International Women's Day

“I am woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman, that’s me.”

         Maya Angelou

By most accounts, International Women’s Day (IWD) began in 1911 when delegates from 17 countries issued a proclamation to that effect.  Three years earlier, however, on March 8, 1908 15,000 women in the needles trade marched in New York City, demanding the abolition of child labor, an end to sweatshop working conditions, and women’s suffrage.  In 1975 the United Nations first endorsed IWD.  In 2011 President Obama proclaimed March to be Women’s History Month.  The 2016 IWD theme is “Pledge for Parity.”  On a less exalter note March 8 was also National Pancake Day and march 9 Barbie Doll Day.

Women currently in the news include former First Lady Nancy Reagan (dead at 94), Erin Andrews (awarded $55 million in peephole lawsuit), and Melania Trump (who while a model posed provocatively).  None are feminist pioneers, to put it mildly.

Steve Spicer has been researching the life of his first cousin three times removed Amanda Theodosia Jones (1825-1914), a suffragette, poet, spiritualist, and inventor, among other things, of a vacuum canning method.

                                        above, Amanda Jones; below, Julia Grant

I’ve been reading a Ulysses S. Grant biography by H.W. Brands, “The Man Who Saved the Union.”  Grant fell in love with Julia Dent, the sister of his West Point roommate, who lived on a slave plantation west of St. Louis.  They soon became engaged shortly before Grant went off to fight in the Mexican War and married four years later in 1848 when she was 22 and he 26.  Used to luxury, Julia endured many hardships due to Grant’s business failings and military career but loved being First Lady.  She called the years between 1869 and 1877, “the happiest period” on her life.  She entertained lavishly and accepted expensive jewelry and other gifts from those seeking favor.  One wonders whether her expensive tastes played a role in her husband’s toleration of rampant corruption.  When Julia hosted an opulent White House wedding for daughter Nellie, a New York Times reporter described how the East Room looked for the assemblage of 200 guests:

  A profusion of beautiful flowers and tropical plants were distributed in suitable positions.  Beneath the large middle window on the eastern side of the room a low platform was raised and carpeted.  The two fluted columns on either side of the window were twined with roses.

After Rutherford Hayes assumed office fraudulently, Ulysses and Julia Grant embarked on a world tour, and Julia gloried in the fabulous gifts they received.  In 1880 it was a bitter disappointed to her when her husband was denied the Republican Presidential nomination.  Nearly destitute by 1884, Grant, suffering from cancer wrote his memoirs as a way of securing funds for Julia in widowhood.  She outlived him by 17 years, dying in 1902 at age 76.

Anne Balay and Mona Shattell wrote a New York Times OP-ED entitled “Long-Haul Sweatshops.”  Balay worked as a long-haul trucker after IUN unceremoniously denied her tenure without cause, and she has been studying LGBT truckers.  Professor Shattell, a registered nurse, has studied the mental, physical, and sexual health of truckers.  They allege that while the Labor and Transportation departments and Federal Carrier Safety Administration are  rightly are concerned with road safety, these governmental entities have overlooked the well-being of drivers.  The column states:

    [Truckers] are told what route to take, where to buy gas and for how much, when and where to sleep. They work 14-hour days routinely and continuously, often without weekends, sick pay or holiday pay. They drive 11 of those hours, and perform other work for the remaining three: loading, vehicle maintenance and a lot of waiting.

    This mistreatment doesn’t just harm the drivers. By forcing experienced workers to leave the industry, it leads employers to hire younger and less capable drivers. Under pressure from the industry, last month the Senate approved a pilot program that will allow 18-year-olds to drive semis across state lines, even though the 18- to 21-year-old demographic has one of the highest accident rates.

On Facebook Anne posted: “Wow, We got shared my more than 200 truckers, and now summarized in [the trucking resource site] CDL Life.  The New York Times comments demonstrate that working people are smart, well informed, and angry.  There’s hope for this country yet, people!

For Steve McShane’s class Kaitlin Musenbrock wrote about her grandmother:

Kathleen Louise Musenbrock was born January 20, 1949 in Stanley, Wisconsin. Her paternal grandparents came from Poland to East Chicago in 1914 after they found out she was pregnant with Kathleen’s father, Joseph Pazdur, born on January 22, 1915. Kathleen’s maternal grandparents migrated from Canada to St. Paul, Minnesota, around the same time with nine children, including Kathleen’s mother Dorothy. 

Kathleen’s dad, Joseph Pazdor, the oldest of five children, worked shift work at Inland Steel until he purchased a farm in Wisconsin. He met Dorothy, born in 1928 when she visited older sister Mildred’s cheese factory. Just 17 when they wed, Dorothy wore a green and black suit at the ceremony and size four shoes. Reluctantly she took up farm living but could hardly wait to delegate house and farm chores to daughters, beginning with Kathleen, who recalled:  “My mother would visit neighbors or just sit on the porch, smoking and drinking coffee.  I was responsible for my sisters and dinner. When not making meals, I was constantly cleaning the house and attending to my siblings. Mother did have quite the mouth on her though.  She must have been a sailor in her past life, as she could cuss up a storm.”

