Au Naturel

 “What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful that the garment with which it is clothed?” Michelangelo Buonarroti

 Medici Tombs sculptures by Michelangelo

When Michelangelo painted male nudes on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in The Last Judgment, religious conservatives were displeased and after his death ordered draperies painted over most of the exposed genitals and buttocks.  When the painting was restored a generation ago, the Catholic Church chose modesty over, in the words of art critic Jonathan Jones, “a chance to remove the additions and reveal the full glory of the resurrected flesh.”

In the March 2016, issue of Journal of American History David Allyn reviewed Brian Hoffman’s “Naked: A Cultural History of American Nudism.” Allyn includes this quote by Hoffman:

  To grow and prosper in the United States, American nudism negotiated the fluid boundaries of sexual liberalism by architecting an appearance of respectable normalcy even as many of its early advocates supported sexual experimentation, radical politics, and homosexuality.

I recall Adult movie theaters in the 1950s and 1960s showing films of nudists seemingly devoid of sexuality playing volleyball and exercising.  Ironically, according to Hoffman, the family-oriented nature of the nudist movement became its greatest liability, “as officials have begun to worry loudly about the inherent potential for child exploitation at family-oriented nudist resorts.”

 above, drawing by Dale Fleming; below, "Dune Faun" by M.P. Waldron

In 2013 I wrote an article for South Shore Journal entitled “The Dune Faun: Diana of the Dunes’ Male Counterpart,” about a naked beachcomber whom author Webb Waldron encountered in the 1920s.  In a section titled “Au Naturel” I wrote:

      During the Roaring Twenties a group of intrepid young women living near Michigan City formed a group called the Dune Dancers.  According to area resident Don Van Vomen, “Their claim to fame, shocking in those days, was to dance on the beach in very shear veils.  One by one in the moonlight, as dusk was coming, they would release their veils until they were dancing nude.”  At this same time male clubs formed whose members embraced the physical culture movement and commonly disrobed when away from gawking strangers.  Some were open to those who embraced a gay or bisexual lifestyle.

      Nudism as a social movement spread from Germany to the United States during the 1920s as a healthy way of counterbalancing the stresses of modern industrialized, urban life.  In contrast with Europe, where social nudism eventually gained a large measure of acceptance, in America self-appointed guardians of morality viewed displays of nudity in a sexual context as immoral.  Even so, during the 1930s the largest nudist club in America, the Zoro Nature Park, opened in Northwest Indiana.

 giant sundial at Naked City

-->

Every couple years during the 1970s the Post-Tribune would do an exposé on Naked City in Roselawn, sometimes at the time of their annual Miss Nude U.S.A. contest.  According to P-T editor Dean Bottorff, reporters would scramble for the assignment.  In an interview Vietnam Veteran L.T. Wolf told me about visiting Naked City in 1972 with neighbor Diane, who was first runner-up in its Miss Nude U.S.A. contest.

  You drove a good distance and just left your clothes in your car.  The only clothes people had on were shoes or sandals.  A bunch of people, from children to grandparents were walking around or playing games like volleyball.  It was pretty boring and depressing.  The wild goings-on, I heard later from Diana, were behind closed doors and reserved for certain select long-time members.  The average person wasn’t going to get anywhere near them.

During the 1980s IUN professor John Dustman took students in a Human Sexuality class to nudist camps in Roselawn.  The purpose, he claimed, was to expose them to inaccuracies in people’s minds as to what’s going on.  Interviewed for my oral history of IU Northwest (Steel Shavings, volume 35, 2004), Dustman said:

      One year I took 16 students to Naked City, the biggest damn truck stop that didn’t sell gas you ever saw.  On a tour a 15 year-old kid was talking about orgies, and it was sleazy.  Of course, this was my intent.  Guys were gesturing to us to join their group.  There was a unisex bathroom with no doors on stalls.  A couple students went in and quickly came out, saying they could wait.

      We went to a legitimate place, and the husband and wife owners and a 90 year-old geriatric conducted the tour.  They’d run ahead to explain why clothed people were walking through.  We ended up at the volleyball court and swimming pool.  It was a hot July day.  I went in to get a copy of the rules.  When I got back, my students were in the pool.  Being a professor, I couldn’t join them.

