On Their Shoulders

“I'm here because I stand on many, many shoulders, and that's true of every black person I know who has achieved.” Vernon Jordan, National Urban League President, 1971-1980

At one time I had planned to write a book titled “On Their Shoulder” about the parents of successful Gary personages, including musicians Michael Jackson and Deniece Williams, football greats Hank Stram and Alex Karras, and mayors Richard Gordan Hatcher and Karen Freeman-Wilson. I have used the material in Steel Shavingsissues and Tracesarticles plus have given talks on the subject. The debt most of us owe our parents is particularly central to the immigrant experience, as I conveyed in books on Mexican-Americans Maria Arredondo and Rogelio “Roy” Dominguez. In preparing a talk on Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay Records I took pains to note her parents emigrating from Mississippi to seek better economic and educational opportunities for themselves and their children.  The daughter of a steelworker and restaurant manager, Vivian attended first-rate, albeit, segregated schools.  I’ll also describe the deep roots of black music and performers who blazed a path for the breakthrough artists whom Vivian recorded during the 1950s.  

Allison Schuette wrote these impressions of Gary pictorial history photos depicting bigwigs at a 1907 Gary Commercial Club banquet and a South Side ethnic family in 1908:

         The historian may have wished to make a point or sharpen our attention.
         Two photos, one atop the other. 

In the first, a banquet thrown by the Gary Commercial Club 

      to celebrate the opening of the Hotel Gary. 

In the second, an immigrant family from Eastern Europe. 

The banquet is packed, tables so close the men would

      have had trouble getting out of their seats once in. 

Dressed in their finest, beneath chandeliers and before linen and china 

      (aperitif at the ready), they rest on the cusp of tremendous influence. 

They will occupy rooms in the Hotel for years to come, 

      relocating when it rebuilds, 

      solidifying the voice of U. S. Steel, 

      the voice they will walk up Broadway to City Hall. 

A decorative flag fills the wall behind the dais, 

      one guesses it holds 45 stars within its folds

—     Oklahoma entered the union just one week prior. 

The immigrant family stands before a pile of large fallen branches, 

      surrounded by others eager to have their photo taken. 

Their long boarding house is just visible in the background. 

Snow is on the ground. 

The husband and wife put on smiles for the camera. 

Their infant standing on a chair in front of the mother has not held still, 

      face a blur, 

      hands raised and fisted at its chest. 

There are more genuine smiles on some of the others,

      broad grins arising spontaneously. 

One young immigrant raises his fist in a salute. 

Next to him another young immigrant sours—it’s cold

      and he’s just woken for a twelve-hour shift 

      and he thinks the man who rents the bunk with him has lice. 

Two other young men are caught at the edge of the photo. 

Their expressions belie emotion less than presence, 

      one cautiously watchful, 

      the other edging toward curious. 

The historian knows there is influence here, too, of another order, 

      less controlled, more disruptive, 

      erupting out of the ways we find our way, inch by inch.

Anne Balay (above) wrote: “Bill Tortat, one of the steelworkers whose story shaped my first book [Steel Closets],has died. He spoke to me for at least 8 hours at his home in Wisconsin. When I left and began my drive home, I had to pull over to the shoulder to cry because his fire -- his intense, campy, articulate, chilling heroism -- shook my soul. I knew I would never be the same. Thank you, Bill, and Rest In Peace. I will never forget you.”Former IUN secretary Dorothy Mokry responded: “As we say in Serbian,“Memory eternal!” “Вјечнајапамјат!”

 Nick Tarailo in 2009

Serbians settled in Gary to work in the steel mills from its earliest years. St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church, first located at 13th and Connecticut, was founded in 1913.  Former student Nick Tarailo wrote about grandfather Nikola from Montenegro, who on the very day in 1909 when he arrived in frontier Gary found work laying an open hearth foundation at Gary Works.  Next he became a machinist’s drill press operator at American Bridge and then back at the mill a rail straightener.  By 1917 he sent money for his sweetheart to join him in America; he eventually retired from U.S. Steel after 47 years.

James P. Muldoon River Center House

Steel Shavingssubscriber James P. Muldoon made a generous donation to IU Foundation on the magazine’s behalf. The Gary native and Lew Wallace grad (class of 1956) served in the air force, graduated from the University of Maryland in 1966, three months before I entered grad school at the College Park campus, worked as an assistant to Indiana Senator Birch Bayh, and founded the Washington DC firm METCOR. Among his numerous honors is the Nathanial G. Herreshoff Award, US Sailing’s highest honor.  His biography states: 

 Mr. Muldoon has been actively involved in international sailing or boat-related organizations for over 35 years and has accrued over 100,000 miles of blue water ocean sailing.  As skipper of s/v DONNYBROOK (80ft) he raced with a competitive amateur race crew along the coast of North America and in the Caribbean.

