 1990, which 1,500 people attended, including TV host Phil Donahue and First Lady Barbara Bush, Elton sang “Skyline Pigeon,” whose last lines go:

I want to hear the pealing bells

Of distant churches sing

But most of all please free me

From this aching metal ring

And open out this cage towards the sun.

Oral historian for the Howard County Historical Society’s Ryan White project, Allen Safianow’s scholarly article makes reference to insights by oral history heavyweights Mary Larson on making ethical judgments, Linda Shopes on challenging contradictions and inaccuracies, Alessandro Portelli on memory as an active process of creating meanings, and Donald Ritchie on the multiple ways of doing oral history.  Safianow concludes with this quote from Ritchie’s classic how-to book “Doing Oral History”(2003), noting:

the tendency of oral history to confound rather than confirm our assumptions, confronting each of us with conflicting viewpoints and encouraging us to examine events from multiple perspectives.  Oral history’s value derives not from resisting the unexpected but from relishing it.  By adding an ever-wider range of voices to the story, oral history doesn’t simplify the historical narrative but makes it more complex – and more interesting.

 Donald Ritchie in 2011

Five years after the Howard County Historical Society created a Hall of Legends, Ryan White name was finally added to the list.  His mother, Jeanne White-Ginder, spoke at the induction ceremony, saying that Ryan, who lived five years longer than doctors predicted, would have wanted her to attend.  In a subsequent interview Jeanne told Safianow: “He would want that fight to be over and say, ‘You know, you’re all forgiven.  You helped me live.’  And I don’t think Kokomo realizes that, but they did, they helped him live with AIDS because of the fight.”  Ironically, had the town not shunned Ryan, he might never have become, in reporter Patrick Curry’s words, the “beacon of hope [who inspired] millions toward understanding and personal growth.”

Shortly after Ryan White’s death I attended a Colts-Redskins game in Indy, and everyone received a free CD containing Elton John’s tribute.  On the twentieth anniversary of Ryan’s death, Elton addressed these remarks to him:

I remember so well when we first met. A young boy with a terrible disease, you were the epitome of grace. You never blamed anyone for the illness that ravaged your body or the torment and stigma you endured.

When students, parents and teachers in your community shunned you, threatened you and expelled you from school, you responded not with words of hate but with understanding beyond your years. You said they were simply afraid of what they did not know.

When the media heralded you as an "innocent victim" because you had contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion, you rejected that label and stood in solidarity with thousands of HIV-positive women and men. You reminded America that all victims of AIDS are innocent.

Ryan, you inspired awareness, which helped lead to lifesaving treatments. In 1990, four months after you died, Congress passed the Ryan White Care Act, which now provides more than $2 billion each year for AIDS medicine and treatment for half a million Americans. Today, countless people with HIV live long, productive lives.

Allen Safianow in 2005

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Allen Safianow has conducted oral histories with Kokomo residents about the Ku Klux Klan, a powerful hate group in that community during the 1920s.   Safianow was the 2005 recipient of the Indiana Historical Society’s Emma Lou and Gayle Thornbrough award for an Indiana Magazine of History (IMH) article entitled “You Can't Burn History': Getting Right with the Klan in Noblesville, Indiana.”  IMH editor Eric Sandweiss noted:

Safianow's carefully researched study sheds light on not one but two periods in Indiana: the 1920s and our own time. By unearthing the reactions of early Noblesville residents to the presence of the Ku Klux Klan in their community, he tells us a great deal about how racism incorporated itself into the lives of ordinary Americans.

[Safianow recounted] the sensitive issue of how a community deals with the fact that its most respected citizens, its esteemed forefathers, embraced an organization which now is commonly regarded as an anathema, a gross antithesis of the fundamental ideals of this nation.

The Engineers took 5 of 7 points from the Pin Heads.  My best game was a 167 despite four splits.  In consecutive frames I picked up the 5-7 and 5-10.  After I missed a ten-pin, Ken Cichocki quipped, “Had the five-pin also been standing, you’d have converted the spare.”  Ron Smith had a chance to win $50 if he knocked down exactly five pins on his first ball and another 50 if he then converted the spare.  He did the difficult part, leaving the 1-2-3-4-5, for $50 but then left the 5-pin on his second ball.  His team’s name, the Pin Heads, reminded me of a party during the late 70s when we invited softball teammates, who favored heavy metal, and friends who liked punk bands.  When someone put on a Talking Heads album, my softball battery mate yelled, “Who’s the pinhead who put that crap on?”

