Catholics vs. Convicts

“Save Jimmy Johnson’s ass for me.” Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz at halftime of “Catholics vs. Convicts” 1988 “brawl” game against Miami

On October 15, 1988, when the number 1 ranked Miami Hurricanes visited Notre Dame Stadium, many students wore “Catholics vs. Convicts” and “Hate Miami” t-shirts. Miami had won 36 straight regular season games but had a reputation for sleazy recruitment practices and tolerating questionable off-the-field behavior from its players.  Prior to the opening kickoff a brawl broke out between the players in the entrance tunnel.  Living up to their nickname “Fighting Irish,” Notre Dame won the contest 31-30 after Miami coach Jimmy Johnson elected to try a two-point conversion with 45 seconds left in the game rather than settle for a tie.

Under the headline “Catholics vs. Convicts?” NWI Times reporter Steve Hanlon reported on a press conference where Guerin Catholic coach Pete Smith badmouthed opponent Griffith in the upcoming 3A state championship game.  Last month Griffith’s season appeared over after a 45-second brawl that ensued after a Hammond player shoved Anthony Murphy, who was going up for a dunk, into a wall.  When twin brother Tremell Murphy went to his aid, someone allegedly punched him in the back of the head.  Judge Pera overturned the IHSAA ruling, citing other cases where the penalty was much less severe.  The main difference: footage of those didn’t go viral on social media.

Coach Smith claimed Golden Eagles fans had taken up the chant “Catholics vs. Convicts” and that, while he doesn’t agree with such a characterization, he believes Griffith does not belong in the tournament.  Speaking out of both sides of his mouth, Smith claimed that it was unfair for Griffith to have had three weeks off to get “rejuvenated” but then surmised that the team had still continued to practice.  He said, “We hope to get into their bench,” a veiled invitation for referees to call fouls on Griffith’s star players the twins Anthony and Tremell Murphy (below).  Downstate refs frequently show bias toward Region teams, so it would not be far-fetched since officials are somewhat beholden to the IHSAA.

Guerin Catholic’s best player, Matt Holba, is from Chesterton.  One wonders if Coach Smith recruited him illegally.  Gary Hayes, the Griffith coach, told Al Hamnik that the Murphy twins, who have lived in Griffith throughout their years in school, have resisted agents trying to lure them to a private school.  Hamnik wrote: “The Murphys, at 6-foot-5 with guard skills, can turn a game around quick as a hiccup.”  In a column entitled “Guerin must lose its elitist attitude,” the veteran Times reporter lit into Coach Pete Smith for his whining and poor sportsmanship and praised Griffith coach Gary Hayes for not getting “into a hissy fit with Smith.” Hamnik added:

How many Guerin fans actually made the ‘Catholics vs. Convicts comments to his face?  Was here a sign-waving, torch-carrying crowd chanting “Catholics vs. Convicts’ through the streets of Noblesville?  Was it that unanimous?

  Or did Pete Smith hear it secondhand, from a few, then pass it on as water-cooler gossip?

  Smith owes the Griffith School Corporation an apology.

Under intense scrutiny the Griffith players, coaches, administrators, and attorneys who took the case to court have been great.   As the headline of Indianapolis Star reporter Gregg Doyle’s column put it, “Griffith kids acting like adults; can IHSAA?”  Doyle wrote:

The kids at Griffith have done everything they can do to make amends.  They were barred from ‘The Region’s’ annual sportsmanship dinner, a petty move by the adults up there, so the kids at Griffith had their own sportsmanship dinner.  They invited the kids from Hammond.  Both teams sat together, ate together, grew together.

They practiced on their own at the YMCA, just in case.  Folks around town were down on them, the whole country was mocking them online, but the kids from Griffith kept it together.  They met every day at the public library because they’d been suspended from school for a week and wanted to keep their grades up – doing homework, studying for tests – just in case they were allowed back onto the court.

East Chicago State Representative Earl Harris (above), stricken with cancer, passed away at age 73. House Democratic leader Scott Pelath (my state rep) called him a true gentleman, “one of the finest and most visionary lawmakers I ever knew” and “a tireless advocate for the future of Northwest Indiana.”  Denzel Smith wrote: “[He was] my Dad's best friend and an awesome man. I am honored to have known him and I'm grateful that he served his community well as State Rep. Mr. Earl always was encouraging and always willing to lend a hand. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps. God bless you and rest in peace.”