Muldoon served eight years as chairman of the board of trustees for St Mary’s College of Maryland. Its James P. Muldoon River Center houses marine biology labs devoted to studying the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal rivers.

 proposed Hatcher statue 

Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson expects that a statue of Richard Hatcher will be unveiled at City Hall prior to her leaving office at year’s end, defeated in a bid for a third term by the Lake County Democratic machine candidate, to become the position of CEO of Chicago’s Urban League chapter.  When plans were first revealed in November of 2017 at West Side Academy, Reverend Jesse Jackson and Minister Louis Farrakhan spoke, Jackson exhorting those in attendance to pledge support and promising a sizeable donation.  Gary native Deniece “Niecy” Williams sang her 1984 hit “Black Butterfly.”  Here are the first two verses:

Deniece Williams

Morning light, silken dream to flight
As the darkness gave way to dawn
You've survived, now your moment has arrived
Now your dream has finally been born

. . .

While you slept, the promise was unkept
But your faith was as sure as the stars
Now you're free, and the world has come to see
Just how proud and beautiful you are

I have written about Mayor Hatcher in many different contexts, but what most excited him was my 2012 Traces article on his father, “’Every Tub Its Own Bottom’: The Odyssey of Carlton Hatcher.”  He was teaching an IUN class when I presented it to him, and he teared up.

My Senior College talk on Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay Records attracted a full house, including jazz musician Billy Foster, a man from Hobart who shopped at Vivian’s store on 1640 Broadway (he brought several Vee-Jay albums, one signed by James “Pookie” Hudson of the Spaniels), and the daughter of one of the Spaniels who sang along to “Hey Little Girl” by Dee Clark and “It’s in His Kiss (The Shoop Shoop Song)” by Betty Everett.  Ron Cohen introduced me. I loved the audience participation and concluded that Vivian was a true pioneer who captured on vinyl the best and most original music of her era.

Pathogen

“Trumpism has infected the American polity like a foul pathogen. But it has also stimulated a powerful immune response that just may leave us stronger in the end,” Steve Chapman

Every so often, I come across an unfamiliar word, such as pathogen (a virus or other disease-causing micro-organism), in a column by Chicago Tribune editorial writer Steve Chapman titled, “Trump is Toxic: Americans Are Not.”  I’m so averse to thinking about our president that I find no pleasure in ruminating over our present political crisis.  Quite the opposite. Of course, it’s impossible to ignore Trump’s daily hate-spewing tweets and actions, such as calling refugees an infestation and smiling when a supporter at one of his rallies shouted, “Shoot ‘em.”  In my blog I generally let old friend from University of Maryland days Ray Smock speak for me.  Here’s Smock’s latest: 

    An Apology for the Enslavement and Racial Segregation of African Americans, H. Res. 194, passed the U. S. House of Representatives on July 29, 2008, on a voice vote. It was a long time coming but that resolution, which did not make a splash in the news media, is worth reading again.More importantly, and more timely, somebody should sit the President down and take his phone away long enough to read this resolution to him. He has no idea of American history, no idea of the history of African Americans, and not one iota of knowledge about the history of this nation of immigrants. Racism begins in ignorance and fear and then gets fueled by hate.

    An entire political party, the GOP, is currently enabling President Trump and not calling him out on such fundamental matters. I do not believe for a minute that all Republicans are racists. But the silence of this major party is deadly. Good men and women cannot remain silent on such a thing. No person in Trump's administration seems able to tell the president to stop tweeting racist and bigoted statements about black and brown people.

Russell Crowe as Roger Ailes

The mini-series “The Loudest Voice” concluded with Roger Ailes, (Russell Crowe) forced from Fox network in disgrace but with Trump’s being nominated for President, a phenomenon made possible by the dethroned evil genius.