I love book reviews that dare to be different.  Writing about Steven Dillon’s “Wolf-Women and Phantom Ladies: Female Desire in 1940s U.S. Culture” in the Journal of American History, Paula Rabinowitz, author of “American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street” (2014) passed on this personal information:

  Toward the end of her life, my mother (with the maiden name Wolf) spent hours watching movies from her youth on television; she was obsessed with Howard Hawkes’s To Have and Have Not (1944).  Turning 16 just weeks after Pearl Harbor was bombed, she spent the war as a Brooklyn College student, marrying soon after V-J Day, then worked as a social worker in the New York City Welfare Office and an auditor for the Textile Workers’ Union of America until her first daughter was born a decade later.   She was fascinated by the film world she had spent hours viewing with her girlfriends as they wiled away the war in a city emptied of men.  In 1944, her contemporary, the 19 year-old Lauren Bacall, looked far more sophisticated than my bespectacled mother when, in the film, she leaned into jaded Humphrey Bogart’s room and reminded him that all he needed to do was whistle.  Bacall’s casual sexiness and brazen seductiveness still amazed her; how could she compete?  She may have been called Wolf, but to Hollywood, my mother was a mere phantom.

Over the IUN library public address system I heard someone say, “Will Terrance Durousseau please report to the circulation desk.”  Durousseau was a student of mine 13 years ago, and I had used an excerpt from his “Ides of March” journal in “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”  I rushed down to catch him, but he had already departed.  Here’s an excerpt from his journal:

      While working at Church’s Fried Chicken, a man reeking of alcohol placed an order and then asked for a refund, claiming what he got was not what he wanted.  Then he placed a smaller order and pretended he’d been short-changed.  He asked for the manager, Ali, who checked the bleed-box, where 20-dollar bills are dropped as soon as they are collected.  It was empty, but the man still left in an outrage.  I got a call from my older brother Cool Breeze thanking me for his birthday gift of ten dollars and the funny card featuring a woman in a bikini on the front.  It said, “Tammie is going to remove her top for your birthday.”  Inside was a chimpanzee named Tammie.

At bowling Frank Shrufran needed to double in the final frame for the Engineers to win a second game and series.  He came through, so we picked up five points rather than just two.  My best game was a 158; my score was 96 after five frames but then had three splits.

Steve McShane and I spoke to a dozen Archives visitors from Twenty-First Century Charter School about a class project on Gary. Steve showed photos of the building and operation of Gary Works and discussed reasons U.S. Steel chose Northwest Indiana as that Midwestern site for its state-of-the-art new integrated plant.  Because student are researching white flight, I mentioned that geographical mobility has been a constant in American history and involved both push and pull factors.  From its earliest days Gary residents sought to escape the pollution and overcrowding and relocate to neighborhoods both within and outside the city – opportunities denied African Americans until the mid-1960s for most Gary neighborhoods.  Beginning in the 1980s, “black flight” to Merrillville, Griffith, Portage, and other previously all-white suburbs drained Gary of many middle-class families.  The students had so many questions I didn’t get to have them recite, as planned, from “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”

At Gardner Center in Miller Jeff Manes had a reading and book-signing for “All Worth Their Salt: The People of NWI, volume II.”  I read lines from his 2012 interview with son Dave, who mentioned being close friends with fellow East Chicago Central teacher (now retired) Leon Kendrick, whose interview also appears.  On hand was John Bianchi, who worked 38 years in Inland’s Steel’s coke plant.  Bianchi, Manes wrote: “walks with a cane these days.  He attributes that to years of working underneath the pusher and the door machine changing shear bolts and the countless times he carried a pair of 60-pound idlers to the top of the coal handling section of the coke plant.” 

Also on hand was Mary Kay Emmrich, whose parents owned the Hilltop Bar in Morocco, located in Newton County.  Nicknamed the Bucket of Blood, the Hilltop, Mary Kay told Manes, “was a farmers bar.  Papa always said if there was dirt under the bar stools, there was money in the register because the farmers had been in.”  Cullen Ben-Daniel read the lines of Jack Gross, who came to America in 1940 at age 6 and graduated from Gary Horace Mann in 1952.  He told Manes:

  When I was growing up, people bought their groceries on credit.  They worked in the mill or a place that supported the mills.  After a couple weeks, when they got paid, they’d pay their grocery bill – same thing with clothes.  Everything was credit.  There was a mutual trust.  But sometimes people would up and move – you lost money.  If a person is working, they can pay; if they’re not working, they can’t pay. What are you going to do?

