Catalysts for Curious Minds (ISBN 1-59196-016-9)

9/11/01 – Infamy and Aftermath

September 11, 2001 -- A reaction in Abu Dhabi

It was 4:57 p.m. here in Abu Dhabi, 7:57 a.m. back in Davenport, Iowa. I had come home from school and changed quickly out of my sweat-soaked white button-down shirt and Bugs Bunny tie. That's what you do when you live in a desert country in the Middle East where a cool-down means the temperature dips below 110 and the humidity falls below 80 percent.
Soon as I had changed I continued my routine by checking the computer in our den. The DSL immediately opened MSN.com and there, in the upper left corner, among a dozen or so headlines, was something about an airliner having crashed into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. At first it didn't sink in. I continued to scan the web page, glanced at a couple of other items, checked my e-mail and, about 10 minutes later, decided to move downstairs and turn on the TV.
We usually watch NBC's "Today Show" live when we get home from school, so without thinking I chose channel 11 on our Orbit Satellite TV system. Katie Couric was speaking on the left of a split screen. On the right was that image none of us is likely to ever forget. And just when I was beginning to realize the magnitude of what I was watching from 10,000 miles away, a plane smashed into the second tower. And then word came that the Pentagon had been hit and that another plane had been heading for Washington but had mysteriously crashed in a Pennsylvania field nearly 100 miles short of the capital.
Like you in Sheboygan and Phoenix, Hartford and Tuscaloosa, Berlin and Paris, London and Rome, Mary and I sat there in the capital city of the United Arab Emirates in stunned silence. We looked outside and the scorching sun was still shining, the traffic was moving normally, everything was as it had always been the last seven years, and yet for us and a few thousand other Americans in the UAE, nothing would ever be the same.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attack, school was canceled on
Wednesday, not because of any threats, but simply because it was too soon to do anything else. Here in this part of the Muslim world, Thursday is like Saturday and Friday is like Sunday. The workweek is Saturday through Wednesday, so by taking Wednesday off, we had our weekend to try to sort things out.
Our school, founded in 1972 by American business and government leaders in the city, is called the American Community School of Abu Dhabi. ACS currently enrolls a record 653 students on its K-12 campus in a residential area two blocks from the Arabian (don't call it Persian) Gulf. But although we are the American School, we enroll students from more than 50 countries. In fact, Americans are a minority on our campus, comprising only about 35% of the student body.
I teach senior English, Advanced Placement English and advise the high school newspaper, The Quill. Mary is the special needs teacher at the elementary school. Our only child, Matt, is a junior and a student in one of my AP classes.
Many of our students are Muslims. Many of our non-American students, although they and their parents respect and desire an American education, do not necessarily respect America or desire a friendly relationship with its government.
A six-foot high concrete wall separates our school from the street.
The American Ambassador’s residence is located directly across the street, but it’s vacant now since a new ambassador is awaiting Senate confirmation.
From the day we arrived here in 1994 there have been armed guards at the school, guards provided by the UAE government. After the events of Sept. 11, the number of guards has increased, the school has tightened security procedures and evacuation scenarios have been discussed.
When we returned to school on Sept. 15, we had a high school assembly in which our principal called for sensitivity and understanding among our multiplicity of nationalities, ethnicities and religions, something that is ordinary behavior on this campus, but these are extraordinary times.
And then the student council president, Omair Ansari, spoke. He is an
Indian-Pakistani who carries an American passport and who has cousins living in New York City. He spoke eloquently of how the terrorist attacks had affected him and his family. He spoke passionately of the need for all students to think seriously and react positively in the aftermath of these events.
In the classrooms there have been raised voices and red faces and not a few tears. In my classroom two days after the attack, an AP discussion of potential American-led retaliation moved two students to leave the room in tears, one an American girl from Mississippi, the other a girl from Serbia. The Serbian is a passionate, Christian young lady who neither respects nor trusts the U.S. government. She saw her family and her homeland pounded by American military might during the recent action in Kosovo. She was brave enough to tell her classmates – three Indians, a Lebanese, a Canadian, a Pakistani, an Egyptian and a couple of Americans – that while the terrorist attack was wrong, that maybe America deserved it. America, she said, thinks it can do anything it wants anywhere it wants, anytime it wants and then go home and talk about
freedom and security and equality. But while Americans may enjoy those
rights, she made it clear she didn’t see those rights reflected in much of
America’s foreign policy, especially not in her bombed-out neighborhood
in Belgrade. When other students, not all Americans, said that she might be biased, that she might be wrong about America, she left the room in tears.
The world is a complicated place. America is a great country and
Americans are a great people, but our government’s foreign policies are
not perceived as such in many places around the globe by people who
themselves are great and who come from countries that are, in many ways, great, too. And, of course, America does make policy mistakes, both foreign and domestic.
When the period ended, the Serbian young lady returned to collect her things. We talked. We hugged. We cried together.

Sept. 20, 2001 – Hypocrisy is where you find it

I've lived in the UAE going on eight years. Some of my best friends are Arabs and Muslims. I’ve been generally successful in tolerating anti-American attitudes and behaviors. That’s what a good guest is supposed to do. But under the tragic conditions of today, I’m quickly tiring of the outrageous hypocrisy here in Abu Dhabi and around the Arab world.
Again today in The Gulf News, which is published in Dubai and is the leading English language daily in the United Arab Emirates, there are stories and editorials critical of the U.S. The stories sharply attack the U.S. and its alleged desire to start a war on Islam and Arabs just because they may share a religion and a race with suspected terrorists. Of course, this charge is blatantly false. What is true is that an objective observer might say that Islam and Arabs have long been waging a terrorist war against Judaism and Israelis because of their religion and race. Not so many years ago terrorist leader Yasser Arafat himself vowed to annihilate Israel. But after failing in that effort, today, of course, he is a peacemaker.
A Gulf News editorial and various Arab spokesmen around the world are chanting that the U.S. should do nothing against Osama bin Laden or anyone else without "absolute evidence" connecting him and others to these recent terrorist acts. But I don't recall reading anything about the Palestinians needing "absolute evidence" connecting Jewish civilians, Israeli citizens to attacks on them before suicide bombers and gunmen indiscriminately murder them in buses, shops, restaurants. All that's necessary before Palestinians can murder innocent Jews and Israelis -- and Christians and other civilians, including women and children, for that matter -- is a claim of revenge. Yet those same people are chiding the U.S. claiming that America "must not act out of revenge, but only out of a desire for justice." Brave words. But rather than TELL us Americans how we should act, how about SHOWING us. If Americans are hypocrites, they certainly have plenty of companions in the Middle East and the rest of the world.
Perhaps you will remember reports of an incident last year when a couple of Israeli policemen claimed they got lost and were captured by the Palestinian police. These Israelis had done nothing. The Palestinians didn't even try to claim they did. They simply said, "Oh, sure, they got 'lost.' They were no doubt planning to attack us." I don't recall any Palestinian, any Arab or any Muslim asking for evidence against these young men before they were punished in any way, but I do recall the fate of the Israelis. They were immediately murdered and when they were dumped out the second floor window of the Palestinian police station, more Palestinians waiting below mutilated the bodies. The Gulf News printed the sickening photos. What The Gulf News did not print was any criticism of the Palestinians’ behavior.
And it would be amusing if it weren't so tragic: many publications in the Arab world are claiming Israel is the real perpetrator of the recent terrorist attacks on the U.S. Have you heard that one? The Gulf News has also reported Arab-Muslim claims that 4,000 Israelis stayed home from work in the World Trade Center on the day of the attacks because they had been tipped off by Israeli intelligence. No evidence is offered to support either of these claims, just the statements themselves are delivered. But then these people don't have to support their irresponsible, biased accusations. They're not Americans, and as we continue to see, only Americans have to provide evidence -- as I have done in documenting my statements here. Non-Americans can say and do whatever they want -- without evidence and without recrimination.
President Bush, while he’s received some muted support from the Arab world in general for his handling of the crisis so far, was blasted in a Gulf News editorial recently for what the newspaper termed his “brash talk like ‘dead or alive’ that is reminiscent of the bounty hunters that still operate in America but descend from the old Wild West. Then President Bush tells us he – and he hopes, his coalition partners – is on a ‘crusade.’ A more unfortunate turn of phrase cannot be imagined. It has connotations that are still fresh in the minds of most Arabs and certainly all Muslims: the 200-year War of the Crusades when Muslims fought against religious knights and soldier monks.”
The Crusades were fought long before there was a United States of America. They ended centuries ago, but then that’s a fundamental problem with the people in this region and the Arab world in general: they never forget. It’s the Arab world, not America, that needs to wake up and stop living in the past. The Arab world needs to get on with it. While America has been closely allied for decades with its major enemies of only 50 years ago – Germany, Japan and Italy – the Gulf News and many Muslims around the globe are upset because President Bush used the word “crusade” – a word The Gulf News described as “still fresh in the minds of most Arabs and certainly all Muslims” -- to describe the multinational effort against terrorism. Depending on which authority you consult, the Crusades ended at least 500 years ago. But The Gulf News tells us in 2001 that these historical events are “still fresh” in the minds of Arabs and Muslims. I believe that. I just don’t understand it.
Winston Churchill, although neither Muslim nor Arab, was considered a pretty smart fella by some folks. He once observed, “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find that we have lost the future.” Churchill was not speaking of the Arab-Muslim world when he said that, but I cannot imagine a more succinct analysis of it. Yes, Egypt and Arab-Muslim nations have made great contributions to the world, in mathematics and science in particular. Way to go. But what contributions have come from the Arab-Muslim world in, say, the last 500 years?
Perhaps The Gulf News editorial writer would better serve his readers by promoting Churchill’s wisdom rather than whining about a word whose closest historical context is half a millennium away.
Today’s America and today’s Americans may not be perfect, but I'll take America's errors over those perpetrated by any other people in any other nation at any other time.
Oh, and I haven't seen this reported in The Gulf News, but the good people of the United States, through the government’s foreign aid program, gave $170 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan last year -- more than Afghanistan received from any other country in the world – including the oil rich United Arab Emirates and the rest of the Arab and Islamic world. And that's a fact. You could look it up.

September 30, 2001 – Of public liberties and private grief

There have been no public gatherings in the United Arab Emirates to mourn the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States of America, as there was in India. There has been no rush to donate blood, as there was in Kuwait. There have been no public tears, as there were in Lebanon. There have been no U.S. flags flying in shops or from apartment buildings or government buildings as there have been in Kosovo. But the attacks have not gone unnoticed by the public in Abu Dhabi.
When the terrorist attacks began in the late afternoon here, one of our neighbors, a Muslim man, stepped outside. “Madam,” he said to Zoe Daney, one of our colleagues at the American School, “please, you must go inside and turn on the television. You must know what is happening.” It’s the first time I’ve ever known him to speak to any of us Americans in the five years we’ve been his neighbors.
Another of our teachers at the American School recently received a different sort of reaction. Taxis are cheap and plentiful here. A ride from one end of the city to the other – and Abu Dhabi is a city of about 1 million – costs $2.50. One of our teachers slipped into a taxi a few days ago and, as he always does, instructed the driver to take him to the “madressa Amerikiya” – the American School. But the Pakistani driver wasn’t interested in this fare and instead shouted, “Get out! Get out of my taxi NOW!” The teacher got out. Our superintendent has told us it might be wise to ask taxis to take us to locations near the school and walk the rest of the way.
The UAE is an unusual country. Of the 2.8 million people – a population about the same as Iowa’s in a land area about the same as Maine’s – only about 700,000 – 25% -- are Emirati citizens, UAE nationals. The rest come from dozens and dozens of places all over the world, so the citizens here are vastly outnumbered by the expatriates. The citizens are a tiny minority in their own land.
And so the taxi drivers are mostly Pakistanis with some Indians, a few Lebanese, Moroccans, Algerians, Sudanese, Syrians -- even Afghans. Taxi drivers leave their poor homelands to come to the UAE to make money. They stay for varying lengths of time, usually leaving their families behind. When they’ve made enough money, they go home and are relatively rich. That’s the same reason thousands of construction workers, maids, clerks, newspaper sellers, fast food workers – come to the UAE. Emirati citizens are supervisors and owners. Few are workers, and few if any are involved in physical labor. Even most of the security guards, police officers and most of the military come from other countries in the region.
Tens of thousands of the foreign workers are housed in spartan barracks outside of Abu Dhabi, many in the industrial town of Mussafah. They are trucked and bused into and out of town daily. But out there in the relative isolation of Mussafah, we have been told, many workers have recently engaged in anti-American rallies. We have also been told that those workers were deported within hours. But you will not read any of this in the newspapers here.
There is no doubt that the UAE government wants no trouble. There is no doubt that the UAE government wants to continue a positive relationship with the United States, the country that a few years ago agreed to a multi-billion dollar deal to sell American F-16s to the UAE. This country knows it needs U.S. help to protect it -- not from Western nations, but from its Arab and Muslim brothers.
Since Sept. 11 we have watched both on satellite television and on the Internet the more stringent security measures adopted in the U.S., from airports to Major League baseball stadiums to the malls. I even see that at my alma mater, the University of Iowa, Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby and company have decreed you can no longer take a thermos, among other things, into 70,000-seat Kinnick Stadium. Maybe that’s OK on a temporary basis, but long term I think it’s a mistake. Check the motto on Iowa’s state flag. I don’t have to go far to check mine. A 3’ x 5’ Iowa flag has hung in my classroom since the day I arrived in Abu Dhabi. And so has the American flag.
Anyway, that Iowa motto says, “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.” It’s a great motto, but only if it describes reality. That motto does not say that except in cases of terrorist attacks, we Iowans will prize our liberties and maintain our rights. It is an unqualified statement. Iowans – all Americans -- ought to think hard about that motto before they give away the freedoms that terrorists hate so much, the freedoms that so many have died to protect.
No, there have been no public outpourings of emotion here like there have been in scores and scores of countries around the world in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, but there have been many private ones. Both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health have written letters of condolence to our superintendent. We not only have many Muslims and Arabs in our school, but many Muslim and Arab teachers. Most of them have been horrified by the terrorist attacks and have expressed their sincere sympathies.
For seven years it had been pretty easy to be an American here in Abu Dhabi. But since Sept. 11, it’s been pretty hard. Not because of any harassment or sense of insecurity, but because we cannot openly share our emotions. We cannot attach an American flag to the aerial of our van and drive around town. We cannot wear symbols of America in public, although I finally did wear a stars-and-stripes tie featuring the Statue of Liberty to school a few days ago. No one complained.
But we watch the coverage of all the major news networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN. We watch the ESPN coverage of the memorial ceremonies at baseball games and college football and in the NFL. We were in Wrigley Field a few months ago ourselves, but we cannot go there with you now and sing the Star Spangled Banner. We cannot go there and watch Dominican Sammy Sosa hit a home run, grab an American flag from the first base coach and circle the bases with it. We cannot join tens of thousands of Americans to wave American flags and shout, “U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A!”
No, American expatriates here and in some other places around the world have had to grieve in isolation. But as fellow Americans we join you in your prayers, in your pride, in your patriotism. And we have joined you in your tears.

October 3, 2001 – Muslim friends in America

On Sept. 7, a 1999 graduate of the American Community School of Abu Dhabi celebrated her 20th birthday. She celebrated with her friends at the small, prestigious Eastern college where she is now a junior. But only four days later, the celebrating was already a faint memory. This mellow, intelligent, sensitive young Pakistani woman was suddenly thrust into the center of an international maelstrom.
As a high school senior back in Abu Dhabi she had been one of my students in English 12 and a key member of the literary magazine staff that I advised. Now she was a Muslim in America. Now, to some, she was the enemy.
“How are you? How is everyone?” she writes in her most recent e-mail, the first from her since Sept. 11. “I hope the situation is under control in Abu Dhabi.” It’s typical that she would ask about others first. But that’s not all she has to say:
“The college, in its effort to provide us security and comfort almost isolates us in a protective bubble. I went home last weekend, and things were so different: conversations about reactions, history and the political situation we are in are more relevant in this setting, but it is oddly impressive too see how people outside campus are living their lives.
“It’s also frustrating. So many innocent lives lost for a purpose only those who did this, and God understands. Sometimes I feel so naïve. After everything happened I didn’t even assume for a second that Muslims or Arabs would be implicated so viciously by some media. Hours later, it was apparent. I’ve realized that there is so much growing up I have to do. It’s one thing to passively read of attacks on American Arabs and Muslims, but when some of them are friends and former students, like this young woman from Pakistan, the stories are far more real and the circumstances often heartbreaking.
“Dozens of my former Abu Dhabi students who are Arabs and Muslims are on campuses and in careers all over the United States. Many of these young people have written of similar reactions and concerns. One such young man from India is now on the campus of a Midwestern university and is the president of its Muslim Student Association. Twice he was named “Student of the Year” at the American Community School of Abu Dhabi. Here’s part of what he wrote in a recent statement addressed to his fellow university students:
“As emotions run high, we must not forget the principles of freedom and equality that America stands for and which were attacked in this tragedy…. We (Muslims in America) are victims and targets of these attacks, too. Yet we are faced with false accusations based on our religion. As all Americans cope with the attack on their liberty and security, Muslim students also question their own sense of safety. Many Muslim and Arab school children and university students are not attending classes for fear of physical abuse and taunting. “We encourage all university community members to continue praying for the victims, for justice to be served and to refrain from stereotyping and labeling others. Let there be no more victims.”
Having known this young Muslim man for four years, I can assure you he is a tremendous person, a terrific role model, a God-fearing individual who lives the tolerance his message extols. He, too, is a friend.
And while this young man, one of the great leaders ever to study at the American Community School of Abu Dhabi, faces the greatest challenge to his leadership skills so far, the young Pakistani woman continues to try to make sense of the senselessness:
“We had panels and tons of speakers throughout the week addressing issues on the political front as well as expressing concern for Muslim/Arab students on this campus. Some students were verbally harassed. These were students who wear hijabs and/or "look" brown. The Muslim Students on campus have gotten together several times to discuss how to make this an opportunity to educate people instead of lashing out…
“We have a huge green area in front of our campus center where we held two jummah prayers followed by question-and-answer sessions that attracted a lot of people. “I have no words for what I feel. You should see the way the media is working over here (in the U.S.) right now. They show pictures of 6-7 year olds at their national parades, and since they are army parades the kids are walking in front of the real army carrying fake guns. These pictures are called, ‘Kids trained for terrorism and suicide bombings.’
“It is so horrific that even after so many lives have been lost, the country here is being so craftily led into doing similar things. I have faith in people, but when I see some of the things people do to each other I wonder who will save us. I believe in God, but God has given us wisdom and reason and it’s up to us from there.
“I can’t help but have bad thoughts of Japanese internment, ethnic profiling, harassment…. I can’t help but be scared of speaking up and becoming targeted, and so much more. And yet life goes on. Things are becoming better. Midterms are coming up and soon enough the college bubble takes over everything. I can't decide if that's good or bad.
“I hope you are always safe.”
I hope you are always safe, too. Sept. 7 seems so, so long ago.

