Changes

“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.”  

 Ralph Kiner and first wife, tennis star Nancy Chaffee

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.

 Ted Williams; below, John Rudd senior yearbook picture

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.

 MJ and Kobe

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

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.

 Michael Griffin, George Van Til, Richard Hatcher, 2018

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. 

On the Basis of Sex

 “I ask no favor for my sex, all I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, quoting Sarah Grimké during her first oral argument before the Supreme Court

 Sarah Grimké  

Sarah Grimké (1792-1873) and sister Angelina were prominent abolitionists and feminists.  Born into a prominent South Carolina family, Sarah sympathized with slaves she grew up with and resented that her own education was inferior to her brother’s due to social norms of the day.  She moved to Philadelphia, became a Quaker, and lectured about two issues dear to her, the immorality of slavery and discrimination against women. She once wrote: “I know nothing of man’s rights, or woman’s rights; human rights are all that I recognize.”

 Ruth Bader Ginsburg portrait

 “On the Basis of Sex” follows the early career of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of just nine women in her 1956 Harvard Law School class. At the time, the building lacked a woman’s bathroom. Despite her academic credentials, no New York City law firm would hire her as an associate, so she began teaching at Rutgers and then Columbia Law School.  The film highlights a case Ginsburg successfully argued with her husband, a tax attorney, before the Tenth Circuit of Appeals of a man denied a tax deduction for hiring a nurse to care for his mother so he could continue working.  She wrote the brief in the 1971 Reed v. Reedcase in which the Supreme Court extended the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to women.  In 1972 she became general counsel for the ACLU Women’s Rights Project.  Felicity Jones played Ginsburg as iron-willed, extremely intelligent, and compassionate. I loved Sam Waterston as unctuous Harvard Law School dean Erwin Griswold and Kathy Bates as veteran civil liberties activist Dorothy Kenyon.

A graduate of New York University Law School, Dorothy Kenyon (1888-1972) was an important feminist and New Deal liberal who worked with the ACLU, NAACP, and agencies offering legal services for the poor in New York City.  When Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy falsely accused her of being connected to subversive organizations, Kenyon (above) called him a liar and a coward hiding behind Congressional immunity.

In “I’m Not Taking This Sitting Down” (2000) humorist Dave Barry described donning the lizard costume of the Miami Fusion soccer team mascot P.K. (for penalty kick) and learning to his chagrin the fine line between being an object of affection and ridicule. He discovered that children “love to run directly into mascots at full speed and tend to hit you” right where one would be well-advised to “wear a cup.”  Barry was at a gala where Mick Jagger made an appearance, looking “like Yoda wearing a Mick Jagger wig” and probably the only one in the room his senior.  In high school Barry’s band attempted to play Rolling Stones songs, such as “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Under My Thumb” but could never get the chords right.  Barry wrote:

    He seemed like a pleasant enough person, as near as I could tell from watching a crowd of avant guard people trying to get as close to him as possible while pretending not to.  I considered trying to push my way in there and start up a conversation with Mick, maybe try to find out the correct chords to “Under My Thumb.”

Former student Fred McColly stopped by on the way to the Archives to drop off two new journals about working at South Lake Mall on Macy’s department store’s loading dock.  He enjoys his co-workers but fears that Amazon and other direct mail giants will soon render stores like Macy’s obsolete.  Cosmetics appears to be Macy’s most important big-profit item. For Sears, mail order pioneers who lost their way, in its last days as a department store the main sellers had been paint and kitchen appliances until new competitors undercut them.

To celebrate bridge player Joe Chin becoming an Emerald Life Master, having accumulated 7500 master points, over 70 people gathered in Gary to honor him, including nonagenarian Jennie Alsobrooks, who, in Chin’s words, “started a lunch-hour foursome at Gary West Side High and taught me bridge basics.”  Barbara Walczak, who planned the event, presented him with a 50-page illustrated book citing some of his accomplishments and tributes from former partners and opponents.  Walczak’s Newsletter reported on the death of Claire Murvihill, noting that at Claire’s request the last hour of her funeral celebration was devoted to bridge; seven full tables participated. Back playing after a two-week hiatus,  Dee Browne and I finished third out of ten couples with 58%.

