Memorial Day

Annville, PA

“Our nation owes a debt to its heroes that we can never fully repay,” Barack Obama

 

Several Facebook friends posted messages about loved ones who served our country.  Mike Certa wrote this message: “This Memorial Day, I'd like to remember my godfather, Joe Certa, who was killed in action in Korea in 1950. I also want to thank all those who have served their country in the armed forces, whether in war or peace.”  As people flocked to beaches, often not heeding warnings about social distancing, Pat Wisniewski posted a clip of troops landing at Normandy Beach on D-Day and wrote: “Memorial Day is more than just a day at the beach.”  Stevie Kokos remembered his father (below), who served with the 82^nd Airborne and passed away within the past year.

For Hoosiers Memorial Day weekend traditionally means patriotic parades and the Indianapolis 500, often referred to simply as “The Race.”  Once widespread, visiting cemeteries with wreaths of flowers still takes place for many families honoring loved ones.  In fact, initially the holiday was called Decoration Day to honor casualties of the Civil War, with May 30 designated as the date because it was an optimum time for flowers to be in bloom.  Historian Ray E. Boomhower posted this quotation by Hoosier President Benjamin Harrison, grandson of “Old Tippecanoe” (William Henry Harrison) and a colonel during the Civil War” who fought under William Tecumseh Sherman.

    I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day.  I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak, because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it. We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did. We mourn for them as comrades who have departed, but we feel the glory of their dying and the glory of their achievement covers all our great country, and has set them in an imperishable roll of honor.

 

Changing Decoration Day to Memorial Day was similar to renaming Armistice Day, commemorating the end of the Great War (World War I) to Veterans Day, encompassing all who served in combat regardless of what war, or, for that matter, replacing Lincoln and Washington’s birthday holidays with President Day. July 4 still  reminds us of when in 1776 the Founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, but Columbus Day has been de-emphasized in the wake of revelations about the explorer’s mistreatment of native Americans.  One wonders how long Martin Luther King Day will endure. Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving seem safe in their commercialized form, as does Halloween, which has pagan roots and was banned by New England Puritans but celebrated by Irish immigrants who began arriving in America during the potato famine of the 1840s.

 

World War II was the last noncontroversial war, and those relatively few veterans are succumbing in shockingly large numbers in assisted living facilities.  So, too, are Vietnam veterans, now senior citizens (childhood buddy Paul Curry would be 77 had he survived Vietnam) often receiving inadequate care in veterans’ hospitals and homes.  On this day I not only mourn those who made the ultimate sacrifice in needless wars but those who survived combat but whose nation let them down upon their return and in their old age. Vince Emanuel posted this bitter commentary:

    I used to get angry when people would 'thank me' for my 'service.' These days, it just makes me sad. So many of my friends have died as a result of America's illegal and immoral wars. Millions of our brothers and sisters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Palestine, and beyond have either been killed or displaced.  I have lost more guys from my platoon to suicide, cancer, and drug overdoses than we lost during the war. Imagine the stress and uncertainty you're feeling in the midst of this pandemic, multiply it by a thousand, add foreign troops kicking in your door, killing, kidnapping, and torturing your family members, then destroying your home, only to have it happen again in a few weeks, and you'll have a small idea of what it's like to be on the receiving end of Uncle Sam's madness. Imagine foreign troops bombing, shelling, and shooting up your neighborhoods just for fun. Imagine those troops mutilating the dead corpses of your relatives and friends, taking pictures and laughing. That's war. That's where your tax dollars are going. That's what I testified to U.S. Congress about back in 2008 (no one cared). That's what's being done in your name while you and your family eat hotdogs and fret about a non-existent baseball season. There's nothing courageous about flying halfway around the world and killing innocent peasants and unemployed workers with mechanized military equipment. There's nothing brave about serving U.S. Empire. That's why 22 veterans kill themselves every day in this country. They're not proud. They're ashamed. - Signed, USMC Veteran (2002-2006) 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, Alpha Company, 3rd Platoon, 1st Squad, 3rd Fireteam.

