Great Adventure

“When a great adventure is offered, you don’t refuse it.” Amelia Earhart

 

Growing up in Atchison, Kansas, Amelia Earhart earned the reputation of being a daredevil and tomboy who believed girls should have the opportunity to do anything a boy could do.  Her first plane ride in 1920 changed Amelia’s life; becoming an aviatrix became her passion. By the following year, she had saved enough money to pay for flying lessons from highly-regarded instructor Anita Snook. Within a few years she was a seasoned pilot.  In 1928, in what was a well-planned publicity stunt, Earhart was a passenger in a transatlantic flight piloted by Wilmer Stultz, admitting, “I was just baggage.” Upon returning to America she and the two-person crew received a ticker tape parade in New York City and a reception with President Calvin Coolidge. Due to her resemblance in appearance to Charles Lindbergh, she was dubbed by the press “Lady Lindy.”  Determined to prove her mettle on her own, in 1932 Earhart completed a 14-hour solo flight across the Atlantic, battling strong winds, icy conditions, and mechanical problems.  Her celebrity status led to frequent appearances and commercial endorsements. In 1935, I learned from historian Ray Boomhower, Purdue University hired Earhart to be a counselor to female students and established a Fund for Aeronautical Research in her name that helped in purchasing a twin-motored Lockheed Electra for Amelia’s next great adventure.

By 1938 Earhart had decided to attempt an around-the-world flight and have an account of it be the penultimate chapter in a memoir that would raise money for further aeronautical research and exploration.  After a false start, the ill-fated flight began June 1, 1938, in Miami, Florida. Flying to South America and then east to Africa and Southeast Asia, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan had completed 22,000 miles in a month and had just 7,000 miles to go, across the Pacific.  From Lae, New Guinea, the next leg was 2,570 miles to Howland Island.  She never made it; the plane went missing and a radio frequency snafu caused a waiting naval vessel to lose contact with her plane.  Her last message was that the Lockheed Electra was running out of fuel.  Despite an intensive search, no trace of her or the plane was ever found.

 

Earhart’s disappearance has been the source of speculation and conspiracy theories that exist to this day.  Indeed, it is the primary reason people remember her.  Because America would soon be at war with Japan, some claimed her plane had been shot down and Earhart captured, accused of being on an intelligence mission, and executed.  Romantics wondered wishfully if she and Noonan had escaped to a deserted Pacific island; more likely, they landed on a coral reef that eventually submerged.  Most experts believe the plane simply ran out of fuel, crashed into the Pacific, and sank to the bottom of the sea.

 

My great adventure was leaving law school and traveling to Hawaii to commence working on becoming a History professor. For as long as I could remember, I’d planned to become a lawyer, and for three summers I’d worked at distinguished Philadelphia law firms as a mail room messenger. I observed young associates working 60-80 hours a week hoping to make partner, an outcome that seemed to depend on whether they could generate business for the firm.  In other words, not as glamorous a situation as on the “Perry Mason” series.

 

My senior year at Bucknell, I took Education courses and student taught, which I thoroughly enjoyed. At Virginia Law School many students were undecided over careers or had been pressured into being there. After a dorm mate committed suicide, I started contemplating whether, much as I enjoyed most law school classes, the legal profession was for me.  On a whim I looked into the University of Hawaii’s graduate program and discovered the History chair, Herbert Margulies, was someone whose work on the Progressive Era I admired.  I wrote Margulies a letter, and he urged me to apply and indicated I could receive an assistantship that would cover tuition and pay me a couple thousand dollars.  After meeting with Bucknell mentor, Dr. William H. Harbaugh in Lewisburg, PA, (hitchhiking part of the way) who warned me I’d never be rich and have at least a half dozen years of schooling yet but told me to go for it if that’s what I really wanted, I took the plunge with Toni’s consent. I’ve never looked back and marvel at how well it worked out and that I had the nerve to do it.