A joke from Jim Spicer, who wrote, “Apparently it’s no longer politically correct to direct a joke at any racial or ethnic minority. So”:

An Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Welshman, a Ghurkha, a Latvian, a Turk, an Aussie, two Kiwis, a German, an American, a South African, a Cypriot, an Egyptian, a Japanese, a Mexican, a Spaniard, a Russian, a Pole, a Lithuanian, a Swede, a Finn, an Israeli, a Dane, a Romanian, a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Swiss, a Greek, a Singaporean, an Italian, a Norwegian, a Libyan, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, and an Ethiopian went to a night club.       

The bouncer said, “Sorry, I can’t let you in without a Thai.”

Straight Men

“A liberal arts dean in a good mood is a potentially dangerous thing.  It suggests a world different from the one we know.  One where any damn thing can happen.”  Richard Russo

IUN dean Mark Hoyert includes the above Russo quote on his email correspondence.  The main character in “Straight Man,” an academician, admits in the Prologue: “Truth be told I’m not an easy man.  I can be an entertaining one, though it’s been my experience that most people don’t want to be entertained.  They want to be comforted.  And, of course, my idea of entertaining might not be yours.”  Like William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the protagonist in “Straight Man,” Hoyert can be exasperating but is always entertaining.   In a time of declining revenue for higher education, when campuses are moving away from IU’s traditional commitment to being, first and foremost, a liberal arts institution, his is an unenviable job that has frustrated and overwhelmed several predecessors. 

Straight man can refer a heterosexual, one who does not take drugs or an honest soul who says what he thinks, as in straight shooter.  In comedy duos the straight man sets up a partner to deliver the joke.  In Russo’s novel the antihero usually delivers punch lines at others’ expense.  For instance, when a university colleague says, “I hear you don’t write anymore,” Devereaux responds, “Not true.  You should see the margins of my student papers.”  Told that’s not the same as writing a book, he replies, “Almost identical, both go largely unread.”  When wife Lily pleaded, “Be the man you are.  Be the man I married,” Devereaux replied: “Which?  Make up your mind?

Dave Serynek told me that his last IUN class before graduating was Twentieth Century American Literature with George Bodmer, so, in his words, he “went out with a bang.”  Dave loved the instructor’s wit; and although the marginal comments on assigned papers were at times sarcastic, they motivated him to improve his writing skills and ponder the multiple interpretations.  Bodmer assigned “Lolita” (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov, about literature professor Humbert Humbert, obsessed with a 12 year-old “nymphet” whom he manages to seduce after becoming her stepfather.  One wonders what might have happened if the women flunking Anne Balay’s course who complained of being exposed to the children’s book “Nappy Hair” would have taken this class and, doomed to fail, registered similar complaints about a novel dealing with child molestation.  Would Bodmer’s superiors have had his back or, like with Anne (below, at Cornell), thrown him to the wolves?  They probably would have supported him in the name of academic freedom, although had Humbert Humbert’s victim been a boy, it might have been a different story.

Near the library courtyard I crossed paths with Chris Young, flush from a Colonial America class, who told me about experiences in London while researching Abraham Lincoln monuments.  At the Parliamentary Archives to examine the papers of David Lloyd-George, who dedicated one of them, a bobby asked his name.  Having secured permission beforehand, he said, “Christopher Young.”  The guard frowned, scanned a list skeptically, and then said, “Oh, you should have said Professor Young.”  Very British, we both agreed.  Chuck Gallmeier joined us and, a graver, mentioned Karl Marx’s impressive burial site at Highgate Cemetery in north London.  On any given day, large crowds pay their respects, especially on May 5, the anniversary of his birth.  In contrast, a nearby marker for Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, once the darling of America’s Robber Barons, lies untended and virtually unnoticed.

Arcade Fire with Marky Ramone (on drums) and Mavis Staples

In Brooklyn recently, Marky Ramone joined Arcade Fire on “I Wanna Go Down to the Basement” and “I Wanna Be Sedated.”  For Arcade Fire’s Chicago appearance the great Mavis Staples sang the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time” after opening up with a few bars of the Staples Singers’ “This Could Be the Last Time.”  While tempted to check out Arcade Fire’s “Reflector” from Chesterton library, I opted instead for two Spin Doctors CDs.  On September 6 they’ll be at the Valpo Popcorn Festival.

I learned from Brenda Ann Love that Lafayette, Indiana, police basically censored a graffiti-style portrait by Aaron Molden of an officer in riot gear.  Inspired by events in Ferguson, the street art piece was part of a citywide project entitled small spaces: Lafayette.  Under intense pressure the woman in charge decided to paint over it just one day after it appeared.

