Educated

“I believe, finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience: that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing,” John Dewey

At bridge in Valpo Vickie Voller and I finished in a tie for first with Dee Browne and Sharon Snyder.  Opponent Jim Bell sometimes bangs on the table when he’s uncertain what to bid.  Vickie jokingly asked if he was signaling to partner Fred Green.  On the final hand Fred opened 4 Diamonds; after two passes I bid 4 Hearts.  Jim raised to 5 Diamonds and I doubled.  We set them 2 vulnerable for 500 points and high board.

 Tara Westover at Cambridge U., 2018

Lila Cohen loaned me Tara Westover’s “Educated: A Memoir,” a 2016 best-seller that she had reported on at her AAUW book club. It’s a harrowing coming-of-age account of breaking away from Mormon survivalists in southeastern Idaho and, specifically, a paranoid, despotic father preparing for the end of the world, who kept Tara from attending school or seeking medical help when needed.  New York Times reviewer Alec MacGillis wrote:

    She learned to read from the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the speeches of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. The only science book in the house was for young children, full of glossy illustrations. The bulk of her time was spent helping her parents at work. Barely into her teens, Westover graduated from helping her mom mix remedies and birth babies to sorting scrap with her dad, who had the unnerving habit of inadvertently hitting her with pieces he’d tossed.

In the Prologue Westover introduces herself:

    I’m standing on the red railway car that sits abandoned next to the barn.  The wind soars, whipping my hair across my face and pushing a chill down the open neck of my shirt.  The gales are strong this close to the mountain, as if the peak itself is exhaling.  On the highway below, the school bus rolls past without stopping.  I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don’t go to school.  We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse. We have no school records because we’ve never set foot in a classroom.

Emboldened by the example of a brother, who read whatever books he could lay his hands on and left for college, Tara did well enough on an ACT test to be admitted to Brigham Young at age 16.  MacGillis wrote:

    There, she is shocked by the profane habits of her classmates, like the roommate who wears pink plush pajamas with “Juicy” emblazoned on the rear, and in turn shocks her classmates with her ignorance, never more so than when she asks blithely in art history class what the Holocaust was. (Other new discoveries for her: Napoleon, Martin Luther King Jr., the fact that Europe is not a country.) Such excruciating moments do not keep professors from recognizing her talent and voracious hunger to learn; soon enough, she’s off to a fellowship at Cambridge University, where a renowned professor — a Holocaust expert, no less — can’t help exclaiming when he meets her: “How marvelous. It’s as if I’ve stepped into Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion.’”

 The 1913 George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion was the inspiration for My Fair Lady. 

Miller's Sullivan St. lakefront illustrating beach erosion and mild winter, by Paul Kaczocha

Bob Seeger’s “Roll Me Away” came on the car radio and I just had to turn the volume way up and sing along.  On the surface it’s such a celebratory “on the road” anthem that the wistful final verse, not unusual in Seeger compositions, always comes as a sobering reality:

I'm gonna roll me away tonight
Gotta keep rollin', gotta keep ridin'
Keep searchin' till I find what's right
And as the sunset faded I spoke
To the faintest first starlight
And I said next time
Next time
We'll get it right

I attended Valparaiso University professor Allison Schuette’s interactive workshop at IUN sponsored by the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE) and titled “Flight Paths: Mapping our Changing Neighborhoods.”  Allison acknowledged my participation in the Indiana Humanities project and since the featured interactive map was on Gary’s Tolleston neighborhood, she passed out a brief history of Tolleston that I had written for Flight Paths. Allison played excerpts of interviews with three people who grew up in Tolleston.  One man described the ethnic mix prior to the 1960s as a blend of Slovak, Polish, Czech, and German.  His father had black friends; when he drafted Jimmy Scott, a black kid, for his Little League team, people phoned to complain and called him a “nigger lover.”  He recalled:

    Realtors would come into a neighborhood, say to the whites, “Better move now while your property is still worth something because when this neighborhood starts changing, property values will decrease and you’ll lose out on a lot of money.” And that eventually became illegal, but for quite a while these white folks just felt, “Well, I’d better do as they say and turn my house over to the realtor and get rid of it while I move elsewhere.”