 

Toni agreed to move up our wedding date six months, after which we drove her Volkswagen Beetle across the country (a Southern route since it was mid-January 1965, a time when Yankees were viewed with suspicion), shipped the VW from California on to Honolulu, and boarded a plane.  I began work on a Master’s degree, and Toni obtained a job at a downtown law firm. We found a small apartment on Poki Street (why we later named a cat Poki) about a mile from the Manoa campus and close to a bus stop for Toni to commute to work while I walked to classes.  Some evenings we’d hang out on Waikiki Beach near nightclubs with live Hawaiian music and once splurged at Duke Kahanamoku’s for dinner and a show featuring Don Ho of “Tiny Bubbles” fame. I did research at Iolani Palace and we spent a glorious week on the then-barely developed island of Kauai (below, left).  Since phone calls were prohibitively expensive, we’d send and receive audio tapes from our families. I retain many other fond memories of our 18 months on Oahu and have been back to the islands several times since.                 Graduation, 1966

My adventure pales in comparison with the millions of immigrants to America, including Toni’s grandparents.  John Petalas posted a 1922 photo (below) of charter members of AHERA (American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, founded to counter bigoty emanating from hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan  Anne Koehler, who emigrated from Germany many years ago, wrote about spending a delightful evening with friend Dorothy: “We were sitting in the car at Weko Beach in Bridgman, Michigan where they play taps at sunset during the summer. A car pulled up halfway. Dorothy talked to the driver and found out that he was from Germany. We started to talk from car to car and I found out that this spry gentleman is 92 years old. He hails from Stuttgart in southern Germany and came to this county in the 1950s. He remembers growing up under Hitler and barely missed being drafted toward the end of the war. I was happy to find out that he shared my dislike of our president.”

Dominguez family and George Van Til

My “Great Adventure” post received close to 50 replies, many from former students, including Jim Reha and Sarah McColly, collaborators Roy Dominguez and George Van Til, niece Cristin and nephew Bobby, with whom I’ve shared some adventures.  In the New York Review of Books “Personals” section was this message titled “In the Time of Corona”: “Chinese-Russian grandmother, youthful 60s, seeks a kind, self-supporting, healthy single man 60-70s with whom to share some life - enjoying career tai chi, theater, War on Drugs, Buddhist meditation, and more.” War on Drugs must refer to my favorite band that nephew Bob Lane and I saw perform at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown, CA.

Tail-Gunner Joe

"Enemy sighted, enemy met, I'm addressing the realpolitik,
Look who bought the myth, by jingo, buy America”

    R.E.M., “Exhuming McCarthy (Meet me at the book burning)”

Joe McCarthy

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-1957), Republican demagogue from Wisconsin, first ran for statewide political office falsely claiming to be a war hero when in fact he never saw combat as a tail-gunner during World War II.  Fearing he’d lose a bid for re-election, he seized on the country’s fears of communism in Cold War America and claimed without a shred of proof that subversives were working in President Harry S Truman’s State Department.  Between 1950 and 1954 McCarthy terrorized opponents with smear tactics until he over-stepped by taking on the army.  This earned the wrath of fellow Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had parleyed his military generalship into becoming Truman’s successor in the White House.  The turning point took place during the so-called Army-McCarthy Senate subcommittee hearings when, as quoted in the R.E.M. song, attorney Joseph Welch stood up to the bully and asked, “Have you no sense of decency, sir; at long last, have you left no sense of decency?  Shortly thereafter, the Senate censured McCarthy, effectively ended his Reign of Terror.  He died within three years of acute alcoholism.

my mentor, William H. Harbaugh

By the time I knew much about McCarthy, in a Bucknell college History course taught by William H. Harbaugh (the man most responsible for my becoming a historian), “Tail-Gunner Joe” was dead but “McCarthyism” had become a synonym for Red-baiting, accusing political enemies of being “soft on communism.” Former Vice President Richard M. Nixon, whose political career was thought to be at an end when he lost the 1962 California gubernatorial race, had built his career by Red-baiting opponents.  Even though the Cold war ended 30 years ago, the tactic still rears its ugly head when all else fails. In fact, McCarthy’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, introduced Trump to politics and “hardball” tactics the New York City tycoon would emulate.