Kathleen’s earliest memories were picking peapods and the milk house, located next to the barn. Her father would pour the milk into a sterilized stainless steel container.  They only had two neighbors, including Mildred and Joseph’s cheese farm where there was a store where one could buy groceries and dairy products. Kathleen’s father took milk there and got free cheese. “Aunt Mildred and Uncle Joe would start making the cheese at 4 A.M. and it wouldn’t be done until that night. It was the best cheese to this day I ever had,” said Kathleen.

When Kathleen was five, Dorothy announced that the family was moving to Northwest Indiana. Kathleen recalled: “A big white van appeared. Where did I have to sit? In the middle of the van next to a man I hardly knew.” By days end they reached East Chicago. They stayed for about a week with grandparents while Joseph and Dorothy looked for a place to rent, settling on an apartment in Whiting. She only had a few memories of that apartment she used to live in.  A funeral home was next door. When her parents left for work, the lady who owned the funeral home babysat her and her siblings. “I remember being in a living room with one lamp. It was so dark and a door was cracked open that led to the funeral parlor. I was so scared and would hide behind a chair until my mom came home,” said Kathleen.  Kathleen described her grandparents as tightwads: “They didn’t want to spend or go on trips.  Later, visiting, we’d sit on a couch. We weren’t allowed to touch anything and could only get up when we wanted something to drink, normally half a glass of warm soda. I never had a meal there or even a snack there.”

Joseph and Dorothy finally found a home on Walter Street in Hammond with a kitchen, living room, dining room, and two bedrooms. They converted the living room into a bedroom for the girls.  When Kathleen started kindergarten, older brother Andrew was in charge of walking her home. “This one day he must have forgotten about me, so I decided to go home myself. Needless to say I ended up in downtown Whiting and was lost. I was crying like a baby until a police officer found me and took me home,” said Kathleen.

Kathleen went to All Saints Catholic school.  The nuns made everyone go to church at 8 a.m., and classes started at 9. Kathleen’s first three were catechism, math, and writing. Students didn’t wear uniforms; instead girls had to wear dresses from home. Kathleen’s clothes weren’t in the best condition. “I was one of seven children and my father worked hard but was one to hold onto his money. So our clothes were not that great. Mine had holes in them, and by the time I got home from school the holes were huge,” said Kathleen.

Kathleen and her siblings lived so close to school that the nuns made them walk home for lunch so they didn’t have to feed them. They had to cross train tracks but didn’t mind. The trains were fun to watch and very loud, with steam blowing out the top.

Kathleen’s brother Andrew was a rebel while younger sibling Kenny never got in trouble despite being a practical jokester who could make everyone laugh. Kenny later got into a motorcycle accident and messed up his foot so bad he finally had to have it amputated. Four other children followed, but age difference meant Kathleen wasn’t as close to them.  Kathleen’s father was abusive, especially to his sons.  He’d whip Andrew for defying rules over and over again. Kathleen said, “I was really disappointed in my mother, as she could have been stronger with my father. Looking back, I can see that she was dominated by him and had little control.”

A high point in eighth grade for Kathleen was graduation, a big deal back then.  Kathleen didn’t really have anything nice to wear for the ceremony, but her mother bought her a beautiful pink dress with sleeves that went to her wrist. Her mother also bought Kathleen a hat and her first pair of high heels. They were only an inch high but she loved them. “When I was walking down the aisle I was crying the entire way down because I was so excited to graduate,” said Kathleen.

Kathleen went to Hammond High on Calumet Street. It was for people who wanted to attend college, while Hammond Tech was for those who didn’t. Kathleen stated, “It was the place to be even though I wasn’t smart enough for college. I am really happy I went there.” She enjoyed the football games and sock hops.  At 17 she went on a double date with Andrew’s friend Victor Musenbrock. “Wherever we went we had someone with us. I was a new dater and that made me nervous,” said Kathleen. Kathleen and Victor dated for a year. “I found out I was pregnant March 5 and got married March 20,” Kathleen stated.  She and Victor eloped at the courthouse in Crown Point.  In tears Kathleen called her mom from a phone booth to tell her that she was married and pregnant. “We went home,” Kathleen recalled, “and my sister was running around asking, ‘What is elope? What is elope?’” They rented a trailer in Hammond.  She dropped out of high school.

Kathleen recalled: “I was balling my eyes out but happy at the same time.  My mom was running around the kitchen collecting stuff I could take to my new place. I also had stuff in the basement I’d been saving for when I moved out. After my dad found out, he said, ‘You made a bed, now lay in it.”

All Victor’s mom said was, “Are you sure you’re pregnant?”  She took Kathleen to a doctor who confirmed it. Afterwards they went to the trailer, their first night as a married couple. They lived in the trailer for three months and then moved in an apartment next to Kathleen’s parents. The baby, a girl named Tonia, was born November 17, 1967.  A year later they bought a house in Hammond where they lived in through the birth of three more children, Timothy, Todd, and Tearsa. Kathleen worked evenings so she could be home during the day; Victor worked days so he could be home with them at night. One time while she was away, Tonia reorganized her entire kitchen. “I had no idea where anything was. It was a nice thought though,” said Kathleen. 

