Hitting Home

    “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever.  Use a pile driver.  Hit the point once.  Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.” Winston Churchill

For a Flight Paths project that I’m involved with, Valparaiso University professor Liz Wuerrful posted interviews with African-Americans who attended Gary’s segregated East Pulaski School. Here is an excerpt from one titled “Hitting Home”:

    The school I went to in Detroit was what they say now was integrated. When I came here to Gary, there was an East Pulaski and a West Pulaski. East Pulaski was for my people, and West Pulaski was for other people. That’s the way it was. One of the buildings was a cooking classroom. We from East Pulaski would go to our cooking class, and make lunch for the children at both West Pulaski and East Pulaski. I don’t know if you realize, I don’t know if you realize, the shock to a child of 11 years old, almost realizing that you’re not accepted because of the color, and that was hard.

   Roosevelt was an entirely black school. I think there were two or three white students there because their parents owned property in the area. Froebel was the only integrated school in the area. Emerson had a few black students, but that was because they lived in the area. And my mother had to go to Horace Mann school in order to get me transferred from Roosevelt to Froebel.

   I read a lot. I’m what they would have called a nerd at the time. And I wanted to take mechanical drawing. They would not let me take that. And I was so upset. They did not want the girls to participate in things. They steered us to the cooking class, sewing class, and to a typist class.

   There is one thing that we all disliked: we were not allowed to go to swimming classes until Fridays. After we were supposed to take those swimming classes, they would drain the pool. When my mother found out, I thought for sure I was going to get kicked out of the school. I don’t know what she said, what she did, or what she had to do, but I was never allowed to go swimming, and they didn’t even put that on my schedule. I was glad because I didn’t feel like it was right because my first thing is, “Why do I have to go in there after they’ve been in there and it’s all dirty?”

   We started a club and we called it Fro-Ro, which was Froebel Roosevelt. We would get together, and have dances and sit around, even do our homework together.  That’s when we found out that the books Roosevelt had were almost five years older than what we had. The information that we had in our history books, even our math books, our literature, all of that was totally different from what they had. Why didn’t they have the same information available to them that we had? And that’s when it really started hitting home about how things were. I was starting to grow up and starting to see things the way my parents were seeing them. And I started to realize how much of a sacrifice they were making. They did a lot of things that were quiet. They did not come, they didn’t do the marching, and all this stuff that everybody else is doing. They did whatever they had to do to let them know that it wasn’t acceptable. They did it in a very quiet way. It was almost like they did not want us to see the hardship they were having to make it possible for us to get a very good education.

In “A Well-Kept Secret” a second respondent told Flight Paths interviewer Reagan Skaggs:

   Seventh grade, we had a speech teacher. She introduced us to black poets—black poetry—and all of us kids were shocked, like, “What? Black folks wrote poems?”We had never heard of it. I was elated, and I went home, and I told my mother. I said, “Momma, black folks wrote poems. Look at this! They wrote these poems!”Langston Hughes, to name just one, but there were so many! She didn’t know it either, of course, and she bought the very first book of poetry we owned - this expensive book - a book for twenty or thirty bucks was a lot for her.  It was a compilation of poems by African Americans, and then you had your Caribbean folk, and it also included Europeans. And that is a thick volume. It’s not in print anymore. I still have it to this day.  So that was a great sacrifice for her, but she bought that book, and boy, did I get into those poems. I loved them. I was so grateful to know about that.

   Throughout my life, looking at TV, movies, magazines, there was never, ever anything pleasant said about the continent of Africa, nor the brown, black people in it. It was always bad. It was always sad. It was not stuff that would make you feel proud and honored to be a part of that heritage. They never, ever spoke about Ancient Egyptians being chocolate people. That was a well-kept secret. I didn’t learn that until I was a grown woman. Actually, a very mature grown woman. When I went to Egypt, I saw the pictures on the walls, and the people were black, and dark, and brown, and I was in awe. This is really true. They were a black race, so why is it hidden? Why is it kept secret? Why is it never mentioned? All I ever heard was negative things, so, to learn that during the Harlem Renaissance we had these phenomenal poets step out, and writers, and I mean, you just didn’t hear about it in any form or fashion.