 

I watched “Bully. Coward. Victim,” a documentary on attorney Roy Cohn, McCarthy's sidekick responsible for framing Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed for being Russian spies who helped the Soviets acquire the knowledge to develop an atomic bomb. At the time Julius supposedly carried out this crime, the U.S. and the USSR are WW II allies.  What information he passed on to our future Cold War adversary was relatively unimportant.  Ethel played no role in the alleged espionage and convicting her was a ploy to convince Julius to confess and name names.  He refused, and in 1953 they died in the electric chair.  A shameful chapter in American history, brought on by paranoia exploited by politicians. On Jeopardy (a repeat, no social distancing) the Rosenbergs were an answer in the category “Traitors,” along with Brutus and Benedict Arnold. 

 

Not only did McCarthy go after alleged communists, he also claimed that homosexuals were a security risk, susceptible to being blackmailed by our Soviet adversaries.  The resultant “Lavender Scare” ruined lives even though until recently it received less attention than the Red Scare.  Ironically, McCarthy’s Chief Counsel Roy Cohn was a closeted homosexual who later would die of AIDS.  In fact, what did in McCarthy stemmed from Cohn’s close relationship with G. David Schine, a wealthy Harvard grad who was heir to a hotel chain fortune and had written an anti-communist tract.  After naming Schine his chief consultant, the two went on a European junket, touring USIA libraries with the aim of censuring leftist books. After Schine was drafted, Cohn hectored army officials demanding that the enlisted man be given special treatment so he could have time to continue working with Cohn.  When army brass balked, Cohn accused them of being pro-communist.  Following McCarthy’s downfall, Schine refused to talk about the episode.  He subsequently married a former Miss Universe, fathered six children, had a successful career in the entertainment industry, and died in a plane crash in 1996 at age 69.


The Red Scare and Lavender Scare also affected African Americans, as civil rights leaders were often deemed to be subversives and gay writers declared to be degenerates. These included such black pioneers as actor Paul Robeson, novelist Richard Wright, sociologist W.E.B. DuBois, and essayist James Baldwin.  FBI director hounded Martin Luther King for his supposed communist ties and immoral lifestyle and resorted to equally heinous actions against Black Power activists.  Harassment of black public officials was in full swing under presidents Nixon and Reagan and continues today. No wonder many African Americans chose to keep a low profile, be as invisible as possible or, in the words of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, “wear the mask.”  Historian Ray Boomhower posted Dunbar’s poem on the occasion of what would have been his 148^th birthday:

        We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- -

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile

mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be otherwise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see thus, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!”

It's Obvious

       “So we starve all the teachers


And recruit more Marines


How come we don't even know


What that means, it's obvious.

And the walls are coming down


Between the eagle and the dove


You don't have to be a hippie to believe in love.”

         Joe Jackson, “Obvious Song”

Joe Jackson’s 1990 CD “Laughter and Lust” leads off with “Obvious Song,” whose lyrics remind me of Elvis Costello’s “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding?”  “Laughter and Lust” contains such gems as “Hit Single” and “Stranger Than Fiction.”  The final song, “Drowning,” is about contemplating lost love as time slips away:

       There's laughter as I drown

       Like so many lost before me

       Damned by lust and gone to hell

I discovered two Obvious magazines, one Brazilian, the other devoted to style and fashion.  These seem obvious to me: public universities should be free; America needs a progressive income tax without loopholes; workers deserve a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour; tough EPA regulations are necessary to prevent corporations from polluting the environment; Latino immigrants have enriched America.  Hopefully Bernie Sanders’s candidacy will force Hillary Clinton to get on board with the progressive wing of her party.

Highlighting Valparaiso’s Shakespeare in the Park festivities was a live performance of “Hamlet,” but midway through the play the rains came.  With Angie at a wedding in Texas, Dave took James and Becca to a 49 Drive-in double feature (“Minions” and “Inside Out”).  The place was packed, and it took forever to leave due the lack of adequate exits, Dave reported the next morning at gaming (I was one for 4, prevailing in Amun Re thanks to being able to play 3 power cards).

Though I haven’t been to Subway in weeks, server Danielle recalled that I liked my 6-inch cold-cut on an Italian roll, with oil put on first.  She knew what ingredients I wanted, including extra onions.  On TV: Cubs salvaged one victory in their three-game White Sox series, thanks to Jake Arrieta, who hurled a complete game and homered.  Comcast was offering free season series premieres, so I caught an episode of Showtime’s “Masters of Sex.”  Like “Mad Men,” it seemed very true to the spirit of the 1960s regarding relationships between the sexes.  Critics have panned the second season of HBO’s “True Detective,” but Rachel McAdams, Colin Farrell, and Taylor Kisch are quite compelling, and the plot is more understandable than season one.   A special treat is David Morse playing a guru charlatan.