Kathleen’s daughter Tonia graduated from Hammond Tech and got a job in Munster as a dental assistant. She eventually married an abusive alcoholic who once locked her in the basement. After he struck her, she moved in with Kathleen’s sister Cindy.  Tonia’s younger sister subsequently introduced her to Bill Alter, father of three children with a previous marriage who became Tonis’s stepchildren. Tonia presently is a dental technician.

Timothy, Kathleen’s second oldest, came down with kidney cancer in kindergarten. After they rolled him away into an elevator on the way to surgery, Kathleen cried that whole day and prayed. Timothy ended up being in surgery for nine hours. “I saw him come down the hall in his bed. When he got closer I saw blown up doctor gloves with happy faces on them tied all around his bed. I knew everything was okay,” said Kathleen. Still Timothy needed three weeks of radiation and 15 weeks of chemotherapy.  At Chicago Memorial Children’s Hospital the doctors explained that Timothy would lose his hair. Kathleen recalled, “This is when I got mad at God. I thought he was going to die.”  Fortunately she was wrong.  Timothy finished high school and then married a girl named Jennifer. He got a job at BP and they had three children.

Todd was a cute child, with dark skin and chubby cheeks like a squirrel but suffered from a serious learning disability. One Mother’s day Todd brought home a little turtle that “The teacher took a picture so I had proof he made it,” Kathleen stated. Unfortunately, some teachers just put him in the corner, gave him cars to play with, and ignored him. Kathleen transferred him to Wilson School in Hammond, but on the bus kids called him “retarded.” Todd walked on days Kathleen couldn’t drive him. Todd has worked at Shakey’s Pizza, Chapman Cleaner, and Pazdur Plumbing, but due to crippling ailments he got on disability and has been living with Victor and Kathleen ever since.

Youngest daughter Tearsa, according to Kathleen, was a huge slob. Tonia and Tearsa fought all the time because they shared a room. In fifth grade Tearsa’s class had to watch the movie about the menstrual cycle.  Kathleen didn’t allow Tearsa to go to school that day because she has not had her period yet and didn’t even know what that was. “She was the only girl that wasn’t able to see that movie and was very upset about it, even till this day,” Kathleen explained.

Tearsa in high school met a girl named Dawn who was a bad influence on her. Tearsa would sneak out of the house at night with Dawn when she was grounded.  Dawn became obsessed with Tearsa. After high school Tearsa moved in with her aunt in Roselawn because Dawn wouldn’t leave her alone. Tearsa returned after Dawn stopped coming around, got a job at Subway in Demotte and met Matt whom she eventually married. Tearsa then went to Sawyer College and got a degree in business. After five years of failing to get pregnant, she went to a fertility doctor. After a miscarriage, she had triplets, giving birth prematurely to two boys and a girl.  EmmaGrace ended up having really bad asthma and Mason has cerebral palsy. Today at 13 Mason is in a wheelchair but doing great.

In 1993 Victor and Kathleen bought land in Roselawn, Indiana. Their kids were moving out and getting married; it was time to leave Hammond. They moved into Pine Island apartments while waiting for their house to be built. After nine months they got kicked out because they had a dog, so they stayed for a month with a nephew.  Grandchildren started coming into the picture: Kaitlin, Emily, Jacob and then the triplets. While living in Roselawn Kathleen worked at McDonald’s. She said, “I loved my house. I loved watching my grandchildren play in my huge backyard, driving the tractor and pulling the wagon.”  As Kathleen and Victor aged, they found a duplex down the street from their old house. Optimistic despite several cancer scares, Kathleen concluded: “I’m going to live for another 60 years. That is my story.”

 Kaitlin(l) on Halloween with Jennifer and Emily Musenbrock

Columnist Jerry Davich, writing about early Gary, noted:

  Many Eastern European immigrants were called “hunky,” a derogatory racial slur possibly derived from the term “Bohunk,” or Bohemian-Hungarian.
  As a kid, I remember my father jokingly calling us hunkies. I wore that
 label with honor at Croatian picnics and Serbian festivals until I entered 
Gary schools where it was used against me by blacks and other minorities. 
I equated hunky with pride. They equated “honky” with white.  Enough said.
  Here we are a century after the term was coined, then corrupted, and it’s 
still in our street-slang vernacular in Gary.

 Ed LaFleur's grandfather, 1926

Responding to Davich, Ed LaFleur wrote:

I was called a honky by a black guy in the US Steel parking lot over a parking space. LOL.  He told me to go back where I came from. My grandfather came to Gary in 1908 [and] was sold property in the boon docks of 2585 Garfield, the Patch.  Built his own home, where he raised 7 children. Walked down Grant St. to work every day to the Sheet and Tin mills.

The father of IUN Grounds supervisor Tim Johnson died, inspiring this eulogy by Hollis Donald:

Without knowing Otto Johnson, we see the son and

We aren’t done with our exclamations.

We see in him the resemblance of the man he came from

And in his life the tools used and the character they made.

   
David Rutter’s P-T column, “Hatcher still pays his dues for unforgiven ‘sins’” deals with white flight, the illegal creation of Merrillville in 1971, and the improbability of the former mayor receiving county funds for a Civil Rights Hall of Fame, despite its tourism potential.

  The light of history casts stark shadows. Those with their hands on the political wallet didn't like Hatcher when he was elected Gary's mayor in 1967, didn't like him for the 20 years he served and don't comfort him much now.