My late IUN colleague Jim Tolhuizen, grievously wounded when ordered to participate in Nixon’s 1970 Cambodian “Incursion,” never talked about his war experiences until learning I was teaching a course of the history of Vietnam. He began speaking to my students and never brought up his platoon mate Paul’s death but wrote about it for my Vietnam veterans Steel Shavings (volume 39, 2008).  During an R and R trip to Bangkok, Paul had bought the Beatles’s “Abbey Road” tape.  He’d play that tape over and over, and Jim’s last memory of Paul is their squad coming under attack on night guard duty and Paulosing his life trying to retrieve that tape.  After his week in Bangkok, Paul also returned with a photo of a Thai girl who’d been his “escort” and asked Jim to get rid of it should he be killed so his parents and fiancé wouldn’t see it.  Tolhuizen wrote:
    I packed that picture of Paul and his Thai girl away and haven’t seen it in years.  Sometimes I think I should find it and maybe send it to his family if I could find them.  It’s hard to believe anyone would care about the Thai girl anyway.  I don’t know, I made a promise, so I’ll keep it to myself.       

In “They Marched into Sunlight (page 45) David Maraniss wrote about a similar attack in 1967 near Vung Tau: “A squad of Viet Cong guerillas slipped past the listening post and the ambush squad and launched a surprise attack on the night defensive position with machine gun fire and claymore mines, killing one soldier, who had been sitting atop his bunker rather than inside it, and wounding eight others.”

Anne Koehler recalled growing up during World War II in the small farming village of Damendorf in the north of Germany:

    Nearby was the site of torpedo experimentation. They would shoot them into the bay and it was not safe to be on the beach, because some would go astray and surface there. All around the area were barrels which in times of imminent bomber attack would emit smoke to cloud the area and make targets invisible.  We were directly in the flight path of Allied bombers from England to the city of Kiel, where submarines were being built and thus a strategically important target.  We would hear the drone of the engines by the hour during the night. The sky would light in colors over Kiel from "Leuchtkugeln" or flares, dropped to make targets more visible. We called them Christmas trees. (I read once that Jimmy Stewart flew those missions). Sometimes bombers on their return flight would drop extra bombs into the fields nearby. We made a field trip with our school to look at the huge crater. Our village was never hit but toward the end of the war dive bombers flew right over our farm. An anti-aircaft batter or FLAS was on the way to our county seat, the Baltic seaside resort of Eckernfoerde.  I do not recall the end of the war on May 8, 1945, 75 years ago or how it was greeted in our village. I was only 10 and it was my mother's birthday. Prior to that time, I do recall hearing Hitler on the radio. He was screaming and I did not understand what he was saying. Hopefully WWII will be the last world war.


Our weekend routine didn’t change much.  Friday a violent storm left many Lake County residents without electricity or flooded basements, but we escaped except for large puddles in our back yard.  Dace’s family came over and brought homemade egg drop soup and the makings for spring rolls.  Toni provided shrimp, corn on the cob, and other ingredients.  Afterwards, we took pictures with Becca wearing her commencement robe, and I played space base with Dave and James.  I got in some computer bridge, including partnering with Carol Miller.  She had bought plane tickets to visit her son, who’s serving in South Korea, but the pandemic put the kibosh on that.

Sundown Towns

“By 1970, exclusion was so complete that fewer than 500 black families lived in white suburban neighborhoods in the entire metropolitan Chicago area.” James W. Loewen, “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism” (2005)

Most famous for “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” first published in 1995, James W. Loewen in the 1970s  had a textbook turned down by Mississippi educators on the grounds that it was too controversial.  Sundown towns, Loewen discovered, existed from Maine to California, including the Hoosier state.  Sometimes the discrimination was blatant, and in Southern Indiana it was not uncommon for motorists to come across signs crudely addressed to African-Americans, warning, “Don’t let the sun go down on you.”  Jews and other minority groups sometimes encountered similar hostility when attempting to move into suburban communities. 

In Northwest Indiana, suburban police forces often intimidated drivers passing through their communities, and realtors rigidly enforced the color line.  During the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan had been active in many Hoosier towns, and the Klan almost purchased Valparaiso University at that time.  According to John Gehm’s “Bringing It Home” (1984) the Klan erected a sign by the Valpo city limits reading “NIGGERS OUT BY SUNDOWN” that remained for some years.  Two black students registered for classes at VU in the fall of 1946 but were told to wait until second semester so that a statement in the city charter that read, “No blacks are allowed to sleep in Valparaiso overnight” was amended.  Then they allegedly were given notes from the mayor to carry with them granting them permission to be in town in the event they ventured off campus after dark.   