The Black Student Union and Office of Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs sponsored a screening of “The Trials of Muhammad Ali,” which brought back a flood of memories, including watching the first Sonny Liston fight in 1964 on cable TV in Williamsport at the home of a fraternity brother.  Ali was certainly a trailblazer who suffered mightily for his outspokenness and becoming a Black Muslim.  Many reporters, in fact, continued to call him Cassius Clay long after he took the name Muhammad Ali.

I learned that the unanimous Supreme Court decision that overturned Ali’s conviction of draft evasion and upheld his claim to be a conscientious objector was all set to go the other way when Justice John Marshall Harlan switched his position after a clerk pointed out that the Black Muslim position was identical to the Jehovah Witnesses, a religious group that had been granted conscientious objector status.  Other justices, fearful that all Black Muslims could refuse military service, then found a way to base the ruling on very narrow grounds, namely that his draft board had claimed he was insincere but during oral argument the Solicitor General conceded that Ali was sincere in his belief.  The scene of Ali, suffering from Parkinson’s, lighting the Olympic torch at the Atlanta Games Opening Ceremony caused tears to stream down my face.

I spoke to Steve McShane’s class about Thyra J. Edwards (above), who between 1920 and 1931 was a Gary teacher, social worker, and director of Lake County Children’s Home for orphans.  Thyra was the subject of historian Gregg Andrews’ biography, subtitled “Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle.”  In 1925, optimistic over the possibilities for racial progress in the Steel City, Edwards declared: “I am inclined to call Gary the eighth wonder of the world.  A barren, uninhabited waste of sand dunes and thistles has in 20 years developed into one of the largest industrial centers in America.”  She was appointed to several interracial commissions, served on the board of Stewart Settlement House, and was friends with Judge E. Miles Norton.  Moreover, through a circle of Chicago friends, she met the leading social workers and black leaders of that day.

Thyra soon became disillusioned, however, at the possibilities for racial progress in Gary because of the pernicious influence of the Ku Klux Klan, the increasingly segregated housing patterns, and the decision of Mercy and Methodist hospital boards to deny black patients access to their facilities.  In 1934, well on her way to becoming a radical, feminist, and human rights activist, she wrote in the Pittsburgh Courier:

We played childish games, ate rich cake, tea and jelly, and tried to be awfully nice to each other.  Having no common base of interest we had no real conversation – but we chatted and smiled and it might have been Gary, Indiana, or any one of a number of race-Relations fiascos of which I have been guilty.

Beautiful, adventurous, and intellectually curious, Edwards developed an intimate friendship with union leader A. Philip Randolph, who praised her “keen analytical mind, fine poise, modes charm and a fluency of presentation that will capture the admiration of the most critical.”  Biographer Andrews wrote:

She rejected orthodox religion and conventional marriage.  She was a theater critic, passionate lover of the arts, excellent cook, and fashion-conscious beauty writer known for her impeccable taste and collection of peasant blouses.  She led educational travel seminars to northern and western Europe, Scandinavia, Mexico, and the Soviet Union.

The same person who as a young girl was warned by her father to stick to the same street on her way to school every day and never to take a different route later walked down the street to the Kremlin, thrilled when she marched in Red Square in a May 1st celebration.  Edwards visited Napoleon’s tomb, wined, dined, and danced with European politicians and dignitaries; took lovers in a number of countries; and enjoyed nude sunbathing on the Soviet Black Sea Riviera.

Thyra Edwards supported anti-Fascist forces in Spain and Germany, was active in the wartime Double-V campaign, and due to her radical connections came under FBI scrutiny during the Red Scare.  She died in 1953, on the eve, Gregg Andrews concluded, of the civil rights movement she helped nurture.

In the memoir “The Imaginary Girlfriend,” John Irving wrote about being the butt of novelist Nelson’s Algren’s disdainful humor while a participant in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop during the mid-1960s.  Irving suspected that Algren thought him too soft since he was a small-town, prep school brat who didn’t play poker and wrestled rather than boxed.  Years later, when Kurt Vonnegut brought them together, Algren acted like he couldn’t remember meeting Irving at Iowa and pretended to confuse him with Clifford Irving, who had produced a bogus autobiography of recluse Howard Hughes.  Algren said he appreciated a good scam and then winked.