  At best, he endures chilled civility.

  Myths also cast long shadows. The enduring myth is that Hatcher's rise — and his attendant representation of black citizens — ruined Gary and forced white flight upon a vibrant, diverse, blue-collar city unwilling to face racial upheaval.

  But a thousand knife wounds killed Gary, primarily the death of steel. The hemorrhage of middle-class jobs left a civic invalid, though Hatcher admits he bears some responsibility. He never found a way — or reason — to quell white fear. They ran from him, and he found no answer. But he faced down loud, virulent racists at every turn. And he was no Gandhi.

In Steve McShane’s class I discussed the variety of Region teen lifestyles during the 1920s, from farm and small town experiences to growing up in industrial cities.  In Gary Northsiders joined social clubs and enjoyed fads and fashions of the “Roaring Twenties” while the children of immigrants often quit school at age 16 and led a sheltered and chaperoned church-oriented social life.  Black kids, for the most part, went to segregated schools, in the case of East and West Pulaski adjacent to one another. I profiled social worker Thyra J. Edwards (below) who resided in Gary for 12 years beginning in 1920 and became disillusioned by blacks being unable to be admitted to Mercy and Methodist hospitals and by the denouement of the 1927 Emerson School Strike, a victory for segregationists.

Roll with it

“When this world turns its back on you

Hang in and do that sweet thing you do

Roll with it.” Steve Winwood

On heavy rotation on my CD player are Steve Winwood, Don Henley, Weezer, INXS, and The 1975.  “Roll with It” (1988) leads off with the title song and also contains two favorites from the blue-eyed soul brother, “Holding On” and “Don’t You Know What the Night Can Do.”  I also love Winwood’s compilation album “Chronicles” (1987), which includes “Arc of a Diver” and “Valerie.”  Before going solo, Winwood, born in Birmingham, England in 1948, was in the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, and Blind Faith. 

I rolled a 450 despite just four strikes in three games.  Opponent Sharon Fisher finished with a 205 and has the women’s high series for the year, 669.  Several bowlers had read my “Region Proud” NWI Times column, including Dennis Cavanaugh, a Gary Horace Mann grad and mutual admirer of Region historian Tom Higgins. Around my age, Dennis may have had future IUN Chancellor Peggy Elliott for English or known 1960 valedictorian and Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglich.

above, Dave Lane; below, Becca, James and Toni at Sectionals

IU clinched the Big Ten championship with a thrilling victory at Iowa. Radio sports jock Les Grobstein noted that five Indiana teams will likely be in the NCAA tournament (IU, Purdue, Notre Dame, Butler, and Valparaiso) but none, pathetically, from Illinois.  High school sectionals are underway, and on the first day Valparaiso upset top-ranked Region powerhouse Merrillville, then lost to Crown Point.  East Chicago Central defeated Munster to avenge last year’s loss and Lowell, who had beaten them a month ago.  Dave announced the Sectional final and granddaughter Becca sang the National Anthem.

Former student Jim Daubenheyer, doing research in the Archives, said he still bowls and was in the stands when Crown Point upset Merrillville.  He told me about a wild finish posted with this description on YouTube (CHS Buzzer beater!!! 2-19-16) by Nickanator86:

  Down by 3 (54-57) against our rival, Valparaiso High School, Rhyss Lewis of Chesterton is fouled while shooting a three. He misses the first free throw but makes the second. He misses the third on purpose, the ball bounces around for a bit, and ends up in the hands of Antwan Beeks. Beeks drains the buzzer-beater three for the win, 58-57.

 Roy Juarez at IUN

Dave and Spanish teacher Veronica Garcia brought 40 Hispanic E.C. Central students to IUN for a METAS Conference.  The initials stand for motivate, educate, termina (graduate), alcanza (achieve), and sueña (dream).  Five other area schools also participated.  Dave alerted me that the keynote speaker, Roy Juarez. Jr., was fantastic, and he did not disappoint.  In Savannah Auditorium he told of being homeless at age 14 and using all the charm he could muster to find shelter for his nine year-old brother and two year-old sister.  He eventually graduated from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas through a series of fortunate, unlikely circumstances.  Juarez urged the seniors not to be a victim, not to settle for merely being a survivor, but mentor others.  He spoke movingly of his mother, molested as a child and then married to an abusive man whose grasp she finally escaped.  Juarez held the students’ attention; indeed tears flowed; afterwards he interacted warmly with all those who wished to speak to him.  On his Homeless By Choice website Juarez advised never giving up, adding: “Our darkest moments are the birthplace of our greatest victories.”

At lunch in Moraine student union Admissions director Dorothy Frink talked with several of Dave’s brightest students and told Jessica, who has been admitted to IUN in the Fall, that once she becomes an American citizen in October, scholarship opportunities would be available.  Interacting with students were Dean Pat Bankston, Geology professor Kristin Huysken, and Math profs Axel Schulze-Halberg and Vesna Kilibarda.  Joining Dave, Veronica, Dorothy Frink, and me, Bankston told two of Dave’s tennis players about the variety of meaningful opportunities in Health and Human Sciences, including social work and environmental affairs. In the past the METAS event took place at Purdue Cal, but, thanks to Diversity director James Wallace and others, IUN snagged it and put on a good showing.