Indiana Humanities kicked off a ten-city film series tour (on March 6 the venue will be at IUN’s Bergland Auditorium) at Valparaiso University by showing two documentaries of particular interest to me, “From Sundown to Sunrise” by Pat Wisniewski (left) and Tom Desch and “Larry from Gary” by Miller resident and Columbia College professor Dan Rybicky (below).  I sat with Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette, who introduced me to two VU students connected with the Welcome Project and Jon Hendricks, VU director of photography, whose wife Becca works for IUN in University Advancement.  A large crowd was on hand, including former Post-Trib columnist Jeff Manes, a good friend whom I hadn’t seen in over a year, IUN Vice Chancellor John Novak, and Katherine Arfken, a Performing Arts professor who knew Pat Wisniewski from when she was an IUN student.  Once a steelworker, Wisniewski returned to school in her 40s and graduated in 2009. She and Jeff Manes collaborated on “Everglades of the North” (about the Kankakee March) and she worked with Lee Botts in producing “Shifting Sands” (about efforts to save the dunes). I'm in it, and when people tell me they saw me on TV, I'm fairly certain that's why.

“From Sundown to Sunset” told the story of the Cotton family becoming the first African Americans to live in Valparaiso.  They were residing in Chicago’s segregated housing project Cabrini Green, where close to 15,000 African Americans lived, when the met Walt and Loie Reiner.  A navy veteran and former VU football coach, Walt had moved his family to Chicago after founing a group called Prince of Peace Volunteers interested in working with Cabrini Green residents.  Four years later, when the Reiners prepared to move back to Valparaiso Robert’s mother expressed regret that her family couldn’t do so as well, it became the Reiners’ mission to make that happen.  When realtors refused to deal with the Cottons, the Reiners arranged for volunteers to construct a house for them near their own.  As a result, both families received death threats and other forms of harassment. Volunteers guarded the Cotton home at night for over a year. Appearing on the film, Robert Cotton, who was 12 at the time of the move, recalled her sister being fearful upon spotting a stranger lurking outside their home and his deciding, bare-chested, to guard the door with a machete in his hand.  Cotton went on to graduate from VU, and there’s a clip of him speaking to students in Allison Schuette’s class. In 2015 residents elected Cotton to the Valparaiso City Council;  he was re-elected in 2019.  The film ends with him first being sworn in and his mother wiping tears from her eyes as he recited the oath.

above, Reiners; below, Robert Cotton

Larry Brewer

Renaldo Maurice

“Larry from Gary” highlights teacher Larry Brewer’s efforts to teach dance to young people despite great obstacles.  Brewer graduated from Gary’s Horace Mann High School and taught for 35 years at Emerson School for the Visual and Performing Arts, which closed down last year.  Brewer is interviewed outside the ruins of Horace Mann, where as a student he participated in a demonstration on behalf of Martin Luther King Day becoming a national holiday, inside the ruins of City Methodist Church’s Seaman Hall, where he once performed, and at the two former sites of defunct Emerson School. He’s seen working with dancers, and the film includes performances by former students, including Reginald Maurice, who went on to study at Juilliard School and dance with the prestigious Alvin Ailey Company.  I was pleased to see Larry, sitting in front of me, be greeted by numerous well-wishers.  A few years ago, he directed a program at the old Miller School that grandson James participated in, learning hip hop dance moves.

A third film showed the tremendous effort it took to put out a small-town paper.  It reminded me of the Chesterton Tribune, in existence since 1882 and performing a vital community service. It’s probably destined to survive, if at all, as an online publication.  At intermission IUN performing arts professor Kathy Arfken greeted me warmly.  Sensing I was trying to place, she said that, inspired by former colleague Anne Balay’s example, she recently decided to let her hair go naturally white.  It looks great.  We talked about photography professor Gary Wilk, who retired a few years ago. I told her we used to party with him during the 1970s when artist Larry Kaufman was his mentor.

Photographer Kay Westhues sought information about a Gary district known as Black Oak.  Among other things, I recommended my Vietnam Steel Shavings issue that has excerpts from Joe Klein’s “Payback” describing the “scuffy” home town of Vietnam veteran Gary Cooper (who would subsequently die in a shoot-out with Hammond police while suffering a pstd-induced flashback) and the distinctive blue-collar counter-culture emerging there in the late-1960s that promised “sex, drugs, mayhem, and good music.” Klein wrote:

    It was harsher, more anarchic and, in a way, more hedonistic than its better-known progenitor.  There was none of the philosophical posturing, little of the youthful idealism.  If a Fonda was admired, it was not Jane (who was despised even by the antiwar veterans) but brother Peter and his motorcycle. Steel workers didn’t “experiment” with drugs; they used them; they weren’t searching for illumination, just escape.

