“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.” Lao Tzu
In an email titled “Change Is Coming” bridge Newsletter editor Barbara Walczak (above) announced that she is ending her tenure after 1000 issues. While she hopes someone will take over what seems like a herculean task, that seems unlikely. Admitting that she is “worn out,” Barbara wrote: “I have begun this labor of love 14 years ago, and I’ve come to a time when I wish to pursue interests other than concentrating so heavily on bridge. There are so many other things to do in life.” I responded: “Say it ain’t so! We’re losing a vital historical source. Let me know if you wish to deposit your photo files or other items to your collection in the Calumet Regional Archives.”
Completing Ralph Kiner’s “Baseball Forever,” I noticed the word DISCARDED on the front cover. The culprit: Valpo Public Library, just 15 years after the book’s publication. Kiner had harsh words for executive Branch Rickey, who broke the color line while with the Brooklyn Dodgers but did not add any African-American players to the Pirates roster during his unsuccessful five-year tenure in Pittsburgh. After the 1952 season, during which the Pirates finished the cellar, he wanted to cut the slugger’s $90,000 salary 25% despite his having led the National League in home runs, saying, “We can finish last without you.” Rickey ended up trading Kiner to the Cubs. Kiner admits that when a Mets broadcaster, he was known for malaprops, such as calling his press box sidekick Tim MacArthur rather than McCarver, catcher Gary Carter Gary Cooper, and sponsor American Cyanmid American Cyanide. Oops! He once claimed that “if Casey Stengel were alive today, he’d be spinning in his grave.”
Thrice married, Kiner also dated actress Janet Leigh for three weeks until a jealous Tony Curtis returned from a movie set and reclaimed her. Years later, Kiner ran into Jamie Lee Curtis, and without missing a beat she exclaimed, “Daddy!” That night, Kiner did the math and realized that Jamie Lee was joking. Kiner became friends with many Hollywood celebrities, including Bing Crosby and Bob Hope and like them, made his home in Rancho Mirage near Palm Springs, where my mother spent her final years.
On HBO Saturday I watched “The Horse Whisperer” (1998) starring irresistibly sexy Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas as his love interest, and Scarlett Johansson (I was delighted to discover) as a 13-year-old who became traumatized after a riding accident that killed her best friend, caused her leg to be amputated, and severely injured her horse Pilgrim. Later Toni and I braved the snow to dine with the Hagelbergs at Longhorn Steakhouse, finally exchanging Christmas presents after a month of being unable to find a mutually agreeable date.
Sunday I went to an Aquatorium fundraising event, the screening of “The Bridges of Toko-Ri” (1954), starring William Holden as Navy Lieutenant Harry Brubaker and classy Grace Kelly as wife Nancy. One of the few movies dealing with the unpopular, inconclusive Korean War, it focused on a World War II bomber pilot unwillingly called back to active service despite having a wife and two daughters and a successful practice as an attorney. For comic relief 5’2” Mickey Rooney plays a pugnacious helicopter pilot; for gravitas the veteran Frederic March was Rear Admiral George Tarrant. In one hilarious scene the Brubakers visit a Japanese bath house, and uptight Nancy makes Harry get in the water before the kids can see him naked. To their surprise a Japanese family arrive to use the adjacent pool; when they disrobe, Nancy shields the girls until they are in the water. Soon the two families exchange pleasantries, with the children, unlike Nancy, unconcerned about skinny-dipping.
Beforehand, host Greg Reising explained that like the main character, many pilots, known as “dual draftees,” were called on to serve both in World War II and Korea. One of these was baseball great Ted Williams. I chatted with several familiar Millerites, including realtor Gene Ayers (who recently met with IUN student Casey King to discuss Frank-N-Stein Restaurant), Nelson Algren museum founders Sue Rutsen and George Rogge (about an April speaker's new book on photographer Art Shay), and John and Catherine Rudd, a couple I introduced myself to, who turned out to be 1976 Lew Wallace grads. John was wearing a Wallace swim team jersey, and we discussed past Hornet basketball stars, such as Jerome Harmon, Tellis Frank, and Branden Dawson. I told them that in 1976 IUN held its commencement ceremony in the Wallace gym.