Lane-Okomski gang

At the large family gathering over the weekend, there were a couple Trump supporters.  At one point I asked niece Andrea, who lives in Seattle and shares my lefty political views, whom she favored in the Democratic field.  Hostess Lisa almost immediately silenced me, emphatically stating that any discussion of politics was forbidden.  She got no argument from me.  Sunday afternoon Jackie Okomski’s well-read boyfriend Nick, a carpenter from New Jersey, asked what I thought of Trump and how anyone could support him.  On the latter point I mentioned one-issue voters, such as gun fanatics and those wanting to outlaw abortions.  Then without getting into specific political issues, I lamented Trump’s total disrespect for the political process or anyone who dared take issue with him. I briefly lost my composure contrasting his demagoguery with John McCain, who claimed Obama was a Muslim born, telling her that she was wrong, that he was a loyal American.  Draft-dodging Trump branded McCain, a POW for five and a half years (!!!) a loser rather than a war hero and had to be pressured into lowering flags to half-staff at his death. 

Schoolboy Q and Hanif Abdurraqib

In “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” Black essayist Hanif Abdurraqib wrote about rapper ScHoolboy Q (Quincy Matthew Hanby), who grew up in South Central L.A., encouraging white people concertgoers to sing along to “Yay Yay,” which contains these lyrics:

I'm a drug dealin' nigga, cause them grades ain't get me paid
My agenda for today is to make bread or get laid
See my daughter need some shoes and my mom work overtime
So I'm standin' by that stop sign with nickels and them dimes

As one totally uncomfortable with the “n” word, I’m still analyzing why ScHoolboy Q would make that request. Abdurraqib wrote: “The reclaiming of the slightly modified ‘nigga’ is a political act.” Yet, on the other hand, Abdurraqib sees it as bowing to the comfort of affluent white ticket holders. He introduced the essay with this quote from one of my favorite Philadelphia 76ers, Allen Iverson, criticized by the media for his postgame appearance: “You can put a murderer in a suit, and he’s still a murderer.” “ScHoolboy Q defended his position by saying, “It’s not like these white people are racists, they’re at a rap show.”  True, but “Howlin’ Wolf was in demand at Deep South, all-white fraternity parties.  In 1970 I discovered that blue collar longhaired hippies from white working-class neighborhoods were a different breed of cat from those from the East and West coasts.

In a eulogy to author Toni Morrison Time contributor Tayari Jones quoted her favorite Baptist hymn “May the Work I’ve Done Speak for Me.”  Nice sentiment.  When Ton Dietz said he was spiritual but belonged subscribed to no rigid set of beliefs, I explained that Reformation leaders such as Martin Luther and John Wesley broke off from the catholic church over the doctrinal issue of good works verses faith, that due to original sin, no amount of good works could get one to heaven, only belief in Jesus as redeemer. Like me, he thought that the silliest thing he’d ever heard.

Obama signing Affordable Care Act

On International Lefthanders Day WXRT morning jock Lin Brehmer noted that Cubs star Javier Baez, nicknamed “El Mago” (the magician), grew up lefthanded but wanted to play shortstop, considered a righthander’s position; so he simply started batting and throwing righthanded and now he has the strongest arm at that position in the majors, yet still eats and writes lefthanded.   I began eating and writing lefthanded after getting my right arm caught in an old-fashioned clothes wringer that one used before hanging wash out to dry.  I was about two at the time.  Our past three presidents, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, were lefties.

William A. Wirt in 1917

I introduced Ron Cohen prior to his Senior College talk on William A. Wirt and the Gary schools, noting that Ron came up with the ideas for the Calumet Regional Archives, Steel Shavingsmagazine, and our pictorial history of Gary. Although Wirt was a brilliant educator, he was a cold fish with virtually no friends and three troubled children.  Ron mentioned that the Wirt family summered in upstate New York; the car ride took three days, and Wirt forbade any talking during the trip.  Billy fled at first opportunity and became a merchant seaman.  Younger son Sherwood and daughter Eleanor spent years in mental institutions. Born on a farm near Markle, Indiana, Wirt disliked city life and was a staunch Republican whose capitalist ventures into banking and a car dealership went bust during the Depression.  

Lanes and Cohen in in IUN library courtyard

With Ron were daughter Alysha, whom I knew as a little girl, and granddaughter Eva, a history buff who asked a question about whether students learned cursive, at present controversial, as some schools are phasing it out.  Both were quite charming. Alysha asked how Phil and Dave were doing. 