    They tended to favor the wilder fringes of rock music, disdaining the existential angst of Simon and Garfunkel for the less subtle pleasure of Led Zeppelin and Grand Funk Railroad.  They grew their hair long (and left it that way, long after most of the campus radicals returned to the fold and discovered the 25-dollar hairstyling parlor), and they began using some of the words they’d heard on television: the police became the “pigs,” the factory bosses the “establishment,” and “party” became a verb as well as a noun.  Their rage was diffuse; they weren’t rebelling against their parents so much as the utter dreariness of factory life itself.  Those who talked revolution were mostly interested in tearing the old mess down.

David Rubenstein included an interview with A. Scott Berg, author of “Lindbergh,” in his new book “The American Story.”  “Lucky Lindy” was the world’s first mega-hero after his 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic at age 25.  Previously, he’d performed dare-devil feats, including wing walking and parachute jumping, as a barnstorming pilot and survived close calls delivering mail between Chicago and St. Louis.  Berg claims that Lindbergh turned down all endorsement offers upon his triumphant return from Europe and that in 1929 the shy Minnesotan and his bride Anne Morrow were virgins on thei wedding night.  They went on to have six children, the eldest who was abducted from his crib and killed.  Between 1958 and 1967, unbeknownst to his wife or author Berg until after his biography was completed, Lindbergh fathered seven children by three German women. Because he was an isolationist prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt rejected his efforts to serve in World War II.  Nonetheless, Lindbergh advised American pilots in the Pacific and with General Douglas MacArthur’s blessing flew on 50 combat missions. Somewhat of a racist, he was no doubt more comfortable fighting Japanese than Germans.

Since IUN only carried Elizabeth Keckley’s “Behind the Scenes: or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House” as an ebook, Anne Koehler ordered it for me inter-library loan.  A copy arrived from VU that contained an informative foreword by historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  I was most interested in Keckley’s relationship with Mary Todd Lincoln, for whom she made over a dozen dresses and became a close companion of the First Lady. After publication of the book, Keckley was criticized for revealing White House secrets, but the anecdotes were tame compared to present-day gossip.  Mary Todd Lincoln was very suspicious of the men around her husband, in particular Salmon Chase and William Seward.  When Lincoln was about to appoint Andrew Johnson military governor of Tennessee, she told him, according to Keckley, “He is a demagogue and if you place him in power, mark my words, you will rue it some day.”  She also detested generals George McClellan as a “humbug” and Grant as “an obstinate fool and a butcher.” She was uncomfortable with Abe interacting with comely women during social engagements. One story has Mary telling the President prior to a reception not to flirt with the ladies and saying, “You know well enough, Mr. Lincoln, that I do not approve of your flirtations with silly women, just as if you were a beardless boy, fresh from school.”      

Toni and I celebrated our 55th wedding anniversary at the Craft House in Chesterton. Normally we don’t get dessert, but the highlight of the meal was sharing nine warm beignet pastry fritters served with chocolate, strawberry, and caramel dipping sauces.

Tempus Fugit

“Time flames like a paraffin stove

And what burns are the minutes I live.”

    Irving Layton

In Harper’s weird column “Findings,” which presents without explanation dozens of biological oddities, I learned that Japanese quail possess a gland that turns “copulatory fluid” into “meringue-like foam” and that “invasive mussels were purifying the Great Lakes, thereby killing loons.”  Say what?  Inspired to look further into this, I discovered that clear water allowed sunlight to penetrate to greater depths, facilitating the growth of algae mats.  When they decompose, they produce deadly botulism toxin that infect Gobies and other fish that the loons eat, ultimately paralyzing them. 

On the way to watch James bowl I listened to WXRT’s show on 1990, not my favorite year musically although “Love Shack” by the B52s and Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” were cool.  It was the year Nelson Mandela got released from prison and the Soviet Union dissolved.  “Home Alone,” “Goodfellas,” and “Pretty Woman” were box office hits, and Johnny Depp starred in the year’s strangest movie, “Edward Scissorhands.”  At Camelot Lanes Dave told me he’s been named English Department chair at E.C. Central.