Ides of March

“Beware the Ides of March,” soothsayer in “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare

On March 15, 44 B.C., Roman Senator Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, one of 60 conspirators, stabbed Julius Caesar to death on his way to the Theatre of Pompey.  Roman historian Suetonius wrote that on February 15 at the festival of Lupercalia Caesar sacrificed a bull that seemingly had no heart.  A seer named Spurinna believed this to be a portent of death and warned the Roman dictator and chief priest (Pontifex Maximus) that his life would be in danger for the next 30 days.   Shortly before his death Caesar passed Spurinna and joked, “The Ides of March are come.” Spurinna allegedly replied, “Aye, Caesar, but not gone.”  Four years later Emperor Octavian (Augustus Caesar), whom Caesar had adopted as son and heir, avenged his great-uncle’s assassination by executing 300 noblemen suspected of having taken part in the plot. 

In March of 2003 my students kept journals, concentrating on their daily lives, especially on the weekend of March 13-15, for a special Steel Shavings issue (volume 36, 2005) dealing primarily with the contemporary history of adolescence in the Calumet Region.  In the process I learned about anime (highly stylized Japanese animation) and slash fiction (fan fiction screenplays pairing same-sex cast members romantically).  Students wrote about well-endowed waitresses at Hooters in Merrillville and strippers at Club O in Harvey, Illinois.  They patronized tanning salons and fitness centers, sports bars and myriad eateries (Olive Garden being a clear favorite), played video games on Play Station 2 and Xbox, rented last season’s movie hits from Blockbuster, took younger siblings to Chuck E. Cheese, and watched Reality shows and syndicated situation comedies (with women Friends was hands down the most popular while guys tended to favor Seinfeld).  Like at present some spent Spring Break in Florida and St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago. 

Topping the pop charts in March of 2003 were “All I Have” by Jennifer Lopez featuring LL Cool J and “In Da Club” by 50 Cent (“You can find me in da club, bottle full of bub . . . so come give me a hug if you into gettin’ rubbed”). Some headlines have faded from memory (i.e., Elizabeth Smart’s reappearance months after being kidnapped by a religious nut), while President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq still provokes debate and consternation.  Indeed, on March 15, 2003, anti-war protestors gathered at IUN’s Hawthorn Hall and, led by Professor Raoul Contreras and Reverend Charles Emery (below), marched down Broadway.  Participant Samuel A. Love wrote, “People came out of their houses and businesses: most waved, smiled, flashed peace signs, and raised clenched fists in solidarity.”

On Friday when I speak to students from Twenty-First Century Charter School about (at their request) white flight, affirmative action, and gentrification pertaining to Gary history, I plan also to have them read excerpts of student journals from the section in “Gary’s First Hundred Years” called “Ides of March 2003.”   Here’s what 50 year-old Louise Cunningham wrote:

I feel like Alice in Wonderland when she fell down the rabbit hole.  I’m scheduled o work 10 hours today and 13 tomorrow.  It’s my pound of flesh before my vacation in Las Vegas.  My husband sleeps with the TV on. With all the predictions of war, it reminds me of the Edwin Starr refrain, “War!  What is it good for?  Absolutely nothing.”

B.W.'s ambition was to be a rapper.  His journal mentioned riding around in a Pontiac 6000 listening to 50 Cent’s “In Da Club.”  He especially liked tracks six (“High All the Time”) and seven, “Heat,” which contained the lines, “If there’s beef, cock it and dump it, the drama really means nothin’ to me.”  At a gas station a crack head begged for ten dollars for gas.  B.W. wrote:

He didn’t even have a car.  Then he offered to pump my gas, which pissed me off.  I stopped into a barbershop on 45th and witnessed a cop jump out of a squad car and chase someone.  The barbers and I hoped the man would get away.

Before bed B.W. wrote some raps in his notebook.

