Consumer Counterculture

    “The natural foods movement launched many citizens into activism for nutritional equity, food workers’ rights, and sustainable agriculture and contributed to the neoliberal definition of the marketplace as a force for social justice and self-fulfillment.” Maria McGrath

 Maria McGrath                                                                          Carol Flinders

In the introductory chapter to “Food for Dissent: Natural Foods and the Consumer Counterculture Since the 1960s,” titled “The Gathering Storm: Baby Boomers and Their Discontent,” historian Maria McGrath profiles Carol Flinders, co-author of “Laurel’s Kitchen: A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery and Nutrition” (1976).  In 1967, married with a two-year-old daughter and living in Berkeley, California, Flinders met future collaborator Laurel Robertson at an antiwar activity.  After involvement in encounter groups, potting, and eastern meditation, she reconnected with Robertson and joined the Food Conspiracy, a natural foods buying club.  Sharing Beat poet Alan Ginsberg’s contempt for “Supermarket America” as a symbol of capitalist America’s unchecked excesses and civic irresponsibility. Flinders, McGrath concludes, found community and purpose.  Nourishing the body with non-processed foods, she believed, had the potential to transform one’s life and help save the planet.  

 Selma Miriam and Noel Furie at Bloodroot Restaurant

McGrath, daughter of Upper Dublin High School classmate Susan Floyd, quotes hippie Raymond Mungo, author of “Total Loss Farm” (1970) responding to critics who claimed he had retreated from political action by moving to a Vermont commune: “We are saving the world.”  In other words, the personal is political, a rallying cry of student activists, feminists, queers, and natural foods advocates.  During the 1970s, McGrath concluded, cultural nonconformists attempted to create the markets services, and societies that matched their dreams for a better world in the pursuit of “right livelihood.”  One example, which Maria talked about at the Oral History Association conference in Montreal last year, is the vegan restaurant and bookstore Bloodroot Collective in Bridgeport, Connecticut, whose cookbooks proclaimed that carnivorous people were part of a “Blood culture” while vegetarians honored the cycles of nature. Lesbian owners Selma Miriam and Noel Furie are still keeping the faith 42 years after Bloodroot’s debut.

Justin Henry Miller, "Wannabe Satyr";     James Deeb, "Pyles Regiment" 

Toni and I attended John Cain’s annual Holiday Reading, “Don We Now Our Gay Apparel,” at Munster Center for the Arts.  Beforehand, we enjoyed the gallery exhibit “Things that go bump in the night,” whose paintings and sculptures had a ghostly Halloween flavor.   We ran into numerous Miller friends, including Karren Lee and Judy Ayers.  Elaine Spicer introduced me to folklorist Sue Eleuterio, who directs Goucher College’s graduate virtual writing center and is a consultant with the American Folklore Society.  She was familiar with my Gary books.  Last year Sue took part in a Walk the Line protest against oil pipelines running through residential neighborhoods in Griffith, Hammond, and East Chicago.   

 Susan Eleuterio with Vietnam Vets exhibit

The meal was vegetarian, featuring tomato bisque, quiche, fruit, rolls, salad, and pumpkin mousse.  It was nutritious, without processed foods so far as I could tell, and filling without leaving you stuffed like often the case at such functions. At the IUN table I talked to Mark Hoyert about meeting fellow Marylander Jim Muldoon.  Mark told me he was a History major about 10 years after I graduated, and that his favorite professor was military historian Gordon Prange, author of the popular account of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” and a consultant on the set of the movie. David Klamen asked about the rumor that the Jackson 5 had once lost a talent show at IUN.  It happened at Gary Roosevelt, I told him, when audience applause for a skit by high school jocks exceeded their ovation.  Papa Joe Jackson supposedly was so angry he kept the brothers up all night rehearsing.    

A somewhat embarrassed Art in Focus director Micah Bornstein, adorned with angel wings and halo, introduced John Cain and Jim West, who read a humorous 1950s account of a kid watching “The Lawrence Welk Show” in his pajamas with a cynical father and chain-smoking grandmother followed by one about a New York City family celebrating both Hanakkah and Christmas.  Last year, at his twenty-fifth Holiday Reading, John indicated it might be his finale. I’m glad he reconsidered; with some 300 people in attendance, it remains a popular and profitable affair. Toni and I find Cain to be charming, and by now he knows both of us by name.