October 9, 2001 – Juxtapositions in Arabia

Juxtaposition. It’s a funny word. But sometimes it’s the only word that works. This is one of those times.
The only way to describe life in the United Arab Emirates is to say it is a story of juxtaposition. Next to the topless German sunbather on the beach of the Jebel Ali Hotel and Resort are the Muslim women veiled and covered from head to toe in the traditional black abaya. On the head of the Arab teenager in the traditional white dishdash rollerblading down Zayed the Second Street in Abu Dhabi is not the traditional gutra, but a New York Yankees baseball cap. As you pick up the traditional Arabic maneesh for lunch at the food court at the Marina Mall in Abu Dhabi, an Arab woman takes a bite of her Big Mac by slipping it carefully under her full veil.
Three years ago there was one four-screen English language movie theater in Abu Dhabi. Today there are four major English language theaters with a total of 31 screens. Two years ago there was one six-lane public bowling alley. Today there is a 48-lane international quality Brunswick bowling center across the street from the NHL-size ice rink. And just a few blocks further you find the 60,000-seat Zayed Sports Stadium.
During the Muslim Holy Month of Ramadan, about Nov. 16 to Dec. 15 this year, Muslims fast daily from dawn to dusk to show solidarity with the poor and underprivileged. Then many of these same Muslims gorge themselves on multi-course meals at midnight and stay up partying until 4 in the morning. I don’t know many poor and starving people who follow such a lifestyle.
Last year in Dubai several Christians were arrested for standing on the sidewalk and handing out Christian literature. About 10 years earlier the UAE’s only president, Sheik Zayed, donated a valuable parcel of land and about $1 million to build the Evangelical Community Church of Abu Dhabi. Services continue to be held openly there for hundreds every week. But in neighboring Saudi Arabia, Christian church services are banned, and if Bibles cross the border, they must be smuggled in. Bibles may be brought into the UAE and carried in public without fear.
Eating pork and drinking alcohol contravene Muslim beliefs, but most grocery stores in the UAE have a special meat counter where non-Muslims may purchase pork. And the government offers non-Muslims liquor permits, although alcohol is banned for Muslims.
During the Christmas season most of the major stores in the UAE play American Christmas carols. You can hear Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas,” Johnny Mathis singing “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” Elvis singing “Silent Night.” But if you are caught eating, drinking or even chewing gum in public between dawn and dusk during Ramadan, you may be arrested.
Sheika Fatima, the president’s No. 1 wife, is a strong advocate of women’s rights, including the right to a college education and the right to work in any field. But women cannot enter a mosque with men and in all UAE public schools, boys and girls must be taught separately. There is no co-ed education after age 9. (A few private schools, including the American Community School of Abu Dhabi where I teach, are in a special category and allowed to operate as co-ed schools as they would if there were on American soil.)
Many Muslims in the UAE eschew American values of all kinds, yet they buy American cars, buy American clothes, attend American movies, listen to American music, pay billions for American fighter planes. They bring in American companies to build buildings, to build roads, to train pilots, to pump oil.
The UAE is an Arab, Muslim country but UAE citizens are a tiny minority in their own land, making up only about 25% of the 2.8 million people who live here.
Juxtaposition. It may be a funny word. It may be a strange word. But if it didn’t exist, we’d have to create it in order to explain life in the UAE.

October 22, 2001 – Habitat heads to India

The first student chapter of Habitat for Humanity in the Middle East was established two years ago at our American Community School of Abu Dhabi. That chapter was established by our former principal, Steve Kehm, who has since returned to his native Wisconsin, and our service coordinator, Mrs. Kate Flynn, who arrived with her family seven years ago from Virginia. Last school year we experienced our first Habitat build, but not without some trepidation.
School officials decided that the senior class should represent the school each year in the Habitat building project. The ACS Class of 2001 was the first to do so. Plans were made to participate in a project in Hyderabad, India. The trip was set to depart Abu Dhabi for Hyderabad, via Bombay (Mumbai), on Jan. 10, 2001, and return on Jan. 18.
Twenty students from our small senior class of 29 were planning to make the trip. Four chaperones were assigned, including Mr. Kehm and me along with Mrs. Shahana Agha and Mrs. Amina Khan. Meetings had been held with parents and students to make sure they were ready for the challenges.
Finally the preparations were over and Jan. 10 had arrived. It was time to leave. I rushed home from school and finished packing so I could be back at school by 6 p.m. to join the kids on the bus ride to the Abu Dhabi International Airport. But at 5:30 the phone rang. It was Mr. Kehm.
“We’re not going.”
Incredible, but true. We had started working on acquiring visas months earlier, but had run into all sorts of bureaucratic snags at the Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi. Still, everyone figured the red tape would be cleaned up in time for us to make our flight even if some of the folks at the Indian Embassy wanted to take it down to the dramatic final seconds. It did go down to the last seconds, but there were no visas.
But as disappointed as the kids were – as we all were – it was with that much more enthusiasm we finally did obtain our visas and finally did arrive in Hyderabad on Feb. 27. Here’s how some of our seniors described their experiences in essays published in the school magazine in May 2001:
Hamida Louafi (Algerian): “On the first day my group was tossing bricks, carrying bowls of cement and leveling sand. The children of the village stared at us with shiny eyes. In the slums of Hyderabad I’ve seen little kids wearing huge smiles, but no shoes. Is it fair? It was a shock for me to be surrounded by little children pleading for money. And that stimulated me to work harder than hard and to be stronger than strong….”
Hamsa Abdul-Baki (Lebanese): “I met 6-year-old Kaliyani and 20-year-old Salomi, the lady whose house we were helping to build. But she helped build, too. Kaliyani was the most adorable young girl I’ve seen. She ran up to me with a huge smile and extended her hand. She didn’t speak English, but she had soon learned to say my name… Kaliyani and Salomi are two people I will never forget.”
About a century ago U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt said, “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” If we didn’t know he was right before, we know it now. And that’s why at ACS Abu Dhabi, service is a major focus of our curriculum and why Habitat for Humanity trips will remain a highlight of the senior year. Listen to senior Elias Parisca (Venezuela):
“In just a week in Hyderabad I learned much more than I can write in an essay. So many experiences and so many people will live in my heart forever. By having helped so many people and having experienced so much, it would be a shame not to return.”

It’s Personal

August 28, 1983 – Out of the mouths of babes....

Ask Derek to name the starting lineup for the Chicago Cubs and he’ll rattle it off as fast as Charlie Fox. Ask him who coaches the Iowa football team and he’ll matter-of-factly report that it’s Hayden Fry. Now you may not be amazed by this ability, since you may be able to do it, too. But it’s noteworthy in Derek’s case. He’s only three.
Derek, of course, is my nephew. My other nephews and nieces do neat things, too, but there’s no sense in using all that for just one column. But Derek, whose father, Blaine, is to blame for this indoctrination, does share this column with one of my nieces, another three-year-old, Michelle.
As you regular readers may recall, Michelle is a one-time Korean orphan who was adopted by my sister, Nancy, and her husband, Les, a few months ago. Michelle brought her new family up for a visit recently and amazed Mary and me with her knowledge of English, a language she had no exposure to before settling in Ottumwa late last spring.
“Michelle wants Kool-Aid,” she’d say. Or, “Mike, take off shirt. Too hot.” Or she’d place some dolls on our revolving coffee table and, as we had told her when she was riding the merry-go-round, she’d advise the dolls to “Hold on tight!” as she whirled the tabletop around. Three years old. It’s amazing. And Michelle has a sense of humor, too.
“Is daddy pretty or ugly?” her mom will ask, and Michelle will look at Les and say, “Michelle pretty. Daddy ugly.” And she’ll laugh and laugh.
That she is most discerning in her determination of what is ugly and what is pretty was demonstrated when she was exploring our bookshelves. Tucked into a corner on the bottom shelf Michelle found three pocketsize New Testaments. Two have black covers. The third is maroon. After carefully examining all three, Michelle held the two black ones in one hand and said, “Bibles pretty.” Then she picked up the maroon-covered copy and announced, “This Bible ugly.” And she put it back on the shelf.
Watching Derek and Michelle at only three gives me reason to believe there is much logic in an increasing number of studies that suggest children are capable of starting school at that age. For there is one vital lesson that three-year-olds haven’t learned yet—that they’re not supposed to enjoy learning. If we get them before they learn that, maybe they never will.

MY, MY, MY! Aren’t we sensitive…

Hayden Fry, who as Derek knows is the Hawkeye football coach, was recently slammed to the turf, figuratively, by a bunch of females at the University of Iowa who belong to an organization called the “Association of Professional and Faculty Women.”
The group wrote a scalding letter to the university president calling for the official censure of Fry as a result of a comment he made regarding whether college football players should be paid.
Fry, in illustrating his support for expense money for the players, drew upon his personal experience as a quarterback at Baylor from 1947-50. “We got $15 a month for laundry money back then. That wasn’t any big deal, but you could find a little dumplin’ to do the wash and then take her out to eat.”
That’s what did it. The Association of Professional and Faculty Women rose in mighty indignation at the telling of this piece of historical fact. In their letter to the president they wrote, “Mr. Fry should be censured for demeaning and offending remarks which perpetuate the secondary status of women.”
Well, being a much better sport about it than I might have been, Hayden issued an apology upon being informed of the complaint and, with great magnanimity, the organization accepted the apology and withdrew its demand for official censure.
One of the women did say, however, that the group hopes “this incident will raise Mr. Fry’s consciousness.” And I hope these professional and faculty women find more important tasks to pursue.
I wanted to find out if there are any men in the organization or if the organization discriminates on the basis of sex as its name so clearly implies, but the university switchboard has no phone number for the group. Nonetheless, I did attempt to call the organization’s president after obtaining her number from the office of the president, but was unable to reach her.
Clearly, if the organization’s consciousness were sufficiently high, it would call itself the “Association of Professional and Faculty Persons,” not the blatantly sexist, “Association of Professional and Faculty Women.” This female chauvinism must stop.

October 15, 1979 – Back when Mom was a paperboy

My mom was a paperboy. She delivered the Des Moines Register in the west end of Ottumwa, Iowa, every day after class at Ottumwa High. She’s told me how she used to carry her newspaper bag flung over her shoulder as she walked to school, picked-up her bundle of papers on a corner near the high school and then tossed them on to people’s front porches on the way home.
There was no such thing as girls athletics, of course, and not everyone could be a cheerleader. Besides, the newspaper money came in handy.
Mom did such a good job, in fact, that she won an airplane ride on a Piper Cub and a trip to St. Louis for a baseball game. That may not seem worth getting up at 5 a.m. for every day—including Sunday—but in the not too distant past life in America was measurably more difficult than it is today.
It used to be a relatively easy chore to recruit young people such as my mom to deliver the newspaper and to collect the subscription payments door-to-door. But it’s tough now.
Whether it’s a morning paper or an afternoon paper, many kids today are too busy to be bothered with the responsibility of a paper route. I never carried newspaper myself because I was too busy with after-school activities from sports to student council.
And the young people who do want or need to work usually are able to find jobs that pay more and are allowed more flexible hours.
And another reason that newspaper carriers are rapidly becoming an endangered species is that many youngsters don’t have to work at all. Their parents give them enough money—whether it’s called an allowance or something else—to take care of most of their desires.
You may not have noticed, but last Saturday was celebrated as International Newspapers Carrier Day. That’s the spark that ignited this look at a most unappreciated aspect of the newspaper business.
The long tradition of newspaper carriers has been as much a part of the business as movable type. While the nuances of modern life and technology have eroded the number of young people who are willing and able to carry newspapers, there are still some around who do an excellent job.
Not only do they earn money and develop a sense of responsibility, but they also provide the best method so far devised for getting today’s paper into your hands at your house.
In 1776 there were 29 weekly newspapers in America. A little more than 200 years later nearly 7,500 weeklies and about 1,800 daily papers serve this country. That translates to an enormous number of newspaper carriers.
Next time you have a chance, you may want to give an extra “Thank you” to the young person who delivers your newspapers.
We’d all have a lot more problems without the help of the newspaper carriers. My mom knows that.

May 16, 1980 -- Emerson line defines Mom

It has been an off and on subject over recent months as to why athletes, especially football players, who are caught in idle moments on the bench by a TV camera almost a always shout, “Hi, mom!” One of them letting loose with a “Hi, dad!” would be a greater upset than the Cubs winning a doubleheader.
While this debate has waxed hot and cold, no satisfactory explanation for the phenomenon has been discovered. But that’s probably because we have failed to heed the observation of Ralph Waldo Emerson, published in his Conduct of Life in 1860. He wrote, “Men are what their mothers made them.”
And so the puzzle is solved: those linebackers and quarterbacks, those second basemen and pitchers, the whole lot of them are merely intoning the Emersonian philosophy when they offer recognition to the person who made them what they are. I am so certain of this I would wager that if TV cameras were to catch a doctor in between surgeries or a construction worker in between lay-offs that we’d hear a muffled “Hi, mom!” from them, too. And today belongs to all those moms, and to mine, too.
My mom is tough. She grew up in the roughest part of Ottumwa and wasn’t stranger to the use of pugilistic persuasion. But then neither was anyone else who expected to survive in the west end. Her life at home wasn’t much, either. Her parents, to avoid unclear euphemisms, were drunks. But mom survived the difficulties that resulted long enough to eventually be taken in by her mother’s sister and her husband who lived in a more rural area of that same end of town.
But while her aunt and uncle were not given to drink, they weren’t given to much else but hard work. And so mom really did walk more than a mile to school most of the time and, after delivering the newspapers along her route one the way home, she’d usually be responsible for preparing supper and then doing the dishes afterward.
On weekends mom was charged with cleaning the house and performing various other chores. She didn’t have time to participate in Girl Scouts, the YWCA, student council or any similar involvement, all considered frivolous extravagances by her aunt and uncle. An austere life it was, but mom was tough.
Mom may not be pleased that I’m mentioning this, but the fact is she never finished high school. It wasn’t unusual for the kids of the west end in those days. Getting enough food to eat and making enough money to get by on were more important.
But even without a high school diploma, mom’s never had to take an intellectual back seat to anyone. Her formal schooling may have been limited, but her wisdom and common senses have never failed her.
As was common during the post-war period, mom married a returning soldier, a former Air force radio operator. She was only 16. A year-and-a-half after the wedding, which took place in Rock Island because Illinois law was less restrictive than Iowa law, her first child was borne. He has been the source of some pain and, I suppose, of some pride as well, if a mother can be proud of a son who ends up as a newspaperman.
Seven years later she gave birth to her fifth and final child. A girl. That made a pair of girls and three boys, including a set of twins, for whom she continues to constantly care. That’s one of the things about the job—once a mother, always a mother.
Mom had never spent much time in churches as she grew up, but she knew it was a place where her children, ought to be every Sunday morning, most Sunday nights and several Wednesday nights, too. And mom and dad didn’t just send us kids to church. They took us. That verse in the Bible about training kids up in the way that they should go so they will never depart from it, made a lot of sense to her.
And while she expected all of her children to help with the household chores, she led by example. Her house has always been the neatest and cleanest on the block, although never the most expensive, and her yard was always as neat as those on the magazine covers. It was common to come home from a sandlot ballgame and find mom in her cut-offs and T-shirt weeding the strawberries out back or hoeing the beans or staking the tomatoes or pulling some radishes. And her lawn-mowing prowess was nearly legendary.
Despite her rigid upbringing, mom always encouraged all of her children to get involved in all the activities they could.
Of course, her kids did have to walk to school. But it was only across the street.
Mom has trouble understanding some of today’s younger mothers who go off and leave their kids soon after they’re born to be cared for by strangers in some daycare center. But things are different now, her children tell her. She grudgingly agrees. Grudgingly, because while she concedes that many of today’s mothers are different, she’s not about to concede they’re better. That’s my mom, and she’s tough.
Why she’s so tough she’ll run over the catcher if it’s the only way to score a run. (She used to play softball for her employer, the Quaker Oats Company). And she’s so tough that she went on TV after city officials
Ignored her complaint. The thing was mom thought the Cedar Rapids Police Department was a disgrace for flying a dirty, tattered American Flag at its headquarters along a major highway. A few days after she complained, a bright new flag was flapping in the Cedar Rapids breeze.
And my mom is so tough that she sometimes cries at birthday parties. But only if she thinks nobody’s looking.
Happy Mother’s Day, mom. And you know what?
That Emerson was a pretty smart fella.

