A Good Jolly

“A good jolly is worth what you pay for it.” George Ade

Ray Boomhower’s “Indiana Originals” contains a chapter on Hoosier’s “warm-hearted satirist” George Ade, mentor to both acerbic Jean Shepherd and fantasist Kurt Vonnegut.  Following in the footsteps of Mark Twain, Ade wrote humorous columns and books about everyday Americans.  His “Fables in Song” bore a resemblance to Shepherd’s semi-fictional tales of the Calumet Regional and certain characters that appear in Vonnegut’s novels.  Like Progressive urban reformer Jacob A, Riis, Ade’s writing career began as a beat reporter for a big city newspaper, in his case the Chicago Morning News.Riis’s big break was scoring a scoop covering a New York City fire.  Ade was the first reporter on the scene following an explosion on the steamer Tioga on the Chicago River on July 11, 1890, caused by naphtha vapor and resulting in at least 26 deaths. 

Boomhower referenced Jazz Age songwriter Hoagland “Hoagy” Carmichael’s autobiography “Sometimes I Wonder,” the first line of Carmichael’s classic “Stardust.”  Born in Bloomington, Carmichael was named for a circus troupe that stayed at his parents’ home during his mother Lida’s pregnancy.  Lida, whom Hoagy was much closer to than his dad, an electrician, played the piano at home in preparation for dances on the campus of Indiana University as well as at local movie houses.  Carmicael’s mentors included black pianist Reginald DuValle and Bix Beiderbecke (he named a son Hoagy Bix).  In “Indiana Avenue and Beyond,” a history of jazz in Indiana, DuValle’s son, Reginald Jr., recalled that when Hoagy was a young aspiring jazz pianist, he’d sit on their front porch in Indianapolis and listen to his father practicing until he was finally invited in to take lessons. From DuValle Hoagie learned how to improvise and play stride. In turn, once he became famous, Hoagy he would frequently visit the DuValle family when passing through Indianapolis.Carmichael’s repertoire of popular standards included “Up the Lazy River,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Heart and Soul,” and “The Nearness of You.” He died at age 82 in Rancho Mirage, California.

 son Hoagy Bix with Annie Lennox

At duplicate bridge in Chesterton Charlie Halberstadt and I finished in first place with 62.5 percent, earning each of us .90 of a master point.  Our best hand came when Charlie overcalled a Club by bidding one Diamond.  The opponent to my right bid a Spade, and I passed, having just six points but six Hearts to the Ace Queen.  When Charlie bid 2 Hearts, I jumped to 4 Hearts, causing Charlie to exclaim, “I woke him up.”  He made the bid on the nose, and we were the only pair to be in game. Charlie asked Dottie Hart for the recipe for her snickerdoodle cookies, only he butchered the four-syllable name, causing a caustic rejoinder from the cool octogenarian.  

 John and Karen Fieldhouse in 2016

Next day at Banta Center Charlie and I finished third, scoring 55 percent sitting north-south in a six-table match.  I told John Fieldhouse, who was a chemist for Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio, that my father had been an industrial chemist for Penn Salt (later Pennwalt Corporation) in Easton, Pennsylvania before being transferred to the company’s Philadelphia executive office.  Like Vic, John had been expected to comply to a strict dress code, even to an extent of wearing white shirt and tie under a lab coat.  Firestone frowned on employee behavior that might reflect badly on the company, similar to the situation with Vic, who even wore the requisite monogrammed polo shirt on the golf course of Manufactures’ Country Club in Fort Washington, PA.  Both traveled often for work, in John’s case to Prescott, Arkansas.  One time his travel agent booked him on a flight to Prescott, Arizona.  A chlorine expert, Vic often went to Paducah, Kentucky. Both secured valuable patents for their respective companies.

 Manufacturers' Golf and County Club clubhouse

Elton John and family, 2015

While the film biopic “Rocketman” had great production numbers, it mostly concentrated on the reasons for Elton John’s admitted drug, alcohol, and sex addiction – a result, according to the screenplay, of feeling unloved and ashamed of his homosexuality, augmented by the temptations and insecurities endemic to his profession. The triumphant final number, “I’m Still Standing,” follows the singer’s long stint in rehab going to group therapy and precedes mention that Elton has been drug and alcohol free for 28 years, happily married to Canadian filmmaker David Furnish, and the father of two boys, Zachary and Elijah, born to a surrogate.