 Marcia Carson on left

At bridge Jim and Marcia Carson were wearing Red for Ed Action t-shirts, having been among the 15,000 demonstrators assembling earlier outside the Indianapolis statehouse. For many years Marcia taught Art, a program that has suffered from draconian budgets and policies forcing educators to concentrate on preparing students for standardized exams to the neglect of cultural enrichment.  Indiana State Teachers Association president Keith Gambill told the crowd, “To the legislators in the statehouse today we say pencils down, time’s up.” Average pay for Indiana teachers is $51,000, less even than in most Deep South states.  Speakers also blasted a recent bill requiring teachers to complete 15-hour “externships” free of charge with local businesses as a condition of having licenses renewed. At Banta Center Charlie Halberstadt and I finished second to Chuck and Marcy Tomes by a single percentage point.  In out three hands head-to-head we played them pretty much to a draw.

Charlotte and Terry Kegebein

In bowling the Electrical Engineers took all 3 games from Portage Four despite having to spot them 28 pins.  Back from Georgia because his wife Charlotte is in the hospital, Terry Kegebein rolled a 530 series and after a 220-game quipped that he was still not bowling his weight.  Leading off, Joe Piunti rolled a 180 and won the league pot in game 2 for most pins over average.  Despite a sore shoulder I bowled 20 pins over average opposite Neda Gonzalez, who carried a 146 average.  Each game we were virtually neck and neck.

For IU’s Bicentennial oral history project, I interviewed IUN Dean of Health and Human Services Patrick Bankston, who will be retiring after 42 years of service to the university.  He grew up in a community near Rochester, New York, and majored in Biology at Hobart College before earning a PhD at the University of Chicago and teaching for five years at Hahnemann Medical College.  Bankston was proud of collaborating on a research paper with Nobel Laureate George Palade. When he was hired as a professor of anatomy and cell biology, only one year of medical school was available on the Gary campus. Classes took place in World War II “temporary” buildings that endured into the twenty-first century.  Bankston was instrumental in expanding the program to all four years and, more recently, launching an initiative that allowed graduates to take part in residency programs at area institutions. Among his heroes were predecessor Dr. Panayotis Iatridis, Congressman Peter Visclosky, Senator Richard Lugar, Indiana legislator Charlie Brown (who calls him “my brother from a different mother”), and his wife of 25 years Dr. Glyn Porter, an IU School of Medicine graduate whom he has known for 40 years.  “I guess she knew what she was getting into,” I quipped, as we concluded the productive 70-minute interview.

After the interview Bankston told me about recently attending a Muslim wedding of two former IU medical school graduates.  Years earlier, the Pakistani father of the bride brought her to meet with him while she was still in high school  in order to learn what was needed to become a doctor. Pat joked about his political career, “unsullied” by ever winning an election.  He was appointed to finish out the term of a Porter County commissioner and during his brief tenure found outside funding to replace a dangerous, century-old bridge in Union Township from the state and the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC).  During the ensuing election his opponent falsely claimed the project wasted local taxpayers’ money.  As Media Production Specialist Samantha Gauer, who taped the 70-minute session, was leaving, Pat said he hoped he didn’t bore her.  “No, I learned a lot,”  she replied.

Samantha Gauer

Valparaiso University professor Liz Wuerffel’s podcast students signed a “Thank You”card with expressions of gratitude for my guest appearance.  Noah wrote: “Keep history alive.”  Liz added: “I appreciate that you were willing to share your [interviewing] mistakes that helped you be a better oral historian and recorder, too.  Much appreciated!”  

Felicia Childress

Wuerffel’s Welcome Initiative co-founder Allison Schuette recently interviewed 101-year-old Felicia Childress, who moved to Gary from St. Louis during World War II.  Born prematurely in the house of her grandfather, a Baptist minister, she and a twin brother each weighed less than three pounds and were not expected to live. She knew the wife of Joseph Chapman, hired to head up Gary’s Urban League chapter, and initially came to help the Chapmans get settled.  Joe Chapman would play a key role in mediating the 1945-46 Froebel School Strike.  Childress recalled:

   When we came into Gary, we were coming up 5th Avenue, and I was amazed. I looked out the car window and there was tumbleweed blowing down the streets. I said, “This looks like the Wild West.” I could see sand hills between buildings and said, “It’s so flat.” Nobody had a house over two stories. I found out that everyone wanted to come to Gary because there was a mill. All the way down Broadway we could see the gates to the mill and realized that was why people came to Gary. In the old days, the mill would take the huge, molten steel and dump it directly into the lake. These were the days before EPA, and when that hot steel hit the water, Uh-whump! - it was so loud you could hear it past the borders of Gary. I cringed and said, “I don’t like it.”  But I’ll tell you what I did like. I learned about the South Shore.  I could relate to the South Shore because it looked so much like the streetcars in St. Louis. When I got on that South Shore, I looked out the window and there were trees. And then past that canal, you could see pheasants with beautiful feathers.  You could see the colors of their feathers as they would be flying through the trees. But they were soon gone, I think because whatever they were throwing into the mill was so frightening, and so they left. 