June 12, 1979 – Fatherhood is a bittersweet experience

Andrew Jackson, a general who became the seventh President of the United States, found that being a father often called for more skill than either of the other two responsibilities. After seven years in the White House, Jackson penned this letter to his 25-years-old son, Andrew Jr., whose spendthrift ways had placed him $5,000 in debt:
“I now address you with the fondness of a father’s heart. How careful then ought you to be to shun all bad company, or to engage in any dissipation whatever and particularly intoxication.
“The happiness of your charming little wife and sweet little ones depends on you upright course. This, my son, ought always to be before your eyes.
“Our real wants are but few, our imaginary wants many, which never ought to be gratified by creating a debt to supply them.”
Unfortunately for President Jackson, his son failed to respond to the advice his father offered in the letter. When the president died, he was $24,000 in debt solely on his son’s account.
Becoming a father is easy, but being a good father is almost always difficult and the attempt often discouraging.
But when a father sees his child take that first step, set off for that first, day of school, catch that first fish or hit that first home run; when a father sees his children understand the difference between right and wrong, when he sees his child display a sense of justice, a sense of fairness, that is a day to be marked.
Some may think it a naive views, an outmoded thought, but it seems to me that if more parents, if more fathers, were as interested in developing their child’s character as they are in developing the youngster’s mental and physical talents, the child, the parents, the family and society in general would be much better served.
Charles Dickens was aware of such concerns when he wrote this letter to the youngest of his seven sons on September 11, 1968. The 16-year-old was about to setout on a voyage to Australia:
“I write this note today because your going away is much upon my mind, and because I want you to have a few parting words from me to think of now and then at quiet times.
“I need not tell you that I love you dearly, and am very, very sorry in my hear to part with you. But this life is made up of partings, and these pains must be borne It is my comfort and skincare conviction that you are going to try the life for which you are best fitted.
“I exhort you to persevere in a thorough determination to do whatever you have to do as well as you can do it.
“Never take a mean advantage of anyone in any transaction, and never be hard upon people who are in your power.
“I hope you will always be able to say in after life that you had a kind father. You cannot show your affection for him so well, or make him so happy, as by doing your duty. Your affectionate father.”
The day before, the story goes, Dickens had complained loudly about the cost of outfitting the boy for the trip. “Why was I ever a father? Why was my father ever a father!” he is reported to have exclaimed.
Fatherhood, like most of life, is a bittersweet experience.

November 26, 1979 -- The ‘Golden Rule’ of Christmas

Enlightenment often comes at the least likely moment. And so it was with a typical lack of anticipation or intent that fellow Argus staffer Ken Golden, floating in a euphoric state brought on by bowling a near perfect game the night before (nine straight strikes and a final score of 278), that the answer came: It should be illegal to purchase Christmas presents or to prepare for Christmas in any public manner whatsoever prior to Dec.1.
That answer seems to match perfectly one of the nagging questions of modern days: What can we do to de-commercialize Christmas?
Golden’s breakthrough, unexpected as it was, inspired me to take his proposal to my old friend, Professor Haffa Goodtime, commonly regarded as the leading mind in the world on holidays and celebrations.
That’s what makes the public in this country one of the world’s best informed - the fact that we have so many “experts” who we can call upon whenever we’re faced with a problem.
And so it was that I spoke yesterday with Professor Goodtime in his office at the Sleight International Institute of Sociology and Celebrations located in its picturesque setting near the I-74 overpass in Bettendorf, noted worldwide as “Iowa’s most exciting city.”
There, surrounded by melted Hanukkah candles, spent fireworks from Guy Fawkes Day, Christmas cards so old that they’d been mailed with two-cent stamps, several species of artificial Christmas trees and other holidays paraphernalia, towered Professor Goodtime.
“I am overwhelmed by the implications of your friend Golden’s Christmas proposal. That is, of course, one of the most confusing, controversial conundrums those of my ilk are obligated to confront.” he said.
“I thought so,” I said.
“You have come to the right professor. As you know, the solution to many complex problems often turns out to be relatively simple. That’s why they’re so difficult to solve. I should have known that the mind of a journalist would be the most likely to see the simple ness in the whole dilemma.”
“Of course,” I said.
“I think the theory will work, but we do have to devise a working model of the idea in all its ramifications.”
“I see,” said I.
“For example, if we were to make the buying of Christmas gifts and the whole of public preparation for Christmas illegal prior to Dec.1, we would have to determine how the shops could be certain that nothing purchased before that date was eventually destined to find itself hidden in bright wrapping and set under a Christmas tree somewhere.
And then there’s the problem of preventing shopping centers from hoisting their tinsel and colored lights too early.
“Why, the Village Shopping Center on Kimberly, across the border in Davenport, has had its candy cane decorations up for days already,” the professor lamented. “What’s to be done about that?”
“That’s a tough one, all right,” I admitted.
“And then there’s the radio DJ’s the professor said, becoming noticeably flushed. “Those rascals always start playing Christmas carols before I’ve even picked out my Thanks giving turkey. Now there’s a real toughie.”
By this time I was rapidly losing my enthusiasm for the project. And so, it seemed, was the professor. After staring blankly at a row of Halloween masks for what must have been at least 15 or 20 seconds, but which seemed even longer, the professor slowly ambled toward the door. He motioned for me to follow, so I did.
“My friend, I appreciate your dropping by and I still think your friend’s idea is meritorious, but I need much more time to tear it down into its fundamental aspects - time to shake out the subtleties.”
“I understand,” I said.
“But tell your friend I think his plan will work. Tell him I think that Christmas by the “Golden Rule” may yet be this answer we’ve been looking for all these years.”

May 29, 1983 -- It would be nice to go back

About midway through the summer of 1971 at Camp Lenox, I was directed to escort my eight campers on a two-day trip that would take us from west-central Massachusetts to the campus of Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. There we visited the computer center where a boy of 10 showed us how he’d programmed a computer to play football with him. We were all amazed by the performance of both the young man and his computer opponent.
Then it was on to Burlington, Vt., where we took the ferry across Lake Champlain into New York State. There we stopped to tour Ausable Chasm, a miniature Grand Canyon.
We spent the night at a motel near the lake and headed on down I-87 in eastern New York the next day to an amusement park at Lake George and then it was back to camp.
Being given charge of eight 12- and 13-year-old boys and a station wagon for a two-day trip of several hundred miles had me a little worried at first, but it turned out to be a great experience.
There were several other special events during the summer to add variety to the daily routine at Camp Lenox. Three other counselors and I took our campers to the famous Tanglewood Music Festival one day, for example. Among the acts we saw there was Doug Kershaw who, in 1971, was America’s only electric fiddle player.
And Johnny Green, a counselor from Tennessee, went wild when Kershaw started stompin’ around the stage while his electric fiddle literally sparked as he wailed “Louisiana Man.” I can see it now....
Then there were the numerous baseball and basketball games against other camps in the area. Several teams represented Camp Lenox according to age levels. I coached a basketball team and a baseball team made up of 12 - and 13-year-olds, several of my own campers played on those teams.
The schedule was similar to a school schedule in that we played two or three games a week and took a bus to games at other camps.
Near the end of the camp season, a couple of other counselors and I hit the road again with our young charges, escorting them to one of Massachusetts’ largest amusement parks in Springfield. My campers even talked me into riding the roller coaster, not my favorite ride. I’m more of the Ferris wheel type.
One of the funniest special activities was the exchange between our boys at Camp Lenox and the campers at girls camps in the area. Twice during the summer we had the girls over to Camp Lenox for a dance and once we took our guys to a girls camp for a dance. One all three occasions, with only a few exceptions – my cute little Paul Marks being one – the girls sat shyly and one side of the auditorium while the boys fidgeted nervously on the other side. This would go on for hours while the music played and a few brave souls would actually go out on the floor and dance.
All too quickly, those eight weeks in the heart of the summer of 1971 came down to the 1st day. The Camp Lenox yearbook was distributed, autographs were secured, good-byes were said and even a few tears were shed. You get to be pretty close to a lot of kids, especially the eight in your own bunk, during such a summer.
I remember trading my Iowa baseball numeral jacket to a counselor from Cornwall, England, for his track jersey from the 1970 British Commonwealth Games. I still have the jersey.
I remember the nights I sneaked back into camp around 11 p.m. bearing “fribbles” -- special milkshakes -- for all eight boys. It was against the camp rules, but....
And I’ll never forget how David Goldman, one of my 13-year-old campers, from the first time I introduced myself to him, called me “the Kraut.” And every once-in-a-while he’d pretend to be afraid to take a shower in the barracks-like arrangement: “You say we’re going to take a shower, but we know what you really mean, Kraut.” And he’d laugh, grab his towel and dash into the building before I could grab him.
Finally, after a solemn final evening in which all of us -- campers and counselors alike had placed a blue and orange rock bearing our name into the camp’s memorial yard, after the final good-byes had been said and those Caddies and Lincolns had reappeared to whisk the campers back to their homes, it was time for us counselors to leave, too.
I headed back to Iowa City to begin my senior year at the university and hoped to return to Camp Lenox the next summer, but I never did.
Most of my campers and some of the other boys and some counselors kept in touch by mail for as long as a couple of years, but I don’t hear from any of them anymore.
Instead of accepting an offer to return to Camp Lenox in the Berkshires in 1972, I took an offer to be athletic director at Camp Ocala, a co-ed Jewish summer camp in the Ocala National Forest in Florida.
I met a lot of great people there, including counselors from England and Australia. I saw the ocean and the southeast for the first time, yet the experience couldn’t match Camp Lenox.
But those two summers are uniquely filled with people, places and events—far more than can be recounted here—that I will never forget.

March 22, 1980 -- A subtle culprit tightens its grip

Remember how your life was back in the period from 1960 to 1965? For me, that period marked the end of grade school, the completion of junior high and the beginning of my days at Ottumwa High School. And it marked some other key changes in our family.
The seven of use lived in a modest frame home on McKinley Street, directly across the road from Wildwood Grade School. Helping to occupy the house with me, the oldest child, were - in addition to our parents - my sister Nancy, my twin brothers Blaine and Wayne and the youngest, my sister Carol.
Dad had come back from overseas duty in the Air Force after the war and had worked at the John Deere plant in Ottumwa for a while before he moved over to the city’s largest employer, the John Morrell & Co. meat packing plant. He was to continue there until the plant shut down in 1973.
Mom, she never worked outside the home all the time we were growing up. She and Dad had grown up in what can fairly be called the poorer section of Ottumwa.
She tells me stories even now about how she used to deliver papers in the neighborhood, the only female “paperboy” in town then. She was so good at it she beat all those boys who worked the fancier parts of town to earn a plane trip to Chicago.
Well, as a mother she figured her job was to take care of her house and her kids and it was her husband’s job to go to work and earn an income. Lots of people had it figured that way in those days.
Even with the seven of us, though, we ate as well as most folks, we dressed better than many and were a solid, middle class family without any significant problems in making ends meet.
By 1965, though, things started to change a little. Mom decided we could use the extra money she could earn if she got a job, and she figured we were all old enough to get along without her being home all the time. She started working in a local electronics firm in 1965, her first full-time job outside the home. She and Dad are both still working today.
These things occurred to me recently while reading such facts as these: Due to the run-away cost of living more and more wives and mothers are being forced to join the work force simply to maintain average standards of living. The circumstances of this are often desperate and sad. Almost 30 percent of married women with infants less than one year old held jobs last year, the Census Bureau says.
My sister Nancy has two boys, one in kindergarten and one in first grade. She has so far avoided being forced to take a job. Her husband helps run a family owned construction firm. She’s thinking about looking for a job soon, she says.
My other sister, Carol, has a daughter in first grade. Carol has reluctantly worked part-time for a couple of years. Her husband is personnel director for non-salaried employees at the Ottumwa John Deere Works.
The wives of both my brothers work, although neither family has any children yet. That will change for one of them in mid-December, though.
The bureau cites other significant changes in family formation. Young married couples – I’ll include Mary and me in that group – are waiting longer now, on the average three years longer, to have their first child than couples of the 1960s did. In fact, 11 percent of working women in the childbearing years, many with college educations, expect to remain childless because of career and economic pressures.
The grim reality of those pressures include these all too familiar facts: The dollar today buys less than half what it did in 1970. And although the median family income has risen 105 percent during the decade, Social Security deductions and federal income taxes alone rose much faster,
increasing from $1,338 in 1970 to $3,251 this year. Real, after-tax income is five percent less now than it was 10 years ago.
For the second year in a row, the inflation rate hovers around 13 percent. To help demonstrate how devastating this is, let me remind you that for almost 20 years after World War II, until about 1965, the annual inflation rate averaged 2.5 percent.
What’s gone wrong?
As voters have apparently realized at this late date, the soaring price of government is public enemy No.1.
Even David Rockefeller, never known as an inflation fighter, is sounding the alarm. Just last week the chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank pointed out that the liberal assertion, which places the blame for inflation on the “profiteering capitalists and greedy workers”, is patently false. “Overspending by government has created nightmarish deficits for 19 of the past 20 years, with a total deficit exceeding $400 billion which debases the currency and generates most of the inflation,” Rockefeller said.
And it has put America’s wives and mothers to work outside the home in ever-increasing numbers. Inflation, you see, debases much more than just the American dollar.
Ask my Mom, my sister, my sister-in-law. Or ask their children.

June 27, 1981 -- It can be a real shocker

They say you can’t go home again. Last weekend I tried. You know what? They’re right.
Oh, Mary and I were in Ottumwa, all right. But I wasn’t home. I wasn’t home when we drove by the house I cam back to each summer during my undergraduate years at the University of Iowa. I wasn’t home when we pulled up along the curb a few blocks further west along Chester Avenue to examine the houses I had lived in at 1215 and 1220 during my junior high and high school years, respectively.
There were plenty of memories there: the birthday parties, the baseball games, the lawn mowing, the homework, the friends who came over, the little household chores, all the routine, everyday things we all do.
But it was several blocks from there, deeper into the heart of the south side, past the spot where Shorty’s Grocery used to be, past the places where friends and classmates used to live, past the creek submerged in heavy woods, that the house I remembered as “home” is located.
It is there, at 413 McKinley, that my oldest memories live. I wasn’t born there and I don’t know exactly how old I was when we moved in, but I must’ve been about three or four. Unlike my parents and so many others, I didn’t have to walk miles to school in raging snowstorms. From our front door to Wildwood Elementary was a trek of about 50 yards.
There in the school yard, the portion that has managed to evade the blacktopped hand of those who would tear down paradise to put up a parking lot, trees now grow abundantly all over the place where I had spent nearly every recess and noon hour for most of my elementary days playing “work-up” softball.
Behind the school was what Ottumwans had always referred to as “the Legion Field.” It was not one of the finest sandlot ballparks in America, but I had spent 10 years there – five as the batboy for the American Legion baseball team and, after a one-year absence, five more as a player.
For a couple of those years I was also employed as the groundskeeper and came to know the area extremely well as I collected paper cups and bubble gum wrappers, as I constantly battled to keep grass from growing wildly in the all-dirt infield, as I raked the mud over and over again to help the wind dry-out a field drenched by a late-night thunderstorm.
But when I wandered over there behind Wildwood last weekend I knew it wouldn’t be the same. It wasn’t.
The same old backstop was there, but the playing field had been redesigned to accommodate Ottumwa High School girls’ softball. The infield was now covered with a finely crushed gravel. Not much raking to do when it rains now.
The girls team was taking batting practice, but I didn’t see them. I saw the monumental battles we used to have with the Moline Legion, Cedar Rapids, Hastings, Neb., Galesburg, Art Gaines Baseball School of Hunnewell, Mo., Burlington....
Without doubt the most starting the most unbelievable change in the old neighborhood greeted me when Mary and I slowly walked back across the schoolyard and stood on the sidewalk in front of 413 McKinley - the sidewalk where I had skinned my knees learning to ride a bicycle and trying to roller skate.
There is the corner of the front yard, next to where the driveway used to be, our sycamore tree towered 40 or 50 feet into the air. Its branches now stretched almost all the way to the house. But when I was growing up there from about 1955 to 1963, it was less than half that size. I pointed out to Mary the particular branch much larger now, that my brother Blaine had once fallen from, resulting in a concussion.
The yard, almost a football field long and nearly 50 yards wide, had been my parents pride. Mom, especially, took great pride in keeping the lawn immaculate, the flowers well cared-for, the trees and shrubs properly trimmed.
But last weekend the lawn was a shambles. It hadn’t been mowed for weeks, perhaps months. There were no flowers. The five-foot decorative evergreen trees that had guarded the front corners of the house had been untouched for years and now towered grotesquely far above the roof of the single-story dwelling.
The sinister look of the lot was the antithesis of the way it had been when I had grown-up there. The toll the years had taken on that house and the once beautiful yard that surrounded it was further dramatized by the fact that the houses and yards of our immediate neighbors remained almost exactly as I’ had remember them.
The back porch that dad had built, after adding several rooms onto the original structure, had suffered the most. It appeared to have been ripped by fire or by someone who hated back porches. Much of it was lying in ruin.
I was afraid to get much closer than the sidewalk, fearing what I might find if I looked into the windows of the now vacant structure. Instead of the shimmering walls of knotty pine, the polished the floors - wall-to-wall carpeting wasn’t so common then - instead of the spic-and-span kitchen, who knows what horrors I might have seen? No matter what may have lurked there, however, nothing could erase the memories of home. Buildings may fall down, lots may go to seed, but our memories live on. And my memories of home will continue to be as wonderful as ever.
Mary and I get back to Ottumwa often, but since my sisters live on the north side, I hadn’t ventured south for all these years. Not, that is, until last weekend when I finally decided to go home again. But you know, it’s like they say...
Editor’s note: Mike Kielkopf, editorial page editor and columnist for the Rock Island (III.) Argus is a 1968 Ottumwa High School graduate and former sports writer for the Courier.

January 6, 1981 – Organ arrives, and so does new nephew

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been much of one to go in for making New Year’s resolutions. In the spirit of that tradition, I have made none for 1981. There are some things that are different around our house in this young year, however.
For one, there’s music – or at least attempts at it – in the air. Yes, we finally broke down under a masterful sales sonata from the young men who sell the Kimball pianos and organs over at the Acme outlet in Davenport’s Northpark Mall. About a week ago we became the proud new owners of a Kimball “Caravan” organ. And it’ll be ours outright in February 1985.
Between now and then, however, Mary and I – and the intelligent Kimball itself – will be honing our skills at the keyboard.
Last night we ate supper then headed straight for the den where our orchestral flute, trumpet, clarinet, violin, piano, Bangor, guitar, harpsichord, Hawaiian guitar and flute were imprisoned in the organ, waiting for us to come and set them musically free.
Well, we tried.
And thanks to the many automatic features of the organ, we didn’t do so bad for a guy whose six years as a cornet player ended in the ‘60s and for a gal who refused to play “On Top of Smokey” for her six month guitar recital many years ago.
From the University of Michigan fight song to the theme from “Love Story,” Mary and I took turns playing the chords and the melody. The three of us—including the organ—make one pretty good beginning player.
We had thought about possibly buying such an organ several times in the last year or two, but had never seriously considered it until recently. Now that we’ve acquired the thing, we’re glad we didn’t keep putting it off.
Of course, Fred Silverman and the other honchos of the television networks aren’t too happy about it. The time we’ve been spending with the organ - as much as two and three hours a session – has most often been deducted from the time spent writhing in front of useless TV offerings. But no more.
When I need a break from the organ, I’m heading for James Michener’s best-selling historical novel about South Africa, The Covenant. It’s something like 950 pages. Mary gave me the book for my birthday recently and so far I’m not quite up to page 100. But it’s an engrossing work, as most of Michener’s stuff is, and especially so to us since we spent 1976 living in Johannesburg and traveling throughout the portions of southern African which provide the backdrop.
With Mary nearing the end of work on her master’s while she continues teaching full-time, the TV in our house will be lighted only for sports, good movies, “M*A*S*H,” “60 Minutes” and a few other special presentations of merit.
From what I hear, a lot of folks are starting to do things that keep them away from the TV. Watching the thing is just a bad habit anyway, kind of like smoking. It can be tough during withdrawal, but once you’ve made the break you’ll be a lot healthier for it. And you might even read a good book or learn to play the organ a little.