Terry Brendel, in charge of the Valpo game with Charlie Halberstadt in Arizona, complimented my letter to the NWI Times complaining about Gary and its political leadership.  The editor had left out some of my supporting material, but Terry reminded me of the policy limiting letters to 250 words or less.  I did like the headline: “Positive solutions needed to Gary’s problems.”  It fit with my final sentence: “What is needed in the face of Gary’s present travail is regional cooperation and positive solutions, not ugly stereotyping by those who, in my opinion, long ago ceased wishing the city well.”

In the Banta center library was “Baseball Forever” by Ralph Kiner, my first sports hero growing up in Easton, PA.  Kiner’s father, Ralph, Sr.,  had been a steam-shovel operator in the New Mexico copper-mining town of Santa Rita who died when Ralph was just four.  Mother Beatrice moved the family to Alhambra, CA, worked as an insurance company nurse for $125 a month, and, in Kiner’s words, kept a clean house and close eye on her son, sending him to military school for a semester when he lied about his after-school activities.  Kiner played for Pittsburgh, my dad’s hometown, and led the National league in home runs a record six years in a row, twice hitting over 50.  He briefly played for the Cubs and Cleveland Indians before a bad back ended his playing career.  Chicago oldtimers fondly recall Kiner in rightfield, slow-footed HR hitter Hank Sauer in left, and Frank Baumholtz in center, expected to cover most of the outfield. Beginning in 1961, Kiner became a New York Mets announcer until his death in 2014.  

At bowling, after overhearing Jim Daubenhower and I discussing Gary, George Yetsko mentioned that he was a 1951 Lew Wallace grad (he recalled French teacher Mary Cheever’s murder, which led to women protesting crime and corruption tolerated by the Democratic machine).  Wife Marge was a Horace Mann grad.  Her grandfather, a dentist, lived in a large house with a spiral staircase that was later torn down to make way for RailCats Stadium. 

 Tim Vassar

Daubenhower brought me Timothy Vassar’s autobiography “Jeremiah Wasn’t Just a Bullfrog: A Story of Passion, Pursuit, Perseverance . . . and Polliwogs.”  Vassar, a Butler University grad, taught special education, coached track and field at Lake Central High School, and is presently Director of Student Teaching at IUN. A Highland native, Vassar attended Mildred Merkley Elementary School, a name Region humorist Jean Shepherd (whose style Vassar’s resembles) would have appreciated.  Tim father worked at the mill plus two weekend jobs to provide for his family of six.  Vassar wrote: “My Dad used to say that Northwest Indiana was one of the only places on earth where you could run your furnace and central air on the same day.  Since we didn’t have central or any other type of air conditioner, I had to take his word for it.”  

Tim Vassar played centerfield on a Highland team coached by Andy Domsic that competed in the 1970 Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA after winning state and regional tournaments.  In Williamsport Vassar noticed Taiwanese players eating with chop sticks and met Pirate great Pie Traynor and 1968 Olympic medalist Chi Chang, the first woman to run 100 yards in ten seconds flat.  Tim’s moment of glory came when he fielded a line drive on two hops and threw out a runner jogging from first to second. After defeating a German team consisting mainly of sons of American servicemen, Highland lost in the semi-finals to eventual champ New Jersey.  The town of Highland threw a parade for the returning heroes, and players rode in convertibles.  The following year, 1971, a team from Gary, led by Lloyd McClendon, reached the Little League finals, losing to Taiwan in the longest game, nine innings, in tournament history. After McClendon homered in five consecutive at-bats, opposing coaches intentionally walked him every time he came to the plate.

Princeton professor Imani Perry was the featured speaker at VU’s Martin Luther King Day celebration.  Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1972, she is the author of six books, including “Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry” and one on the history of the Negro National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Perry’s keynote speech lamented the “Disneyification of Dr. Martin Luther King” and urged students, my grandson James, a VU freshman among them, to overcome the rancid present political climate. NWI Times correspondent Doug Ross quoted her as saying, “Hope is not an organic feel for me at this moment.  I don’t just feel it, I create it, and we all have to do that.”

Jim Spicer’s latest senior citizen joke:

  An elderly man in Louisiana had owned a large farm for several years. He had a large pond in the back. It was properly shaped for swimming, so he fixed it up nice with picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some apple and peach trees.
    One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond and look it over, as he hadn't been there for a while. He grabbed a five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit. As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond. He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end. One of the women shouted to him, “We're not coming out until you leave!” The old man frowned, and proving that some seniors still think fast he said, “I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim or make you get out of the pond naked. I'm here to feed the alligator.”