    So many people just heard about these problems or these issues; they didn’t really experience them. They were watching television, seeing all kinds of marches and rebellions across the country, and they just got the impression that the black culture was antisocial, and they were a people that just didn’t understand the needs of the white person.

    When we watched on television the funeral of Martin Luther King, my uncles in particular would say, “Oh, man, we can’t have this, what is going on here? What’s happening to our society?” All they saw was the violence. They did not see the peace. They did not see the change. And the violence, they thought, was going to be widespread. It was going to come into Gary.

And I guess the whole idea of being in the same neighborhood, in the same church, in the same organization with black people was just something that they could not understand or tolerate.

When Karen Freeman-Wilson’s parents moved to Tolleston, it was rapidly becoming a black neighborhood, due to white flight.  Her father was a steelworker and her mother worked for Neighborhood Settlement House, which became Gary Neighborhood Services.  The building housed recent migrants from the South and helped integrate them into the community.  It also offered child day care and activities for teenagers and seniors. Freeman-Wilson recalled:

  I was a 4-H member there. We had a very vibrant program. I learned how to cook and to sew.  I can probably still do a pretty good hem with a sewing machine, and I still slipstitch.  We skated on a floor that was really wobbly, but it made you a good skater.  When you went to a real nice rink, you were a pro because if you could make it through the wobbles and the buckles in the floor at the neighborhood House, you could skate anywhere.

Councilwoman Mary Brown praised the resilience of Tolleston residents:

Just look around at people in my community. Retired doctors, retired teachers, retired professionals who have stayed. They’ve continued to pay taxes and pay into the city because they still believe that we can come back. They believe in the city and believe that it can work.

To illustrate Tolleston’s rapid racial transformation, Allison opened a section on St. John’s Lutheran Church, which predated the Gary’s founding by a half-century.  In 1962 Reverend Norman Brandt became pastor and visited the homes of new African-American residents, urging them to come to St. John’s.  A succession of church confirmation photos dramatically illustrated the rapid transition from all-white to all-black.  Reverend Brandt founded an alternative school in Glen Park that Phil and Dave attended for six years.  Rebecca Brandt was a classmate, as were good friends Clark and Gloria Metz’s girls.

(left; below, confirmation classes: 1962, 1964 & 1974) 

The large crowd included IUN colleagues Joseph Gomeztagle, Kathy Arfken, Lanette Mullin-Gonzales, Chris Young (with son Robert), Ellen Szarleta, Suzanne Green, Sue Zinner (with students from her Ethics class, including Munster clerk/treasurer Wendy Mis), Kay Westhues (from IU South Bend), and people from the community.  Allison posed questions that prompted small group discussions.  When the entire group shared insights, I remained quiet except to note the redlining by banks and government agencies not only prevented minorities from owning homes but also discriminated against black entrepreneurs.  African Americans in the audience shared experiences of growing up in segregated neighborhoods and encountering institutional racism.

Seeking more information about St. John’s Lutheran Church on Google led me to Michelle McGill-Vargas’s website, where I was cited in an article about Gary during the Prohibition era.  McGill-Vargas wrote:

    James Lane’s City of the Century led me to real-life gangster Gasperi (or Gaspari) Monti who ruled the city’s Little Italy section until his violent death in 1923. According to local newspaper reports, Monti is best known as the government’s star witness in a corruption case against more than sixty judges, prosecutors, policemen, and even then-Gary mayor Roswell Johnson, all for violating Prohibition laws. At the time, the Gary Police Department had a special enforcement arm called the Sponge Squad that arrested bootleggers, and then would sell liquor confiscated in the arrests to line their pockets and the pockets of everyone else up the law enforcement chain in Lake County. Monti made a deal with federal prosecutors to expose the corruption, but was gunned down in broad daylight by two unknown assailants on March 13, 1923, just days before he was scheduled to testify.