*

IF YOU READ my last column before I took my two weeks hiatus over the holidays, you may recall that we were anxiously awaiting the some what delayed arrival of a new niece or nephew. I had offered the view that the youngster might be waiting so as to arrive on Christmas.
Alas, he was not.
Derek Blaine Kielkopf, son of Blaine and Nancy Kielkopf of Cedar Rapids, debuted in this world at precisely 11:07 on the morning of Dec.18. He stretched to 21 inches in length and hit the scales at 7 lbs., 11 ounces. I would hasten to point out here, however, that the rumor that Derek arrived wearing a Cub cap, an Iowa Hawkeye football jersey and sneakers autographed by the Iowa basketball team are entirely incorrect.
He was several hours old before he got into that outfit.
The child is Nancy and Blaine’s first, but we took the whole thing in stride. After all, the kid’s our third nephew to go along with a niece who, by the way, was a bit disappointed that the count failed to even at two apiece. But Amy, who’s about to turn eight, did come around enough to tell Mary that she thinks even though Derek is a boy, “He makes a wonderful baby, anyway.”
One of the biggest difficulties in having a child, of course, is what it shall be called. After excluding such nominations from Blaine as “Hayden Fry Kielkopf,” “Lute Olson Kielkopf,” “Walter Payton Kielkopf,” and others along those line Nancy came up with the much more sensible name of Derek Blaine.
And where did she get the name “Derek” we wondered. “From a character on my favorite soap opera,” she said. Thank goodness “Dallas” isn’t her favorite. “J.R. Kielkopf” would be tough getting used to.

June 8, 1983 – It’s a moving experience

It there’s anything more tiring than moving, I don’t want to know anything about it.
Mary and I decided to put our house on the market just after the first of the year. Within a few weeks it was “sold” and on Feb. 14 we made an offer on the house we wanted to buy. We finally moved out and moved in over the Memorial Day weekend.
It took 3½ months to get all the paper work and other details of the transaction worked out. We closed both deals in less than two hours and moved out in one long day. And it’ll be weeks if not months before we finally get everything unboxed, sorted and organized so that when we want a spoon or a tie or a towel we’ll know exactly where such an item is without having to delve through a dozen boxes in several rooms first.
We tried hard to be patient while waiting for final word that the deals were going to go through, but it’s hard to have such things constantly hanging over your head. We started packing and boxing things up back in late February because we didn’t ant to wait until the last minute. That was good, but having to crawl over a basement full of boxes stashed with trays of slides. Souvenirs, work clothes tools pictures clippings books magazines, sports equipments and sundry other items wasn’t.
When we finally did move over the long Memorial Day weekend, it marked the seventh time we’ve moved in the eight years we’ve been married. We might move again – but not for at least 50 years, we hope.
You’ve probably noticed that every time you move you always seem to have accumulated more stuff than you thought you had and, if you’re like us, even though you have a feeling you should just throw most of it away, you also have a feeling that as on as you do you’ll be sorry, and so you keep it. But then you never need it. At least you’ve got it if you ever do need it, though....
Not only do we have all the unpacking and sorting and organizing to do, but we also have all those little repairs to make that we didn’t notice and that everyone forgot to point out to us. Like the windows have the screens and the storms in backwards. And the sliding door on the patio has a screen that was ripped by the previous owner’s dog. And there’s some woodwork around that door that will have to be replaced because the dog scratched it so viciously.
Besides those repairs and others we have to buy new shades and drapes for the den and the bedrooms. (At least we’ve already got our Hawkeye wallpaper up in the den, thanks to the experienced hands of my Mom and Dad, experienced movers in their own right. And my brothers and a sister-in-law helped get the moving chore accomplished, too, but didn’t hang around for the wallpapering job.)
If you’ve ever had to buy drapes or curtains you can probably sympathize. One day we want one thing and the next day we want something else so, after 10 days, we still have two naked windows.
We were planning to have a garden this summer, but now we’re pretty much resigned to simply getting the house organized. The garden will have to wait until next year.
Thank goodness I have a week’s vacation that starts Monday. Maybe then I can put the green carpet on the patio, build some bookshelves, hang the drapes, organize the rec room and the garage and a few other things. Oh, and Mary will have plenty to keep her busy, too.
Picture need hung – not to mention the drapes -- closets need organized and the kitchen utensils need to find homes, among dozens of other chores.
We love our new house. We just don’t like moving in.

February 6, 1980 – Stop sign saga of 5-year-old nephew

The two cars arrived at their respective stop signs simultaneously. My sister waited for the other driver to pull away while the other driver waited for my sister.
Finally, since my sister decided the other driver wasn’t going to go first, she started to pull away. At precisely the same moment, the other driver had reached a similar conclusion and had also decided to break the stop sign stalemate.
Of course, when my sister saw the other car coming, she again stopped.
By this time she had rolled away from the intersection and was sitting nervously several feet into the roadway.
The other driver waved for her to keep going and she did. But only for a couple of feet.
She saw a motorcycle coming along the street so she stopped again to permit the cyclist to continue on the front of her.
The rider, however, decided it would be safer to pass behind her car. He was wrong. As he attempted to swerve from in front to behind he miscalculated -- only slightly -- but enough that he grazed my sister’s car and unexpectedly disembarked from his vehicle.
No one was hurt. Not even the motorcycle. But the Police were called. My five-year-old nephew, Mark was accompanying his mother on this particular ill-fated trip and held his own in the chaos. He did, that is, until the screaming sirens and flashing red lights with the policemen inside arrived at the scene.
I’m told the young man turned quite pale, his eyes grew large and then, as on officer approached his mother’s car Mark said “Don’t worry, Nancy, I won’t let him put you in jail.”
My sister, who Mark offer calls by her first name, managed to hold back her laughter, thanked Mark for his concern and suggested that the policemen really didn’t want to put her in jail anyway.
That didn’t completely quell Mark’s apprehension, however. He held tight to his mom throughout the ordeal, casting frequent skeptical glances at the policemen.
Finally, it was all over.
The police left, the motorcycle man rode off into the Ottumwa sunset, the other car finally proceeded on its way and Mark and his mom prepared to leave the troublesome stop sign behind.
As she stepped on the gas and pointed the car toward home, Mark’s mom said “I don’t know if I should tell your dad about this or not. He’ll kill me!”
“He’d better not!” Mark growled.
And Nancy had to laugh that time.

*

I WANTED to close on a short note, and thanks to this Associated Press story from a few days ago, I will:
“Lana Jo was Little until this morning when she became a Midgett.
“In a short ceremony at the Williamson County Courthouse in Marion, III., Lana Jo Little, 24, became the bride of Larry D. Midgett, also 24.”
What’s in a name? To Lana Jo, the answer used to be a Little, but there’s not even that much anymore.

March 11, 1980 – Breaking the news

Maybe Erma Bombeck would know how to break the news to you more cleverly. But since cleverness has escaped me again today, I have decided to settle for telling you the way Mary told me.
“Well, we’re going to have a baby.”
“That’s real funny,” I said.
“Now what did the doctor really say?”
“That we’re going to have a baby,” Mary said. “I’m not kidding. It’s due Aug. 26th.”
After recovering from the initial shock, the first thing I did was figure out when the fateful day had been. As it turned out, Nov.19 is to be remembered for more than simply being the day Iowa trounced Minnesota 61-10.
As most of you know, Mary and I have debated and analyzed and researched the pros and cons of having and not having children for a long, long time. Some of you have even called or written with various comments, advice and suggestions. Your interest has been appreciated. But will you be there when we need a baby sitter?
After all the research and advice, I was kind of leaning toward the not-having-children side of the argument, but apparently not far enough.
With Mary’s wardrobe now featuring what I sentimentally refer so as “fat woman’s clothes”—she’s gained five pounds already—it’s getting pretty hard to ignore the situation.
Fortunately, with my two brothers and two sisters already having had children, we’ll be able to borrow much of what we need for this newcomer. I’ve told them that was part of our master plan.
Lots of people have asked us if we want a boy or a girl. My answer is always a firm, “Yes.”
Since the news came, we’ve been studying this whole process and have learned some interesting things that modern research has discovered. For instance, researchers believe that while babies are developing in the womb they:
• Smile and frown
• Make noises
• Kick to signal displeasure
• Can recognize their mother’s voice
• React differently to Mozart and rock ‘n’ roll
• Exercise regularly.
All this makes me believe that kids get dumber after they’re born instead of smarter. Otherwise, how can we account for kid’s preference for rock ‘n’ roll over Mozart, resistance to regular exercise and their failure to recognize their mother’s voice, especially when she says things like, “Be home by 10 o’clock,” “Take out the garbage,” “Hang up your coat,” “Eat those vegetables,” “What kind of report card is this?”
To try to hedge against this apparent natural tendency toward growing dumber, we’ve begun playing tapes of Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, Knute Rockne and other greats to the baby. We’ve been playing the best from the great American musicals and from the Chicago Symphony, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the University of Iowa Marching Band.
Shakespeare and the Bible are next. If the kid isn’t a merit scholar by the time he or she is born, don’t blame the parents.

August 31, 1983 – Face it: Living is a risky business

Both of my brothers, Blaine and Wayne -- yes, they’re twins -- played high school football at Ottumwa. So did I. Wayne and I played a little in college, too, and I managed to get in two years in a professional minor league. Blaine would have played in college, too, but a high school injury prevented that.
All three of us had been banged-up at various times during our football careers that began with flag football at the YMCA and advanced into contact starting in junior high. Among the three of us the injuries included a severely broken elbow (Wayne), a badly bruised ankle (Blaine), a pinched nerve in the shoulder (me), a severely sprained ankle (all three of us), and various knee injuries (all three of us). That’s most of the major stuff.
Of course, there were also the routine cuts and bruises and pulled muscles and sprained fingers and scraped elbows and the like, but almost nobody goes into football without knowing that minor injuries are certain and that major injuries are possible.
I mention all this after reading a recent column by the Des Moines Register’s Patrick Lackey, a talented and sensitive writer. Lackey wrote that he used to be a football fan, but that after a jogging buddy of his had to give up running because of an old football injury, and after an Iowa City youngster nearly lost a leg because of an injury suffered in a football scrimmage at West High that has left with him a lot of surgical scars and a big knee brace, the Des Moines columnist says his “former fondness for football has not returned.”
Well, I don’t blame him for feeling that way. But I wonder if he’s ever had any friends or relatives injured by falling off ladders, or slipping in the bathtub, or while riding in a car or on a motorcycle? And if he has, I wonder if he also advocates giving up those things He has suggested that people forsake football and take up soccer.
I offer no such advice. And neither do Blaine or Wayne. Oh, yes, let me tell you more about that injury Blaine suffered which prevented him from playing college football.
He couldn’t play in college, you see, because his left leg was amputated just below the knee after he was injured in the first scrimmage of his senior season back in 1971.
I was there and saw the play.
Blaine, who had been starting defensive back as a junior, was being groomed to play both ways as a senior. On offense he was playing wingback in Ottumwa’s T-formation. They had called Blaine’s favorite play, a wingback reverse up the middle couple of times already and they called it one more time.
He lined up outside right tackle and at the snap, he sprinted along the line of scrimmage, took and inside handoff and slid to the outside since there was no hole up the middle. After a six or seven yard gain, he was hit low and flipped into the air with his back parallel to the turf and his legs outstretched. At that precise moment—in what had to be a one-in-a-million chance—another defender dived into Blaine in midair. The tackler crashed into his outstretched right leg in such a way that, as we found later, he had severely dislocated the two large bones (tibia and fibula) that meet to form the knee joint. The dislocation severed the major blood vessels in the area and prevented the blood from nourishing the leg blow the knee. That, along with medical errors, combined to let Blaine’s lower leg die and force the eventual amputation.
For more than 10 years now Blaine, 30, has been wearing an artificial leg.
But you know something? Not once has Blaine ever said he wished he’d played soccer or been a member of the band or been scooping the loop instead of playing football. In fact, he’d play right now if that were possible with an artificial leg. He’s still got one of the best pairs of hands I’ve ever seen on any receiver. I know that because we play a lot of catch with the football whenever we get together. And he jogs pass patterns on that artificial leg.
The whole thing is certainly tragic in the sense that he has lost the leg, has had numerous problems since and will continue to have problems with it the rest of his life. But does that mean football ought to be banned or that sensible people should play soccer instead?
I don’t think so. Wayne doesn’t think so. And neither does Blaine.
Anybody who does anything and gets hurt doing it regrets the injury, but that hardly means the activity ought to be abandoned, whether it’s football, woodworking or walking across the street.
Life is a risk. We all take risks of one kind or another. Those who figure football is too risky for them are not required to play. It’s all volunteer.
Football is a unique game and ought to continue to be available to the athletes of the United States who enjoy playing it and who are willing to accept the risks.
Unfortunately, society is lawsuit crazy these days.
The most recent example of how this affects football comes from Seattle where the school district recently lost -- now take a deep breath -- a $6.4 million lawsuit brought by a football player who suffered a crippling spinal injury. The school lost big, in part, because it hadn’t warned the player of the possibility of injury.
Now that, folks, is plumb crazy!
As I said earlier, nobody goes into football without knowing they can get hurt, and hurt seriously, unless they’ve come from Mars.
Next time I fall off a ladder—I do that at irregular intervals—I’m going to sue the guy at the lumberyard who sold it to me because he never even hinted that I could fall off the thing and could do myself serious bodily injury. And how could I possibly be expected to know if he didn’t tell me?
If I could get the same jury that kid got in Seattle I’d be better off than if I’d won the Lotto grand prize.
Maybe it’s just that people are a lot smarter now than they were in 1971, but we never thought of suing the Ottumwa Community School District because it hadn’t told the football players they could get seriously injured – even lose a leg – if they played the game.
Or maybe that Seattle jury was just made up of people who had fallen off too many ladders and landed on their heads.

May 12, 1981 – Opening Day in Ottumwa sign of hope

Ottumwa may be dying on the vine, but to 25,000 people or so, it’s still home. When I was growing up there, the population threatened 40,000, but that was before the John Morrell & Co. meat packing plant finally moved out after more than 100 years in the city. That was back in 1973 and the departures from the southeast Iowa community on the Des Moines River haven’t stopped since.
But among the 25,000 who remain are my two sisters, their husbands, two of my nephews and a niece (and a cat and a dog).
And so it was that last weekend my parents, my twin brothers and their wives left from Cedar Rapids (lots of former Ottumwa’s in the neck of the woods now, you know) and joined Mary and I in Ottumwa to witness opening day festivities.
You may think they had opening day in Cincinnati more than a month ago, but it’s not so. Otherwise, why would all of us have gone all that way to Ottumwa?
Anyway, it was opening day but when we got to the ballpark the wind was blowing out of the north at about 30 mph, the skies were of the gray overcast which would have nudged Grantland Rice into literary metaphor and the temperature would’ve made the Toronto Maple Leafs feel right at home.
A few hardy fans snuggled under parkas and blankets in the bleachers along the first base line while others pulled their cars up to the backstop, willing to risk a broken windshield from foul ball rather than death by freezing. And some of us just stood around, wondering whatever happened to May.
The attraction, in general, which brought all this misery to so many, was the opening of the city’s Midwest Little League baseball season and, in particular, the first organized game for my nephew, Brent Grooms. And eight-year-old member of the “Pee-wee” league, Brent played shortstop and helped his team to a stunning 22-1 thumping of, I believe it was, the Tigers.
Brent’s team, coached by his father, Les, who had been a teammate of mine when we played in Ottumwa’s Little League program, and managed by a fella who was my running mate my junior year in the Ottumwa High Football backfield, was forced to play the game in jeans and sweatshirts. Their uniforms had arrived in time, but they were all adult sizes. The re-order is due in shortly.
They have a gravel infield on several diamonds in Ottumwa. The theory is that it will eliminate most rainouts. I guess it’s OK, but it’s a little odd at first. It didn’t seem to affect the outcome of last weekend’s opener, though.
My other nephew, Mark Grooms, will not be old enough to play until next summer, so at the suggestion of his mother the team took him on as the batboy. He admits he has a ways to yet before he’s in mid-season form. But as he pointed out, “It was just my first time.”
Yesterday, niece Amy Jo Cash, at the age of eight, made her debut in Ottumwa’s girls softball league. Before the season started Amy said if she ever missed a ball, either at bat or in the field, she wouldn’t play anymore. Fortunately, she has come to realize that nobody, not even Dave Winfield, can expect to reach that level of proficiency.
Amy’s mom and dad have gotten caught up in baseball fever and have volunteered to act as official scorers for the team. Of course, I’m not sure how far you can trust Cardinal fans, but it looks like they may work out.
While the big leaguers continue to threaten a strike, hundreds of thousands of boys and girls like Brent and Mark and Amy have opened their seasons, or will soon, and are ready to grab those line drives and slam those base hits all summer long. Even a beleaguered city like Ottumwa, even on a day more suited for ice fishing than baseball, comes alive when its young people gather at the diamonds, the friends and parents and relatives fill the stands and the umpire cries, “Play ball!”

