“I've had 36 orthopedic operations, have two fused ankles, my
knees, hands and wrists don't work, I now have a fused spine, other than that,
everything is great.” Bill Walton
Bill Walton’s autobiography “Back from the Dead: Searching
for the Sound, Shining the Light and Throwing It Down,” discusses the
unbelievable series of injuries that not only curtailed his NBA career but, for
three years beginning in 2008, left the “Big Redhead” barely able to move. After leading UCLA to two NCAA championships,
Walton’s pro career highlight was spearheading the previously lowly Portland
Trail Blazers to the 1977 NBA championship, 109-107, over a Philadelphia 76ers
team that included Julius Erving, George McGinnis, Darryl Dawkins, Doug Collins,
Caldwell Jones, and World B. Free (who was mugged at the end of the sixth and
final game though no foul was called).
Dr. J had 40 points in a losing effort.
A sometime hippie who loves the music and mellow philosophy of the
Grateful Dead, Walton calls himself the luckiest Deadhead in the world. One of
Walton’s memorable expressions while announcing NBA games was “Throw it down big man, throw it down.”
At Gardner Center for a poetry reading, I recited three Gib
Laue compositions that appear in my latest Steel
Shavings. One poked fun at his
endless home improvement projects; another described pre-schoolers learning
Baptist hymns at the Frietag’s next door; the third lamented the destruction of
sand dunes during the 1960s to make way for steel mills. Laue grew up in Gary, and his father (Gilbert,
Sr.) was one of the city’s first dentists.
In 1951 he and wife Dot bought a log cabin just east of County Line Road
in Edgewater on the proceeds of Gib’s book, “So Much To Learn,” about being
house-husband to son John. Following me
was N. Davina Stewart, who recited a Sonia Sanchez poem about a black girl who
once believed she was ugly and worthless.
Across the street at Miller Bakery Café 80 people opposed to
GEO building a detention center near the Gary Airport heard passionate pleas by
speakers Diana Twyman (owner of the restaurant, who provided excellent food),
Samuel A, Love of 219MIGHT (Mass Incarceration and GEO Halt Team), Fred Tsao
(attorney for the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights), and
Reverend Cheryl Rivera (director of the NWI Federation of Interfaith
Organizations). All stressed GEO’s shabby reputation and that the proposed
facility would break up families and further tarnish the city’s
reputation. Sam mentioned that his dad was
once a lifeguard at Miller Beach and that he and Brenda recently bought a house
in Miller.
I had told former Lake County sheriff Roy Dominguez (above) about
the meeting, and he came with wife Betty.
A month ago, on St. Patrick’s Day at Crown Point Fire Department he had
his hair shaved off to help the St. Baldrick’s Foundation to raise funds for
the purpose of curing childhood cancers.
He showed me a video of the head-shaving, at the end of which he posted
photos of his sister Maria, brother Eloy, and Uncle Vicente, whose lives were
shortened by cancer.
In the audience at Miller Bakery Cafe; Ron Cohen, below. NWI Times photos by Jonathan Miano
;
GEO failed to get approval for a facility in Hobart last
year and in Gary just months ago. Now
the company is throwing down the gauntlet again and perhaps spreading money
around to grease the system. Four city
council members attended, including Ragen Hatcher, who is against the project,
and Ron Brewer, who claims to be undecided.
Carolyn McCrady passed out a flyer, titled “NO Gary GEO,” publicizing a
prayer vigil at City Hall Tuesday in advance of a Board of Zoning meeting. The flyer stated:
It is immoral and
unconscionable that a city 90% Black, descendants of slaves and marginalized by
Jim Crow structural racism, would consider supporting suffering, terror, fear
and dismantling of poor immigrant families in a detention/slave center.
City Hall Protest; P-T photo by Jim Karczewski
James had a weekend bowling tournament in South Bend, so we
watched their dog Maggie. Dave drove
through a blizzard to get there, and Toni welcomed them back Sunday with a
steak dinner. I channel-switched between the Cubs (a winner thanks to a home
run by pitcher Jake Arietta) and the Masters in Augusta (defending champ Jordan
Spieth shockingly had a quadruple bogey when he put two balls in the water on
the par-3 twelfth hole, allowing Brit Danny Willettt to lay claim to the green
jacket.