   You know, we’ve been so disconnected to those truths because we didn’t control things that would allow us access to that information. And it all has to do with this thing that’s called institutional racism. The group that’s in charge controls information as well. So, if you don’t have access to that information, you don’t know what your potential is. And the potential is always for greatness.

According to Noah Isenberg’s “We’ll Always Have Casablanca,” the idea for “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” the play that became the basis for what the author calls “America’s most beloved movie”originated during a trip writer Murray Burnett made to Vienna during the summer of 1938. What hit home was the utter terror Jews faced, including his wife’s family, as a result of Anschluss, Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria. After successfully smuggling out of the country some of her relatives’ prize possessions, including a fur coat wife Frances wore and diamond rings of each finger, Burnett visited a nightclub in the South of France.  An African-American pianist was playing jazz standards, providing respite from the insanity outside its smoky walls. The atmosphere was in stark contrast to the “tragedy and tears”Burnett had witnessed in Vienna and a perfect setting for a play, named for a Moroccan city Burnett never visited Casablanca in his entire life.

Depressing cable fare abounds, including movies about the breakup of a marriage (“Wild Fire”), a musician’s self-destructive path to eventual suicide suicide (“A Star Is Born”), and a lesbian marriage that turns sour due to one being a psychopathic murder (“What Keeps You Alive”).   “Big Little Lies” began its second season in the aftermath of an abusive husband having been murdered.  The pilot of the super-depressing mini-series “Euphoria” portrays teenagers as drug and sex obsessed misfits dependent on cell phones and bereft of meaningful adult role models.  Unlike “Big Little Lies,” which has a brilliant cast, I doubt I’ll keep watching “Euphoria.” The so-called comedy series “Barry” stars Bill Hader as a hired hitman taking acting lessons from the “Fonz” of old, Henry Winkler and killing his lady friend, a cop. Barry’s diabolical boss is a hoot.  When police close in on him, he manages to say something like “Thank heaven you’ve finally arrived.”

Charlie Halberstadt and I had an excellent bridge week, finishing second in the Chesterton game and first at Banta Senior Center in Valparaiso out of 12 pairs for a combined 3.86 master points each within 24 hours, by far my most ever. At Chesterton I was getting weak hands all evening until one contained 26 high card points, Ace, King, Queen, spot, spot in both Hearts and Diamonds, Ace, Jack, of Spades, and bare King of Clubs. I bid 2 Clubs, indicating at least 23 high card points, and Charlie responded 2 Diamonds, meaning 0 to 3 points. I went to 4 Hearts and made it on the nose.  Others playing an automatic 2 Diamond response to 2 Clubs didn’t get to game since the strong hand got passed out at 2 Hearts.  

Banta Center was once an elementary school; bridge opponent Knoefel Jones recalled the names of his first, second, and third grade teachers.  The latter, he claimed, collected a quarter from his students, promising they’d get a European pen pal, but they never did. That guy must have pocketed at least five dollars, I joked.  But think of how much money that would be today, he replied, straight-faced.  Knoefel is always joking around, so when he first told me his name (pronounced no-fell), I thought he was putting me on.  Knowing Tom and Sylvia Luekens were big Valparaiso University boosters, I told them grandson James was going to VU in the Fall and that I will be in a history session in October with professors Allison Schuette and Liz Wuerrfel in Salt Lake City.  When Sylvia said she knew Allison, I told of working on their Flight Paths project tracing the Gary roots of Valpo residents.

Barbara Walczak’s newsletter contained “A Poem about Alzheimer’s,” which began:

Do not ask me to remember

Don’t try to make me understand

Let me rest and know you’re with me

Kiss my cheek and hold my hand

Bridge players with mild Alzheimer’s often remain cogent at the card table. Bridge is great mental stimulation for retirees, even after the initial signs of what was once cruelly referred to as senility hits home.