August 1, 1982 – Some final thoughts of Washington

It’s been almost exactly a month now since Mary and I visited Washington. For Mary, it was a return trip. For me, it was the first time. We both hope to return often.
But before closing this series of recollections, it seems necessary to note a few remaining thoughts and to mention a few other experiences.
Our first stop on our first day of sightseeing was Arlington National Cemetery. If you stand at the Lincoln Memorial, you can see the cemetery and the Lee-Custis Mansion – the home of Robert E. Lee and his wife until it was confiscated by the federal government and the surrounding grounds turned into a national cemetery when the Civil War erupted. And you can see some of the hundreds of thousands of white crosses that mark the graves of the famous and the unknown who died for freedom. It is a humbling sight. An uneasiness settles on even the most boisterous tourist when the tram must change course to avoid disrupting a funeral service in progress.
The older portions of Arlington are dotted with headstones of various sizes and styles. But many years ago the military officials revised the cemetery rules so that anyone buried at Arlington, regardless of rank, would have a plain white cross as a marker. The officials said the change was more in keeping with military tradition. It was wise decision. In addition, the military cemetery is organized so that the markers form straight lines no matter from what direction they are viewed, again a reflection of military procedures. The simplicity is powerful.
Another powerfully impressive sight at Arlington is the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns. The tomb, which overlooks the Potomac toward the Capitol, is guarded every day of the year, every hour of the day and night, regardless of the weather. For 30 minutes at a time, a Marine in full dress uniform and shouldering a rifle marches back and forth near the tomb. He stands so straight and moves so precisely that he must wear a back brace in order to prevent injury.
And when the 30-minute assignment is over, an officer marches in with a replacement. But before the new guard is given permission to take up his post, the officer conducts a white-glove test of the new guard’s rifle and give a visual examination of his uniform that is so meticulous and so exacting that the scores of tourists who moments ago were casually wandering all over the area stand transfixed, nearly afraid to risk even a breath for fear of disrupting the ceremony.
Finally, the officer salutes the new guard, he clicks his heels snappily, returns the salute and marches to take his post while the previous guard and the officer march away. You can hear a collective breach being taken by the crowd as the two Marines disappear behind the white marble amphitheater.
Just below the Lee-Custis Mansion in Arlington are the graves of John and Robert Kennedy. John Kennedy’s grave features a simple bronze plate with his name, his date of birth and his date of death. The eternal flame, set flush with the ground, burns quietly. Several feet below the grave, on a sort of landing, is marble wall into which have been carved some of the president’s words:
“With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and his help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
One a few feet away, marked by a simple white cross, is Bobby’s grave. A separate marble wall stands nearby and it has some of the former attorney general’s words embedded in it:
“This is great nation and a strong people. Any who seek to comfort rather than speak plainly, reassure rather than instruct—they deny that greatness and drain that strength. For today, as it was in the beginning, it is the truth that makes us free.”

*

THE LINCOLN Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the 500-foot ball tall Washington Monument, the Supreme Court Building, the dozen or so museums that comprise the Smithsonian Institution – almost everything in Washington met or surpassed my expectations, including Ford’s Theater, just up the street from the new FBI Building.
The Air and Space Museum—the most popular single museum in the area—is filled with a fabulous collection of full-size rockets and space capsules and almost everything having to do with flight since its inception. And the movies, shown on screens five stories high and which speak to the miracle of flight, are unparalleled. We spent most of two days in the museum and still have not seen it all.
Then there’s the National Archives, which houses the original Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the Museum of American History that houses the Hope Diamond and the dresses of the First Ladies, and there’s art, science and everything in between.
We spent nearly two weeks in Washington and still have not seen it all. But what we saw, we will never forget.

May 4, 1983 – Even a great map can’t do everything

Nice goin’ Bi-state and Julia Adcock. You came through in the nick of time.
Wednesday afternoon I took my proud and battle-weary ‘73 Chrysler Newport to Sears at Northpark in Davenport for spring tune-up and general check-up. A few days earlier the reliable Newport, formerly owned by a Muscatine farmer, had started on its second 100,00 miles. My banker and I hope it will make substantial progress towards achieving that milestone.
Ah, but I digress. I took the car to Sears in the hope that I could get it back in a couple of hours. Alas, the time required to install a neutral switch, install new front breaks and to do the other routine chores required by an aging but steady personal transportation system would not permit such a speedy return to the road, so I was left to my own devices to make it home.
Yes, it was a beautiful day Wednesday, but walking the seven miles home was quickly rules out of the question. That left hitchhiking --- too dangerous and unreliable; calling a cab --- too dangerous and expensive; or taking the bus. And that’s where Bi-State and Ms. Adcock came in.
Don’t tell the mass transit folks, but the fact is the last time I had ridden a public was seven years ago in South Africa. Mary and I seldom had a car available to us the, so we both rode the bus to work and back – and to most other places we wanted to go around Johannesburg --- every day.
Faced with similar transportation problems Wednesday at Northpark, I overcame some early misgivings and determined that I would reach home on the bus. And reach home I did in a most splendid fashion.
But before I could get home on the bus, I had to figure out which bus would get me there most directly. Just when I was pondering that problem, I discovered one of the new maps that the Bi-State Metropolitan Planning Commission -- in association with the Rock Island County, Davenport and Bettendorf mass transit systems -- had released. And what timings!
After arriving at home, I read in Wednesday’s Argus that the maps had been distributed for the first time on Tuesday!
As for Ms. Adcock, well, she designed the colorful, glossy map and made it so easy to read that even a journalist is quickly able to determine the best route home, even when it requires the changing of buses.
So I hopped on bus No.4 (Downtown) and headed south. By following the color-coded map, I discovered the most propitious stop to transfer to bus No.10 (Cross-town West). In a most efficient, comfortable and uneventful 30 minutes, I was home.
Driving is a bit quicker, but for 50 cents the bus trip was a good bargain.
The trouble is that when I got home, I found that even Ms. Adcock’s map was useless in helping me to get into the house.
All the doors, including the screens that do not yield to keys, were locked. And the way we usually enter is through the basement door that connects to our basement garage. But the trusty Newport was still harboring the garage door opener.
Oh well, that new sod needed watering anyway. Any Mary would be home in an hour.
There are some miracles that even Bi-States and Ms. Adcock just can’t do.

June 26, 1983 – To tell you the truth

I am back. Actually, I’ve been back since Monday, but my weeklong vacation exacted such a toll that it’s taken me until now to recover sufficiently to resume this column.
That’s the good news -- or the bad news, depending on whether you’re an astute, discerning, sophisticated reader or an irascible, irrational, incorrigible one.
You be the judge.
“How was your vacation?” you ask. To be honest -- and we real columnist types are sworn to be that, if nothing else -- vacation is, in this case, a major misnomer.
The week I spent away from the office was no more than that, a week away from the office.
I didn’t rush off to Paris abroad the Concorde or dash off to Mexico City or even bump along I-80 to Chicago. In fact, I never got further than Waterloo, and that was only on the weekend.
So what did I do all week?
I awoke at 7 Monday morning to prepare for the arrival of two tons of dirt. Precisely on time, the truck rolled up at 8.30 and dropped the huge mound of dirt in the middle of the drive. Mary was able to maneuver her Horizon out of the garage and on to summer school, however. But there was no summer school for me, only a shovel and a wheelbarrow.
By noon, I had wheel barrowed about half of the dirt three quarters of the way around the yard into a corner out back that needed some major fill work. Fortunately, the sophomore baseball team I coach at West High in Davenport was scheduled for a doubleheader in Cedar Rapids that evening, o I had to turn in my work boots and wheelbarrow for a pair of cleats and a fungo. But I was so sore I could hardly hit infield. Maybe that’s why we only managed a split.
Ah, but if Monday comes can Tuesday be far behind?
Not nearly far enough. It looked like rain when I gazed out the window about 6.30, Tuesday morning so I jumped into my work clothes, hung neatly on the doorknob of the closet, and was busy filling the wheelbarrow by 7.
When I started the job Monday I had considered counting trips, but I decided not to. I figured it could get too depressing. But after about 8 hours of wheel barrowing over a-day-and-a-half, all the dirt was gone.
Well, it wasn’t all gone. It took me another hour to sweep and clean up the residue and then wash down the driveway. With that done, the ordeal at last was over.
Then it was out to the back patio where I toweled a couple of gallons of gluey gunk on to the cement before applying that green outdoor carpet. It turned out pretty well since patching mistakes with that stuff is fairly easy and usually undetectable. Some evergreens and trees were trimmed before my “vacation” moved indoors.
Their scores of boxes remained filled with magazines, books, pictures in frames, pictures without frames, frames without pictures and various knickknacks. Before any of those things could be freed from their boxes, bookshelves had to be built. And so they were.
After much wailing and mashing of thumbs, the metal braces had been screwed into the wall, the brackets had been hammered into place and the shelves had been stained to match (thanks, Mary). A couple of hours later, Mary and I had a garage full of empty boxes and a pair of bookshelves oozing with objects. But at least we could see the wreck room floor. Not bad.
It went like that all week. Hang a picture here, put up a shelf there, install a new rod in a closet someplace else. Mercifully, I only had a week’s vacation this time. I don’t know if I could have lasted any longer.
So now that I’m back to keep you company, Donald Kaul of the Des Moines Register has gone on vacation. He had been waiting for me to get back, you see, since we can’t have too many columnists away from our jobs at the same time. Bad for keeping the public informed and entertained, you know.
So that’s what I did on my summer vacation.

August 22, 1985 – It’s not so easy being one

Editor’s Note: This is a guest column by Matthew William Kielkopf on the event of his first birthday. His dad’s column will resume soon.

It seems like only yesterday that Dad asked me to write a column in honor of my reaching the age of six months. Now here I am writing my first birthday column!
It’s incredible, really, to think it’s been a whole year since Mom stopped carrying me around and let me step outside on my own. Oh, sure, I was a little apprehensive at first, but life on the outside has been pretty good so far.
The summer has been fun because Mom, being a teacher, has been home with me all the time. I miss her now that she’s back at school, but I do get to play with some other neat kids at the babysitter’s, so it’s not so bad.
Mom and Dad are excited because I’ve been walking for about a month now. Oh, I’m not perfect yet. I’ll admit that sometimes I get a bit too excited and try to go faster than my feet can take me, but I haven’t gotten more than a few minor bumps and bruises from those falls. And I get a little better at walking every day. It probably won’t be long till I can run. Boy, Mom and Dad will never catch me then!
I’ve learned a lot of things, too, over the summer. Sometimes learning hurts.
I remember one day I was curious about that was on my Mom’s desk, so I grabbed the back of an empty chair and stood on my tip-toes to see. Suddenly I felt myself falling but, instead of letting go of the chair, I held on tight. That was a mistake. I pulled the chair down right on my head and got a pretty big bump. It’s about all gone now, but I cried pretty hard at the time. I don’t do things like that anymore.
I’m getting pretty good at walking up and down the stairs, too, instead of crawling. Oh, I still crawl now and then, but mostly just for old time’s sake. I could go to nothing but walking if I really wanted to.
Anyway, what I do is I hold onto the railing on the staircase. This way I can go up and down without any help. I haven’t even fallen down yet, but I notice that Mom and Dad always are close enough to catch me just in case.
You’d think they’d have more confidence in me than that.
The last few weeks I’ve really started to get into TV-especially the commercials. Love and music! I don’t know what they’re all about, but I love those tunes. I think Mom and Dad like them, too, because they’re always laughing and smiling when the commercials come on. I just do a little dance in time with the music. I didn’t know what I’d been missing.
Food is a lot more fun now, too. Not so much of that strained baby glop. Now it’s hamburger, tuna, and breads of all kinds, fresh fruit including grapes, peaches, bananas, apples, oranges and nectarines. Mom and dad feed me right off their plates, too, things like green beans and carrots and potatoes. I especially love those cooked carrots.
I’m drinking my milk out of a cup now. I still have a bottle of milk or juice after supper and occasionally during the day, but at meals it’s always milk from a cup.
I’ve got some nice new toys including a toy car that I drive myself —I’m better at backing up than going forward -- and a car with a cat inside that I can push around when I’m just going for a walk. I like them, but I like to play with Mom’s saucepan lids, the cardboard roller the gift-wrap comes on and all kinds of empty boxes, too.
Books are a favorite, even if Mom and Dad most often read them to me just to quiet me down for bed. I especially like the story of Mr. McFunny Bunny and the picture book of dogs and baby animals. The story with Big Bird in it and the one about the three pigs who build houses are OK, too.
Mom and Dad are trying to figure out if I’m left-handed or not. I’d tell them, but I’m not sure, either. When I eat, I just use the hand that’s nearest what I want and sometimes, I use both hands at once.
When we all sit down to roll a ball back and forth, I use my left hand for a while and then my right. I just can’t decide which I prefer.
I’m talking quite a bit now, but I don’t think Mom and Dad and very good at understanding me yet. Sometimes I say, “But I don’t want to go to bed now!” And they just act like they don’t understand a word of it. I’ve been told that parents start understanding babies better by the time the baby is about two years old, so I guess I’ll just have to wait for my parents to get a little smarter. It’s a common problem for babies and children, I hear.
In the meantime, I’m going to do my best to follow some advice that Dad read to me the other day from a guy named Robert Louis Stevenson:
“A child should always say what’s true
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at the table;
At least as far as he is able.”
I’m working on it. After all, I’m only one.

July 31, 1979 – A South African odyssey with no TV

An article in the current August issue of McCall’s reminded me of the time that Mary and I went cold turkey.
It was 1976.
We had arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa about noon, December 31, 1975. We moved into our apartment on the eleventh-floor a twenty-story downtown apartment complex, un-packed and turned on the radio.
We were to spend the next eleven months and four days without a television in our lives. We “watched” radio, much as our parents have told us they did back in the 30’s and 40’s.
I’ll admit, however, that we failed to completely abstain from TV.
There were the two or three visits to a Johannesburg restaurant where we watched “The Bob Newhart Show,” “The Carol Burnett Show,” and a few South African programs so primitive as to be embarrassing to the locals who always compared them to American and British imported shows.
South Africa, you see, was the last industrialized nation in the world to introduce television. After several years of planning and intermittent test transmissions the South African Broadcasting Corporation officially went to “full-time’ service on January 7, 1976.
By “full-time,” the SABC meant telecasting from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday plus a few hours on Saturday. There was no television on Sunday.
The other couple of hours of television we viewed that year came at the homes of some white South Africans. Blacks cannot afford TVs, and even if they could, most of them don’t have access to electricity.
On those visits to homes we found the entire family routines, established for generations, in a shambles. No longer did the entire family eat together at the dinning room table, all displaying the kid of etiquette that Emily Post would have envied.
Nor did family members speak to each other anymore, except to ask for a change in the channel or a greater degree of silence from the others in the room.
“We used to come home and sit down, talk about things with the kids, play games and then enjoy a lovely dinner,” Bob Busby, a suburban Johannesburg Ford dealer told us once. “But since we got that bloody monster—pointing at Little Joe in an episode of ‘Bonanza’—the kids are too busy watching the telly to come to the table. We all wanted it, but now I’m not so sure it’s that good an idea.”
But television had arrived to stay in South Africa. For better or for worse, life-styles would change, views of the world would changes, priorities would be revised.
As for Mary and me, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves despite seeing only 9 hours of television programs on those 237 days.
We learned to look forward to the radio quiz shows, dramas, comedies—even an occasional soap opera. It was a unique experience for us, like traveling back about thirty years into history when radio was king in America.

June 11, 1979 – My mom says Kennedy needs a haircut

Sen. Ted Kennedy needs a haircut and looks like he could use more sleep. That’s what my mom told me when she called a couple of days ago from Cedar Rapids when Kennedy addressed a meeting of the Iowa State Bar Association.
Mom and Dad were among a contingent of Cedar Rapids area union representatives who greeted Kennedy and attempted to convince him he should run for the Presidency in 1980.
My dad, who was quick to join the bandwagon that carried John Kennedy into the White House, was less concerned about the Senator’s hair. At least that’s what Mom said.
“Your Dad says he didn’t think his hair was so bad, but I sure did. He did have some pretty funny things to say though, especially about what Carter said about whipping his behind.”
My brothers, Blaine and Wayne, should take some major consolation from Mom’s criticism of Kennedy’s hair. She often says the same thing to them. Perhaps they should consider careers in the Senate.
The mention of my brothers—they’re twins by the way—also brings to mind a sad story about Blaine’s dog. Tybo. A snow-white malamute, Tybo had been a part of Blaine and his wife Nancy’s household for about two years. He had been that, is, until about a week ago when Tybo was cremated at Iowa State University’s department of veterinary medicine.
The large, friendly dog they had raised from a pup began to show signs of illness several weeks ago. At first the diagnosis was arthritis. But when Tybo failed to respond to treatments and new symptoms began showing up, he was taken to Iowa State.
I battery of tests failed to reach a conclusive diagnosis. Then, finally the examinations revealed that it was not arthritis but leukemia, which was sapping the dog’s strength.
There is, of course, virtually no treatment for leukemia in either humans or dogs. And as rare as leukemia is in humans, it is even more so in dogs.
So Tybo no longer eats the furniture at Blaine and Nancy’s house. They don’t have to buy dog food any more, they don’t have to pay a kennel to keep the dog while they go on vacation, they don’t have to take Tybo for any more walks.
But somehow, they’re not so happy about that.