    Monti was no stranger to violence and attempts on his life. In 1922, he’d been shot through the mouth by a man who’d shot him a year prior. He owned and operated the Black and Tan Club in the 1700 block of Adams Street where shooting deaths were commonplace. Even Monti’s wife, Mary, was into the rackets. After her husband was killed, police found illegal liquor and several pounds of explosives in her home.

So-called “Black and Tan” establishments were saloons where African-American and Caucasian clientele intermingled. Scandalous to blue-blood Northsiders, the Gary “dive” was known for “debauched” activities such as interracial dancing and prostitution.

On a mute TV screen at Hobart Lanes was an ad for Lawless Auto Repair in Valpo.  Love the name.  Terry Kegebein will be attending a sixth family funeral within a year.  Since the price of obits in local newspapers has skyrocketed, many only use funeral home websites.  My great-aunt Ida Gordon, who lived with us when I was growing up, subscribed to the Easton (PA) Express for the obits about people she may have known.  I scan obits for personages of local significance or that illustrate Gary’s former ethnic diversity.  For example, from February 20 obits in the NWI Times I learned that Alice Geraldine Kiefer, 82, worked at USS Gary Sheet and Tin, met husband Carl at the Midway Ballroom, and the two were married at Holy Angels.  Robert Joseph, 96, played tackle for Gary Emerson and at IU, was a member of the 1945 Big Ten champions, and met wife Mabel at Calumet High School, where he taught for many years and founded its football team.  Here’s an excerpt from the obit for Mihailo Kostur, 77, like Robert Joseph a Gary Emerson grad:

    Mihailo was born in Vrlika Dalmatia Croatia.  He immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 15.  He worked as an operator for Arcelor Mittal for37 years. Mihailo enjoyed being outdoors, gardening playing bocce ball, many different card games, making homemade wine following Serbian traditions, and spending time with his grandchildren. Mihailo was a member of St. Elijah Cathedral in Merrillville as well as the Chetnik organization.  He was preceded in death by parents Bozo and Andja Kostur.

Historian Jerry Pierce found a humorous cartoon on Facebook, and Ray Gapinski posted photos of an abandoned asylum near Terre Haute. Larry Bean, who like wife Cindy pseeks out historic ruins, responded, “Looks like it’s worth the trip.”

Realizing the Dream

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up 
like a raisin in the sun? 


Or fester like a sore-- 
And then run? 


Does it stink like rotten meat? 


Or crust and sugar over-- 
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags 
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

            Langston Hughes, “A Dream Deferred"

About 70 guests were on hand at Valparaiso University’s Harre Union “Brown and Gold Room” for “Realizing the Dream in Northwest Indiana: Civil Rights in the Age of Ferguson.”  The event showcased work done by students in historian Heath Carter’s Race-Relations seminar.  Anne Balay went with me, and IUN’s James Wallace also attended.  It was fun hearing students whom I had met in Carter’s class and who had done research at the Calumet Regional Archives discuss their projects.  Guests were encouraged to contribute to a 30-foot long civil rights timeline; someone had already mentioned Gary mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher’s 1967 election victory, so I added his being elected to Gary City Council four years earlier.  At our table on my left was Queen Ella Washington, a West Side history teacher who’d taken my survey course ten years ago after a 20-year career in the navy.  On my right was Reverend John E. Jackson of Trinity United Church of Christ, who came with Carolyn McCrady and Dena Holland-Neal (below), the daughter of Gary’s former deputy mayor Jim Holland (NWI Times photo by Andy Lavalley). 