Charlie Halberstadt had an excellent bridge week, finishing over 60% two days in a row.  Our 67.19% at Banta is almost always enough to win but Mary Ann and Norm Filipiak earned 68.23%.  In the hands we played them, we each had a high board, and on the third hand they tied for best board by making 3 No Trump while all other East-West pairs played in Diamonds, with only one of them making 5.  Terry Brendel asked if I wanted to teach Social Studies in a Michigan City middle school. The only catch, he added, was that I’d have to start tomorrow.  I demurred. When I mentioned Temple Israel in Miller, Helen Boothe wondered if Rabbi Stanley Halpern was still there.  He retired, I replied, but returned to preside at the wedding of Herb and Evelyn Passo’s son Alex to Bianca.

Rabbi Stanley Halpern

I was a guest on the WLTH afternoon “Drive” with Karen and Steve Williams, who’d heard that I would be speaking about Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay Records.  WLTH first went on the air in 1950, and during the 1970s broadcast from Glen Park. One of its talk show hosts back then was arch-conservative Warren Frieberg, who took exception to Ron Cohen’s anti-Vietnam War arguments. When Ron noted that the French finally realized that holding onto South Vietnam was hopeless, Frieberg called the French a bunch of pansies, or something to that effect. WLTH moved to Merrillville before returning to Gary in 2013 and presently located downtown.

 With WLTH afternoon co-hosts on the "Drive" Steve Williams and Karen Williams

Co-hosts Steve and Karen Williams, who are not related, greeted me warmly.  Steve was very knowledgeable about Vee-Jay Records, and Karen, a lifelong resident, about Gary history.  A Roosevelt grad and member of St. Paul Baptist Church, she recalled when her place of worship burned down, and Rev. L.K. Jackson going for help in his big Lincoln.  She described Sunday services as at least two hours long and for some women like a fashion show when they’d go to the front to take communion.  The wife of policy boss Fred Mackey wore a beautiful silver fox stole, she recalled.  Jazz saxophonist Art Hoyle goes to her church, as does Chancellor Lowe’s administrative assistant Kathy Malone.  Steve tested me by asking if I knew the former names of various doo wop groups. I knew that the Spaniels called themselves the Three Bees and that the Impressions were the Roosters, but he got me on the Dells (El-Rays) and Dee Clark’s original group, the Cool Gents.  As I was leaving, Steve said he'd expected me to be a nerdy professor with boring facts and statistics but could see how much the music meant to me.

Granger

“You’ve got the right to wages and holidays and proper clothes; you don’t have to do everything you’re told.” Hermione Granger in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”

 Hermione and Emma Watson in Vanity Fair

While I’ve not read the Harry Potter books, just heard parts of tapes in the car, I saw most of the films and admired the character of Hermione Granger, played by Emma Watson, who in addition to modeling and movie careers has been a United Nations goodwill ambassador and outspoken feminist active in the fight against sexual harassment. In 2017 she took much heat – unfairly, in my opinion - for posing topless in Vanity Fair. Famous actors sharing her last name include English matinee idols of years past Farley and Stewart Granger.  The word originally meant one who worked in a granary.  The Granger movement of the late nineteenth century was a farmer protest against being ripped off by bankers, railway corporations, and grain elevator operators and ignored by elected officials. Goals included government regulation and democratizing the political process

I spent the weekend in Granger, Indiana (one of at least 11 American communities so-named) to attend a graduation party for grandson James, niece Michele’s son Nicholas, and niece Lisa’s daughter Grace, soon to be freshmen at Valparaiso, Purdue, and Oregon.  An affluent South Bend suburb, Granger dates back to the 1880s when named for National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry.  After World War II Granger rapidly ballooned to a bedroom community of 20,000 in 1990; nearly double that at present.

 funny family photo; 3 graduates

Hosted by Lisa and Fritz Teuschler, the family gathering included a dozen Lanes and even more of Toni’s sister MaryAnn’s kids and grandkids.  Toni brought a huge pot of galumpkis plus rye bread, and Fritz cooked burgers, hot dogs, and corn of the cob on the grill.  I  spent the night at nearby Hampton Inn rather than opt for a couch.  Though I see Nicholas (from near Indy) and Grace at least once a year, still it was startling to observe how much they’d matured.  In the 8 months since he and Dave jammed on guitars at our condo over the Christmas holidays, Nicholas has become an accomplished player; he and Dave kept the group entertained with many of us joining in on the chorus of songs we knew.

late-night storytelling; golfers Phil, Connor, Fritz, Tom, Nicholas, Nick, Sean, Jim