Reacting with disdain to Ted Cruz’s plans to run for president, both Anne Balay and Steve Pickert posted a Dr. Seuss “Green Eggs and Ham” parody.   The frigging Indiana legislature passed a “religious objection” law that will allow businesses to discriminate against gays.  Anne Balay posted: “Indiana, I’m leaving you anyway, you don’t have to pile on the reasons.”  John D’Emilio responded: “Yes, observing its current politics does put your denial of tenure in its true context, doesn’t it?”

Closer to home, Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson wants the land where the Sheraton Hotel once stood converted into a park and ice skating.  Samuel A. Love posed in front of the Memorial Auditorium façade, all that’s left off that important landmark.

Bodies of Evidence

“Evidence doesn’t always convince people of the truth, especially when the lie is what they prefer.”  Daniel Black, “Perfect Peace”

In Daniel Black’s “Perfect Peace” a southern black women, Emma Jean Perfect, has six sons and desperately wants a daughter.  When her seventh-born is yet another boy, she names him Perfect and raises the kid as a girl.  On the child’s eighth birthday Emma Jean tells Perfect: “You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain’t what you was supposed to be. So, from now on, you gon’ be a boy. It’ll be a little strange at first, but you’ll get used to it, and this’ll be over after while.”  

On the fifth anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death tourists visited the home on 23oo Jackson where he grew up.  Monica Yassen recalled as a girl hearing his music in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Paul Brattwood, who sported a large tattoo of the “King of Pop” on his arm, listened to Jackson while growing up in England.  He told Post-Trib reporter Michael Gonzalez: “I think affection for Michael will be there forever, like John Lennon.”

After receiving, via interlibrary loan (from Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne), “Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History,” edited by Nan Alamilla Boyd and Horacio N. Roque Ramirez, I turned to John D’Emilio’s Afterword.  I was aware of D’Emilio’s “Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970,” and that he’d touted Anne Balay’s “Steel Closets” as a groundbreaking study of steelworkers.  Starting grad school in 1971, the year after I received my PhD at Marylandhe admired scholars who studied history from the bottom up but, like me, was not much exposed to oral history.  Researching the Mattachine Society, he realized that oral interviews were essential to understanding that homophile organization. As the title (“If I Knew Then . . .”) of D’Emilio’s essay suggests, he, again like me, made a number of missteps but in time balanced an instinctive, nondirective, open-ended approach with a deft touch at steering conversations in directions germane to his purposes.

From California cousin Sue Stone wrote: “Being from McKeesport, the steel industry was always close. Mother and every other McKeesporter I knew bemoaned the fact the mills ran day and night for the war effort, often repaired haphazardly to continue production. Then after the war, the U.S. rebuilt Germany and Japan with new, efficient mills that made it more cost effective to import their product than to buy U.S. produced steel. I never questioned if their ideas were historically accurate, but McKeesport went from a solid town to a horrible place with abandoned mills and decaying buildings. I saw beautiful estates become run down multifamily homes. I am glad you are saving the history of the Calumet's experience. There is much to learn from history.”

I’ve probably met cousin Sue about four times in my entire life and probably wouldn’t recognize her on the street, but we’ll both be at a family reunion next month in Lancaster, PA.  She’s a couple years older than I.  In the summer of 1954 my family traveled to Pittsburgh to visit Vic’s brother Tom (Sue’s dad) and sister Aurie, and to this prepubescent kid Sue looked hot.  I think we became kissing cousins, but that might just have been a fantasy.  Her dad was the second-born son.  During the Great Depression older brother Jim hitchhiked to California and ultimately became a millionaire in the canned tuna business.  Tom was left to deal with shell-shocked parents who nearly lost everything and caught his share of life’s frustrations.  Young brother Vic (my old man) was able to work his way through college (Pitt), obtain a white-collar job, and during the 1950s raise a family in a middle-class suburb of Philadelphia.

above, Cindy Kalberg's mother Ruthie with her mother Susan Seesock Guba; below,Ruthie (r)

Cindy Karlberg may donate materials to the Archives but first wants to check with relatives.  She has numerous photos and memorabilia, including a Holy Card apparently written in Slovak. Her mother, Ruthie Guba, grew up in Glen Park at 3880 Jefferson.