In the car I learned the shocking news about basketball great Kobe Bryant, 41, dying in a helicopter crash, along with eight others, including his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, who had hoped one day to play in the WNBA and whom Kobe coached in a league he’d founded. They were on their way to a game despite heavy fog. A quarter century ago, Bryant had gone right into the pros from Lower Merion High School in the Philadelphia area and tried to emulate his hero Michael Jordan in the way he talked, dressed, practiced, and played through illness and injury. In a moving eulogy Jordan wrote: “I loved Kobe – he was like a little brother to me.” Some criticized the NBA for not cancelling games later that day, but players honored his memory in gestures of respect on the court and in public statements.
That evening the GRAMMY awards took place at the Staples Center, where Kobe played his entire 20-year NBA career; his jersey, number 24, stayed illuminated throughout the show. Hostess Alicia Keys and Boys to Men sang a special tribute to Bryant’s memory. The live performances were awesome and included a few old-timers, including Billy Ray Cyrus in a Lil Nas X number, Gwen Stefano in a duet with Blake Shelton, Tanya Tucker backed by Brandi Carlile, and Arrowsmith performing “Walk This Way” with Run-D.M.C. Lizzo, as always, was incandescent and obviously shaken by Kobe’s death. Honoring the lifetime achievements of Chicagoan John Prine, Bonnie Raitt sang “Angel from Montgomery,” whose chorus goes like this:
Make me an angel that flies from Montgom'ry
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go
While Vampire Weekend won a GRAMMY for best alternative album, my choice would have been Jeff Tweedy and Wilco’s latest, “Ode to Joy.” I particularly like “An Empty Corner,” which includes this verse:
Now that I’m not longed for
Wild life seems wrong
Won’t care, won’t stare
You’ve got family out there
“Everybody hides,” Tweedy sings in one of the album’s best songs, but the folky selections are surprisingly candid at times.
Assisted by Samantha Gauer, I interviewed former IUN student and Lake County surveyor George Van Til for a second time, in the Calumet Regional Archives. We covered his introduction to politics at age 23 in Highland town government and years of service as a precinct committeeman, learning lessons that facilitated his becoming county surveyor and proved useful on the way to winning 16 of the 17 times he ran for elected office. The one loss came early in his career as a result of the last-minute entry of a spoiler candidate. He later had the pleasure of handily defeating that person. The 60 minutes flew by. George considered it good preparation for his February book club appearance and motivation to resume working on an upcoming autobiography.
Timothy Vassar’s “Jeremiah Wasn’t Just a Bullfrog: A Story of Passion, Pursuit, Perseverance . . . and Polliwogs” contained a 1974 photo of him wearing a Mayor Hatcher Youth Foundation t-shirt with nine African-American AAU summer track and field teammates. Vassar explained: “I was recruited out of Highland [after his sophomore year] to be part of this team and was honored to be part of an exceptional group of athletes.” In the book he described being on the 880-yard relay team with athletes from Gary Roosevelt and West Side, track and field powerhouses coached by Willie Wilson and John Campbell:
All of the team members were black. Except one. I felt like the middle layer of an Oreo cookie. Practices were held at Gary Roosevelt in the “Midtown” section of Gary. At that time, Gar had a reputation as a violent, crime-ridden city. As I was warming up during the first practice, I carried my “spikes” with me. One of my teammates, Jimmie Williams, began to jog with me and asked why I was carrying my spiked shoes. I told him I didn’t want anyone to take them. He told me that wasn’t a problem because “Track is sacred in Gary.” I dropped my spikes right then and never worried about them again. As the summer season progressed, our relay team of Michael Johnson, Lawrence Johnson, Robert Buckingham, and I qualified for the state championship. As we were warming up for the event, I asked Michael, a 9.6 sprinter, what he needed from me. He simply said, Just get me the baton.” I did just that. It was awesome to see Michael, Lawrence, and Robert finish out the race with a huge lead. Lawrence went on to play football for the Cleveland Browns during the “Kardiac Kids” days. All three of my teammates were far more talented than I was, and it was a blessing to be part of that relay team.
Jerry Davich wrote a Post-Tribune column on Brent Schroeder, 55, who during the 1980s and 1990s played with such heavy metal bands as Prisoner and Hap Hazzard. Schroeder grew up in Boone Grove idolizing KISS and AC/DC and in high school formed the band Panama Red, which learned such numbers as “Cocaine” and “Highway to Hell” and got banned from a local talent show. After working as a welder in Chicago and playing area bars, Brent took his band to Hollywood, “flirted with success” (Davich’s words), and came back to the Region to sober up and eventually form a new band Midwest Cartel. After suffering a stroke in 2011, brent wrote a memoir titled “Heaven Became Hell.” He’s been shot by Los Angeles gang members and stabbed and hit with a broken bottle while flirting with a guy’s girlfriend. Commenting on his shaved head, Schroeder remarked: “I see guys with long hair like that, I say, ‘Hey dude, the ‘80s are over.’” At present Schroeder is back in Boone Grove living with his 83-year-old father who, wrote Davich, “never quite understood his son’s lust for life as a brash young rock’n’roller.”