The U.S. women’s soccer team slaughtered Thailand 13-0, including a half-dozen goals in the waning minutes, celebrating each like it was the winning shot, jumping on each other’s backs and shimmying on the sidelines – the wretched excess creating an international backlash.  The rout reminded me of Phil’s soccer team beating Lew Wallace by a similar score, only the boys acted more maturely rather than rubbing it in.  Phil took exception to my original characterization of the women’s behavior as disgusting, pointing out that rules prevent more than two substitutions and a World Cup goal is more momentous than a high school feat.

The White Sox raised eyebrows by distributing commemorative t-shirts to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Disco Demolition riot that took place between games of a doubleheader, causing the nightcap to be forfeited due to fan hooliganism.  Among other things, some hard rock purists tossed albums like frisbees at Tiger players and dug up sod as souvenirs, rendering the field unplayable. 

The St. Louis Blues won their first ever Stanley Cup upsetting the favored Boston Bruins, who dominated the first period only to find themselves down 2-0 after 20 minutes.  A day later, the Toronto Raptors won their first NBA title over defending champ Golden State after both Kevin Durant and Trey Thompson were badly injured attempting to play hurt.  All in all, plenty of grist for the sports talk radio mill.  For a true fan, nothing beats that first championship.  I still recall where I was when Bobby Clarke and the Flyers beat the Bruins in 1974, the Phillies won the World Series in 1980, and the Cubs in 2016.

 Charlotte Cushman

In the “New Books” section of Chesterton library I discovered the “young people edition” of Michael Bronski’s “A Queer History of the United States.”  According toTime, what mainly got expunged were graphic photos and written depictions of sex acts.   For example, sodomy was defined not in terms of oral stimulation or anal penetration but as intercourse of some sort between two people of the same sex – misleading since fellatio and cunnilingus performed between males and females were also criminalized under sodomy laws. In a chapter titled “Nineteenth-Century Romantic Friendships: BFFs or Friends with Benefits?” the author leaves the posed question unanswered, concluding that such relationships may or may not have included sex, we have no way of knowing in most cases.  He examines George Washington’s relationship with General Lafayette to demonstrate that an intimate bond need not be a a “queer” one, consummated sexually.

Bronski’s chapter on acclaimed mid-19th century tragic actress Charlotte Cushman, titled “American Idol, Lover of Women,” leaves no doubt that the thespian was a practicing lesbian. Cushman’s lovers included African-American Sallie Mercer, British journalist Matilda Mary Hays, sculptor Emma Stebbins, and paramour Emma Crowe, to whom she wrote:

 Ah, what delirium is in the memory. Every nerve in me thrills as I look back and feel you in my arms, held to my breast so closely, so entirely mine in every sense as I was yours. Ah, my very sweet, very precious, full, full of ecstasy.

Bronski leaves out intimate details of orifices explored and erogenous zones aroused, but each relationship was stormy, filled with agony as well as sexual climax, but long-lasting despite not being monogamous.  At Charlotte’s death bed, Bronski writes, were Emma Stebbins, Emma Crowe, nephew Edward, and Sallie Mercer.

Charlotte Cushman, friends with President Abraham Lincoln and rich and powerful cosmopolitan New Yorkers of her day, had a fondness for men’s attire and often played male roles, such as Romeo in the Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy “Romeo and Juliet.”  She was most famous for her role as ambitious Lady Macbeth, who, like Romeo, took her own life.  After Cushman’s death of pneumonia in 1876 at age 59, Reverend W.H.H. Murray delivered this eulogy: “She was a Samson and Ruth in one. In her the strength of the masculine and the tenderness of the feminine nature were blended.  She seemed to stand complete in nature, with the finest qualities of either sex.”  As Hoosier humorist George Ade would have put it, she had a gay old time and plenty of good jollies for which she must have deemed the price paid worth it.

 Charlotte Cushman as Meg in "Merrilees"

George Ade wrote: “After being turned down by numerous publishers, he had decided to write for posterity.”  I self-publish my musings and write primarily for posterity.  For an end-of-the-week “good jolly” I might smoke out, watched a couple episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and put on “Living Mirage,” the new Head and the Heart CD found in the library’s “New Acquisitions” section. Missed Connection” contains these lines:

Don't tell me I lost a step
Criss-crossed in the wrong direction

Phil also discovered the new Head and the Heart album and likes the track titled “Running Through Hell.”  It begins:

Well you know those times
When you feel like there's a sign there on your back
Says I don't mind if ya kick me
Seems like everybody has

The song advises:

If you're going through Hell
Keep on going, don't slow down
If you're scared, don't show it
You might get out

         Before the devil even knows you're there

Dave is sore from participating in a softball doubleheader, subbing for a team he used to play on. He wondered at what age I retired (56 was the answer, but I spent my later career on the mound). Dave went four for four in the opener and made a diving stop of a ground ball but was spent by the second game and may have pulled a hamstring.  It was at Hidden Lake, the same field in Merrillville where I pulled a “hammy” at his age attempting to break up a double-play on a hard-hit grounder to short. I recovered and played for several more seasons on a team put together by Dave and Kevin Horn.