Mel Allen

Samantha Gauer taped my hour-long interview with retired Hammond Teachers Federation president Patrick O’Rourke.  His father ran into New York Yankee announced Mel Allen while at a conference, leading to a lifelong friendship that provided Patrick with some of his most vivid memories, including a ping pong match with Mickey Mantle.  Allen loved Phil Smidt’s Restaurant in Hammond, and the two would meet there when the Yankees were in Chicago to play the White Sox. Elston Howard, the first Black Yankee, often slept at the O’Rourke home, unwelcome at the team’s hotel.  When New York faced Milwaukee in the 1957 World Series, 15-year-old Patrick got to watch the game from the Yankee press box.  In fact, O’Rourke claimed that “Ellie” Howard once saved his life after he fell off a pier and ended up under it until Howard reached down and fished him out.  

O’Rourke’s sister eloped at 16 with someone who was neither Irish nor Catholic.  When they returned from Iowa, the father and grandfather tried to have the marriage annulled, only to be told by the bishop that if it had been consummated (it was) to forget it.  The union lasted a lifetime and produced seven children.  O’Rourke still has a crooked knuckle from his seventh grade teacher at St. Joseph School in Hammond rapping him with a ruler. Once after he misbehaved, the nun made him recite the Gettysburg Address from memory.  Another nun refused to teach girls.  Forced to do so, she gave them huge amounts of homework and kept them inside during recess while the boys got off scot free.

I got a call from Michael Keating, who with Chris Smith has been photographing over 300 Indiana gyms over the past six years.  Many are featured in an Indiana Historical Society Bicentennial exhibit, and a book entitled “Hoosier Hardwood” is in the works.  Keating was familiar with my work and with the Calumet Region’s proud basketball tradition.  He knew that the remnants of Gary’s Memorial Auditorium, once the site of Sectional tournaments, was in danger of being demolished.  Asked my opinion of the best Region team ever, I mentioned the 1971 East Chicago Washington team with Pete Trgovich, Junior Bridgeman, and Tim Stoddard and the 2006 EC Central champions Trgovich coached starring E’Twaun Moore, Kawann Short, and Angel Garcia, then added two Gary Roosevelt teams that lost in the finals, the 1955 team with future NBA star Dick Barnett that lost to Indianapolis Crispus Attucks despite “Mr. Basketball” Wilson Eison outscoring Attucks star Oscar Robertson, 31-30, and the 1991 squad that lost in double overtime to Plymouth, with Scott Skiles scoring 39, including a miracle shot at the end of regulation. 

 Oscar Robertson

Keating has interviewed Emerson coach Earl Smith, whose Golden Tornado team my family followed closely.  In 1975 Emerson lost to Lafayette Jefferson in the Regional after a downstate ref called two egregious fouls on center Earner Calhoun Mays within the first few minutes. In 1977 we were in Hinkle Fieldhouse when Emerson won the Thanksgiving “Turkey Classic” with “twin towers” Wallace Bryant and Frank Smith (one of the teams was the Frankfort “Hot Dogs”).  I noted that in 1991, when Gary Roosevelt defeated Indianapolis Brebauf by 19 points in the state finals, it took a 40-point effort by Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson, including a game-winning, last-second jump shot, to win the Regional against East Chicago.  

The Jesuits who run Indianapolis Brebeuf defied the Archdiocese and refused to fire a lesbian teacher who married another woman, supposedly counter to church doctrine.  In retaliation the Archdiocese will no longer recognize Brebeuf as a Catholic school.  Shameful!  I’ve been following the story since niece Sophia Dietz, who attends Indianapolis Roncalli, told me about a popular guidance counselor fired from her school despite student protests.  I’m certain this would not have happened if Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin hadn’t been transferred to Newark.  Kirsten Bayer-Petras praised Brebauf’s stand and posted this statement by the school board:

  The decree follows a sincere and significant disagreement between the Archdiocese, on the one hand, and Brebeuf Jesuit and the USA Midwest Province of the Society of Jesus, on the other, regarding whether the Archdiocese or our school’s leaders should make final governance decisions related to internal administrative matters at Brebeuf Jesuit and, in particular, the employment status of our faculty and staff. Specifically, Brebeuf Jesuit has respectfully declined the Archdiocese’s insistence and directive that we dismiss a highly capable and qualified teacher due to the teacher being a spouse within a civilly-recognized same-sex marriage.