At Chesterton library I came across the Goo Goo Dolls “Miracle Pill” and found the 2019 CD irresistible.  Formed in Buffalo some 33 years ago, the band, featuring Johnny Rzeznik and Robby Takac, enjoyed two smash hits,“Iris” and “Slide,” in the late 1990s from the album “Dizzy Up the Girl” and then pretty much dropped out of the spotlight. The track “Autumn Leaves” differs from the 1945 Johnny Mercer standard, covered by countless crooners including Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Robert Goulet, Johnny Mathis and more recently, Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan. An instrumental version by pianist Roger Williams became a number one hit in 1955. The Goo Goo Dolls “Autumn Leaves” contains these lines:

Life is change, we move on

And where you go,

I hope the summer goes along.

In my CD collection, lo and behold, was a nearly forgotten 1993 Sting album, "Ten Summoner’s Tales.”  Most titles were unfamiliar and fun to discover, and to my delight were the tracks “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” and “Fields of Gold.”  Here are the latter's bridge lyrics:

        I never made promises lightly

        And there have been some that I've broken

        But I swear in the days still left

        We'll walk in fields of gold

"Bubbie"

“Once you’re gone you can never come back

When you’re out of the blue and into the black”

         Neil Young, “My My, Hey Hey”

Ann “Bubbie” Zucker passed away at age 99.  She was born at the dawn of the modern era, January 1, 1920, in Geisin, Russia. She and her parents, Gertrude and Chaim Stookal, left their native country shortly after the Bolsheviks came to power, then made their way to Chicago.  Ann’s family history reminded me of Gary attorney Paul Glaser, the son of impoverished Jews who came to America after participating in a failed 1905 uprising against Czar Nicholas II.  She and three siblings grew up in the Windy City, and Ann became a secretary after high school.  In 1953 she married Dr. Edward Zucker and served as his office manager. Her obituary stated: “She was a devoted mother to her loving children Victor (Eva), Eric (Haengmi) and Amy (Tim) as well as her four grandchildren Jessica, Andrew, Melissa, and Zoe.”  Former neighbor Mona Stern recalled the time long ago “when we lived next door to Ann and Ed and our kids played together.”

Coming across Ann Zucker’s obit, I found myself wondering how she got the nickname “Bubbie.”  On the same page was an “In Loving Memory” announcement for Christopher “Cricker” Smith of Valparaiso on the fourth anniversary of his death at age 28.  His dad wrote: “You told me that your biggest fear was that people would forget you after you were gone.  We will not let that happen!”  

When my great-aunt Ida Frace Gordon lived with my family, she subscribed to her hometown paper, the Easton Express, for the express purpose of checking the obits for any mention of past friends and acquaintances. My interest is more from a historic perspective, but I get a kick out of coming across colorful nicknames and anecdotes among the solemn words and list of loved ones.  My centennial history of Gary contains a section titled “Ides of March 2003” where I mentioned notices for two St. Timothy’s Church mainstays, Leona Hill and Ophelia Marsh Davis, as well as Lucille “Sweet” Ford-Burnell, a soprano in the Jerusalem Baptist Church choir.  I noted: 

 The write-ups in the Post-Tribune included nicknames (often “papa” or “momma”) and special talents (poet, southern cooking, fisherman) but few clues about the cause of death beyond the ubiquitous “after a brief illness.”  One was left to speculate over the passing of 19-year-old West Side grad Angela Lorraine Windom-Robinson, 27-year-old Wallace grad Rodney L. Pace, Jr., and 30-year-old Wirt grad Terrance “Sean” Ligé.

Timemagazine referred to actress Tessa Thompson as “a queer woman of color”who’d been in tentpole films, an expression unfamiliar to me.  I have since learned that the phrase describes movies (in Thompson’s case, as Valkyrie in Marvel’s “Avenger” series) that have as an ancillary purpose the advertising of toys, games, and other products sold by the franchise.  