At Miller Bakery Café with Linda Anderson and Ron and Nancy Cohen, I had the scallops “small meal” and a house salad (perfect choice). Nancy watches two grandchildren three times a week and is weaning Rocco off diapers as his third birthday approaches.  Linda, once IUN’s athletic director, asked about folks she used to work with, including Scott Fulk and Mary Lee. Folk singer Charlie King is performing at Temple Israel next weekend; Ron arranged for him to sing at IUN some years before. I first heard Charlie at a Bailly Alliance No Nukes rally; now he is active in Bill Pelke’s movement to abolish the death penalty, Journey of Hope . . . From Violence to Healing.

 Charlie King

After dinner we attended a Gardner Center showing of “Everglades of the North: The Story of the Grand Kankakee Marsh.”  All four producers were on hand, including Pat Wisniewski and Jeff Manes, and answered questions afterwards.  The most touching moment was when they thanked the late Cara Spicer for all her support with Steve and many of her friends in the audience.  Although I’d seen the documentary before, it still was jarring to realize the callous disregard for nature and the wholesale slaughter of migrating birds.  One company would fire off a huge cannon-like rifle that could kill hundreds in a single shot.  President-elect Benjamin Harrison got lost in the marsh during a hunting excursion; the country might have been better off had he never been found.

 Blondine Huk and Frederic Cousseau

Frederic and Blandine arrived from Hunter’s Inn in Glen Park, whose owner was so impressed with them that he plied them with free drinks and offered to have a party in their honor in October.  Dick and Cheryl Hagelberg gave them photos from when they took in a RailCats game, and I introduced them to Karren Lee (who they’re going to interview), Jeff Manes, and Pat Wisniewski.  As we were leaving, Brenda and Samuel Love drove by, saw us, and stopped to chat. All in all, a good evening.

Home in time for the season debut of SNL, hosted by Tina Fey, who played an Albanian woman in the evening’s funniest skit, a parody of “Girls.”  I managed to stay up till midnight to see Arcade Fire perform both “Reflektor” and “Afterlife.”  Frontman Win Butler had black makeup around the eyes, making him resemble a raccoon.

Jeff Manes had alerted me that his Sunday SALT column was about his North Newton Latin teacher, Mrs. Maggie Merchant, now 91 and a resident of a healthcare center named for Hoosier humorist George Ade.  During WW II she attended Ball State and told Manes: “If it had not been for a scholarship, I wouldn’t have been able to go to college. At that time, they had quarters rather than semesters. It was $27.50 per quarter; my scholarship covered $22 of that. I worked at the movie theater while going to college. I smelled like popcorn all the time.”  When Jeff told her it seemed like just yesterday that he was in her class, she responded in Latin, “Tempus fugit.”  Time flees.

Union stalwart Alice Bush arranged for Frederic and Blandine to attend Sunday afternoon line dancing at the SEIU hall.  About 25 women were learning steps from a retired steelworker.  They were delighted to be filmed and some tried out their French on their guests.  I wore my SEIU cap and, though normally a terrible line dancer (I could never master the electric slide’s change of direction), I did one new step well enough to earn high fives from several women near me, including Jackie, who is a champion step dance competitor.  I tried to keep her in my sight whenever possible and do whatever she was doing.

Chris Graham wrote: “You were my first professor in college in the winter of 1991. You taught me more than you will ever know. I ended up with an MBA and run a business while working for Abbott Laboratories these days.  When we are young we don't get all that matters. I do now. Thank you!”  He had interviewed his grandfather for my 1950s Shavings issue, and I wrote back that I had found two interesting quotes:  “My grandfather told my aunt, ‘If the boy likes you enough, he'll call you.  You don't have to act like a common whore.’”  And: “My grandfather required my aunt's dates to pass the handshake test.  They had to have a firm grip.” He replied: “I recall those quotes.  Wow.  So long ago.”

As Republicans threaten to shut down the government over Obamacare, Taylor Branch’s “The Clinton Tapes” is a reminder that abject partisanship has been a GOP hallmark for the past 20 years.  At least, thanks to the over-reaching by Ken Starr, special prosecutors are mostly a thing of the past.  One Clinton administration victim, HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, was hounded out of office and saddled with huge legal fees because in Senate hearings, though he admitted he had once supported a mistress, he underestimated how much he had paid her.  Branch writes that even Republican Alfonse D’Amato, the leading Senate Republican on the committee during confirmation hearings, wrote Attorney General Janet Reno “that the error by Cisneros was of no consequence.”  I heard Cisneros speak at IU Northwest, and the former mayor of San Antonio was quite brilliant and should have had a bright future.