June 2, 1979 – Weekend at the lake more than sunshine

Water and boats, fishing poles and tents, motor homes and minnows, hot dogs, hamburgers, apple cider and sunshine.
Those are some of the things which comprised the memorial Day weekend for Mary and me as we got away from it all by joining my parents, one of my brother’s and his wife and both my sister’s families at Lake Rathbun in southern Iowa, near Ottumwa.
We could hardly have ordered better weather for zipping around the huge man made lake that covers more than 100 acres of what used to be little-used scrub and brush.
Mary, who did some water skiing as a teen, was the only member of our group who had experience playing the wake who declined the chance to slash across the lake over the weekend.
My brother, Blaine, the one who had a leg amputated during his senior year in high school in 1972 after a football injury, followed brother-in-law Jim Cash on the skis.
Then it was sister Carol’s turn.
When she had completed her lengthy tour I told her daughter, Amy, 7 that her mom and dad are both very good skiers.
“Yes, but my mom’s a lot better than my dad,” she said with a distinct note of authority.
Me? Well, Mary and I are not water sport enthusiasts, so we managed to keep high and dry in Jim’s dandy boat although I got the distinct impression that had the water been warmer Mary would have taken the chance to try some skiing again.
I did manage to get up early enough one morning to accompany Jim and a couple of other guys to a secluded spot for a little fishing.
We managed to capture about 30 small bass and some other fish whose name eludes me at the moment. A few of those creatures would be embarrassed to know that it was my hook that did them in.
One of the more interesting things I noticed was the fact that, despite the large number of people living in close proximity to one another, the place was really quiet, especially at night. And almost without fails, whenever we passed another boat, whether powered by oar, sail or motor, the folks almost always waved and smiled.
Of course, it wasn’t quite as crowded on the lake as it is on Fifth Avenue or Kimberly Road.
Nonetheless, it was kind of a nice little thing for a change.
No, we didn’t exactly rough it, either.
Jim and Carol provided the accommodations with their 20-foot Ithaca motor home. It sleeps, 10 has a microwave oven, electric stove, kitchen with cabinets, sink table and refrigerator, television and—most importantly—bathroom and shower.
That makes camping much more agreeable.
While at Lake Rathbun I happened to meet a member of the Ottumwa High School class of 1968. She was a well-respected member of the class with a winning personality and good grades.
She look about the same as she did back then in high school. Over the weekend I met her two daughters, one nine-years old and the other five.
But they have no father now. My high school friend is divorced.
She’s taking business courses at Drake University in Des Moines and works part-time. She says she and the girls are getting alone just fine.
Then there were the “Password” games that took up a couple hours one night and a couple more the next day. Amy, her grandmother, Mary and I battled it out with Amy doing a better job than the rest of us most of the time.
On the way home, mom and dad told Mary and me about some of the great old days they’d had in the Centerville area, near the lake, when dad played softball. He said they had a Memorial Day tournament in Centerville in the early ‘50s that drew a crowd of over 5,000.
Those were the good old days of fast pitch.
A lot of things happen on a lake over a weekend when the family gets together. A lot of things.
It’s water and boats, fishing poles and tents, motor homes and minnows, hot dogs hamburgers, apple cider and sunshine. But it’s a lot more than that.

May 14, 1980 – Mom would rather wash the dishes herself

Tomorrow, moms all over the country will be opening greeting cards and unwrapping presents given them in appreciation for all those things good mothers do which almost always go unnoticed, although not unappreciated, and which are so vital to growing up well.
In looking through my wife’s family history recently, I cam upon a poem written by Mary’s Aunt Beulah which, I think, says a great deal about what it means to be a mother.
Beulah wrote the poem in 1948 in honor or her mother, Mary Slocum Guernsey, my wife’s paternal grandmother, who was one of nine children of the family of John and Olive Slocum. It’s the only poem she is known to have authored.
Beulah’s mother, Mary Slocum, married Solon Guernsey on June 6, 1909, in Minburn, Iowa, where he published the local paper and she taught in the high school.
After several moves, including a stint of two years in Davenport, Mary Slocum Guernsey died of cancer in June 1948, at the age of 61.
Here, in honor of all mothers, living and dead, is Beulah’s poem written 32 yeas ago and published for the first time outside the Guernsey family history:
“Mother’s Graduation”
We all know that Mother was as saintly as could be, but did you know that Mother has been awarded her degree? Yes, she’s already been promoted Way ahead of time—Cause she finished requirements—First of the Slocum nine.
She majored in her children and reared all of her six and still found time for others who weren’t on to all the tricks. She minored in her grandkids. They loved her like a pal—she beat the stork in every race From Alabam to sunny Cal!
She never ran for office or starred in life’s great plays. She preferred to wash the dishes and serve in humble ways. She didn’t make the paper but was writing all the time to all us children far and wide and to the Slocum nine.
Her extra activities were varied but none will bring her fame. She showed us love and patience, Unselfishness her game. She earned a “Kappa Key” down here in selfless love I’m told, and when her crown is given, it’s bound to be pure gold.
She far out-shone us children. Her sterling traits we lack. So we, in our self-pity, tried hard to hold her back crying out, “We need her to help us make the grade. We need so much more tutoring, and glowing memories fade.”
But the Dean just seemed to answer, “There is only one more test. She must experience suffering and know my way is best.’ We saw her take that great exam. Our hearts and heads grief- bowed with poise and equanimity. She made us all so proud.
Now the angel profs have passed her in faith, in hope, in love. She’d spent her life for others, and honored Christ above. Her good life lives on to inspire us, as we take the hurdles here. May we graduate with honors,
like precious Mother dear.

November 23, 1979 – Some thoughts upon turning…30

It is with pangs of anxiety and remorse, twinges of hope and disillusionment, servings of cake and ice cream that today I mark the 30th anniversary of my birth.
I have been told that a blizzard of historic proportions hit Ottumwa back there on Nov. 23, 1949, and it seems that I’ve been in the middle of some storm or other most of the time since.
Not that I’m complaining.
After all, it was Nov. 23, 1765, that the court of Frederick County,
Md., repudiated the Stamp Act, the first such act of defiance by the colonies against Great Britain. And it was Nov. 23, 1774, that the colonial provincial congress formed the Minutemen.
In 1863, on the 23rd of November, the battle of Lookout Mountain began in Tennessee. And on Nov. 23, 1971, Communist China took its seat as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
Hordes of other noteworthy things happened on various Nov. 23rds, including the formation of the first intercollegiate football conference, Enrico Caruso’s American debut, and the birth of Franklin Pierce, America’s 14th president.
Despite having been born on a fairly noteworthy date, the realization that I no longer qualify for the “under 30” category in the opinion polls, that I am now as close to being 60 as I am to being one, that I can clearly remember important events that happened 20 years ago, that my birthday candles are so numerous I can’t blow them out in one breath -- all these things and more have tended to hold the celebrating in check.
And, of course, such remarkable events as 30th birthdays also give entrance to other, less cherry thoughts. Death, for example…

*

THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA in Iowa City recently held a three-day conference on again which provided an opportunity for a University of North Dakota professor to note, “We live, in sense, a fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy that the years of our lives are three score and ten; yet there is no medical or biological basis for that being so.”
And then came the best part.
“I see no medical or biological reason why the healthy lifespan should not be well over a century, or at least, until the century.’
Thank you, Professor Theodore R. Reiff. I’ve never been particularly thankful for North Dakota wherever that is, but I am now in the process of correcting that bad attitude.
Reiff also said that the lack of post mortem examinations of people over 75 is largely to blame for a lack of understanding of what it is that does, in fact, cause death.
“I look on the lack of autopsies in older people as the final rejection of the aged in our society. We’re not even interested enough in them to try to find out why they died.”
The North Dakota prof said that preliminary studies indicate the causes of death in the very old are quite different from the causes of death in the young.
While heart attacks and strokes are the big killers of persons under 70, he said persons over 75 tend to die either from infections or from blood clots breaking loose from the veins in the legs and eventually blocking major lung vessels.
Both the infections and blood clots are in part related to the psychological state and amount of activity of the very old person, Reiff said.
“The evidence indicates that in societies where people keep working, keep active, and have a value to society, they do live healthier and longer lives, but there’s not enough data on this,” the North Dakotan said.
And when it comes to birthdays, Reiff said they spell bad news for the elderly, especially elderly women.
“There is documented evidence which shows that many women die close to their birth dates,” he said. ‘That anniversary date is very important to them and they set their internal clock or whatever it is determining how long we live, and they live to the time they think they can live... then they give up and are reedy to die.”
Reiff said similar correlations have not been shown for men, “possibly because women are more aware of birthdays and anniversaries than most men are.”
Our molecules and cells should be good for 150 years and our organs for at least 100, according to Reiff.
That’s why he says, “How long you think you should live may partly determine the age at which you’ll die.”
An interesting point…especially on a 30th birthday.

May 25, 1983 – From Reveille to Taps

The massive Cadillacs and Lincolns looked strange in the same picture with the dirt roads and the gaggle of boys in cut-off jeans and T-shirts, but the fathers in shiny silk suits and the mothers wearing stoles over Saks Fifth Avenue dresses were even more unlikely sights around Camp Lenox.
But it was late June of 1971, arrival day, and the 250 or so campers, ranging in age from 8 to 16, started rolling in as early as 8 a.m.
I suppose it was a little like the first day of school, although for some of the boys and some of the counselors it was more like a reunion. Some had been spending their summers at the Jewish camp near Pittsfield, Mass., for six, seven, eight years.
At breakfast that morning Camp Director Monroe Moss had reminded all of us counselors that we could not accept any gratuities from parents and that we should report any such offers to camp officials. We were told that parents sometimes tried to slip a counselor as much as $200 or $300 in order to get special treatment for their child. The instructions were easy for me to follow—no one made an offer.
A little before noon, my full compliment of 12- and 13-year-olds had arrived including a chubby, freckled, Howie Silverman, complete with glasses and braces; feisty Brian Weiss; Paul Marks, a little guy who was a favorite with the girls (fortunately this wasn’t a co-ed camp); Charlie Mann, a big but gentle guy, and David (don’t ever call me “Dave”) Goldman, a nice kid with a tendency toward a temper.
After the parents had said goodbye and checked to make sure their sons had their name-tags on their swimsuits, after the convoy of Caddies and Lincolns had bumped back toward the Long Island area of New York or to other spots along the Northeast Atlantic Coast, we all retired to our cabins where the boys unpacked, battled over who would get the top bunk and generally made themselves at home.
During the next eight weeks the recording of Reveille would wake us precisely at 7 a.m. We then had 30 minutes to wash and dress and lineup for the Pledge of Allegiance. Then it was on down the hill to our assigned table for breakfast.
One of the boys, on a rotating basis, acted as the busboy for his cabin’s table. The busboy would grab a large silver platter and head for one of several serving windows. There one of the kitchen helpers would apportion the lox and bagels, cream cheese and butter, cereal and milk to each busboy who would then take the platter back to the table and pass the portions out to each of his bunkmates and his counselor.
I had never eaten lox and bagels until my arrival at Camp Lenox. I haven’t stopped eating them since.
Although Jewish, Camp Lenox did not keep Kosher. Nonetheless, once all tables had been served, a camp official would tap a bell for quiet and a camper would lead us all in a Jewish prayer. (I remember some of the Yiddish, but I can’t spell it.)
After the prayer we ate and then, when the bell was tapped again, the hubbub created by the chatter of 250 excited boys slowly subsided and announcements for the day were made. Then it was back to the cabins for cleanup before the first-period activity.
Boys were assigned to sweep, to dust, to take out the garbage, to clean the bathroom and to sweep the basketball court that stretched out from our doorstep. They also were responsible for making their own beds and for keeping their bunk areas tidy. There was an inspection at 8:45 and if anything was found wanting, the bunk lost points. Point leaders at the end of the camp session would receive a special award.
As soon as inspections were over, an announcement would come over the P.A. that boys could leave for their first-period activity. All the other periods the playing of a bugle call over the P.A. marked endings and beginnings.
Each boy had signed-up before arriving at camp for the activities that he wanted. They ranged from archery, tennis, arts and crafts and publications to soccer, football, baseball, water skiing, boating, swimming and hiking. Counselors acted as coaches or teachers in the various activities. The periods lasted about an hour and 15 minutes. There was a 45-minute lunch break after which there was a quiet period. During that time everyone was to be lying down and reading, writing home, or taking a nap.
After the quiet time, the bugle call sounded for the first activity period of the afternoon.
The last period ended at 5.30. We had 30 minutes to wash up and prepare for supper. We were required to be seated at our table in the dining hall no later than 6:15.
We were dismissed from super at 7 p.m. Then there was free time until 8.30. Campers had to be in bed by 8:45 with lights out at 9 when Taps was sounded. Counselors could then leave the cabin until 10 -- if they weren’t on duty for their cluster of cabins.
You were tired, but every day was one you would never forget.

June 19, 1980 – It’s Father’s Day

It must have been 1964 or 65. I was in Grand Island, Neb. – the city recently devastated by a series of killer tornadoes – on a baseball tour with the Ottumwa American Legion team. My parents usually traveled to our games, but this weeklong excursion would’ve meant too many days of work missed for Dad, so they stayed home.
We had a doubleheader scheduled for next Sunday, Father’s Day. I felt pretty bad about Dad having to stay home and work while I had a good time traveling around Nebraska playing baseball, so I thought I’d try to make it up to him by buying a really super Father’s Day present to give to him when I got back.
I walked all over Grand Island in search of just the right thing. Finally, I found it. Perfect. I bought it, had it wrapped in neat Father’s Day paper for free and placed it carefully in my luggage. It would have to survive several hundred mules of travel on an old school bus before it would be safely in my father’s hands.
That special care paid off. The present and I arrived in Ottumwa unbroken and excited—at least I was.
The first thing I did was to give the tardy Father’s Day present to Dad along with a suggestion that he open it right away.
I don’t know if he still has the gaudy plate that depicted the highlights of life in Nebraska inside the state’s right red borders, but I do know that he acted as if it was the best present he’d ever received.
I thought at the time that it just might have been.
But now I know that any gift a father receives from a son or daughter is always the best gift he could ever get.

*

A FATHER’S LETTER to his teenage son:
“Last Saturday you and I disagreed on how late you should be allowed to stay out. When I refused to extend your curfew, you complained that I was not treating you like an adult. This has become your standard answer whenever you can’t have your own way. But what you really mean is that I don’t go along with your idea of what constitutes adulthood.
“Let me put it this way: I do not pretend you area grown man because you are a 16 year old boy. You may be as big and strong and capable as many adults but only a child would maintain - and sincerely believe - that his manhood can be measured by the lateness of the hour his father permits him to stay out at night.
“I can understand why you and your friends are eager to become adults, and to enjoy the freedoms, privileges and even the bad habits that are denied to you as children. What you fail to see is that these freedoms and privileges are routine and minor by - products of being an adult. They are not, as many of you believe, the components of genuine maturity.
“It is possible for children to convince themselves and each other that disobedience, late hours, smoking, drinking, sexual experiments and the rest actually transform them into adults. When this happens they often begin to despise their own contemporaries and the tasks that are appropriate to their age. They often come to resent not only parental direction and control, but to resist and resent school, and avoid normal teen-age activities and patterns.
“It is a sad thing when children renounce their own generation and try to sneak into maturity as though it were a border to cross under cover of darkness.
“You complain that I do not treat you like an adult. My reply is, I would rather treat you like what you are. And at sixteen, you are a boy and you belong to a boy’s world, accepting a boy’s responsibilities, dreaming a boy’s dreams, learning a boy’s freedoms, appreciating your boyish years. Being a successful boy is the best guarantee in the world that you will be a successful man.
“In a few years, time and experience will make you an adult. When it does, I will treat you like an adult. It will be impossible for me to do otherwise. I don’t know when that time will come, or when you will discover that it has. But I can give you one clue. When the time comes that you no longer feel the necessity to prove to me, to your friends, to the world or to yourself that you are a man—you will have become one.”
Sincerely,
Your Father,
Henry G. Felsen

Nov. 6, 1982 – If we stopped to count the costs

Need to get rid of about $100,000 before the end of the century? Looking for a good investment that could yield solid returns as we swing into the year 2000? Anxious to find a significant, long-term tax deduction?
My brother Wayne and his wife Linda think they may have found the perfect answer to all those goals at precisely 11:11 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 3. That’s when they greeted their firstborn, a six-pound, 11-ounce boy they call Anthony Blair.
Only a few days earlier Cornell University had released its revised 1977 report on the costs of raising a child to age 18. When the report first comes out four years ago, that cost was about $80,000. It now stands at more than $100.000.
And that amount does not include indirect costs associated with raising child, things like wages lost because a parent stays home from work to care for a child or the extra time needed for household chores.
If, for example, a mother who earned $300 a week decides to stay home for the first year after the child is born, the family would lose more than $15,000 in wages alone.
And, Cornell researchers say, the average parent who does not work outside the home spends an extra 19,000 hours—that’s the equivalent of 2,375 eight-hour days, 475 working days, nearly two years worth—on household chores by the time a single child has reached its 18th birthday.
Those are only a few of the indirect costs of having one child that are not included in that $100,000 figure.
The researchers have divided the direct expenses into three basic categories; childbirth, maintenance expenses to age 18 (makes the kids sound like a car doesn’t it?) and college.
Childbirth these days costs an average of about $2,500 assuming a four-day hospital stay for mother and child, obstetrical and pediatric bills, nursery supplies like clothing and furniture and the mother’s maternity wardrobe.
To keep the youngster properly maintained—radial boots for winter snows, air conditioning so he won’t overheat in the summer, re-upholstering about every six months in order to keep up with the competition, plenty of Big Mac’s and RC Colas to keep the engine running—adds up to an average cost of about $73,000 over 18 years.
Sending the youngster off to college adds nearly $10,000 to the bill, if he opts for a state school. If he wants to go Ivy League, you could tack at lest another $40,000 onto the price tag.
But getting married and having children—preferably in that order -- should be done without David Stockman’s advice, shouldn’t?
Maybe, maybe not, but without seeming too much the realist and too little the romantic, maybe it would be better if more people look at reality a little closer before they fell too into their dream-world. Perhaps their inevitable re-awakening would be far less harsh for both their family and society.
If we’re going to add up the costs, though, it’s only fair to try to at least balance the ledger with the benefits of having children.
In Anthony Blair’s case perhaps he will use those long legs and long fingers of his to gain a fortune as a major league pitcher, an NFL quarterback or an NBA scorer. His bonus for signing would wipeout the $100,000 cost of raising him all by itself.
Or maybe he’ll cure cancer, explore Mars, establish new case law, surpass the piano genius of Horowitz, out-fiddle Perlman. There are other things that fine babies can grow up to be but, none of those things would ever happen to a nephew of mine or Mary’s, so there’s no need to bother listing them.
Even so, some of those other things have helped to keep Mary and me no closer to any children of our own than our growing role as aunt and uncle. But nephew Mark Grooms, 7, is much less cautious. The first thing he said when he saw Mary over the weekend was, “It’s your turn now, isn’t it Mary?”
If how a child would turn out were as clearly calculable as how much it would cost to raise one, answering Mark’s question would be a whole lot easier for Mary, for me and for lots of others who find themselves in a similar quandary.
But for right now, Mark, let’s just say we’re still thinking about it. In the meantime, there a lot of good things about only having nieces and nephews, a list of relatives that now includes Anthony Blair Kielkopf. It’ll be exciting to watch the return on investment.