On the cover of Timeis Bernie Sanders, whom Toni has not forgiven for challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016. There are articles on “Late Show” starring Emma Thompson and the appearance of Meryl Streep in the second season of the HBO series “Little Big Lies.” The role of a passive-aggressive mother-in-law was tailor-made for Streep.

Right Place, Wrong Time

I been in the right place but it must have been the wrong time
I'd have said the right thing but I must have used the wrong line

    “Right Place, Wrong Time,” Dr. John

New Orleans legend Dr. John (Malcolm John Rebennack) succumbed to heart failure at age 77.  The piano man, keyboardist and guitar player combined blues and psychedelic rock with traces of voodoo mysticism and Mardi Gras jazz.  Dr. John toured with the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Band, and many others.  The Rock and Roll inductee had a 1973 Top Ten hit with “Right Place, Wrong Time.” “CBS Sunday Morning” paid tribute to the ultra-cool Dr. John and commemorated the 1969 Greenwich Village Stonewall riots with a feature on gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny (1925-2011), dismissed from the U.S. Army’s Map Service in 1957 for being openly gay. In 1965 Kameny and other members of the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis picketed the White House to protest discrimination based on sexual orientation.

 Frank Kameny at 2010 Gay Pride parade

After an ABC camera recorded a D-Day survivor finding his buddy’s gravesite at Normandy American Cemetery, the deceased G.I.s family in Syracuse, New York saw the feature on TV and was able to talk with him via Skype.

Among the many tributes to World War II veterans on the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day was a Post-Tribunearticle about Ernie Pyle’s dispatches from Normandy that contained an interview with Phil Hess of the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum in Dana, Indiana, the war correspondent’s home town.  Pyle’s stories of those who fought, Hess stated, “are necessary to really understanding the magnitude of the invasion and the indescribable toll it took on America’s young men.”  In a dispatch titled “A Pure Miracle” Pyle wrote of the killing field

 For some of our units it [the landing] was easy, but in this [Omaha Beach] special sector where I am now our troops face such odds that our getting ashore was like whipping Joe Louis to a pulp. Our men simply could not get past the beach.  They were pinned down right on the water’s edge by an inhuman wall of fire from the bluff. Our first wave were on the beach for hours before they could begin working inland.

A subsequent dispatch described the terrible human toll in the immediate aftermath of the landing.  Walking along the beach, Pyle saw bodies washing out to sea and then in again.  He stepped over what he presumed to be driftwood until recognizing the foot of a soldier half-buried in the sand. Noting that “soldiers carry strange things with them,”he not only found packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes and photos of loved ones but, a banjo and a tennis racket, the latter lying “lonesomely in the sand, clamped in its rack, not a string broken.” A dog was whimpering pitifully “looking for his masters.”

 Ernie Pyle at Anzio with G.I.s

Captain Waskow

Ray Boomhower devoted two chapters to Ernie Pyle in “Indiana Originals,” the only Hoosier so honored.  The first described his years as a roving reporter for Scripps-Howard newspaper chain traveling all over the country (and Western hemisphere) between 1935 and 1942 by car, train, plane, and occasionally horseback in search of human-interest stories.  The second highlighted his most widely reprinted column, “The Death of Captain [Henry T.] Waskow” on Mount Sammurco in Italy in January 1944, five months before the D-Day landing.  I was already familiar with the piece, having read it in my World War II class.  A shell fragrant had pierced his heart while Waskow was trying to shield another soldier.  Waskow had been dead for four days before his body could be retrieved and brought back to camp lashed to the back of a mule on a moonlit night. Pyle wrote:

    Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the low stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally there were five lying end to end in a long row, alongside the road. You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them.

   The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.

   One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, “God damn it.”    That’s all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, “God damn it to hell anyway.”He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.

   Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain’s face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: “I’m sorry, old man.”

   Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said: “I sure am sorry, sir.”

   Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

   And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

   After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.