Nephew Bobby Lane linked me to a YouTube video of Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey.”  I’m not a big country music fan but dug the Kentucky native’s bluesy twang, reminiscent of Leon Russell and bluegrass roots that make for an intriguing musical blend.  On a recent Saturday Night Live Stapleton sang “Nobody to Blame” from the album “Traveler.”  It goes:

She took down the photograph

Of our wedding day

Ripped it down the middle

And threw my half away

And I got nobody to blame but me.

She broke all my fishing rods

Put my guns in hock

Threw my clothes out in the yard

And changed out all the locks

And I got nobody to blame but me

I got nobody to blame but me

[Chorus:]

I know right where I went wrong

I know just what got her gone

Turned my life into this country song

And I got nobody to blame but me.

She fired up my old hot rod

Ran it in the pond

Put sugar in my John Deere

I can’t even mow my lawn

And I got nobody to blame but me.

She built her a bonfire

With my old six string

Took all my good whiskey

And poured it down the drain

And I got nobody to blame but me.

For Steve McShane’s Indiana History class Emma Lynn wrote about Bernice and Al Govorchian.  They reside in the Valparaiso Rittenhouse, where Emma is a Certified Nurse Assistant.

  Bernice Grakey was born in Gary Methodist Hospital in 1928. Her parents, Ursula and John, were from Lithuania. Her father left Russia illegally when 16. After fighting in World War 1, John hired in at U.S. Steel Mill because, in his words, “that’s what everyone did, that is where the paychecks were at.”  During the Great Depression John was fortunate he had a very good job at the mill. Bernice’s parents lived in a two-story apartment and at one time rented out the first floor, she claims, to future Oscar winner Karl Malden.

An only child. Bernice attended Spaulding Elementary in Gary and later Lew Wallace. She attended IUN for two years, then completed her teaching degree in Bloomington, graduating in 1951. She taught first grade at Riley Elementary in Glen Park for 5 years and kindergarten until her retirement. 

  Bernice’s first husband, Ted Collins, worked for Hubbell Electric. They had one daughter, Sue, and then Ted died suddenly. Bernice next dated a man who worked at a technology building in Valparaiso.  She recalled: “He brought over this box, plugged it in, and had us looking at this little TV and two practically naked men wrestling each other!”

At Riley Bernice met her second husband, Principal Alfred Govorchian.  Al, also an only child, was from Indiana Harbor, and his father, nicknamed “Sam the Man,” was a lifer at Inland Steel.  Al played basketball and baseball at East Chicago Washington, graduated from IU in 1955, got drafted, and was an army medic.  A widower whose first wife Delores died of cancer at age 36, Al, like Bernice, had a daughter, Susan.

  Now married for 40 years, Al and Bernice reminisced about their years at Riley.  One kid nicknamed Fat Eddy threw a fit every day his mother dropped him off.  She’d take off running and Eddy would chase her.  This was an ongoing thing; I tried everything and then asked Al if he had a solution.  Al came to the classroom one morning and when Eddy began his fit, Al wrapped both arms around him.  Eddy just screamed and kicked like there was no tomorrow and ripped Al’s tie right off his suit.

  Another student was so smart but lazy; he never wanted to do work.  One day Bernice asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. The boy replied, “Mrs. Collins I want to be clean,” meaning he wanted to dress nice, live well, and stay clear of the police - easier said than done.  Bernice later learned that the boy got in trouble with the law.

 Govorchian family pictures

  After they retired Al and Bernice bought two condos, one in the Florida Keys and the other in Chesterton.  Bernice explained. “We went to Florida six months out of the year starting in October. Last year was the first time I saw snow in 25 years.” Al added, “I loved deep sea fishing; I would meet with a bunch of people on a boat and we would fish for hours. I also did a lot of lobster fishing.” Bernice interjected, “Once the girls graduated and moved out I like to say I sold the kitchen.” Al smartly added, “You sold the bedroom, too.” We all laughed for a solid 15 minutes. They went on numerous cruises and family trips.  “We were a very fortunate family,” Bernice said.

Sand Creek condo board approved allocating $3,000 for pruning dead branches and, in one case, cutting down an entire tree.  A day later Roger Getz and crew arrived for work, important to accomplish while the trees are still dormant.  It looked to be a family enterprise.  Leo Rondo, called, worried about his plum tree.  Getz assured me that it was safe.

NWI Times guest columnist John Hodson, President of Kankakee Valley Historical Society, wrote about “river rat” Harry Nusbaum (1887-1980), a petty criminal who in later life built a shack at Baum’s Bridge.  Hodson wrote about a ceremony near Baum’s Bridge  A wildlife conservation group, according to Mark Miller, was releasing a previously injured hawk to the swampland.

  It was a big deal.  After a speech or two, they opened the cage and let the bird loose.  It flew maybe a hundred yards or so down the river and BOOM!  Harry had his dinner.

Descending to the basement, I missed the last step and fell, leaving rug burns on my left elbow and knee and a sore back.  After a similar mishap, we put a different colored throw rug at the bottom, but I had moved it in anticipation of the cleaners’ visit and failed to put it back.  I’m too old to be so negligent and fortunate to escape without more dire consequences.  Visiting my trusty chiropractor Manuel Kazanas, I learned he is soon retiring.  Bummer.  Driving north on I-65, I saw a billboard touting IUN as “The Region’s University” with the slogan, “Fulfilling the Promise.”