September 5, 1982 – How piggies get to market

Rolling hogs is nothing like rolling your own cigarettes or rolling a perfect game, and it certainly has nothing to do with merrily rolling along. What it does have to do with is this:
You stand alongside a 10-foot long conveyor belt that stretches to your left and that runs without interruption—at least it does if the hog-roller does his job correctly. You are armed with a two-foot long wooden stick that has a sharp, steel hook embedded in one end. To your right is a chute with a top-hinged door hanging over a square opening. A six-foot- long conveyor belt runs from the edge of that door to where it intersects with the other conveyor belt.
Out of that chute, at the rate of 15 per minute – one every four seconds – shiny, hairless hogs pop onto the conveyor belt that is inclined at about 60 degrees. The hogs have been killed only a few moments earlier. Their throats have been slit and they’ve been run through steam so hot that it instantly removes all their hair. The hogs then are placed in the chute where they pop out in a seemingly endless procession. That’s when the hog roller goes into action.
Each hog is supposed to pop out of the chute head first so that the hog roller can grab the hog with his bare hand and, crashing the short spear into the back end of the hog, turn it over so that another worker on the other side of the ever moving conveyor belt can insert hooks into the hog’s hind feet, for once the hog arrives at the end of the conveyor belt a rack is waiting to automatically connect with the hooks.
When these jobs are done properly, the hog is then jerked onto a constantly moving overhead rack which carriers the carcass along to other workers who split the carcass open and remove the innards. And the meatpacking procedure continues.
But this procedure doesn’t always go smoothly. At least it didn’t when I was rolling hogs back in the John Morrell & Co. plant in Ottumwa one summer 12 years ago.
Sometimes the hogs would come out backwards, tail end first. That mean I’d have to turn the beasts around before I could flip them over for the hoof man to insert the hooks. Having just been scalded, the hogs were as slippery as an ice cube in a cup of oil. It was often difficult to manage a good enough grip to flip them over, especially the really big hogs, the ones known in the business as “heavy hogs.”
Difficulties also occurred when the four-second interval between hogs was breached. Sometimes two hogs would manage to slip out of the chute almost simultaneously. That was bad news because, as I said, those conveyor belts kept moving and the hogs kept falling into the chute.
And so it came to pass -- once or twice -- that hogs would come out backwards and be followed too soon by a pair that would pop out at once. I tried feverishly to get them all turned properly in time for the hook man to do his job, but sometimes I wasn’t fast enough.
Hogs started crashing into each other at the end of the conveyor belt and then plopped onto the floor about nine feet below. The boss got a little excited when hogs started falling around him. And I wasn’t exactly in hog heaven then myself.
All this came back to me the other day while reading the stories of the Dubuque Pack workers in Joslin, III., who lost their jobs, at least until the new owners of the plant, Iowa Beef Processors, reopens the facility later this fall. I know a little about what it’s like to do the kinds of work they’ve been doing, and so I think I can understand a little bit about their anxieties over the change of plant ownership.
Of course, my dad can, too. He worked at that Morrell plant in Ottumwa for about 25 years -- until it closed and moved out of town in 1973 after 98 years. That closure left my dad, a United Packing House Workers of America union member and more than 5,000 other Ottumwans like him, out of a job.
Nobody was needed to roll hogs anymore.

April 16, 1981 -- It’s a time to pause and think

You can head off to Florida or Arizona or some other spot in the Sun Belt if you like, but I’ll stick around here, thank you.
The red maple in our front yard, a twig of a tree with its one-inch trunk and its nine or ten offshoots which carry ambitions of some becoming real limbs, has given life to several dainty maroon buds. The talk of drought has been doused by drenching April rainstorms. Optimism is as plentiful on the farms now as tadpoles around their ponds.
It’s the Midwest, and it’s spring.
(“The Polish crisis is not going to fade away. Soviet leader Brehznev has turned down the heat for the time being, but preparations for invasion go on. Foreign policy experts recall that the Kremlin made the same kind o soothing noises just before the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion Czechoslovakia.”)
We were walking through the park a couple of days ago. There were kinds on bikes riding through the puddles produced hours earlier by a torrential downpour, but now the miniature lakes were acting as reflecting pools for the grandiloquent sun as it crept imperceptibly northward. The baseball diamonds were damp with earthworms, which looked as if they were trying to slither out from under the dampened feet of sliding outfielders and leaping second basemen. An easy breeze softly coiffures the hair of a tot as she kneeled to great an eager tulip juxtaposed along a dugout wall.
(“The Iran-Iraq war, dormant through the rainy season, is headed for anew eruption. Massive Iraqi drives could trigger Iranian reprisals against oil resources in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, two Iraqi allies.”)
As we moved on across the lawn which had resembled a mown wheat field a few days earlier but which was now in its aestivate glory, Mary pointed to a woodchuck poised at the edge of its subterranean home. We stopped about eight feet away and watched the marmot watch us. As we slowly inched forward, the woodchuck sprang forward into the opening and was gone.
(“Big business shows America’s slippage. A majority of the world’s largest corporations no longer are U.S.-based firms. Ten years ago, 280 of the world’s 500 largest industrial firms were American. The number now is down to 219.”)
How many years do you suppose Homo sapiens and marmots have been meeting like that with similar results? The humans move on, noting how cute the woodchuck is, while the woodchuck carries out its instinctive responsibilities.
Across the rolling hills of the park we heard the song of a bird or the warbling of a sparrow, that much I knew. It must be an exotic bird, uncommon to the area, I thought, but when we arrived at the source all we found was the common robin. How many times have we heard the song of the robin and yet never really listened?
(“Now that most Americans have sent off their 1980 tax returns, new worries begin: Will you be audited? Will you have to cough up more money? Or will you get the refund you’ve claimed?”)
It’s a scene that has been played over and over again for century after century, this changing of the seasons, this renewal of life. As we walk along the Mississippi shoreline, I wonder how many times others have walked along this same spot, observing this same rebirth, wondering.
(“Overflowing state prisons and flaws in the criminal justice system are putting potentially dangerous ex-convicts and criminal suspects on the street, endangering public safety, state law enforcement officials say.”)
The shoreline is never the same one year to the next, and yet it is always here. The rippling of the river as it rushes on toward New Orleans after having had its apparent motion stymied a few months ago by the stiff hand of winter is one more sign of hope.
Yes, you can lie in the sand by the surf or stretch out along the pool and gaze at the cactus and the mountains if you prefer, but I’ll take my chances here with a system that follows the cleansing pattern of the ages.

December 8, 1982 -- Writing the best-seller

Andy Rooney has a couple of books ready for Christmas shoppers to snap up. James J. Kilpatrick has a new one out and so does Donald Kaul of the Des Moines Register. Even a bunch of Mike Royko columns have been collected into a book. It seems that newspaper columnists of nearly every size, shape and persuasion, in one way or another, have recently joined the literary set and become “authors” instead of mere writers. Could I do any less?
Of course not, and so it was that I began writing a book the other day.
It was to be a tale of old London and on orphan boy who grew up in the workhouses there. “In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice,” I wrote. I called my young hero “Tip.” The rotund little fellow was to run away from an orphanage, be befriended by an escapee from Parliament who would become his anonymous benefactor, fall in love with a tease named Bestsella who would live with a half-crazed spinster known as Ms. Lavisham. Oh, it was going great.
It was, that is, until I asked a friend to read the manuscript and he said the book sounded an awful lot like something or other that a fella named Charles Pickens or Nickens or something had written a long time ago. He figured it’d be better to start with a whole new idea. Reluctantly, I agreed. But I wonder who that Rickens fella was and how come he stole my idea?
After awhile -- it was five minutes at least -- I finally took heart again and set to formulating a new plan for my literary work. The perspiration dripped from my nose and forehead as I concentrated as fiercely as a contestant on “Family Feud,” but try as I would, nary a single workable scenario revealed itself.
I paced the floor, I tapped my pencil, I pounded my typewriter. I started at my computer terminal. (I only work on my books on break time, boss.) Still, the perspiration came but the inspiration was as wispy as Casper on Halloween night.
Then, suddenly up in my brain there arose such a clatter that I sprang to my typewriter to record the whole matter.
“That’s it!” I exclaimed to no one in particular. “The title of my book will be Real Columnists Don’t Write Books”!
Oh, what a clear idea! First we had the best selling Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche. Then we had Real Women Never Pump Iron and Real Extra-Terrestrials Don’t Phone Home. My book would be a natural! Even that fella Nickens would be envious.
Feverishly my fingers sped across the keyboard like drag racers challenging Dead Man’s Curve.
“There aren’t many real columnists left. Too many are swayed by the easy bucks available to authors. Too many are willing to abandon the noble profession of journalism to take up the questionable pursuits of the so-called literati.
“Real columnists take their own phone calls. Whether it’s an irate city council member, a bellicose member of the NRA, a farmer from Preemption, a businessperson from Bettendorf, a clever fund-raiser from the University of Iowa or a ticked-off union member, real columnists can take it. Authors have secretary’s who screen visitors and phone calls. Real columnists take on all comers.
“Real columnists know real people. Authors only know make-believe people that you meet at high society parties. When a real columnists goes to a party, the main course is usually hot dogs and baked beans prepared in his or her own kitchen. When authors have parties the hors d’oeuvres are served by caterers who also provide the punch and the caviar and the roast leg of duck almonde.
“When authors go to parties they crook their little fingers with the likes of other authors, painters, sculptors, politicians and entertainers. When real columnists go to parties they hold onto their paper cup with a firm grasp in case they bump into one of the plumbers or carpenters or machinists or production line workers or teachers or housewives or Social Security receipts in the group....”
There’s more, lots more. But after reading my book I’ve convinced myself I can’t be both an author and a real columnist, so you won’t find my book in the stores this Christmas season. You’ll just have to settle for Rooney and those other guys – if you don’t mind reading stuff written by authors instead of real columnists like me….

August 12, 1982 – Rounding up random thoughts

After the birth of Dustin Kyle Kielkopf at the end of July, Mary and I now have six nephews and two nieces, a total of eight such relatives. Six years ago we only had three. Talk about inflation...
And every time one of them is born at least one family member, and usually several, feels obligated to drop hints that will win no awards for subtlety. The most common approach features the proud new mama or papa flashing a Pepsodent smile and cajoling, “Well, I guess its your turn next,” while they bounce our newest niece or nephew on their knee.
When we think of the pros and cons of taking our turn now, there is a bit more urgency than there has been before. After all, Mary won’t be 29 forever.
Still, when it comes right down to it, I don’t thing I’m really sold on the prospect of becoming a father. Mary definitely seems to be weakening in favor of being called “mom,” though. So I thought maybe I’d ask you folks for some help in coming to a more firm decision.
If you’d like to help us decide whether to become parents or maintain our sanity instead, please take a couple of minutes to drop me a few lines and give me some reasons, for or against, our joining the ranks of parents. As responses come pouring in, I’ll probably print them since it’s likely there is at least one other couple out there going through the same “should we” or “should we not” debate.
Remember, however, that this is not a contest. No prizes will be awarded and the judge’s decision may not be final. (Void where prohibited by good sense.)
Heck, if you do a good job and things work out that way, we might even call on you again for some help with names.

*

IS MY FACE RED! A caller – only one -- informs me that my recent column recounting the experience of seeing the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Washington was in error. Those are not Marines who snappily patrol the tomb. No indeed. The Army supplies the personnel.
To my untrained eye, the Army’s blue dress uniforms look like Marine uniforms, thus the error. And, the caller pointed out, it is not an officer who conducts the inspection when the guards are relieved, but the Sergeant-of-the-Guard.
Gee, and I had a year of ROTC—conducted by the Army. Of course, our uniforms were Army drab, not dress blues. But thanks for the lesson.

*

RUMOR OF THE WEEK: Adlai Stevenson, in an effort to counteract Gov. Thompson’s characterizations of him as “a wimp, “ will challenge the governor to a boxing match in place of the next scheduled debate.
Some politicians are content with throwing their hat into the ring, but not Stevenson. He’s throwing his whole body in. And you think Rocky makes a dramatic comeback in Rocky III.... (And guess who’s agreed to act as Adlai’s trainer? That’s right, Sylvester—“Rocky”—Stallone.)
Howard Cosell is to be on hand to provide the blow-by-blow account of the match that is to be nationally telecast on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports.” The match will pre-empt the scheduled telecast of a bottle-throwing contest between two L.A. winos.
Word has also come that Mr. T., an independent, plans to challenge the Stevenson-Thompson winner. “I don’t eat quiche,” he said in proposing the bout.
Stevenson reportedly replied, “Go for it,” while Thompson said Mr. T’s record is unimpressive. Wow! What a governor’s race!

June 24, 1981 – Parenthood: It may not be for everyone

It never seems like it’s been that long, of course, but it has. Over the weekend I plan to accompany Mary back to the halls of West Waterloo High School where she will be participating in the 10-year reunion of her high school graduating class.
We received a letter a few days ago from one of her classmates who now lives in Des Moines and who plans to attend the event. She filled us in on what’s happening around her place, including the fact that several classmates and friends are pregnant. And so is she. It will be her second.
“We ‘re doing our part to keep the schools open,” she writes. “Isn’t it about your turn?”
Is it? We’re not so sure.
Mary and I recently marked our sixth anniversary—has it been that long? And the subject of children seems to be a more common point of discussion as the days pass. That figures, since neither of us is, as they say, getting any younger.
To add to the little jabbing remarks such as those in that recent letter, one of my brothers and his wife are expecting their first child around the first of the year and my other brother and his wife will be celebrating my nephew’s first birthday about the same time.
One of my sisters has an eight-year-old daughter and my other sister has an eight-year-old son and a six-year-old son. That leaves only our house without the sounds of tiny footsteps - not to mention blood - curdling cries in the middle of the night.
Mary and I are not as lonely or as alone as childless couples of the past, however. The Census Bureau’s statistics show that in 1967 only one percent of wives between the ages of 18 and 24 said they expected not to have children. By 1977, the figure had climbed to five percent. And in the latest Bureau statistics available, of all women between the ages of 18 and 34, 11 percent say they will never have children.
Pressure to have children is subtler, in many cases, than it used to be, but there is still pressure, the recent letter from Des Moines standing as one small example.
One of the ways in which pressure is applied is to ask the childless couple who will care about them, who will take care of them once they grow old. But recent figures from the National Alliance for Optional Parenthood, citing a survey by Dr. E. James Lieberman of the George Washington University School of Medicine, indicate that less than 25 percent of parents have weekly contact with their children.
We still have time to decide whether we’ll regret it. Maybe we would. But then we could point to more than a few people who regret that they did have children.
Mary will be beyond the age of 30 in a couple of years. In the past eight years the number of women having their first child after that age has almost doubled, to more than 100,000 from 58,000. The number having their first child after they turn 35 has increased as well. The trend is strongest among college-educated professional women – like Mary – many of whom are consciously postponing marriage and children until after they have established them selves in their careers.
An interesting aspect to postponing the decision to have children is that the longer people wait, the more reasons seem to come up not to become parents. Younger, less experienced couples are often unaware, are naive about what the responsibilities of marriage are, let alone the vastly more complicated responsibilities that attach themselves to those who become parents. They often have children without carefully considering the implications.
Psychologists get into the picture, too. Some say that the trend toward older parents is a plus for the children since older parents bring greater maturity, financial stability and a sense that the child is wanted. But other professionals claim that after waiting so long expectations are often so high that there is a great chance of experiencing a let down, a disappointment.
And so the final decision comes down to Mary and me. We are the only ones who should make that decision and it should not be made to satisfy parents or other relatives or friends in Des Moines - even if one of them did sit next to Mary in high school English and even if she is doing her part to keep the schools open.

August 22, 1986 – Two years down, a lifetime to go

Exactly two years ago today, I was writing an editorial on my Argus computer when, shortly after 9 a.m., my phone rang.
“I think it’s time,” Mary said. “You’d better come home as soon as you can.”
By the time I arrived about 20 minutes later, Mary was more than ready for the 15-minute drive to the hospital. A few hours later, at exactly 2:19 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 22,1984, Mary’s labor ended and Matthew William Kielkopf came screaming — literally — into the world.
Today, Matt stretches to about 37 inches tall and weighs nearly 40 pounds after debuting at seven pounds, 15 ounces and 20½ inches.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years already, and yet Mary and I really can’t remember what it was like before Matt was around. It seems like he’s always been here.
So far, so good. If the next 10 or 20 or 80 years go as well as the first two, we won’t be able to offer many complaints. We’ve been pretty lucky so far. We hope that luck will last.
In spite of his father, and surely because of his mother, Matt seems to be developing a genial personality. The fact is, he’s a fun guy — almost all the time.
About a month ago we took his crib down and put a double-mattress on the floor in his room. He’s been sleeping pretty well ever since. If he continues, we’ll put the full bed up pretty soon. Before we do, though, there is one thing Matt really will have to stop. For the last two weeks he’s been getting up two or three times during the night, opening his bedroom door and walking into our bedroom where he smiles and gently says, “Hi.”
We pry our eyes open, look at the clock to confirm that it’s only 2:23 a.m., and walk Matt back to his bed where he usually requests some juice. The fact is he drinks Hi-C the way Harry Caray drinks Budweiser.
Last Tuesday night Matt was uncharacteristically owly and refused to go to bed for the night unless he had a can of “bop”-- or pop, as the carbonated soft drink is more commonly known to Midwesterners.
So it was that he bedded down clutching his stuffed white doggie in one hand and a 12-ounce can of Diet Shasta Cherry Cola in the other. He quickly fell asleep and, after releasing his white-knuckle grip on his “bop,” Mary liberated the Shasta and returned it to the refrigerator.
A few months ago, some of you may recall, another strange notion hit the youngster and he went to bed with a bag of Hy-Vee hamburger buns. Next time it’ll probably be an eight-pack of Hormel hot dogs or a Muscatine watermelon since it seems obvious he’s suffering from a subconscious need for picnic foods.
Matt’s vocabulary is suddenly exploding. Limited to “hot” for weeks, now he says a few new words every day. He’ll try to pronounce almost anything he’s asked. And when you try to help him with something, oh, say, like opening the refrigerator door, he’ll look at you with darts in his eyes and announce, “I do!” And he usually does.
It’s getting so I can’t take pictures of him anymore because he wants to be the photographer rather than the subject. We’ve also discovered that Matt’s a left-hand batter, but a right-hander in everything else, like his dad. Without either encouragement or instruction Matt has developed a powerful baseball swing. And, apparently copying what he’s seen on TV, he’s taken to running a version of the bases after he hits the ball, often concluding with a slide. The kid’s got potential.
Pretending has become a big thing lately and Matt loves to pretend he’s a kitty-cat, crawling around the floor on all fours and meowing. He’ll also walk around in my shoes and a baseball cap and declare, “I daddy.”
When we’re roughhousing and he’ll clobber me in the nose or rip off my ear or cause some other major bodily injury and I offer any protest, Matt’s face will take on a most serious look and he’ll softly jabber away unintelligibly, always concluding with, “O.K., daddy?” And then he’ll kiss my ruined ear or nose or knee and the action continues.
Thanks to the time his mom spends with him Matt loves his books.
He can identify all sorts of animals and other objects. He’ll lie quietly for the longest time while Mary -- and sometimes his dad -- reads to him.
The sight of the city bus enthralls him. Whenever he sees one he
immediately announces, “Bus!”
Matt doesn’t like to have either of us put our arm around him when he’s lying down. Instead, he puts his arm around us and then pats us gently on the back.
And just think—he only joined us two years ago. He’ll be in school before you know it, then it’ll be high school graduation and on to college, then maybe marriage and kids of his own. But first, we’re going to work on making it to three.