 Patrick O'Rourke of the Hammond Federation of Teachers

At Asparagus Restaurant in Merrillville I met lifelong Hammond resident and teachers union leader Patrick O’Rourke, who has taught Labor Studies and Education courses at IUN.  When he mentioned former Gary teachers union leader Charles Smith, I mentioned playing poker at his home and that Chas, as I called him, introduced a seven-card stud, high-low game that he called AFT, after the American Federation of Teachers. Charles would put out a sumptuous spread and we’d all chip in five bucks, hardly enough to cover it.  Lefty stalwarts Al Samter and Fred Gaboury were regulars. That evening Miranda arrived, and we celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday. 

Kaitlyn and Miranda

Lights

Saturday Toni and I attended a wedding at the Miller Aquatorium. Kaitlyn, a friend of Miranda’s from Grand Rapids, was marrying a Syrian Muslim named Albaraa.  They apparently met at a rave, and he was very friendly when we chatted briefly.  Before the ceremony began, a bunch of the groom’s friends came in singing, clapping, dancing, and making squealing sounds.  Impressive. Phil, Kaitlyn’s soccer coach for several years, attended with Delia, as did three young ladies – Samantha, Niki, and Ann (a Warren, Michigan, police officer) who stayed at the condo with Miranda. We sat with Albaraa’s friend Hassan, who had just arrived from Saskatchewan, Canada, grew up in Toronto, and was a big Raptors fan. I told him that the capital of Saskatchewan, Regina, was a recent “Final Jeopardy”answer.  

I asked a young, tattooed woman with multi-colored hair whose portrait was adorning her upper leg and found out it was a Canadian singer Lights Poxleitner-Bokan, who goes by the name Lights. Most of her videos seem to be about intimate relationships.  “Skydiving contains these lyrics:

You pull me in
I'm doing things I never would do
My pulse, racing
I'm coming alive with you

After enjoying a Middle eastern meal sans alcohol, we attended Mike Chirich’s seventy-fifth birthday bash at Miller’s Gardner Center.  At one table were Bobby, Henry, and Joe Farag as well as several other family members.  I chatted with Danna Conklin, whose late husband audited several of my classes after he retired and became a friend and whose son was killed by a random bullet fired from near the Miller South Shore station as he was in his car near Lake Stereet and Route 20.  I gave Mike and Celeste tie-dye t-shirts with “Miller Beachcomber” inscribed on the front and “CHIRICH” on the back.   

 Michael Chirich

Fred McColly and Jimbo

Former student Fred McColly posted a decade-old photo taken on the day I retired and Dave’s band, Voodoo Chili, put on a mini-concert in front of IUN’s Hawthorn Hall.  I have on a dress shirt that Clark Metz had outgrown.  I thought of my old partner in crime while at Mike Chirich’s party since it was Clark who first introduced us.  On the way to Marquette Park for the wedding we passed his house on Oak Avenue, where we spent many afternoons joking around and looking out onto the lake.

Junedale concession stand

Sunday prior to James’s graduation from Portage, there was a family party that Dave missed due to East Chicago Central’s commencement.  He was able to be at the Portage ceremony on time, however.  Tamiya’s friend Charles and I shared Little League stories.  He played on a Junedale field in Glen Park that a half-century ago hosted the Senior League World Series, thanks to Joe Eckert, known as “Mr. Little league.”  Learning Charles was a Thea Bowman grad, I brought up former boys basketball coach Marvin Ray, who guided his 2010 team to the 2010 Class A championship.  Charles said that Rea falsely accused him of stealing a pair of shorts similar to those worn by the players that he’d had permission to take from the Lost and Found.

Cedar Lake Museum curator Scott Bocock sent clippings about boxing and wrestling matches staged at Lassen’s Resort in 1935.  One featured Gary’s Jack Kranz, who the year before had gone the distance in an 8-rounder against Joe Louis at Marigold Gardens in Chicago. According to Eye on the Ring,Kranz won the first three rounds and Louis the final five.  A 1942 Post-Tribunearticle reported on a wrestling match between Cedar lake native Am (Ambrose) Rascher and a seven-foot Swede named Hans Steinke.  As yet, Bocock has found no tangible evidence that Louis appeared at Lassen’s resort, as commonly thought according to local lore.  Steve McShane located a May 4, 1953 Post-Tribune clipping announcing Rascher’s appointment as an Indiana AAU commissioner that included his photo (below).