In his welcome remarks Carter quoted from Marin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and added that King’s vision included economic justice as well an integrated society.  The evening program was a prelude to February’s Martin Luther King Week events that will include a panel discussion featuring Gary mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson.  Speakers then will include Joanne Bland (a participant in the 1965 Selma March) and Sierre Leone native Ishmael Beah (author of “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier”).  Carter showed an image of a website that featured a photo of Hatcher speaking at the 1972 West Side National Black Political Convention with Jesse Jackson, Amiri Baraka and other black leaders in the background. Thousands of delegates attended from all over the country, many staying in residents’ homes.  Rev. John E. Jackson lamented that there is not so much as a plaque at West Side commemorating the transformative event.

 below, Delphina Hopkins-Gillispie and Heath Carter across from Queen Ella Washington; NWI Times photo by Andy Lavalley

Students spoke briefly about their seminar projects; topics ranged from forced Mexican Repatriation during the 1930s to a 1964 VU student petition demanding that the university do more to attract a more diverse student body.  Christina Crawley talked about Roosevelt School’s proud tradition and Lucas Phillips described tensions in Gary on election day 1967.  Tommy Morrison mentioned Rev. Norman Brandt, liberal pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church, whose adopted daughter Rebecca, an African American, went to the same alternative school in Glen Park as Phil and Dave. 

After dinner (delicious chicken, lasagna, rolls and salad) each table, led by a student facilitator (in our case, Christina), discussed the legacy of Region race relations and what needs to be done in the future.  When Reverend Jackson brought up the impediment of systemic racism, I brought up the willingness in 1968 of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration to fund War on Poverty programs.   He proliferation of urban riots had scared government officials and liberal foundations into encouraging black leaders willing to work within the political system.  Subsequent presidents, beginning with Richard M. Nixon, have neglected rustbelt cities, even recent Democratic chief executives.  Perhaps the current protests will wake up Washington.  Or not.

Protest in East Chicago; photo by Samuel A. Love

I noted that Bulls guard Derrick Rose wore an “I Can’t Breathe” warm-up shirt referring to the last words of Eric Garner, NYC victim of a police choke hold and brought up a Times column by Doug Ross entitled, “Could NWI become another Ferguson?”  IUN professor Monica Solinas-Saunders provided Ross with statistics concerning the disparity in arrest rates in suburban communities such as Hobart and Munster, where the presence of a black male is an immediate cause of suspicion.  Ronald Mullins of the Hammond Human Relations Commission urged police to reside within the communities they serve (a state law forbids cities to mandate that, an example of the absence of home rule hamstringing local officials).  I mentioned that when a Hammond policeman recently stopped an African American women for driving without a seatbelt and smashed a window, then tasered a passenger in the passenger seat who exercised his legal right to remain in the car, the story became national news after a youngster in the back seat caught it on video.  Protests have occurred in 170 cities, and in Gary on the corner of Ridge and Broadway.  Further examples of police brutality locally could ignite a veritable powder keg.

Heath Carter mentioned feeling somewhat disconnected, living in Valpo, from the nationwide protests.  Anne Balay added that when she lived in Chicago she almost never interacted with common folks, but in Gary it is virtually a daily experience to be asked, for instance, while at a stop sign for a ride to the South Shore station.  She contrasted the progressive role steelworkers traditionally played in the life of industrial cities such as Gary and East Chicago with their near invisibility today.  In 1964 thousands of Gary mill workers spent their money at local stores, bars, movie theaters, diners, and bowling alleys.  They were a major part of the lifeblood of the city politically, economically and socially, campaigning for candidates and agitating for economic justice and social change.  Now, even though the mills produce as much steel as ever, the blue-collar aura is almost gone.  

Several VU faculty members had heard of “Steel Closets” and were shocked at IUN denying Anne tenure.  Last Sunday Anne took part in a Day of Remembrance at a Portage church for transgender violence victims who died within the past year.  She’s on her way to DC for a Pride at Work twentieth-anniversary event where “Steel Closets” will be honored.

I emailed Heath: “Congratulations on putting together such an excellent program and bringing together so many interesting people, especially the students, even some from Merrillville High School.  You must be so proud of Christina, Lucas, and the others who handled speaking and facilitating with so much confidence and preparation.  I was delighted to see an article about the event on page one of the Northwest Indiana Times.  Reporter Susan Emery quoted Carter as saying, “Given everything going on around the country right now, the conversation could not be more timely.”