Thanking me for Steel
Shavings were Lowell librarian Robert Bussie, who appreciated my references
to civil rights hero Richard Morrisroe, and ace Chesterton Tribune reporter Kevin Nevers, who admitted, “What I do for a living is a bit like
yelling into the wind in the desert, if you catch me drift.” I felt the same way during my advocacy for
IUN English professor Anne Balay.
Nevers wrote:
I admire your range
off passions and preoccupations, your feel for people and places, the way the
past really isn’t the past for you but more a murmur of whispering voices, a
clamor of ghosts looking for a medium.
Not everybody hears them, almost no one does really, but it’s your great
gift to make the hauntings human and meaningful.
Heavy.
Mary Schmidt wrote about her father, Frank L. Schmidt, born
on October 24, 1954, at Gary Methodist Hospital. His father, Robert Bernard
Schmidt, was injured during the Korean War and on a hospital boat met a
Japanese man who introduced Robert to his sister, Shigeko Sudo. They soon fell in love. He wanted to take her to America, and the
only practical way was to marry her in Japan.
She took a flight to America and stayed with Robert’s mother and father
on Garfield Street in Glen Park for a month until Robert arrived home on via
army troop ship. Shortly thereafter, Shigeko got pregnant with Frank. Mary wrote:
Robert’s father owned
Emil Schmidt and Sons Plumbing Company.
Growing up, Frank went to an elementary school named after poet James
Whitcomb Riley. He participated in
science fairs and was a safety patrol boy.
On an East Glen Park Little League baseball team, in his first game, he
hit two triples. He remembered, “Every
time we won our coach would take us to eat at Ricochet’s Pizza in Gary. They
had the best pizza you’d ever taste. My best friends on that team were Scott
Moore and Michael Martinez.” Robert loved the carnival rides, pony rides,
and games at Kiddieland on 61st and Broadway.
Robert and his three
brothers learned the plumbing trade and took over the business after the war.
Robert and Shigeko moved to Tennessee Street and visited his parents every
Saturday. Frank recalled: “We’d get to my
grandparents’ house at about six or seven a.m.
Grandma Emma would already be cooking pancakes for us. She made the best homemade pie and bread and
let me use the rolling pin to thin out the dough. She’d make a special loaf of
bread for me to take home.” Joined
by uncles Dean, Earl, Rich, and Jim, they’d go fishing over by Deep River on
Route 51.
Shigeko’s father once owned
a movie house where Charlie Chaplin performed. However, the family lost most
everything during World War II. Once
Shigeko was on a train going to school when suddenly bombs were falling. She
got under her seat and stayed there until it was quiet. Many of her friends died that day. In 1961 Robert, Frank, and Shigeko traveled
back to Japan to visit her family. They stayed for three months. My father
recalls: “Their house had bamboo floors, not carpet. Wearing shoes in the house was considered
rude. Their kitchen table was close to the ground, and to eat we had to sit on
the floor. My grandmother tried to make us fried chicken but couldn’t figure it
out because it wasn’t commonly made there.
At age seven I met my Japanese cousins. We had no idea what the other
was saying but communicated just by playing.
We watched typical television shows you’d see in America but all in
Japanese. We also watched baseball and Sumo wrestling. And we rode trains and
busses everywhere. One day my 12 year-old
cousins and I snuck out of the house, took a train to Tokyo, and played
Pachinko, a popular Japanese game, all day at an arcade.”
Frank and Paerents
Frank often
took empty coke bottles to the grocery for two cents a bottle. He recalled: “I used that money for baseball cards. A nickel could buy you five
baseball cards and a pack of gum. I’d
use one to stick in my bike tire to make it rattle. Back then a candy bar was
five cents, a bottle of pop was twelve cents, and a popsicle was five cents.” Frank’s father forbade him to ride his bike
away from Tennessee Street. He recalled:
“When I was ten, a couple friends wanted
to go to Joe Plezac’s Grocery, a small store in Glen Park that sold baseball
cards. My dad wasn’t home so I went with
them. We were walking our bikes across Georgia Street when I spotted my dad’s
car. He rolled the window down and said ‘You
get that bike home right now!’”