I discussed the postwar years in the Calumet Region and Vee-Jay records with Steve McShane’s class for about 80 minutes Tuesday afternoon and then condensed the lesson down to 55 minutes for Steve’s two Senior College sessions the next morning.  Reading political prisoner Kathryn Hyndman’s eulogy to her former cellmate Willa Mae and describing Pookie Hudson singing “Goodnight, Sweetheart” to a critically ill Vivian Carter in a nursing home, I teared up, as I knew I would.  Senior College director Sandra Hall Smith came in the room about that time and teared up, too.  Steve did an excellent job reciting from Stanley Stanish’s diary, which we have in the Archives, pronouncing such names as Tekla Kasprzychi Grandma Rybicki, and St. Adelbert’s Church.  

from the Stanish family album, circa 1951-2

Many of the readings that students read drew chuckles, none more than Bill Figueroa describing maternal grandmother who came to live with them when in her 80’s.  Figueroa wrote:

            “My father thought she came to die.  She stayed for 20 years.  She smoked homegrown marijuana every morning and had a daily shot of wine.  She made a lot of money crocheting initials and designs on handkerchiefs.”

Other than Figueroa’s remembrances, there is hardly any mention of elderly people in my “Age of Anxiety” issue.  Median age in the Region then was much lower and included many baby boomers.  Mary Wainman, a good Catholic, raised ten kids and, like my mom, gave them a tablespoons of cod liver oil at breakfast.  Ugh!  How I remember.  When several Wainman children came down with scarlet fever, the Board of health quarantined the house for a month.  Mary’s husband stayed in the basement and got in and out to work through a window. 

To ingratiate myself with the seniors, I gave out free copies of Steel Shavings volume 41 (2011), my pink issue, and pointed out photos of Vivian Carter, the Spaniels, and their lead singer Pookie Hudson.  One cover photo shows Anne and Leah Balay at a Gay Pride parade, another Gary outgoing and incoming mayors Rudy Clay and Karen Freeman Wilson.  I dedicated volume 41 to IUN’s late physical plant wunderkind Dianne Cutler, whose daughter was as petite as Dianne was powerfully built.  Felled by cancer, Dianne kept the diagnosis to herself until almost the bitter end.

One woman recalled having Marie Edwards, whose reminiscences of buying a 1947 Nash drew smiles, as a teacher both at Lew Wallace and for an IUN Political Science course. Another woman with a copy of “Gary’s First Hundred Years” read this poem by “E.Z. Stuff” that I found in the Post-Trib’s “Flue Dust column during the 1920s, when the city’s population doubled to 100,000 in ten years.

“She is just a maiden,

With years not heavy laden,

The prospects of her future sure are great.

So like the bantam rooster,

We will work to crow and boost her

Till she’s the largest city in the state.”

For once the cafeteria was packed, as it was visiting day for incoming students and their parents.  I sat across from two Portage graduates accompanied by their grandmother, who said she had been a Nursing student 30 years ago and remembered History professor Ron Cohen.

After the rain ceased, Dave’s family got a couple hours in at Seven Peaks Waterpark before arriving at the condo for tacos and corn on the cob.  Dave asked what I thought of America’s chances in the World Cup, and I said that surrendering a last-second goal to Portugal reminded me of the bad karma that befell the Cubs in 2003 after a fan, Steve Bartman, snatched a foul ball away from leftfielder Moises Alou that prevented the Cubs from going to the World Series. Uruguay’s Luis Suarez bit an Italian opponent and will certainly be banned from the tournament.  Suarez has done the same thing twice before in the heat of combat.  I’ll never forget watching Mike Tyson bite part of Evander Holyfield’s ear off in 1997.

Jeff Manes started off a piece on former farmer and teacher and present-day pastor Derald Ailes by stating: “He’s my annual conservative and Chicago Cubs fan to be interviewed for this column.  It’s best to kill two birds with one stone.”  Not only witty but up front, as every scholar or journalist should be.  Despite their political disagreements, Manes ended by writing, “Derald Ailes is a good man.”  Back home, Manes found the Kankakee River dangerously on the rise.  The outdoor dining area at Marti’s Place is under water.

above, Marti's Place by Jeff Manes; below, Marquette Park lagoon by Anne Balay