If I Had a Hammer

  “If I had a hammer

I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land”

         “If I Had a Hammer,” Lee Hays and Pete Seeger

In “From Cotton Fields to University Leadership: All Eyes on Charlie” by Charlie Nelms the chapter on Nelms’s six years as an IU Northwest administrator between 1978 and 1984 is titled “If I Had a Hammer.”  Nelms is a self-described a county guy from the Arkansas Delta and former marine who benefitted from numerous mentors during a distinguished academic career.  One of these was IUPUI Dean of Faculties Jack Buhner, who during the 1960s had run IUN’s Gary campus.  Nelms completed an Indiana University PhD dissertation while working as a Lilly Endowment fellow in Buhner’s office. Partly through Buhner’s influence Nelms was offered the position of director of University Division at IUN.  His efforts to find decent housing were so frustrating he initially stayed only a few months, explaining:

 I had no idea of just how racially segregated communities were in northwest Indiana.  I quickly discovered that Blacks were restricted to overwhelmingly Black neighborhoods dominated by substandard housing.  My wife Jeanetta and I were not prepared for the blatant racism we encountered in our housing search.  Upon finding something we liked, we’d telephone only to be told that it had been rented earlier that day.

 Jack Buhner with Hertha Taylor in 2015

In frustration Nelms accepted a position at the University of Arkansas in Pine Bluff, his undergraduate alma mater. When that job proved disappointing, he called IUN Dean of Students Bob Morris, who arranged for him to be appointed head of University Division beginning June 30, 1978.  This time he found satisfactory housing at the Mansards Apartments in Griffith, which he described as a “relatively new and overwhelmingly White tennis community approximately a 15-minute drive from the university.”  Owner-developer James Dye later became a mentor to Nelms as an IU Trustee.  Charlie wrote that he and Jeanetta never had a moment of trouble at the Mansards, and while training for the Chicago Marathon, Nelms “became a familiar face on the streets of the all-White towns, hamlets, and villages of northwest Indiana.”

Nelms described Gary was a “gritty, working-class city”that underwent white flight, especially after the election of Richard Hatcher as mayor in 1967.  Noting how polluted the area was, Nelms cited the work D.C. Richardson did with the Gary Board of Health to “hold the EPA’s feet to the fire”and enforce anti-pollution standards.

Much like Jack Buhner, Dean of Students Bob Morris, who had come to IUN two years before, was, according to Nelms, “a thoughtful and politically liberal man” and a“passionate, authentic, and caring supervisor.”  During Morris’s tenure, in addition to Nelms, African Americans rose to leadership positions in Admissions (Bill Lee), Financial Aid (Leroy Gray), and University Division (Ernest Smith). Unfortunately, Morris bumped heads with Dean of Academic Affairs Marion Mochon, whom Nelms described accurately as “a chain-smoking cultural anthropologist [whose] personal skills left a lot to be desired.”Determined to get rid of Morris, she first cut his budget and then hatched a scheme to combine Academic Affairs and Student Services and replace Morris with an associate dean. Just three months after Charlie’s arrival on campus, Chancellor Danilo Orescanin offered him the new position on Mochon’s recommendation.  Though asked to keep the offer confidential, Nelms, reluctant to betray Morris, consulted with him.  Nelms wrote:

 Bob assured me he knew something was brewing and that I was not part of the move to oust him. A consummate professional with real class, Bob told me that he was prepared to do everything possible to help me succeed in my new role. Thankfully, Bob got a respectable severance package. And a good job 4 months after leaving IUN.  Two years later, still in his early fifties, Bob [a chain smoker and coke drinker] died of lung cancer.

Not long after Morris’s departure, Marion Mochon was dead and Dan Orescanin had accepted a position in Bloomington. Meanwhile, in addition to his university duties, which included teaching a class each semester, usually Introduction to Psychology, Nelms accepted offers to serve as president of the local Urban League’s Board of Directors, member of the Gary school board, and on the Post-Tribuneadvisory board. Once he was offered $2,000 by a bus company hoping for a lucrative contract with the school city. He angrily turned the bribe attempt down and wrote: 

 Two years afterwards, I was subpoenaed by a Lake County grand jury to testify about alleged graft and contract kickbacks within the Gary School Corporation.  Words cannot convey how happy I was to testify that I had not been a part of any kickback schemes.  As the questioning proceeded, it became increasingly clear that Mayor [Richard] Hatcher was the real target of their inquiry.

Throughout the 1980s during the Ronald Reagan administration there was a persistent effort to indict Black mayors. Hatcher emerged unscathed in spite of the harassment.