At Bailey Junior High
Frank’s best friend was Marty Johnson. During lunch hour they’d go to Dog N’
Suds for pork tenderloin sandwiches and run back to Marty’s house to eat. Marty’s
mother would drive them back to school. On Halloween, Frank told me: “We’d start at Tennessee Street and keep
moving until we reached Mississippi five blocks away. That was enough to fill up a big paper bag of
candy. Then we’d take that home and head west on Delaware Street and do five
more blocks. Next day we’d walk to school and pick up any candy we found in the
grass!”
Typically Frank would spend
Christmas Eve opening presents and then spend Christmas day with grandparents
Emma and Emil and all his aunts, uncles, and cousins. An uncle would dress up as Santa
Claus, complete with the hat, suit and beard. One year it was his father’s
turn. Frank recalled: “My dad got a pair of nice new shoes. Santa walked in and I realized that he was
wearing the same shoes as my dad! That’s when I realized that it was really my
dad in a Santa suit.” Each of
Frank’s aunts would have a party every day after that until Grandmother Emma
passed away and the get-togethers came to an end. By that time everyone was older.
Frank ice skated
and played hockey at Lake George in Hobart. He remembered: “One day the puck got away from me and I was chasing. All of a sudden I
heard a man yelling ‘Stop! Stop.’ Some of the ice ahead of me was cracked and
melted away.”
During Freshman Week at Lew Wallace it was customary for upperclassmen to haze freshmen. Frank recalled:
“A bully came up to me and tried to make
me carry his books. My friends who were juniors went up to us and told him to
scram and to stop messing with me. Nobody bothered me after that!” “Frank
was on the National Honor Society and took German classes but his favorite
subject was Physics. He played football for two years as a Tight End and
baseball for three years as the Catcher. Unfortunately, he broke his shoulder
and had to quit football. He told me:
“We
were playing football and I had caught a pass and was going backwards, but this
guy ran into me and I fell on my shoulder and I hurt it. But I didn’t want to
tell my dad because I thought it might just go away. But when I looked at it in
the mirror it was swooped down. The next morning I couldn’t move it up at all,
so I finally told my dad and he took me to the emergency room. I got my x-rays
and they said it was officially broken. I had to wear a harness for weeks. My
dad told me I couldn’t play both baseball and football and told me to pick one
sport. Well, football season was almost over so I chose baseball!”
My dad got his first job
at a Shell Gas Station on I-65 and Ridge Road. That’s where Frank learned to tune-ups
and oil changes. He said: “On a typical
Saturday during my high school friends and I would go to Harvey’s Department
Store on 38th and Broadway, Dickerson’s Drug Store on Broadway and
Rudge Road, and then we would walk to the Village Shopping Center on Grant
Street and spend the whole day there. During the summertime we would go to East
Glen Park Senior League Field and play baseball from 9 until 5 when the seniors
came to practice.”
In 1972 Frank was driving his
father’s brand new Cadillac. He picked up two girls, and went “Cruisin’” up and
down Broadway between 45th and 55th Avenue. He recalled: “I had to have my father’s car back by 10
P.M. But one of the girls wanted to try driving it. So I switched seats with
her and let her drive for a while, but then she hit a telephone pole. Broke it
in half and totaled the car! So what I did was I switched seats with her before
the police and my dad showed up and told both of them that I was the one
driving, not her. Man, was my dad mad! But he got a new car from the insurance
so he wasn’t mad for too long. To this day, to his dying day, I never ever told
him that it was the girl who was driving that day and not me. But I think he
always knew anyway.” When Frank
graduated high school in 1973 fiftieth out of 550, he got a 1973 Oldsmobile
Cutlass as a graduation present.