Agreeing with Kristen and the school board, Connie Mack-Ward wrote: “This is an outrage! It's perfectly ordinary for schools of orders within a diocese to run their school independently of diocesan interference. Jesuit schools are among the finest in the country--and that's because they're run by Jesuits!” 

first day of summer at Wells Street Beach, photo by Mary Ann Best

Summer begins and about time considering the cool, wet spring we've undergone.

The Prince

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” Niccolò Machiavelli, “The Prince”

 Niccolo Machiavelli

In the first season of “The Tudors,” a Showtime series that ran between 2007 and 2010, a young King Henry VIII becomes intimate with several of Queen Catherine of Aragon’s ladies-in-waiting, including (with their father’s encouragement) Mary and Anne Boleyn, who ultimately charms him into divorcing Catherine and thereby breaking with the Roman Catholic Church.  There are frequent references to such contemporary events as Martin Luther’s so-called Protestant heresies, Spanish conquests in the New World, and mention of the Niccolò Machiavelli quote from “The Prince” (1532), that “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”  Sam Neil is excellent as the worldly, ambitious Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, brought down by unworthy schemers led by Anne Boleyn’s father and uncle.

 Jacksons in 2015

“King of Pop” Michael Jackson named his first son Michael, Jr., but nicknamed his Prince.  Then came daughter Paris-Michael and finally Prince Michael, nicknamed Blanket, who was 7 when his dad died almost 8 years ago and now called Bigi by family and friends.  It remains to be seen whether he inherited any of his dad’s talents.

In his history of Rock and Roll, Ed Ward’s chapter covering the year 1963 mentions how folk singer Bob Dylan’s appearance on Ed Sullivan got cancelled when he announced he’d sing “Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues” and Pete Seeger was forbidden to appear on “Hootenanny” after he refused to sign a loyalty oath.  Surf music and girl groups dominated the charts, but Trini Lopez’s cover of “If I Had a Hammer” was a hit, as was Peter, Paul, and Mary’s recording of Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”  Johnny Cash put out “Ring of Fire” while Stevie Wonder launched his career with “Fingertips.”

 Chet Baker

In “Born to Be Blue” (2015) Ethan Hawke, superb as always, plays jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, whose heroin habit caused him to get beaten so badly in 1966 that he lost his teeth and seemingly his career until he made a successful comeback several years later.  In the climactic scene, Jane (Carmen Ejogo), who had nursed him back to health and weaned him from heroin, realizes that Chet had shot up prior to the crucial performance and leaves him. Chet Baker died at age 59 after falling from a hotel window in Amsterdam while high on cocaine and heroin.

above, Pete Trgovich; below, "the flop," NWI Times photo by Jonathan Miano

East Chicago Central lost a double-overtime Regional contest on questionable calls, par for the course in basketball tournament history.  The refs called almost twice as many fouls on East Chicago, including 3 on star player Jermaine Couisnard in the first 5 minutes, forcing him to spend much of the contest on the bench.  With seconds remaining, the referees ignored a double dribble by a Warsaw player and then claimed Kyle Mangas got fouled with 2.1 seconds left after he caught a length-of-the-court pass and, according to Coach Pete Trgovich, flopped.  Trgovich told Times reporter Steve Hanlon, “It’s hard to beat eight guys.”  Deontay Bonaparte, whistled for the infraction, said: “I never touched him.  They gave them the game.  We couldn’t do anything the whole game.  Those refs crushed our heart.”  Mangas, who scored 49 points, shot a total of 23 free throws while the entire Cardinal team only attempted 9. Trgovich questioned why there were no African-American referees assigned to the game, then resigned as E.C. coach when the IHSAA threatened repercussions against him.