During the Lane Fantasy Football draft son Dave entered my selections and gave me advice in the later rounds.  I picked second and snatched up Eagles running back Sean McCoy.  In the second round I opted for Cincinnati wide receiver A.J. Green, followed by more running backs and receivers.  I waited until the seventh round to take a quarterback (Cam Newton) and, unbelievably, the Patriots’ Tom Brady was still available in the eleventh. I also have the top ranked defense (Seattle) and kicker (Jason Tucker) plus decent tight ends in Jason Whitten and Martellus Bennett, despite waiting till the tenth and twelfth rounds to add them to the roster.  Jimmy Graham, far and away the best at that position, went to Garrett Okomski in the first round.  As always, much will depend on injuries, but I am defending champion and feel confident.

Eric Sandweiss sent Indiana Magazine of History (IMH) board members a biannual report.  He took my advice and will include a Roundtable on James H. Madison’s “Hoosiers: A New History of Indiana” in the December 2014 issue.  Madison himself thanked me for my blog comments, as well as “all your work that helped make the book.”  He makes splendid use of recent IMH articles, but I was disappointed that he eschewed chronological chapters after the postwar in favor of thematic ones such as “Hoosier Traditions and the Winds of Change.”  For instance, I would have liked one on “The Sixties Social

Revolution and Its Aftermath.”

Madison made a special effort to include material about the Calumet Region and starts the Great Depression chapter with a quote from Whiting resident Betty Gehrke gleaned from John Bodnar’s path breaking “Our Towns: Remembering Community in Indiana” (2001).  Gehrke, interviewed in 1990 when 79 years old, summed up her perspective on the 1930s in this manner:

“In our generation, we knew how hard it was to come by things and make money last . . . it was something that stayed with me because I realized how quickly it could all be taken away.”

Madison added: “Gehrke’s generation never forgot the worst economic depression in American history” – or the war that followed. 

Bill Monroe, the “Father of Bluegrass,” came to Whiting in 1929 at age 18 with brothers Birch and Charlie to work at Standard Oil Refinery.  He and Charlie started performing as the Monroe brothers on local radio stations WAE in Hammond and WJKS in Gary.  Monroe went on to form the Blue Grass Boys, which by the mid-1940s included Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt.  Monroe, who played the mandolin, pioneered a genre that featured a frenetic beat, sophisticated harmonies, and solo breaks to showcase the proficiency of members such as fiddler Chubby Wise.  Elvis Presley sang Monroe’s most famous composition, “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” on his first record.

Whiting, Indiana, August 27, 1955

John Hmurovic has been collecting recollections of the 1955 Whiting Standard Oil Refinery explosion.  John was not yet three years old on August 27, and his first memory is of his mother clutching him tight as they stared out their living room window.  The Region’s worst industrial disaster, not counting the 1982 Cline Avenue Bridge collapse, it showered debris over a quarter-mile radius and damaged hundreds of homes.  Some thought an atomic bomb had gone off.  Amazingly, only two people died, but the blast destroyed or badly damaged hundreds of buildings.  According to resident Gayle Kosalko, “that explosion caused Whiting’s population to go from 10,000 people to 5,000.” Describing the scene, Jerry Davich wrote:

  “Without a flicker of warning, a series of explosions ripped apart the Standard Oil Refinery’s 250-foot tall hydroformer unit 700.  On that warm, quiet and otherwise typical Saturday morning, something went terribly wrong when the hydroformer was restarted and, as witnesses recall, all hell broke loose.”

Hmurovic compared the event to Pearl Harbor, a day one never forgets.  Exactly 59 years later, an explosion at Whiting’s BP plant sent smoke billowing. 

In the cafeteria I joined affable librarian Betty Hiemstra and senior William Mabon, who grew up in Gary and was a Milwaukee carpenter until work dried up during the 2008 Bush economic debacle.  Mabon remembered me from Richard Hatcher’s Minority Studies class; we discussed how the Obama administration should be doing more for depressed cities.  After lunch I took him to the Archives and gave him “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”

On Route 20 to avoid Labor Day weekend traffic, a driver who cut into my lane despite having nowhere to go almost sideswiped me.  A great “Leftovers” episode showed what main characters were doing were when loved ones mysteriously disappeared, including a fetus inside Kevin’s wife Laurie, who went on to join the Guilty Remnant cult.  Kevin had just finished screwing a stranger when suddenly she was gone without a trace, to his astonishment and perhaps relief.

I am a straight man in some ways and not others.  I love Russo’s affectionate yet acerbic portrayal of academic types, including the wimpy junior member, the middle aged burnout, and the aging feminist poet.