Asked about President Obama’s performance in a Rolling Stone interview, comedian Chris Rock stated: “As bad as George W. Bush was, he revolutionized the presidency.  He was the first president who only served the people that voted for him.  He ran the country like a cable network; he only catered to his subscribers.  Obama’s main fault is not realizing that’s kind of what people want.  That whole trying-to-make-everybody-happy thing is done.”  Concerning Gary’s own Jackson 5, Rock claimed: “Anything before them is just black misery.  So far as I’m concerned, Michael, Marlon, Tito, Jermaine, and Jackie ended slavery.”  Spoken like a 49 year-old with good instincts but not much historical perspective.

According to Peter Ackroyd’s “Tudors,” the “Bloody” Catholic Queen Mary persecuted “heretics” because she believed God would otherwise punish her by keeping her barren.  In grad school I wrote a seminar paper about Hugh Latimer, chaplain to King Edward VI, which got published in the Journal of Church and State.  When in Oxford, England, I came across a marker on the site where in 1555, along with Nicholas Ridley, he allegedly uttered these last words before they were burned at the stake: “Play the man, master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”  A witness later wrote: “[Latimer] received the flame as if embracing it.  After he had stroked his face with his hands and bathed them a little in the fire, he soon died with very little pain or none.”

Queen Elizabeth evidently loved to dance, ride horseback, bed down young couriers, and attend bear-baiting events, where dogs set upon the animal in a pit.  On one occasion a raised platform collapsed, killing many spectators, which superstitious Londoners took to be an ominous omen.

Julianne Moore plays a professor afflicted with early Alzheimer’s in “Still Alive.”  A Time review quoted from the poem “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins:

“As if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

Decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of your brain

To a little fishing village where there are no phones.”

The final “Sonic Highway” episode took place in NYC (where else?) and included an interview with Woody Guthrie’s daughter Nora and several Guthrie songs.  When Bob Dylan came to their house, Nora recalled, she refused to answer the door because she was watching Little Eva on “American Bandstand.”  History might have been different, she concluded, had brother Arlo not let him in the third time he knocked.  I learned that CBGB’s stands for Country, Bluegrass, and Blues although, as Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, told David Grohl, he never heard anything but punk rock there during the Seventies.

Family weekend highlights: Alissa and Josh returning from Europe; winning one of five board games (Shark) against Dave and T. Wade; garnering the most points in Fantasy football thanks to wide receivers A.J. Green and T.Y Hilton and thus advanced in the “consolation ladder.”

Ann Fritz hosted a wonderful reception featuring the artwork of ceramist Amber Ginsburg.  “The Tea Project” consisted mainly cups inspired by a guard at Guantanamo prison who noticed that detainees would carve drawings on the cups containing tea, utilizing, in most cases, their fingernails.  Most drew flowers but writings, most likely prayers or poems.  The guard was ordered to destroy the cups, but seeing them helped to understand the humanity of his captors, many in their teens and one reportedly as young as 13.  Amber has held several “Tea Party” events with IUN students that have been very spiritual.  Ann noticed a guy with a huge plastic container about to dive into the food and showed him the small plates guests were use.  He still managed three helpings without so much as glancing at the artwork.

On Atlantic’s list of the hundred most influential, Americans there are eight African Americans (led by Martin Luther King at no. 8) and ten women (highest is Elizabeth Cady Stanton at no. 30) but no Latinos or Native Americans.  I’d surely list Cesar Chavez ahead of Babe Ruth or Mary Baker Eddy.  Mormons Brigham Young and Joseph Smith made the list but no Malcolm X.  Abraham Lincoln deservedly led the list, and I can’t argue with the inclusion of business tycoons Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan.  Though reactionaries, today Ford’s wages of five dollars a day would translate into $120; and Morgan had more scruples than our generation’s Wall St. Robber Barons.

"Imagine": John Lennon, 9 October 1940 -  8 December 1980