On the news: an off-duty police officer got stabbed in the head while working security at a Chicago South Side tow yard.  The victim was IUN patrolman Edward Morrison.  Interim chief Wayne James released this statement: “The department was shocked and saddened this morning to hear of this news about Officer Morrison, but we are all very relieved that he’s been released from the hospital and that the investigation into his attack is promising. His physical injuries could have been much worse and we are all hopeful and positive about his continued recovery.”

 

Steve Rushin’s Sports Illustrated column on strange names quipped that O.J. Mayo could be a short grocery list and that East Chicago native E’Traun Moore, now starting for the Chicago Bulls could be an ad for Lay’s potato chips (“Eat one more”).

Answers in a Jeopardy category, “Born in the 1860s,” included Cannonball Express train conductor Casey Jones and Philadelphia A’s owner and manager Connie Mack.

The Halberstadt family is at Universal Orlando in Florida.  Cancer victim Robin is rolling with the punches better than I possibly could.  Regarding the photo, taken by Jef, son Charles posted: “Ignore Robin’s lack of a smile.  She’s having fun, just cold.”  Demonstrating courage and resilience, that’s the Robin I taught 35 years ago and wanted to get to know better.  Then hubby Jef signed up for my Sixties course.

Sunday Alissa dropped in on her way home to Grand Rapids after visiting her mom (Beth) in Carmel.  She announced that her job at Grand Valley State will take her to Istanbul and then Tanzania, a very poor East African country formed a half-century ago from the previous British colonies of Tanganyika and Zanzibar.  Alissa hopes to go on a safari photo shoot at Serengeti National Park and visit Mount Kilimanjaro, made famous by Ernest Hemingway.  Dave, on hand for gaming with Tom and Brady Wade, told Alissa that some East Chicago Central students were pen pals with Tanzanian counterparts.  Cool.  I urged Alissa to get the recommended inoculations.

Fooled Again?

“There’s nothing in the streets

Looks any different to me.”

         “Won’t Be Fooled Again,” The Who

On Roger Daltry’s 71st birthday WXRT’s Lin Brehmer put on “Won’t get Fooled Again” and during the long instrumental segment near the end played rantings by Donald Trump promising pie in the sky.  Then came the final lines:

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss.

Brehmer first heard “Won’t Get Fooled Again” at a July, 1971 live concert at Forest Hills tennis stadium prior to it being released and, in his words, was gobsmacked, utterly astounded at its audacity and timeliness, as there was fighting in the streets while the Vietnam fiasco continued under Tricky Dick Nixon.

In Steve McShane’s class last semester Bethany Schima wrote about her mother, Debra Ann Martin, born on July 30, 1955, the second youngest of five children.  Debra’s parents, Glenn Nelson and Geraldine Young, were of Swedish, German, and French Canadian ancestry.  Debra lived first in Hammond, then in Highland, and, starting at age 12, Munster.  Describing her mother as an inspiration and role model, Bethany wrote:

When Debra was a little girl, she loved tap dancing. Her mom and dad were in choir, and there was a piano in the practice room.  When she was in eighth grade, Geraldine took her to downtown Hammond and bought her a used Baldwin piano. Her mother never had to ask her to practice, and she took off like lightning.  Within three years, she was playing classical music. 

  Debra was in Brownies and Girl Scouts.  Of the 15 badges she earned, her favorite was for roller-skating at Twilight Skating Rink.  In high school she was in choir, German Club, and Pep Club (members sat in bleachers and cheered sports teams).  In addition, she operated time watches for the girls swim team.  She’d be assigned a lane and time the swimmer in it. 

       Debra remembers going to Woodmar Shopping Center and the Shrine Circus at the Hammond Civic Center.  She shopped at many beautiful Hammond stores including, Evans and Goldblatts, and took in movies at the Parthenon and Paramount Theaters, which had balconies.  In 1968, she had a pen pal named Victor a soldier in Vietnam. His letters were quite desperate. In a high-risk situation he was fearful of losing his life.

In 1970, Debra was drawn to the hippie subculture and for a while called herself Rainflower.  She had a love bead necklace purchased in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood.  Her brother hitchhiked with a friend to the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969, to California in 1970, and Florida in 1971.  Debra and her friends often hitchhiked to Miller Beach and other local haunts.    Looking back, she did a lot of foolish and dangerous things but not as foolish as some contemporaries.

After 30 years of marriage, Debra’s parents divorced.  Even though she was 20, she was devastated but somehow made it through.  A couple years later she and her boyfriend moved to Tennessee, got married, and became heavily involved in church.  Three years later they moved with their small congregation to Greenville, South Carolina.  She had two beautiful girls.  Eventually, her husband got away from church, became abusive, started an affair with a co-worker, and began using drugs.  After separating from him, she moved back to Indiana and stayed with her mother for a year.  She attended IUN, living on a shoestring and raising 2 girls on her own while earning associate and bachelor degrees in Medical Records.  Her husband eventually moved back to Indiana so he could see the kids. He was working and giving her child support, enabling her to obtain an apartment.   After 7 years of separation and then divorce, Debra married a man she met at a Christian singles group. He subsequently became an atheist.  Despite this and other issues they have been married for 16 years.