 Rachel McAdams in "True Detective"

Anne Balay has left Miller, following closing on her house.  She thinks the buyers (the Renslow sisters, daughters of Al and Meg, whose wedding I attended at Club SAR 40 years ago) intend to keep the outside colors that some neighbors thought too garish.  On the phone I told her to visit and added my usual salutation, “You know, I love you.”  She replied, first time ever, with “I love you, too, Jimbo” and chuckled when I thanked her for saying it.  Anne educated me more than anyone since historian William H. Harbaugh turned me into a liberal at Bucknell and Staughton Lynd taught me to study history from the rank-and-file perspective, in other words, from the bottom up.

At Gino’s Steakhouse in Merrillville for a book club get together I ordered my normal BLT salad and an MGD.  By mistake the waitress brought me a glass of Zombie Dust from Three Floyd’s Brewery in Munster.  After I took a sip, I noticed an empty bottle of MGD in front of someone else, whose beer was lighter in color than mine.  I enjoyed the pale ale but limited my intake to a single glass.  Sitting with former judge Lorenzo Arredondo and attorney Michael Bosch, I mentioned having interviewed Arredondo family members for a project called “Pass the Culture, Please.”  Lorenzo, like me, will soon be attending his fifty-fifth high school reunion.  Sitting nearby were Brian and Connie Barnes, also, who re-connected at a high school reunion.  Jerry Davich, age 53, wrote about everyone (but him) looking so old 35 years after graduation.  On the other hand, I expect Upper Dublin classmates who return in October to look great, grey hair and bum knees notwithstanding.

S. S. McClure

During discussion of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism” I intended to restrict my comments to highlighting the accomplishments of the founder of McClure’s magazine, which published articles of exposure by such muckraking journalists Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and Ray Stannard Baker.  New York Times reviewer Bill Keller wrote: “The writers of McClure’s became the shock troops of the progressive movement, ‘putting faces and names to the giant corporations (to quote Goodwin), shining a bright light on the sordid maneuvers that were crushing independent businessmen in one sector after another.’”  The Irish-born Samuel S. McClure graduated from Valparaiso High School while living with a Dr. Cass, allegedly the richest man in town, who provided room and board but no money for a winter overcoat.  “Speed was my overcoat,” wrote McClure, who worked for the Valparaiso Vidette as a printer’s devil and is in the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame. 

After presenter Michael Bosch revealed that TR was a prolific letter writer, I mentioned perusing his papers at the Library of Congress while researching Jacob A. Riis.  TR corresponded with an amazing variety of sources: reformers, Harvard professors, labor leaders, as well as politicians and enlightened businessmen.  Ken Anderson wondered what if Roosevelt hadn’t been president.  There would have been a Progressive Movement, I asserted, but not such a rapid (and unfortunate) rise in imperialism, a subject author Doris Kearns Goodwin did not investigate in an otherwise outstanding popular history.

In just a few days my “Tom Higgins R.I.P.” blog became the second most read entry ever, eclipsed only by “Singing Sands,” which dealt with nineteenth century Swedish immigration to Miller and novelist Nelson Algren’s summer adventures in a cottage near Lake Michigan with French feminist Simone de Beauvoir and other lady friends.  I wrote Betty Higgins, Tom’s widow, expressing my profound admiration for a true Region legend and asking for a copy of a photo I saw at his wake of Tom with his sailboat.