I recall Charlie Nelms as a friendly, confident guy who preferred to rule with a velvet glove rather than an iron fist.  We both served as Student Activities Fund Trustees, charged with approving money for student proposals, some of which seemed ill-advised and too costly. In one case student hired a rock group, the Romantics, to put on a concert and then learned it couldn’t be held in the auditorium, so it took place on the campus of Valparaiso University.  Charlie tried to curb wasteful spending while my view was that, within reason, student input should prevail. Despite his efforts to reach consensus, he clearly intended to rein in many proposals.

While researching a history of IUN I interviewed Director of Admissions Bill lee and Barbara Cope, who went on to become Dean of Student Services.  Bill recalled:“Charlie Nelms reminded you of a good social workler.  He could get you to see if you made a mistake without browbeating you.”  Barbara recalled:

 I was on the committee that hired Charlie Nelms.  The evening before we were to interview him, Kathy Malone and I were working late, and this bearded guy in a sports shirt walked in asking all sorts of questions. We thought he was a prospective student and got him brochures and answered his inquiries.  The next day there he was in his suit and tie.  When I did a double take, he laughed.  Charlie was quite charming and very effective in giving people little hints to go out and do what he wanted.  He wrote beautifully and was an excellent speaker. He liked my patient style and level of awareness in dealing with our wide diversity of students.

Despite his myriad administrative and community activities and popularity with students and staff, Nelms ran into trouble from the so-called “Old Boys” network when he went up for promotion and tenure.  As he put it, most faculty on the Promotion and Tenure Committee “had a very traditional and narrow view of the requirements” plus “some members held it against me that I was an administrator.”  Even so, by narrow margins, both the Education Division and the Promotion and Tenure Committee voted in his favor.  Mochon’s replacement as Dean of Academic Affairs, George Dahlgren, whom without mentioning him by name Nelms branded a closet racist and sexist, suggested he resign and seek another position elsewhere. Acting Chancellor Peggy Elliott offered a compromise that would allow him to retain his administrative post while resigning his academic position.  Nelms described his reaction:

 I said, “Chancellor, my record is equal to or greater than most of my colleagues in the Division of Education.  I feel I have earned the right to be promoted and tenured.  I have a four-year-old son.  I don’t ever want to look at him and say I took the easy way out by resigning rather than do what I thought was right.  So you do what you feel you need to do, and I’ll do what I need to do.”

Instead Nelms accepted a position at Sinclair Community College in Dayton. Having recently served as an ACE Fellow in Bloomington, Nelms was popular within the IU hierarchy and within three years was offered the chancellorship at IU East. Thankful that IU President Tom Ehrlich had confidence in “a country guy from the Arkansas Delta,” he referenced “If I Had a Hammer” and wrote: “We used our voices, energy, and action to hammer out the dangers of ignorance and hate – and to hammer in love and justice for people from all walks of life.”

 Charlie Nelms, Justice John Roberts, Kwesi Aggrey

Nelms valued research to the extent that it was useful for framing and articulating a rationale for change but admitted having little interest in becoming “an extensively cited academic scholar . . . attending national meetings and listening to scholars read academic papers to each other.”  He added: “Hell, I felt that America was in dire need of transformation with respect to racial equity and equality, and I wanted to do my part to change thing now, not 50 years from now.”

Looking back on his brief time at IUN, Nelms noted than when he arrived, Black enrollment was 23% of the student population.  In 2016 it has declined to 17%.  He added:

  Similarly, the number of Black faculty remains meager, in no way reflecting the city’s population, and there are no Black members of the university’s executive leadership team. These realities stand in contrast to an era when the campus enjoyed a Black female chancellor (Hilda Richards) as well as a Black vice chancellor (Kwesi Aggrey), dean (F.C. Richardson), and several senior administrative employees.

There are several reasons for the decline of Black student enrollment, including fewer Gary high school graduates, scholarships at campuses away from home for college bound seniors, and competition from Purdue Northwest and IVY Tech.  Regarding Black faculty, the reasons are less clear but the shabby treatment of Vice Chancellors Kwesi Aggrey and Mark McPhail played a not insignificant role.

Nelms mentions Dr. Lynn Merritt, a nationally acclaimed chemist who, after retiring after as dean of IU’s graduate school, was a troubleshooter at IUN, serving in various capacities as department chair and dean.  It was Merritt who told him that people in Bloomington had their eye on him for a future leadership position.  Merritt was a rather mysterious presence on campus whom I regarded as Bloomington eyes and ears, assessing administrators from the chancellor on down