At bridge, hosted by Tom Eaton, Toni came in first thanks in part to making a small slam as Dick Hagelberg’s partner and two four-Heart contracts as my partner for a 700 rubber.  A gourmet cook, Eaton served a delicious cake with walnuts and apricot filling for dessert.  Brian Barnes has been reading Michel J. Klarman’s “The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution” (2016), which claims that the Founding Fathers pulled off a conservative counterrevolution in order to curb the excesses of democracy and block state legislatures from passing laws for debt and tax relief. During the Philadelphia Convention Edmund Randolph of Virginia argued that if events continued on their present course, “The union will be dissolved, the dogs of war will break loose, and anarchy and discord will complete the ruin of this country.”

William Doyle’s “PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival, and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy” (2005) describes the future president as a voracious reader (Winston Churchill being his favorite author) frequently ill and bullied by older brother Joe, who once repeatedly banged his head against a wall.  Of the mission in the Solomon Islands that resulted in his PT boat being smashed in two by the destroyer Amagiri shortly after midnight on August 2, 1943, Kennedy himself categorized it as a “fucked up” series of events exacerbated by its arsenal consisting of defective torpedoes. PT 105 skipper Richard Keresey later summarized what happened:

Fifteen PT boats ventured out into the Blackett Strait to attack four Japanese destroyers, the best odds PT boats ever had.  We fired 32 torpedoes, including four from my 105.  We hit nothing!  The destroyers kept right on going straight down Blackett Strait and then straight back a couple of hours later.  When the PT 109 got in the way, they ran over it.

In treacherous water Kennedy rescued a badly burned crewman and, towing him by a strap gripped in his teeth, swam three and a half miles to a small island while nine others clung to two wooden planks and paddled their way to the same destination.  They survived on coconuts for six days until finally rescued.  

Jeff Manes profiled IUN Biologist Spencer Cartwright (above) in his Sunday SALT column.  Asked how he got into the field, Cortwright explained:

              One day, while working at a summer camp in Michigan, I was walking on the dunes. It was bloody hot. My feet were burning. I saw flowers in bloom. I thought, “How do those plants thrive with almost no water in this hot sand?” I started thinking plants, animals and the environment. I went back to college, talked to my professors, took some ecology classes and found out there's another realm of biology besides medical biology, which I started out in and hated. That was in 1978, and I've been doing it ever since.

For over a quarter of a century, I studied amphibians like Alan does. If you study amphibians, you have to work a lot of rainy nights. When do frogs breed? On cold, rainy nights. As you get older, that gets tiring. I got burned out on it.  But when I got here, people started telling me about the problems with non-native species and I started thinking that's pretty interesting. Now I get to work on sunny days, not rainy nights.

Samuel A. Love combined his photo of the snow that fell at Eighth and Harrison with one taken at the same Gary intersection a hundred year ago. 

Ray Smock commented on Trump’s latest outlandish claims about his predecessor and Obama holdovers:

When you are as paranoid as Donald Trump, belief in conspiracy theories is par for the course. The fraud that launched his presidency was the theory that President Obama was an illegal alien without a birth certificate. He accused Hillary Clinton of conspiring for decades to cover up major crimes that should have placed her behind bars. He said Ted Cruz’s father was part of the JFK assassination. He called for an investigation into the three to five million people who voted illegally, presumably for Hillary. And most recently President Trump accused Barack Obama of tapping his phones. Add all this up and we get very close to a description of someone with extreme paranoia, like the ones who believe the government has implanted tiny transmitters in their brains to control their actions. 

The engine driving mass paranoia and hysteria in the White House is the idea of a Deep State: that there is a secret cabal, composed of holdovers from the Obama Administration, who are doing everything in their power to undermine Trump’s presidency. It has all the ingredients necessary to explain every failure of the Trump Administration. And it gives the Trump White House another excuse to keep alive the president’s unhealthy hatred of Barack Obama.

This nation could survive an inept novice and mentally troubled individual like President Trump if such a president was surrounded by competent practitioners of governance. But the Trump Administration has a cabinet of incompetents. He selected as his top advisers a band of ideologues from the far reaches of the far-right wing of the Republican Party. His cabinet is composed of billionaires like himself because he thinks successful businesspeople are going to make America a success.  This is one of the greatest American myths of all time. Government is not a business. To pretend that government and the art of governance is no different than a for-profit business is a formula for total failure.