Edwin Whitlock, writing from Hawaii, confirmed that in 1981 he suggested that Gary be named DuSable because, in his words, “Elbert Gary was anti-labor and Jean DuSable, Gary’s first non-native resident, was a true hero.”  The idea ran into opposition from Dr. Margaret Burroughs of Chicago’s DuSable Museum, who feared it would undermine having DuSable recognized as the father of Chicago.  Mayor Hatcher, Whitlock recalled, “felt it would be tantamount to an admission of shame of the name of Gary.”  So he dropped the proposal.  In 2011 Whitlock met with then-mayor Rudy Clay, whom, he quipped, “very much reflected Gary’s African-American community, a transplant from Mississippi driving a red and white Cadillac El Dorado.”  Regarding my latest Steel Shavings issue, Whitlock said, “Good to see Dolly [Millender] and Sparky [Cohen] are still around.  Please give Dharathula and Ron my fond regards.”

above, Gordon Parks; below, "American Gothic, Washington, D.C." by Parks

In his class on Still Photography Samuel A. Love focused on Gordon Parks (1912-2006), best known for Life magazine pictorial essays but also a novelist, composer, Renaissance charactor, and ladies man.  Like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, Parks worked for the Farm Security Administration.  Previously, though a complete novice, he talked a women’s clothier into letting him photograph his models.  He was so nervous he double exposed all but one of the photos.  When he first came to Washington, D.C., his superior, Ray Stryker, sent him to a certain restaurant and then to a theater.  Denied entry, Parks learned the harsh reality of segregation in the nation’s capital. Sam had students double-expose photos on purpose in homage to Gordon Parks. 

After class 18 year-old Latrice Young told me she’ll be working at an Episcopal summer camp for children of incarcerated parents.  The theme of the current Journal of American History’s is “Historians and the Carceral State.”  The volume includes an article by former IUN professor Edward J. Escobar, my co-editor of “Forging a Community: The Latino Experience in Northwest Indiana.”

Tom Wade coaxed me into playing duplicate bride at Chesterton YMCA, assuring me that everyone was friendly.  That proved to be true, and I already knew Judy Selund, Charlie Halberstadt, and Chuck Tomes, the latter a former Portage math teacher and softball umpire when I played as well as a referee of youth basketball games.  In eighth grade Phil started the season on the B team bench, as the coach favored taller kids. Chuck, on hand to referee the A game, was near me when Phil executed a fast break to perfection with a bounce pass to a teammate.  “That was sweet,” Chuck said; “that’s my son,” I told him, flush with pride.  The following game Phil was promoted to the A squad.  Chuck reminded me that his grandfather, Reverend O.E. Tomes, appears in “City of the Century” and introduced me to wife Marcy, who grew up near Lew Wallace and whose parents lived in the classy Ambassador Apartments on Gary’s near west side.  I was there once, in the early 1970s, to interview Rabbi Garry August.

T. Wade and I finished in the middle of the pack.  One  hand I wish I could play over: Tom bid 3 clubs, indicating a long suit but less than opening count.  I had 22 points and 5 hearts, led by an ace, king, queen.  I bid and played 4 hearts and went down one.  With six trump out against me I played my top three rather than finesse, but there was a 4-1 split.  With a singleton queen of clubs in my hand and an ace and six little clubs on the board, I led the queen and played the ace when the player on my left didn’t lay down the king.  I figured, wrongly, if she had it, she’d cover an honor with an honor, normally the proper play.

On Facebook was this post from my friend Robert Blaszkiewicz: “This morning, I'm thankful for the amazing journalists that I've had the pleasure of working with these past 21 years. I'm overwhelmed and feel lucky to have the support of so many family and friends. And I'm looking forward to writing the next chapter. -30-.”  The NWI Times lost a true professional, and I’ll be cancelling my subscription.  The newspaper racket really sucks.  It’s obvious that in an ailing industry the cash nexus trumps everything.  As the Post-Trib’s Jerry Davich put it: “What? Why? When? Where? How? Sorry, as usual, just questions from me... unlike you, who always had the answers. I'll miss you and I haven't worked with you for nearly a decade.” 

In journalism the number 30 is a sign of completion.  Ivan Cohen replied to Robert: “Never -30-.  Just a jump to another page.”   Music critic and Lakeshore Radio personality Tom Lounges spoke for many when he said: “You are a wonderful journalist and top shelf person Robert – one of my favorite editors over the years who was always fair and professional.”  I second that emotion.  Robert gave the Times his best effort for two decades, and management gave him 6 hours to clear out his workspace.  That Robert could write such a gracious goodbye shows what a class act he is. -30-.