In the Post-Tribune an anonymous Quickly submission used the phrase “Crimea River”(i.e., “cry me a river”)about Russian Maria Butina, imprisoned for conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent. In addition to being a song by Justin Timberlake, the expression “cry me a river,”according to Urban Dictionary, is a sarcastic reference to someone who is being a drama queen.  Since many call in Quickly comments, one wonders if the author wanted it printed as “Crimea River” or the Quickly editor was being clever.

 Jim and Marcia Carson

"Marsha" from Pillow Drawings by Larry Kaufman

At bridge I complimented Marcia Carson on her Art in Focus talk about paintings of mothers and children and mentioned one piece that reminded me of drawings by Larry Kaufman, a photo-realist whom Toni studied under at IUN and a close friend during the 1970s.  It turned out that Marcia had taken classes with Kaufman at Bloomington and again while completing a master’s degree at IUN.  Marcia worked on a mural painted on the side of Jenny’s Café next door to where the Fine Arts department was then housed.  One night a dog got into the building and took a leak on a drawing Toni had done of industrial pipes, confirming, Larry quipped, that it was a realistic rendering.

A man bridge buddy Helen Boothe knew well attempted to commit suicide by drinking anti-freeze.  Ugh!   Helen noted that while there had been times when she felt melancholy, she had difficulty understanding depression. Her partner Dottie Hart and I felt the same way.  No matter how down in the dumps, there’s never been a time when I couldn’t think of something to live for.  I told Helen and Dottie that when my dad dropped dead at age 50 from a sudden heart attack, I kept my grief bottled up inside until a few months later, when Toni placed a photo of Vic in a prominent place.  Gradually I began to recall happy memories instead of focusing on regrets, like when I was at the University of Maryland and Vic called from the Baltimore airport, saying that he had a two-hour layover and wondered if I wanted to join him.  I begged off, saying I was busy, and never saw him again. 

Helen brought up that her husband suffered from Alzheimer’s the last 14 years of his life, so I mentioned that Midge’s assisted living facility in California brought patients from the euphemistically named “memory care” ward to Friday afternoon entertainment.  Many mouthed the lyrics of old standards that the piano player was singing.  Helen recollected that she and her husband were at a church service, and he knew the words to the hymns, even the second, less familiar stanzas.  Former Chicago Bears football player Ted Karras flowered after moving to a Memory Care facility.  “He’s even singing again,”wife Anna told me. Helen knew Ted’s sister Helene, whom I interviewed for a Traces article about brother Alex Karras.

Ted Karras honored at Bears game; below Charlie Halberstadt

I partnered with best friend Charlie Halberstadt both at the Chesterton game and one next day at Banta Center in Valpo, which Charlie directs. He guarantees that nobody sits out, so I’d have been paired with someone else had there not been an even number of participants.  In both games we finished above 50% and earned master points. I wish I could have bid or played a couple hands differently, but neither hurt us all that much.

 Viceroy Louis Mountbatten

Rohinton Mistry’s “A Fine Balance” has this acerbic comment on how the 1947 partition of India, which Mahatma Gandhi vociferously opposed, impacted the family fortunes of main character Maneck Kohlah:

   Maneck’s family had once been extremely wealthy.  Fields of grain, orchards of apple and peach, a lucrative contract to supply provisions to cantonments along the frontier – all this was among the inheritance of Farokh Kohlah, and he tended it well, making it increase and multiply for the wife he was to marry and the son who would be born.

   But long before that eagerly awaited birth, there was another, gorier parturition, when two nations incarnated out of one.  A foreigner (Viceroy Louis Mountbatten) drew a magic line on a map and called it the new border; it became a river of blood upon the earth.  And the orchards, fields, factories, businesses, all on the wrong side of that line, vanished with a wave of the pale conjuror’s wand.

Dean Bottorff in Loogootee, Indiana

Former Maple Place neighbor Dean Bottorff posted a photo Jonell took of him and his motorcycle in Loogootee, Indiana.  When I suggested they drop by, he replied:

We thought about visiting you but we were on a somewhat tight schedule with some 3,000 miles to cover in eight days. Our goal in Indiana was Clark County to visit the monument of John Henry Bottorff who was an Ensign in Capt. Michael Wolf's Company of the Berks County Pennsylvania Militia in the Revolutionary War ... the namesake of all Bottorffs after having changed his name from Johannes Heinrich Batdorf ... perhaps because of anti-German sentiment during the Revolution. Clark County was heavily populated with Bottorffs who were among the first settlers there in the very early 1800s.  Rich Bottorff is now very fond of this quote [from Baird’s history of Clark County]: “It is seldom indeed that a Bottorff is found who is not well-to-do and the name has become synonymous with thrift and industry. Originating in Germany representatives of this family became identified with Indiana at an early day.”