Debra’s mother passed away in 2003 at age 78.  Her father, now 89, lives in Florida, and she visits him once or twice a year. Debra’s older daughter Lisa is married and has twice made her a grandparent. Looking back, Debra has seen how differently she could have handled situations or made better life choices.  However, she doesn’t regret having her beautiful daughters and the joy they’ve both given her.

 

above, Debra with Lisa (8) and Bethany (4); below, with father (Glenn) and daughters 8 and 13

In “Lola” Truman Capote wrote about a Sicilian servant girl, Graziella, giving him a raven with its wings cruelly clipped that he named Lola and kept as a pet for 12 years.  In a few sentences Capote draws a memorable portrait of the superstitious Graziella, who became engaged to a young gigolo, mending the socks and doing laundry for a handsome beau whose clients included, in all likelihood, young and old patrons of both sexes. Capote wrote:

  Lola was a thief; otherwise she might never have used her wings at all.  However, the sort of articles she was fond of stealing – shiny things, grapes and fountain pens, cigarettes – were situated usually in elevated areas; so, to reach a table top, she occasionally took a (quite literally) flying jump.  Once she stole a set of false teeth.

While in a sixth-floor Roman apartment, Lola was atop a balustrade when a predator cat caused the bird to fall off the balcony.  Although Lola was capable of flight, instead she merely floated down onto the back of a pickup truck.  Capote chased after it in vain, then told 93 year-old neighbor Signor Fioli, a former cabinetmaker who had grown attached to Lola’s antics and watched what happened in horror, that Lola thought she was a dog.

Mountain Press published “Bold Women in Indiana History” by Louise Hillery, a frequent Archives researcher.  The Young Adult volume includes portraits of Region pioneer Marie Bailly, dunes preservationist Dorothy Buell, and Vee-Jay Records founder Vivian Carter.  Hillery wrote:

  Each of these women had her own talents and her own ideas about how to make the world a better place.  What they had in common were courage and determination, enough to bring their ideas to life.  These are some of the many bold women who helped make the Hoosier state what it is today.

The chapter on Vivian Carter employs quotes from Henry Farag found in a Traces article of mine cited in the Bibliography and concludes: “In a time when black and white teens were mostly kept separated, the music played at Vivian’s Record Shop in Gary, Indiana, brought them together.  In the record business, this was called ‘crossover’ music, but to Vivian Carter, it was just wonderful music that was too good not to share.”

Daniel Velasco, a teacher at Gary’s 21st Century Charter School, located across from the ruins of City Methodist Church, sought help for a student project called 21st Century Citizen Vlogs (video blogs).  He and Ivy Tech adjunct Melissa Culbertson visited the Archives to familiarize themselves with our Gary holdings and pick my brain.  Their students will research and debate such topics as affirmative action, white flight, and gentrification. Regarding affirmative action, I suggested focusing on Valparaiso University and pointed them to VU’s Welcome Project.  I recommended examining black flight to Merrillville but had no suggestions on gentrification – but later thought perhaps the Cedar Lake waterfront would be a candidate for study.  I told Daniel and Melissa about VU History professor Heath Carter, whose students put together a Porter County Museum display highlighting civil rights in Northwest Indiana.  One student did a paper on past efforts, the result of student demands, to promote diversity on campus.

Culbertson is from Homewood, Illinois, Velasco (whom students call Mr V, like East Chicago kids once called my favorite student of all time, Jesse Villalpando, 10 years my senior) from Chicago.  Velasco explained the project on a website:

  Students interested in careers with information technology, or video editing will be able to deepen their understanding of the collaboration necessary for success. Students will use the iPads to edit video clips, work in design teams, and use video editing software like Windows Movie Maker and iMovie. Students will learn essential communication skills and contact local officials in an effort to create an online hub of local leaders that other students can access. In doing so, students will learn essential leadership skills that will help them succeed in college.

Student Monica Phillips hoped the project would expand, in her words, “our impact beyond our school walls and get the local government to hear our concerns about Gary. I want to show my classmates and other students that they, too, can do amazing things.”

Sam and Brenda Love are moving into a century-old house.  While packing Sam found his photo in an August 27 1997, issue of the IUN student newspaper, the Phoenix.  A caption identified him as the staff musician.  He quipped, “I have the same haircut and an additional chin now.”

Super Tuesday results are in, Donald Trump won 11 states, Ted Cruz, 4, and establishment hope Marco Rubio, one, Minnesota.  One anti-Trump ad running on Chicago TV stations mocks the frontrunner for saying, “I love the poorly educated.” After using racist code words for a half-century to lure under-educated redneck Southern voters, GOP hypocrites now are slamming Trump for being slow to disavow support from onetime Klansman David Duke.  When I first heard that Duke had endorsed Trump, I suspected it was a Cruz dirty trick.  Probably so did Trump.  If the frontrunner, caught by surprise, took a few hours to formulate an answer, perhaps he had doubts about commencing the disavowal game.  Should he next be asked to disavow supporter Trent Lott, who claimed segregationist Strom Thurman would have made a better president than Harry Truman?  When Richard Hatcher ran for mayor of Gary in 1967, Lake County boss John Krupa demanded he disavow a half-dozen black militants and anti-war spokesmen, including Julian Bond of SNCC and actor Marlon Brando.  Hatcher wisely refused to play that game.