In that same section I made use of Post-Tribune classified ads.  In “People Network,” for instance, an ”SBM, 21, 5’9’’, 165 lbs., with a nice smile” sought a “petite SWM, 25-30, for LTR” – in other words, an interracial long-term gay relationship.  I also used obituaries, such as that of 100 year-old former Tradewinds volunteer and YWCA board member Leona Hill and 87 year-old Ophelia Marsh Davis, a Gary teacher for 40 years.  I concluded that one was left to speculate over the passing of 19 year-old West Side grad Angela Lorraine Windom-Robinson, 27 year-old Wallace grad Rodney L. Pace, Jr., and 30 year-old Wirt grad Terrance “Sean” Ligé.

My NCAA picks have all four number 2 seeds – Oklahoma, Xavier, Villanova, and Michigan State - reaching the Final Four, with ’Nova beating Xavier, 80-74, in the title game.

At lunch with Mike Olszanski at a mostly deserted IUN cafeteria, we discussed the Republicans’ idiotic strategy of refusing to hold confirmation hearings on moderate Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.  Donald Trump could win points if he recommended that Senate Republicans change their tune but is on record counseling “delay, delay, delay.”  When Marco Rubio, now out of the race after losing the Florida primary, called for reversing Obama’s Cuba policy, Trump merely stated, “I’ll get a better deal” – meaning, I suppose, permission to build gambling casinos.

Anne Balay wrote: “A man in a security uniform followed me into the bathroom at the Penn Museum today to pound on the stall door and tell me to leave because it was the woman's bathroom. New lessons on what life is like for trans* people and gender nonconformists. I'm sorry, folks.”  From Great Britain Jo Church responded: “What a wanker! Happens to me all the time (just this morning in fact). I've yet to learn how to deal with it in a way that doesn't leave me feeling rubbish afterward. Sending love and solidarity from this 'garden variety dyke' across the pond.”

 

above, Jo Church; below, Drew Boetel in 2011

For Steve McShane’s class Drew Boetel wrote about grandparents Robert and Gloria Boetel, who lived in South Dakota, Kansas, and Nebraska before moving to Valparaiso in the late 1960’s.  

Born on December 12, 1935, Robert grew up on a farm near Cavour, South Dakota, and attended a one-room school and high school in Huron, South Dakota, where’d stay with his Aunt Marie and occasionally go back to help on the farm.  A pastor who noticed his skill teaching Sunday school helped him apply to Concordia Teachers College in Seward, Nebraska. During his senior year he met Gloria Kolterman, a freshman, who grew up on a farm in Nebraska.   Graduating in 1958, Robert was teaching in Junction City, Kansas five years later when the school hired a new primary grade teacher.  In walked Gloria Kolterman. My grandma claims that the school secretary caught my grandpa and a friend flipping a coin to see who’d date her. 

              While dating Gloria, Robert heard about a job opening at Immanuel Lutheran School in Valparaiso. After a visit, he accepted a fifth grade position after learning that he’d be able to teach art, which was his passion. Valparaiso University also played a big role in the move.  He was working on a Master’s degree in English at Kansas State and could finish at VU.  Robert and Gloria got married and had three children, my dad followed by sisters Yvette and Megan.  Once Megan started kindergarten, Gloria substituted for a third grade teacher getting married and then was offered a kindergarten position.  The salary was minimal, so Gloria joined a babysitting pool to avoid the cost of childcare.  This required time on her part but helped establish friendships.  To save money she fixed school lunches for the kids. 

              Robert was quite a disciplinarian.  A fifth grade girl talked incessantly.  After three stern warnings he told her the next time she spoke she’d be put outside.  Sure enough, she wouldn’t shut up, and he walked her outside.  It was winter and very cold. After a half hour, he asked if she were ready to come in as she stood there shivering.  Another student bullied others.  After Robert had had enough, he took the class to the gym and had the culprit sit in a chair.  He told classmates to vent their frustrations and tell the boy about the things that they didn’t like about him. The boy apologized and they forgave him.  That boy became my grandparents’ neighbor and recently reminded Robert how that ordeal steered him off the path he was on.