Ray Smock wrote:
Taking notes as Trump attorneys create alternative narrative. Was amused by argument that Trump did not go to Warsaw, Poland to meet President Zelensky on Sept. 1 because he had to manage Hurricane Dorian. You will recall that Trump used a Sharpie to show the hurricane would hit Alabama and spent the next 4 days in a tweet fight with our own weather experts. He can sure manage a disaster!
Jonathyne Briggs invited me to his freshman seminar class on Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The reading assignment included excerpts from Norman Mailer’s “Miami and the Siege of Chicago.” The students were soft-spoken and reticent about discussing an event that must have seemed to them like ancient history. Briggs engaged them by relating what happened to things students were familiar with, such as recent protests over abortion and gun control, the death of Kobe Bryant, and contemporary TV programs. I mentioned that Gary was one of the few cities that avoided rioting following the assassination of Martin Luther King and that I cast my first vote in 1964 for Lyndon Johnson because he promised “no wider war.”
Because students seemed unfamiliar with Mailer, I mentioned that beginning with a 1960 Esquire article on John Kennedy, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” the novelist began to concentrate on what became known as “New Journalism” that made no pretense of objectivity and that his account of the 1967 antiwar march on the Pentagon, “The Armies of the Night” was an instant classic. I stifled a desire to read my favorite paragraph from “Armies” describing what he (and I, marching with fellow Marylanders Ray Smock, Pete Daniel, and Sam Merrill) witnessed on that memorable day:
The trumpet sounded again. It was calling the troops. "Come here," it called from the steps of Lincoln Memorial over the two furlongs of the long reflecting pool, out to the swell of the hill at the base of Washington Monument, "come here, come here. come here. The rally is on!" And from the north and the east, from the direction of the White House and the Smithsonian and the Capitol, from Union Station and the Department of Justice the troops were coming in, the volunteers were answering the call. They came walking up in all sizes, a citizens' army not ranked yet by height, an army of both sexes in numbers almost equal, and of all ages, although most were young. Some were well-dressed, some were poor, many were conventional in appearance, as many were not. The hippies were there in great number, perambulating down the hill, many dressed like the legions of Sgt. Pepper's Band, some were gotten up like Arab sheiks, or in Park Avenue doormen's greatcoats, others like Rogers and Clark of the West, Wyatt Earp, Kit Carson, Daniel Boone in buckskin, some had grown moustaches to look like Have Gun, Will Travel-Paladin's surrogate was here!-and wild Indians with feathers, a hippie gotten up like Batman, another like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man-his face wrapped in a turban of bandages and he wore a black satin top hat. A host of these troops wore capes, beat-up khaki capes, slept on, used as blankets, towels, improvised duffel bags; or fine capes, orange linings, or luminous rose linings, the edges ragged, near a tatter, the threads ready to feather, but a musketeer's hat on their head. One hippie may have been dressed like Charlie Chaplin; Buster Keaton and W. C. Fields could have come to the ball; there were Martians and Moon-men and a knight unhorsed who stalked about in the weight of real armor. There were to be seen a hundred soldiers in Confederate gray, and maybe there were two or three hundred hippies in officer's coats of Union dark-blue. They had picked up their costumes where they could, in sur- plus stores, and Blow-your-mind shops, Digger free emporiums, and psychedelic caches of Hindu junk. There were soldiers in Foreign Legion uniforms, and tropical bush jackets, San Quentin and Chino, California striped shirt and pants, British copies of Eisenhower jackets, hippies dressed like Turkish shepherds and Roman senators, gurus, and samurai in dirty smocks. They were close to being assembled from all the intersections between history and the comic books, between legend and television, the Biblical archetypes and the movies. The sight of these troops, this army with a thousand costumes, fulfilled to the hilt our General's oldest idea of war which is that every man should dress as he pleases if he is going into battle, for that is his right, and variety never hurts the zest of the hardiest workers in every battalion. 