Granddaughter Becca asked for advice for a school project on the subject of how the Cold War affected American popular music during the 1980s.  I suggested analyzing Jackson Browne’s 1986 album “Lives in the Balance,” which during a time when the Ronald Reagan administration was aiding murderous Contra counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua against the socialist Sandinistas warned against the country “drifting toward war” in order to defend business interests.  One line charged that the government was using Cold war rhetoric to justify supporting groups that kill their own people and employing propaganda to sell the American people wars the same way as advertisers sell us clothes and cars. Fortunately, memories of the Vietnam fiasco were still vivid, putting a damper on Reagan’s options.  At a time when National Security Council director for political-military affairs Oliver North and other rightwing operatives were breaking the law to secretly provide weapons to the Contras, Jackson Browne concluded “Lives in the Balance” with these words:

I want to know who the men in the shadows are

I want to hear somebody asking them why

They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are

But they're never the ones to fight or to die

And there are lives in the balance

There are people under fire

There are children at the cannons

And there is blood on the wire

Beloved and Abandoned

 For better or worse Gary’s my home

And I’d rather live in this left-over city

Than any suburb I know.”

         Gary Postscript 1989” John Sheehan

In preparation for a talk about my Gary research interests, I’ve decided to stress how poems, journals, and oral histories have enriched my attempts to capture the city’s social history.  For example, “City of the Century” (1978) cites over a hundred interviews I conducted, ranging from Johnny Kyle, Gary’ first sports star, to Mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher. “Gary’s First Hundred Years” (2006) contains poems by Carl Sandburg and John Sheehan, excerpts from the diaries of pioneer Albert Anchors and Red Scare political prisoner Katherine Hyndman, and journal entries by 2003 IUN students of mine. 

 Photos by Jim Sullivan

On his “Places That Were” site, photographer Jim Sullivan shared over a dozen shots of Horace Mann School, which opened in 1928 and closed in 2004, calling it a monument to the lost prosperity of Gary.  It was designed by famed architect William B. Ittner as a unit school with grades from kindergarten to 12 in accordance with Superintendent William A. Wirt’s work-study-play educational philosophy of learning through doing.  Sullivan wrote:

        I parked beside a crumbling brick apartment building in downtown Gary, Indiana. On a cold autumn morning, a few people were still asleep in nearby cars, a cruel irony in a city with so many abandoned homes. Across the street, a sprawling abandoned high school filled the horizon. Like the breathtaking ruins of City Methodist Church, which I had explored the previous evening, Horace Mann School was a casualty of Gary, Indiana's shrinking population.  Several middle-aged couples walked laps along the track that stretched the length of the building.

        The school was enormous, with a capacity of around two and a half thousand students. It originally consisted of three main structures that were eventually joined together. On the large plot of land in front of the school's main entrance, an existing ravine was transformed into a pond with several pedestrian bridges and a rock garden, giving it the appearance of a beautiful park. It was a popular location for picnics, fishing, and ice skating in the winter.

        The school was named after Horace Mann, one of the most important reformers of the public-school system. He believed that a free society cannot exist without equal access to education and that schools should not be aligned with any particular religious denomination. Though controversial at the time, his ideas eventually became widely accepted throughout the United States. Many schools have been named in his honor. 

        In 1929 Horace Mann School had a student body of 870. By 1937, it increased to nearly 2400 students and 80 staff members.  When enrollment grew to nearly 2600 in 1956, exceeding Horace Mann's intended capacity, the district decided to build an additional school on the southern portion of the property. John H. Vohr Elementary School opened in in 1958. Sadly, the pond was filled in to make room for a parking lot.  By 2003, Horace Mann High School had only 546 students, roughly a fifth of its capacity.  The final graduating class consisted of only 72 students.

        It seems unlikely that the building will ever be put to use again. Vandalism and the elements have taken a heavy toll. There is a great deal of water damage in the basement. The floor of the gym is so heavily warped from moisture that a large section of it has risen up and buckled.