         In 1970 Robert started teaching eighth grade and became involved in theatre and drama until he retired in 2002, three years after Gloria.  He also established a gallery for his students’ artwork in order, in his words, “to share other children’s efforts with the students, to beautify the school, and to provide a sense of continuity and school history.”  Many parents were VU professors who appreciated the fine arts.

Two brothers worked at their family pizza restaurant on the corner of Routes 49 and 6.  Robert had them bring in dough, flour, cheese, and sauce to demonstrate how to make a pizza. Then they baked it in the kitchen, and the whole class enjoyed the pizza.  Robert once set it up a projector incorrectly, and a big film disc went flying across the room.  From then on, he had someone else set it up.  Being near Chicago, Robert took students on field trips to museums, the Art Institute, the aquarium, the planetarium, Lincoln Park Zoo, and McCormick Place for a dress rehearsal for The Nutcracker, followed by window-shopping to see Christmas decorations.  Each spring there was a school trip to Lake Michigan where kids could hike the dunes. 

Granddaughter Alissa posted: "The best part about putting together a wedding slide show is finding gems like this."

Bullwinkle

Bullwinkle: I’d like to apply for a job as an usher.

Boris: What experience have you had?

Bullwinkle: I’ve been in the dark for most of my life.

My favorite cartoon program was “The Bullwinkle Show” starring Bullwinkle J. Moose and sidekick Rocky the Flying Squirrel, plus Dudley Do-Right and nemesis Snidley Whiplash as well as the Russian spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale.  It aired afternoons during my time at Bucknell.  I worked on a dishwashing assembly line at Women’s Cafeteria, along with football jocks on scholarships.  When Toni visited, I’d take her o Catholic mass in Lewisburg and observe some of the hell-raisers lined up for confession.  We watched “The Bullwinkle Show” on our break between doing leftover lunch dishes and the dinner batch. I loved the outrageous puns (Bullwinkle went to Wassamatta U, Rocky to Cedar Yourpantz Flying School) and close calls, such as Bullwinkle falling off a ledge and becoming a huge spiraling snowball, only to be rescued by Rocky before going off a cliff.  Steven Speilberg said, “It was the first time that I can recall my parents watching a cartoon show over my shoulder and laughing in places I couldn’t comprehend.”

Professor Tom Spencer was in the Archives researching Gary School Superintendent William A. Wirt (1874-1938) during the 1930s.  Wirt’s reputation as a progressive educator was tarnished by attacks he made in 1934 against New Dealers.  After visiting the Washington, D.C., home of Alice Barrows, he charged that communists had infiltrated several government agencies.  Wirt claimed that several guests told him that they regarded FDR as like Alexander Kerensky prior to the Bolshevik Revolution who in time would be supplanted by a Stalin.  That led to his testifying before a House investigative committee chaired by Alfred L. Bulwinkle of North Carolina.  A lawyer and battalion commander in World War I, Bulwinkle served in Congress between 1921 and 1929 and from 1931 until his death in 1950. Bullwinkle regarded Wirt as a naïve busybody and succeeded in discrediting him.

Also in the Archives: Rhiannon Azur, a Valparaiso grad student, researching the origin of Lake County unions, nationality clubs, and other social and fraternal organizations.  She is interested in gravestone inscriptions and has visited over 60 Lake County cemeteries, including the old Swedish graveyard in Miller. She has found intriguing symbols on headstones, including some not yet identified, but none so far of the Ku Klux Klan, active in the Region during the 1920s.  I introduced her to Archives volunteer Martha Latko, a frequent contributor to Find a Grave website.

 Victoria Lane and Leah Williamson; Becca flanked by Donkey (Paige Fowler) and Shrek (Liam Blazer)

-->

Victoria’s cheer season has ended successfully, as she won conference and district awards. Next up for her is soccer.  Sister Miranda spent Spring Break in Florida and has been accepted into Grand Valley State’s Social Work Masters program.  Alissa and her mother came in to see Becca shine as Princess Fiona in “Shrek: The Musical.”  Although James graduated from Discovery Charter School last year, he helped rearrange the set between scenes while Angie was on the team of directors.  The cast of nearly a hundred included tap dancing rats, a dwarf (William Skish), a wicked witch (Breanna Smoot), a donkey (Paige Fowler), and three storytellers (Olivia Burkhart, Abby Joeston, and Zoe Blazer) who underwent numerous costume changes.  Sadly, no Bullwinkle.  At one point Becca (with Angie’s help) had barely a minute to transform into a green-faced troll.  During curtain call the entire cast sang the 1967 Monkees hit “I’m a Believer,” which begins, “I thought love was only true in fairy tales.”