“Women, Art, and the New Deal” by Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene contains moving illustrations by the likes of Dorothea Lange, Berenice Abbott, and Elizabeth Olds.  Some I’d never seen before, such as Lange’s unforgettable Mississippi Delta shot, “Negro Carrying Her Shoes Home from Church.”

Above, Elizabeth Olds, "Mrs. Manchester's Program for Homeless Men"; below, Bowery, 1935 by Berenice Abbott 

I have started preparing for an April 5 talk on “Steel makers in Gary and East Chicago” at Calumet College in Whiting at a monthly forum called Calumet Revisited and may start with a joke.  Here’s an early draft:

  In 1970, after I was hired to teach at IU Northwest, a neighbor in my WASP suburban neighborhood of Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, asked if I knew what Gary was famous for.  “Steel?” I said, then “A black mayor?”  “Hookers,” he replied.  But that’s a subject for another day.  Actually, as many of you know hookers worked in billet mills where semi-finished billets are rolled from ingots in that phase of the steel-making process.

Moving to the Calumet Region, I couldn’t get over its blue-collar flavor.  Virtually everyone either worked in a steel mill or had a relative who did.  Some of my students were steelworkers, or had been.

During the early 1970s labor historian Staughton Lynd, a Quaker blacklisted from academia for traveling to North Vietnam, convened a labor History Workshop at a Glen Park storefront just blocks from IUN.  Guest speakers, including an eyewitness to the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre and a rank-and-file activist purged of union office during the post WW II Red Scare.  The common message from the participants was that unions had been weakened by bureaucratization, top-down decision-making, and tactics of thuggery employed against dissidents.

Researching Gary’s history, I learned about early, nonunion-era working conditions in the steel mills for those who labored in unsafe conditions – 12 hours a day, seven days a week, producing what John Fitch called “Old Age at 40.” I read about famous native sons like boxer Tony Zale (whose strength came in part from being a steelworker) and actor Karl Malden (born Mladen Sekulovich, whose brief experience inside Gary Works was enough for him to resolve never to return). Wishing to write a social history from the bottom up, I interviewed numerous steelworkers, including Mexican-American Paulino Monterrubio.  Arriving at Monterrubio’s house, I was most interested in probing into ways he was discriminated against, both in the mill – assigned to the coke plant, for instance – and outside of work.  While this was certainly part of his life, Monterrubio did not wish to be defined as a victim and proudly showed me his union card, citizenship papers, his WW II warden’s hat, and family photos. When I subsequently interviewed Jesse Villallpando and Pete “Chico” Fernandez, two students of mine, I further realized the pride steelworkers had in what they did and how their work did not define their total essence.

In the mid-1970s IU folklorist Richard Dorson began researching the folklore of steel, gathering tales embellished at steelworker watering holes.  Among the categories delineated in Dorson’s book “Land of the Millrats” were the “old days,” deaths and accidents, mill thefts, goofing off, vandalism, rats, characters, and nicknames. My students collected similar tales, with the addition of the additional categories, sex and sexual harassment. As a result of the 1974 Consent Decree women in significant numbers hired in and became subject to humiliations that led to the formation of Women’s Caucuses.  Having met one of the Caucus leaders, millwright Valerie Denney, when both of us were members of the anti-nuke Bailly Alliance, I published the transcript of our interview in a Steel Shavings magazine titled “Calumet Region Steelworkers Tales.” (1990).  By that time unfortunately most women had lost their jobs during the layoffs of the 1980s (being the last hired, due to the seniority police, they were the first laid off).  That project led to a collaboration with Mike Olszanski, on Local 1010’s environmental and safety committee during the Bailly fight and later President of Local 1010. We co-edited a Steel Shavings issue on rank-and-file insurgency in the Calumet Region based largely on oral histories and titled “Steelworkers Fight back: Inland’s Local Union 1010 and the Sadlowski/Balanoff Campaigns.”  In addition several of my students interviewed steelworkers affected by the 1986-1987 lockout, the longest work stoppage in the history of Gary Works.

For several years I was oral history consultant for projects initiated by Sandy Appleby of the Tri-City Mental Health Center in East Chicago. One dealt with the psychological effects on steelworkers being laid-off.  I found that most didn’t miss the mills, just the money they earned there.  Some were subsequently rehired and several became students of mine, taking advantage of a Labor Studies program called Swingshift College.  Working on a second project on ethnicity, entitled “Pass the Culture, Please,” I interviewed members of the Arredondo family, whose patriarch Miguel was a union organizer and his son Jesse later a union president.  That led ultimately in my collaborating in the book “Maria’s Journey.”

Five years ago I suggested to colleague Anne Balay that she research LGBT steelworkers after we realized that virtually nothing had been written on the subject.  Her award-winning “Steel Closets,” based on interviews with 40 LGBT steelworkers, forced the USW bureaucracy to recognize that there was a problem and to take a stand against discrimination.  Ironically, that major contribution to labor history and her queer persona may have cost Anne her job at IUN.