Frank
told me: “My dad was very strict on my
haircuts. Well, in 1973 the hot hairstyle back then was longer hair on men,
about right below the ears. I wanted to grow my hair out but my dad
wouldn’t let me. So I was the only one of my friends who still had short hair.
Then one day my dad visited Bloomington for a parent conference and observed young guys' hair styles. He came home and apologized for making me get short haircuts, and said that if I wanted to grow my hair out, I could.”
At IU Frank pursued a degree in Chemistry.
And roomed with his next-door neighbor Dave Charbonneau. He told me: “During our first few months of college,
other guys were afraid of us because we were from the Region, cussed a lot, and
talked differently than guys from southern Indiana.” Frank played baseball
for his dorm team called The Commanches (above), and won the championship in 1975. One
Spring Break he went to Florida with Nick Psimos and Dave Smelko. Nick’s dad
was a lawyer and owned a condo in Florida. He told me: “One day we went deep-sea fishing. My friend caught a 3-foot shark. My
line started wiggling and when I started reeling it in, it was a 10-foot
Hammerhead Shark! I got it up to the boat, but it jumped back into the water
and tried to swim away but still had the line. Our boat started going in
reverse. Well the owner of a bar/restaurant called Jansem Landing, John Jansem,
was on the boat with us and really wanted it for advertising his restaurant. So
we got it back up to the boat again and the captain shot it to keep it from
struggling. Finally I got it and we put it into the boat. That shark was ten
feet long and 350 pounds.”
During Frank’s senior
year he tried getting a job in construction, but the market was down. U.S. Steel was hiring summer help, and he
landed a job there as a Lab Manager at the North Sheet Mill at Gary Works. After he graduated with a degree in
Chemistry, U.S. Steel hired him full-time to work in Quality Assurance. Working
for U.S. Steel gave him opportunities to travel to Mexico and Serbia.
One day Frank's American Legion softball teammate Ron Ramos
wanted him to trick his sister, Christine, into thinking
he was Gary Fencik of Chicago Bears, whom he resembled. Frank and Christine started dating in 1988 and five years later had their
first of five children, Jessica, my older sister. They were married on
August 6, 1999. They reside in Hebron on Lake Eliza. Frank (61) still works at U.S. Steel and Christine
(52) is a stay-at-home mom. The people and places in Gary that Frank once loved may not exist physically anymore, but
they are alive in his memories. (below, author Mary and Frank, her dad)
Nicole Anslover’s students are reading “All the President’s Men.” I was surprised to see Carl Bernstein as first
author since the Washington Post
reporters are always referred to as Woodward and Bernstein – or in the movie,
“Woodstein.” When Nicole asked about the
legacy of Watergate, I mentioned that except for the first Bush, all successful
Presidential candidates starting with Jimmy Carter have had little or no
“Inside the Beltway” experience. Some
students slammed Gerald Ford for pardoning “Tricky Dick,” but, as much as I
loathed Nixon, jailing him would have been counter-productive and just
increased sympathy for him. On the other
hand, he should have been denied all the perquisites given to former
Presidents.
When a student mentioned seeing Bob Woodward on the FOX Sunday news
show, I thought of Woodward’s “Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate”
(1999). Woodward concludes that the new
inquisitorial environment led to abuses by Independent Council Lawrence Walsh
(investigating Iran-Contra) and Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr (appointed to
probe the Whitewater land deal, he went on fishing expeditions into the suicide
of White House Counsel Vince Foster and Bill Clinton’s sex life that uncovered
the Monica Lewinsky affair and led to Clinton’s impeachment). Nixon had appointed and then fired Special
Prosecutor Archibald Cox in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.
In 1979 Jimmy Carter signed into law the Ethics in Government Act, which called
for the appointment of a special prosecutor when the Attorney General received
allegations of misconduct by a senior government official. The first time it was invoked was to
investigate a charge that Carter’s chief of staff Hamilton Jordon had used
cocaine at New York City nightclub Studio 54.
Jordon was cleared of any wrongdoing but his reputation was tarnished
and it cost him all his savings, $67,000, in legal fees to his attorney. Starr’s
overreach made most people realize the dangers of special prosecutors abusing
the office.
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