I’ve got “Humbug” by Arctic Monkeys on heavy rotation that begins with “My Propeller” (“Coax me out of my low and have a spin of my propeller”).

James has a 142 bowling average – exactly the same currently as mine –and at Inman’s I caught up on news about Chris Lugo’s granddaughter Angel, whom I’ve known since she was a toddler.  About to graduate from Ball State, Angel is taking a Criminal Justice course during Spring Break in England – something Miranda did last summer for Social Work – and, like Miranda, will start grad school in the fall.  Evan Davis came in from Fort Wayne for gaming at Tom Wade’s.  We test-played his latest version of Power Rails, and then I won a five-player Amun Re contest by a single point over Tom and Brady.  Seemingly out of contention, being 14 points down at the end of the first round but with the most money, I built three sets of pyramids plus garnered most on one side and held the power card “all on the (Nile) river or off the river.”

“Spotlight” deserved its acclaim as Best Picture of 2015.  At the end, prior to the credits, was a list of cities, in addition to Boston, where pedophile priests were unearthed - over a hundred in the U.S. alone and even more than that worldwide, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Wollongong, Australia.  Rachel McAdams played Sacha Pfeiffer, a Boston Globe investigative reporter who stopped attending mass with her grandmother upon learning the scope of the scandal.  When Sacha shows her grandmother the story, and the old lady asks for a glass of water.  For the faithful the coverup was like being hit with a ton of bricks.

VU Prof Heath Carter has co-edited a new book, “The Pew and the Picker Line: Christianity and the American Working Class,” with Christopher D. Cantwell and Janine Giordano Drake.  Illinois Press printed this blurb:

Navigating a wide spectrum of time and workspaces, racial and ethnic expressions, and blue-collar gospels, this brilliantly conceived and superbly executed volume demands that historians shift their gaze from the much examined corporate to under-scrutinized labor side of modern American Christianity and capitalism."--Darren Dochuk, author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism.

The subject of IUN colleague Xiaoqing Diana Lin’s new book “Feng Youlan and Twentieth Century China,” was the preeminent Chinese philosopher of the twentieth century.  After graduating from Peking University in 1918 at age 23, Feng Youlan (馮友蘭)  studied under John Dewey at Columbia University on the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program.  PhD in hand, he returned to China and wrote a two-volume “History of Chinese Philosophy” (1934), attempting, in Lin’s words, “to render traditional Chinese concepts compatible with Western metaphysical approaches to knowledge.”  His goal, Lin added, was to produce “a new value system based on the creative adaptation of Confucian and Daoist teachings synthesized with Western logic and other philosophical influences.”  Sympathetic to the Communist revolution, Youlan was relatively free to continue his academic career.  Despite persecution during the Cultural Revolution and house arrest after the death of Mao Zedong, he remained intellectually active until shortly before his death in 1990 at age 95.

At Gino’s Peter Thayer talked about U. S. Grant, whose first name was actually Hiram.  I joked that the first thing I knew about Grant was the silly question, “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?”  Rich Maroc piped in that Groucho Marx would ask losing contestants on “You Bet Your Life” that question for a fifty-dollar consolation prize.  David Moore quipped that some didn’t know the answer.  I added info about First Lady Julia Dent Grant, born on an antebellum Missouri plantation.  Debra Dubovich noted that Julia rented out slaves while her husband, in a similar position, set his free.  Grant had decent intentions toward Indians, but his toleration of graft doomed his efforts.  He appointed a Native American, Donehogawa (Ely Parker) to the Commission of Indian Affairs but moved the agency to the War Department controlled by corrupt Secretary William Belknap.  The other four commissioners represented either avaricious traders or missionaries eager to eradicate Indian culture who, over Donehogawa’s vehement objections, transferred children to boarding school located far from reservations, where many succumbed to tuberculosis and other contagious diseases. 