Princess Garvis (Scott) replied to Sullivan:

        I am a graduate of Horace Mann, class of '93. I was born and raised in Gary, though I've since moved. I walked these very halls, used these lockers, watched many presentations in this auditorium, used the Science Labs, as well as classrooms. I'm heartbroken by it all, but the gym with the buckled floor brings tears to my eyes. I was a cheerleader all 4 years here. I cheered on this floor and watched MANY games.  I know the young men who are the Champions on the gymnasium wall. I had P.E. and swam in these pools.  I have yet to see Horace Mann's ruins in person.  I have to say, I don't know if I'm emotionally ready.

Denny Cavanaugh; photo by Johnny Gorches

Horace Mann grads I’ve written about include former IUN Bookstore manager Ruth Nelson, radio and TV personality Tom Higgins, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, football coach Joe DeSoto, and baseball star Dennis Cavanaugh.  Mann teams were nicknamed the Horsemen.  Coincidentally, reporter Johnny Gorches did a Post-Tribune feature on Cavanaugh entitled, “At 79, Denny Cavanaugh keeps rolling along.” He competes in six bowling leagues, including mine (Thursday Mel Guth Seniors at Hobart Lanes). Gorches wrote:

        “I've been bowling for 60 years and in six leagues right now,” Cavanaugh said. “I'm gonna drop out of a couple of them.  I find it hard to compete with the 'young swingers' anymore.  It's just hard to keep up with them."

        Still, he's done a decent job in recent years. Cavanaugh has eight career 800 series and 16 career 300 games. In February, 2014, he rolled a pair of 290s two days apart at Hobart Lanes. His last 300 came earlier that season at Cressmoor.

I gave the new Steel Shavings to Alan Yngve and Charlie Halberstadt at duplicate bridge and got requests from several others after Charlie showed his off.  Kris Prohl noticed a photo of the late Home Mountain Printing owner Larry Klemz, formerly her close friend.  Charlie and I did well despite two low boards.  In one, everyone passed; the opponents had more points than us, but every other East-West pair that bid got set.  In the other, Charlie preempted 3 Clubs, and East doubled.  I held 8 Spades headed by the Ace, King, Queen, plus a lone Diamond and 2 Queen doubletons.  I jumped to 4 Spades and lost the first four tricks, two in Clubs and 2 in Hearts.  Other North-South pairs stopped a 3 Spades or, in one case, made 5 Diamonds (opponents must have opened with a Spade or Diamond lead). Charlie had 7 Diamonds headed by the Ace, King, the 10 and Jack of Spades, and, like me, losing doubletons in Hearts and Clubs.

 Harold Haydon

Harold Hayden, figures at beach 

Bridge opponent Marcia Carson, an Education Division instructor for many years, now teaches Art History both at IUN and Valparaiso University.  During the 1970s, Toni had such a course at IUN from artist Harold Haydon, who had retired from the University of Chicago and was living in Northwest Indiana.  After Toni told me how interesting he was, I audited the class.

At Hobart Lanes, the Pin Heads had to spot us Engineers 127 pins, and we ended up beating them scratch in game one, enough to take series before losing the final two games. Teammate Frank Shufran brought me some treasures for the Calumet Regional Archives, including bowling records former teammate Bill Batalis saved dating back to 1961, when the Electrical Engineers were in the Good Fellows Supervisors Bowling League. I learned that in 1964 Dick Maloney, still on the team but then with the Mechanical Engineers (as was Bob “Robbie” Robinson), rolled a 266.  Here are the 16 teams in the order they finished in 1963-1964: Electrical Engineers, Blast Furnace, Construction Engineers, New Era Electric, Locomotive Shop, Mechanical Engineers, Accounting, Design Engineers, #3 Sinter Plant, Test Engineers, Safety, Services, Industrial Engineers, Electric Shop, Central Maintenance, Machine Shop.  In 2011, Bill’s final year bowling, ours was the only U.S. Steel team left in the Wednesday Night Sheet and Tin League. His records show that I finished with a 161 average; my friend Clark Metz, who subbed for us on six occasions, finished with a 160 average.

 Larry Klemz at 2004 quilt show

Frank Shufran also brought me booklets from the String-A-Long Quilt Guild’s first (1986) and tenth (2004) biennial quilt show (both he and wife Joan are quilters).  Frank and Joan invited Toni and me to a show, held that year at Timothy Ball Elementary School in Crown Point. On display were not only quilts by both of them but others by good friend Al Sterkin’s wife Carol, IUN colleague Jim Tolhuizen’s wife Marilyn, and Home Mountain Printing owner Larry Klemz’s spouse Jeri.