Chelsea Clinton comes across in The Clinton Tapes” as intelligent and thoughtful.  While at Stanford, she gave up a chance for a Rhodes Scholarship because she had had some many opportunities to travel the world that she thought someone else needed the honor more than she did.

On January 14, 2001, Taylor Branch was a Meet the Press panelist discussing outgoing President Clinton’s legacy.  He recalled: “Every time I mentioned public policy, somebody flew into derision about Monica Lewinsky, impeachment, or sordid variations of Whitewater.”  During commercial breaks moderator Tim Russert and the other guests exchanged gossip about Clinton being “off the reservation” and seeing other women and then gleefully sang the chorus of the Baha Men hit “Who Let the Dogs Out?”  One hypocrite on the panel was Bill Bennett, who postured as a moral paragon but loved the bright lights of Las Vegas but had lost millions due to a gambling addiction.

I had mixed feelings watching the Eagles-Broncos game.  I’m a Philadelphia fan, but once they got way behind, I wanted Peyton Manning to rack up FANTASY points for me.  He passed for four TDs, and I easily beat nephew Garrett with 123 points, second only to Bobby’s 125, with the running back tandem of Adrian Peterson and Reggie Bush.

John Mutka reported that Harry Flournoy and Orston Artis have finally been selected to enter the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.  Hailing from Gary, they played on the all-black starting team for Texas Western, coached by Don Haskins, that defeated the all-white Kentucky team coached by Adolph Rupp, 72-65, for the 1966 NCAA championship.  At the game was former mayor George Chacharis, who had spent two years in prison earlier in the decade for tax evasion.  Froebel grad Artis recalled that Chacharis shook his hand after the game.  Hoosier sports pundits, Mutka sneered, “routinely pretend this corner of the state doesn’t exist unless it’s to reinforce negative stereotypes.”  Emerson grad Flournoy twisted his knee and only played for six minutes in the championship game but made the cover of Sports Illustrated, snatching a rebound from Wildcat Pat Riley, the future NBA coach.  In 2007 the Naismith Hall of Fame honored the entire Texas Western team.

Harry Flournoy in 2007

I received a recall notice about the Corolla having a defective airbag inflator, so I spent two hours getting it replaced plus an oil change.  Among the reading material was a copy of “Gary, Indiana: A Centennial Celebration” by Kendall Svengalis, who must also be a Toyota man (I’m assuming he donated the copy unless it was another customer).  I learned that during the 1930s Kendall’s father Frank changed his last name from Zwingalis on the advice of a fortuneteller.  Frank was infatuated with the occult, and the name was similar to Svengali, a fictional character played by John Barrymore who possesses hypnotic power.  Around this time Frank’s brother Edward changed his name to Lewis, Albert shortened his to Swing, and Sam took the name Jackson, the same as the street where he lived.  Ironically, brother Vincent, who joined a Lithuanian order, changed his to the original family name - Zvingilis

Arriving at the library, the crowd outside indicated a fire drill was taking place.  Burnt popcorn caused the fire alarm in the vending machine room to go off, it turned out, but it was a beautiful, sunny day, so nobody seemed to mind. 

In Nicole’s Sixties class the guy next to me said he took my “Vietnam Veterans” magazine to the Lake Station VFW, and the commander, Rex Allen Lewis, found an article Rae Helton did on him entitled “56 Assault Missions.”  Based at An Khe in the Central Highlands in 1967, he was a “Forward Observer” whose expertise was in reading maps.  He tried not to get too close to fellow soldiers, knowing they might get killed, but told Helton: “You can’t avoid it because you are with guys 24 hours a day and know more about them than your best friend at home because that is all you have out there, each other.”

A student brought in a cartoon of LBJ with a voluptuous mistress (the war machine) turning away an emaciated beggar (his anti-poverty programs).  Nicole mentioned that LBJ feared all of Vietnam going communist would open him to charges similar to the canard that Harry Truman lost China.  A second so-called lesson involving China was that if he invaded North Vietnam, it could lead to big power intervention as happened in Korea.  Thus, his policy essentially was “enough but not too much” – enough to prevent the fall of Saigon but leave Ho Chi Minh in power in Hanoi.