Jerry Davich posted a column about Paragon Restaurant founder Louis Gerodemos.  The Post-Trib refused to run it four years ago because of dubious legality concerns.  Born in 1933, Louis came to America at age 18 and, like many eligible newcomers, soon got drafted.  Davich wrote:

Gerodemos served in the Army as a mess cook, what else, and earned his citizenship while stationed in Colorado Springs. His Army captain drove him to the ceremony.

              While in Colorado, Gerodemos met the owner of a bar and eatery called "George's Grill." George was Greek and took Gerodemos under his wing, treating him like his son.

When Gerodemos returned to this region in 1957, he used what he learned there to open his many restaurants here, including a snack shop in Chicago, a Tasty-Freeze shop, and a nightclub in downtown Gary called The Star Club. 

Other restaurant ventures have come and gone through the years, including a few relationships with shady businessmen, tainting his reputation. But along the way, he's sold thousands of meals, shook the hands of countless customers, and made guests feel like they're part of the family.

Renee Villarreal interviewed Simon Rodriguez, who had a rough childhood, teen setbacks, and, after questionable life choices, turned his life around.  In a paper for Steve McShane she wrote:

--> Simon Rodriguez was born in California on February 25, 1978, the second oldest of three boys. His father, Luis Rodriguez, was born in Puerto Rico, grew up in Chicago, met Simon’s mother Sandra in high school, and was in the Marines stationed in California when Simon was born.  Luis and Sandra divorced three years later. Once out of the service, Luis began to drink heavily and see other women, according to Sandra, who soon remarried and had two more boys.  Simon stepfather moved them to Calumet City and then Hammond and bought a nice house that was a far cry from the roach-infested Chicago apartment of Simon’s childhood. They lived in a high crime area, however, filled with drug dealers, prostitutes, and gangs. Simon recalled seeing needles on the ground when walking to school. Prostitutes worked his street; he and his friends found a gun while playing outside.  At Eggers Elementary a majority of children were black. Simon’s mother was a Boy Scout den leader, a volunteer for the Harrison Park Historical Association, and a stay-at-home mom until a divorce forced her to seek employment, leaving Simon often unsupervised.

At the age of 15 Simon found a fast food job that paid minimum wage. Sandra wanted half his earnings. Simon refused and was kicked out of the house. He bounced around from his father’s home in Chicago, an aunt’s place in Florida, back to Chicago with a different aunt, and then in Hammond again with his mother.  The dysfunctional home life continued, and Simon found himself in and out of Lake County Juvenile Center (LCJC) for a couple of years. Simon joined a local gang and wasn’t concerned with the consequences. He dropped out of high school, lived with friends or gang members, and was happy to have money in his pocket and not worry about the future.

The good times didn’t last. As Simon left a party, he was shot from behind and the bullet went through his abdomen. By the time the paramedics reached Simon, his heart had stopped beating, and he almost died.  Surgeons removed half his intestines. His left side was paralyzed for some time due to the bullet being so close to his spine. Simon’s hospital stay only lasted two weeks because he turned 18 and his insurance ran out.  Although he could barely walk, he was asked to leave.  Friends and their mothers aided Simon in his recovery, and soon he was back to partying and gangbanging until he

--> found out he was going to be a father and enrolled in the Job Corps.  He wanted to be a better parent  than he felt Luis was to him. He left his gang, worked toward a G.E.D., and got certified in bricklaying. He worked in the bricklaying field for three years, had another child, and got into construction, mostly framing and roofing.  The most challenging aspect of adulthood, Simon found, was maintaining financial stability.  Much of his work is seasonal; continuous labor work is hard to come by unless you know someone.  When Simon his late twenties, responsible for three children, one with special needs,he attempted to join the army, but the old gunshot wound rendered him unacceptable. 

Simon and Sandra maintain a relationship, and he sees his father occasionally at family gatherings. On the other hand, Simon and his siblings are very tight and spur each other on. None is incarcerated or on drugs; everyone finished high school or obtained G.E.Ds. Considering some of Simon’s life choices, he considers himself fortunate to be alive and is on the alert for new opportunities. (below, Simon and Sandra)