Charlene and Jim Quinn, who live in Punta Gorda, came with sons Sean and Connor. When Toni and I made annual trips to Florida while Midge and stepfather Howard lived in Bradenton, I’d look forward to being with them.  Teenagers then (like me, Sean was a Jimmy Eat World fan), now they’re in their mid to late 20s.  Connor is extremely competitive (he won the late-night Texas Hold ‘em tournament) and as a 13-year-old insisted on playing as many games of ping pong as it took to beat me.  Sean, a brilliant intellect and well-read with an irreverent sense of humor, is about to earn a master’s degree from San Diego State.  His thesis is on Russia under Vladimir Putin, whom, he said, is a serious student of American history and admires strong chief executives Lincoln, TR, and FDR.  While his heavy-handed domestic policies are unpopular, Putin is admired for making Russia again a superpower after the humiliating days under Boris Yeltsin.  According to one story, American authorities once discovered Yeltsin on a street near the Russian embassy in Washington drunk, in his underwear, and in search of pizza.  The Robber Barons who seized control of the Soviet Union’s state-run industries after the fall of communism thought Putin would be a puppet, but before long he turned on those who would not cut him in on the spoils.

                                                   cornhole champs Dave (ponytail) and Anthony (hands on hips)

homeless newsboys

Our final day, outside on a beautiful afternoon, I played a little corn hole (Dave and Anthony were the champs) but, unlike Toni, stayed away from badminton. Sean recalled reading grandfather Sonny’s New York Post as a kid and finding its sarcastic headlines, sensationalistic stories, and eye-catching cartoons and suggestive illustrations hilarious.  I noted that the tabloids invented mean nicknames for celebrities, such as “Jacko” for Gary’s Michael Jackson.  A big fan of podcasts, Sean liked one (The Bowery Boys, I think) that covered the 1899 New York City newsboys strike against Joseph Pulitzer’s New York Worldand William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal.  We got to talking about comedians, and Jackie Okomski’s boyfriend Matt mentioned Rodney Dangerfield.  I brought up the Catskills borscht circuit where Jewish stand-up comics honed material at summer resorts.  He was unfamiliar with the term, so I explained that borscht was soup favored by Jewish patrons.   Joe Robinson, in from Seattle, clarified that it was Russian soup, which a former neighbor often made and was delicious. Many Russian Jews settled in New York City and, if successful, vacationed at Catskill resorts where Jews were welcome.  Before leaving, Sean gave me his email address, and we promised to keep in touch.

 Allison Schuette

first school in Gary

Ron Cohen will talk to Steve McShane’s Senior College students about the Gary schools first Superintendent William A. Wirt, whose work-study-play system became world famous.  VU professor Allison Schuette composed the following poem after observing a photo in Ron and my Gary pictorial history of students and teacher Ora Wildermuth at Gary’s first school:

A one room, one-story frame building with a gable roof, 

    unfinished on the first day of school. 

Mr. Ora L. Wildermuth rose to the occasion, 

  taking a stand on the stump in front of the schoolhouse, 

  ringing the children to school with a bell supplied by the board. 

A box of tablets of writing paper awaited them, 

  but no seats, no benches. The doors and windows went in that day. 

Who is the bully and who the mean girl? Who the teacher’s pet? 

Who is hungry and who has been well fed? 

Who will fall prey to lice and not give a damn? 

Who will fall prey to lice and burn with shame? 

Who will pay attention and fall in love with reading? 

Who will stare out of windows and dream of running? 

Who suffers abuse at the hands of a mother or father? 

Who knows genuine love? Who will grow up to be an addict? 

Who will call a union strike? Who will give birth to a civil rights leader? 

Who will lead from behind? Who will escape the Midwestern work ethic? 

Who will reject family norms and love whom they will love? 

Who will remember the day this photo was taken 

    and resent the morning of when 

    his mother forced him into his Sunday clothes and pressed his sister’s hair 

    and reminded him that he was setting an example 

    and more was expected of him? 

Who will cross his arms over his chest, tuck his chin

    in an effort to fold himself up like a letter into an envelope 

    that could arrive anywhere else but here, and pout?

 abandoned Lew Wallace H.S.

I grieve for young Black kids from Gary denied the opportunity to attend good public schools like those built under William A. Wirt’s auspices.  Gone is any trace of Froebel, the immigrant school.  Closed in the past 15 years: Horace Mann, Lew Wallace, and Wirt/Emerson. On its last legs: Roosevelt, once the pride of Gary.  Due to enduring boiler problems, its remaining students will start classes at the Gary Career Center.