March 13, 1999 -- Why do we require what we require?

Have you seen X lately? How about Y-squared or the cubed root of 17? No? Me either. And there was only one time in my life when I was looking for them: when I was forced to take Algebra I and Algebra II in high school. Since then, mathematics and I have lived quite nicely without fretting over trying to discover the consecutive integers in this 8th grade equation: x+(x+1)+(x+2)-5>2x. That’s because, as recent research points out and as common sense has always suggested, the vast majority of people will never need to know.
Research conducted by the International Center for Leadership in Education shows what most of us already knew: 87% of adult Americans will NEVER use any form of mathematics beyond basic arithmetic (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing) in their entire lifetimes. And so what sense does it make to require students to suffer through the indignities of high school math? It makes no sense whatsoever and it ought to be stopped immediately.
Sure, it’s too late for me, but for those about to embark on high school careers and for their children and for all those generations yet unborn, we may not be able to give a greater gift than to adjust the high school math curriculum to reflect real life.
Some of my best friends are math teachers. It would be a great service to them all if we were to make their courses elective. It would allow them to work with students who could benefit from their expertise, students who have both an interest in and an aptitude for higher-level mathematics. I know at least one English teacher who wouldn’t mind working only with students who have a strong interest in and aptitude for writing, reading, speaking and thinking. But alas, nearly 100 percent of adult Americans demonstrate a life-long need to write clearly, to read intelligently, to speak effectively and to think. You can be sure, however, that if only 17 percent of adults used such skills, I’d be the first to demand all English courses become elective only.
Trying to teach algebra to people who don’t get it, who don’t want it and who correctly surmise that its mysteries not only have nothing to do with their lives now but never will is as inexplicable as trying to teach a pig to fly. The pigs all know they don’t need to fly and that no matter how much homework they have on the dynamics of flight, they’ll never be able to do it. You don’t have to imagine this scenario because its equivalent is all too real for hordes of high school students who are coerced into taking math. And so the question is: Why do we require the math that we require?
Michael K. Smith knows the answer. In his brilliant book, Humble Pi: The Role Mathematics Should Play in American Education (Prometheus Books, 1994), Smith, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee, examines and explodes the myths that have traditionally supported high school math requirements.
“A purse contains 30 coins, all either quarters or dimes. The total value of the coins is greater than $5.20. At least how many of the coins are quarters? At most how many are dimes?”
You could create and solve an equation to find out, as 8th grade math students have to do, or you could dump out the coins and count them. “The silliness of these exercises,” Smith says, “fosters a sense of absurdity in students. Solving problems in school ought to be for the sake of solving problems in real life.”
The colleges and universities are the real culprits, since their admissions requirements drive high school requirements. But maybe it’s time for that coercion to end.
And so we could solve one of life’s problems for many high school students by making math courses reflect reality and by making them electives. If you want to solve for X, if you need to know what Y-squared is or determine the cubed root of 17, go for it, but leave the rest of us alone. We’ll be just fine. I promise.

June 1, 1998 – Home sheik home

There’s a baseball-batting cage on our roof and a Garfield look-alike curled up in the flowerpot by front door. The Gulf News says Titanic is still playing at the El Dorado, and WGN radio is broadcasting
memorials to Cubs’ announcer Harry Carey as prayer call sounds across the street. Such is life in Abu Dhabi.
We left our Davenport home in 1994 for the uncertainties of life on the Arabian Peninsula, nearly halfway around the world. Now, four years later, we’re glad we did.
I grew up in Ottumwa. My wife is the former Mary Guernsey of Waterloo. And our son Matt, a 13-year-old seventh grader, was born in Davenport. Now we are all part of the American Community School here in the capital city of the United Arab Emirates from whose northern tip, on a clear day, you can see the mountains of Iran across the Arabian (don’t call it Persian) Gulf.
Our school enrolls about 620 students, K-12, from more than 50 countries, including Iraq. Only 35 percent of our students are Americans. Many are Arab Muslims. Some are Arab Christians. Others are Hindus or Buddhists.
The Abu Dhabi Evangelical Christian Church enjoys a multinational membership of more than 500. The church sits on land donated by the United Arab Emirate’s president, Sheikh Zayed, and stands in the shadow of Abu Dhabi’s largest mosque.
Established in 1972 by the U.S. State Department and some American oil companies, our school also occupies a site donated by Sheikh Zayed.
Our students are outstanding scholars, but they are involved in much more than academics. They have performed in productions of Camelot, Grease and Hello, Dolly! There are concert bands and a jazz band. The Model United Nations team travels to The Hague and to Dublin. Students in the Academic Games visit Damascus. Math competitions rage in Copenhagen and Milan. And there are the sports programs (but no American football or baseball.)
Our school belongs to the Eastern Mediterranean Activities Conference (EMAC) and sports seasons end with an EMAC tournament. At least, they usually do. This year, in deference to the impasse between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the UN, the EMAC basketball tournaments scheduled for Cairo and Kuwait City in mid-February were canceled.
But, back in October, Matt flew to Amman, Jordan, for the EMAC jayvee volleyball tournament. He stayed with a local Jordanian family in their mansion. It’s a road trip not to be confused with a school bus ride from West Branch to West Liberty.
As a family over the last four years, we’ve visited 14 countries, from Greece and Egypt to Hong Kong and Thailand to Japan and Israel.
Meanwhile, back in Abu Dhabi, we order pizza from Domino’s, hamburgers and fries from Burger King and McDonald’s, and chicken from KFC. We buy Van Heusen at JC Penney and Nintendo games from Toys ‘R Us. We hit the beach at the Hilton and the Sheraton.
We’ve waited at intersections alongside a Chevy conversion van driven by a fully veiled Arab woman. We’ve been passed by a Mercedes driven by a gentleman in his traditional Arab dress talking on a cell phone. And we’ve seen the glares aimed at Russian and German tourists who are infamous for their flagrant disregard of Arab culture.
The dunes of the Arabian Desert rise high just outside the city. Camels roam the dunes the way cows roam the rolling hills of Iowa. But thanks to the Internet and to satellite TV, when El Nino clobbers California and the Carolinas, when the Hawkeye men’s basketball team upsets Purdue, when President Clinton addresses the nation, when Oprah chooses a book, when Tom Brokaw narrates the news, half a world away we see it or hear it or read it as it happens.
There’s a baseball-batting cage on our roof and a Garfield look-alike curled up in the flowerpot by the front door. An Arab boy in his flowing white dishdash is rollerblading down our sidewalk, an Arabic commercial for Kellogg’s Cornflakes is on TV, and a trio of veiled women is waiting for a taxi. Such is life in Abu Dhabi.
We left our Davenport home in 1994 for the uncertainties of the Arabian Peninsula and, four years later, we’re glad we did.

Media

March 2, 1987 -- Oprah’s oodles

With the coming of baseball’s spring training, the spotlight not only focuses on strong arms, quick feet and powerful bats, but on bank accounts.
Recently decided arbitration cases have left some players, like the New York Yankees’ Don Mattingly, burdened by salaries hovering around $2 million per year. Many of us have a tough time cheering for such financiers and, when talk of Oliver North’s choice of secretaries fades, when discussions of the Tower Report finally wilt, when bantering over who should succeed Paul Volcker at the Fed concludes, talk often digresses to discussions of the salaries of athletes — baseball players in particular.
That debate pales, however, against the latest salary revelations of one Oprah Winfrey. She doesn’t play quarterback for the New York Giants, although some observers say she may have potential as an NFL lineperson. She doesn’t play the outfield for the Yankees or pitch for the Dodgers. At least we don’t think she does. Frankly, we know her by reputation only, never having witnessed even a single precious second of what must repeatedly be the finest hour of daily conversation ever recorded this side of the Big Dipper. Oprah Winfrey, you see, is reportedly a TV talk-show host.
Oprah, as we understand it, is sweeping the country — or at least some of it — as powerfully as the cyclone that whirled poor Dorothy — and Toto, too — all the way to Oz. Oprah herself seems to have landed in a financial location that, indeed, is not Kansas.
According to reports even more reliable than those provided by the prestigious Lollipop Guild, Oprah has signed an agreement for syndicating her talk show that will bring her in the neighborhood of — this is not a misprint or the work of the Wicked Witch of the West — $30 million next year. That’s, THIRTY MILLION dollars for one 12-month period. Even the Scarecrow could tell us that’s about $2.5 million per month.
That makes Johnny Carson’s annual take of $10 million or so seem a pittance. As for ballplayers’ salaries, well, the debate is over. Poor Don Mattingly and his fellows are paupers.
After all, many of these athletes do have unique talents. Mattingly, for example, can use a round stick to hit a round baseball traveling at varying rates of speed and traveling in a multitude of paths better, perhaps, than anybody else in the whole world. What can Oprah do better than perhaps everyone else on the face of the earth?
That’s so simple that Toto could tell us: Oprah Winfrey knows how to make more money than just about anyone else in the world. The Great and Powerful Oz would be proud.

January 9, 1983 – Inside editorials

“The editorial pages of a newspaper are, in many ways, its soul. They help define its character, set its tone, establish its personality and reveal what the newspaper stands for. The news sections of the paper mirror the world outside; the editorial page mirrors the world within the newspaper — its values, beliefs, dreams, hopes and spirit. Read any newspaper’s editorial page carefully over a period of time and you’ll come to understand the people who run it — even if they are faceless and nameless, their character will shine through.”
— James P. Gannon, editor of The Des Moines Register

At least once a year I feel compelled to re-introduce The Argus editorial page and our editorials to you. As we move out into the uncertainties of 1983, this may be as good a time as any.
The views expressed in Argus editorials are not simply the opinions of only one person. Instead, they reflect the position of this newspaper as an institution. These positions are shaped by the executive editor, the editorial page editor and the publisher, who has the final say on any editorial position The Argus takes.
It continues to be our intention to express our opinions in our editorials with vigor and veracity, but we also retain our commitment to present the differing views of others fairly. We want our opinion pages to be an open market of ideas, a market that features letters from our readers.
To implement that philosophy six days a week, year in and year out, is a great challenge, but we do not shrink from it — we welcome it.
Although larger metropolitan newspapers have a staff of several editorial writers, The Argus relies on Mike Kielkopf – yup, that’s me—the editorial page editor, to write all the editorials. Argus staffers Jack Tumbleson, Marc Nesseler and, most recently, Murray Hancks, have filled in for the editorial page editor when he has been on vacation.
Sometimes Argus editorials are longer than those in many other newspapers. The reason? We try to avoid glib comments and superficial opinions. We try to write editorials that are well documented with pertinent facts and supporting evidence and comments from appropriate experts. If you want superficial commentary, try “The Tonight Show.” If you want well grounded, logical arguments — which certainly is not to say we’re always right — then keep on reading Argus editorials.
And so we move into 1983, our 132nd year of publication, with a renewed commitment to presenting you with honest, sincere and hard-hitting editorial comment on the issues that affect your lives and ours. And if you have an opinion to express, send us a letter. We’ll print it. After all, that’s what fairness, the democratic process — and especially the First Amendment — are all about.

August 22, 1979 – ‘Bottom-up news’ and ‘Going in Style’

Herbert Gans wants “bottom-up news.” Gans, a professor of sociology at Columbia University and author of Deciding What’s News, made his proposal for bottom-up news at the recent national convention of SDX—Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists.
Several Argus staffers, including me, are members of the local chapter, but only our court reporter, David Giesen, attended the national convention.
He heard Gans suggest that a “Federal Endowment for the News” be established to supply grants for those news organizations that want to move in the direction of bottom-up journalism.
And what, you ask, does the professor mean by “bottom-up news?”
Simply that the press, both on a national and local level, is usually forced to rely primarily on “top down” news — journalists going to the seats of power and passing the word down to the rest of us.
In this time of public skepticism of established leaders and institutions, Gans contends, it is especially important that journalists try to reduce the huge gap between the reporter and the public while increasing the breathing space between the reporter and the institutions. And that’s where bottom-up news comes in. Using the bottom-up news approach would permit the public to tell the institutions and the officials what they think is wrong with their policies, where they think the country ought to be going, what their problems are.
The reverse is generally the case now, Gans says. “The problem with bottom-up news,” says the Columbia professor, “is that it is based on a much wider range of newsmakers and sources, and this is complex and costly. It’s easier and cheaper to get news from an official who holds a press conference.” Nice theory, too bad it won’t work.
But Gans takes on the restrictions of contemporary newsgathering realities with his suggestion that a “Federal Endowment for the News” be established.
Just as the National Endowment for the Arts aids the public by helping the practitioners, so would the endowment for the news, Gans suggests.
“I am well aware,” he says, “that journalists get very nervous about government intervention in the news; I get nervous, too. But I think the existing endowments have worked almost in a political vacuum. I think the news endowment is worth trying.” I think so, too. How about you?

LOOKING FOR a good, funny movie? Something you can take the family to see and, when you walk out, you have the feeling that the world is to be taken a little less seriously than you thought when you went in?
Then don’t see Going in Style, the George Burns, Art Carney, Lee Strasberg movie now playing at Northpark in Davenport.
It is a terrific movie, but it is not funny. Despite the newspaper ads and TV promos that indicate the film is little more than the hilarious escapades of a trio of senile men who rob a bank wearing Groucho masks, there is little in the film that is really funny.
This is a classy tragicomedy based on the problems of growing old in America, not on Henry Youngman one-liners about prune juice.
Even the funny moments — and there are some — are shadowed by the unfunny realities of living on Social Security benefits in a cramped little apartment and having nothing more to look forward to than little kids rampaging through the park and scaring the pigeons away while you’re feeding them.
Going in Style is a story of human relationships, a commentary on the value we place on the elderly in America. It is not a comedy. The acting is superb, the story disturbing. If you want to confront issues, see the movie. If you want an evening of frivolity and laughter you’re more likely to find it at a chess match than at Going in Style.

December 6, 1982 – About a new grammarian

From time to time The Argus receives letters from readers who say they’ve finally gotten fed-up with all the misspellings, all the errors in punctuation and grammar. “I have been a subscriber to The Argus for many years,” one such reader wrote recently, “and during the past year or two I have been appalled at the sloppiness of your printed pages. By sloppiness I mean misspelled words, poor sentence construction and incorrect punctuation....
“I am forwarding a few samples — and these are by no means the complete record....”
Such criticism is taken seriously. And as the examples the readers generally send in with their critiques clearly demonstrate, we can do much better. Of course, almost any other newspaper you’d care to name could do better, too. Writing and editing under deadline pressure often leads to errors that news people wouldn’t make if they had more time to scrutinize commas and antecedents and other linguistic paraphernalia. In most cases it’s not that we don’t know better, it’s that we’re in too much of a hurry.
That’s not offered as an excuse, but simply as a fact of the newspaper business. Scrutinize the Chicago Tribune or the L.A. Times or the Denver Post or just about any other daily paper and you’ll see that some errors are inherent in the nature of what we do every day. There is a limit, of course, and the folks who have written us on the subject have generally found examples of journalistic malpractice that are downright embarrassing.
Why, I myself have — despite knowing better — occasionally attempted to squeeze a plural pronoun into a sentence that contains an antecedent of the singular persuasion. It’s still wrong, of course.
Only a few days ago a reader justifiably lambasted us for printing a story that her critique revealed as a jumble of inexcusable errors. The day after I had replied to her letter, irony struck.
A leading weekly trade magazine in the newspaper business called Editor & Publisher arrived and inside I found this feature story: “Experimental software may assure grammatically perfect reporting.”
Here’s part of what that article proclaimed:
“A new computer program designed by a University of South Carolina engineering professor may soon ease the work load for newspaper writers and editors. According to its inventor, Dr. Michael Huhns, it has the potential to “eliminate the drudgery of making sure commas and other grammatical structures are correct.’”
If it would, I know a bunch of fourth-graders who’d like to latch onto one immediately. (Now, now... Don’t say things like that. All of us reporters and editors are well beyond fourth grade. And if you don’t believe it, come on in sometime and I’ll show you the elementary school diploma that hangs on my wall next to my E.T. poster.)
This computer program, which Huhns cleverly has named, “Grammar,” enables a computer to detect grammatical errors, correct them and rewrite the sentence. Still in its infancy, Grammar has a dictionary of only 100 words — probably plenty for most of us reporters, especially if they’re all one syllable — but Huhns says he is expanding Grammar’s capacity regularly. For the time being, because of its limited vocabulary, Grammar can correct only one simple sentence at a time. Eventually, however, it will work with complex sentences and complete stories.
Says Huhns, “Actually, the computer is better than any person because it is consistent. This leaves the editors with more time to work on ideas.”
But until Grammar is available, we promise to work harder at doing the dirty work of cleaning up our stories all by ourselves — at least as much as time permits.
And if you don’t think we’re doing a reasonable job, then write to the publisher and complain. You have to help keep us on our toes until we can get Grammar on the job, you know. (Gee, their aren’t any mistake in this column, are they’re?)

April 14, 1979 – Cronkite says papers need more ‘Why?’

Walter Cronkite says newspapers are a necessity. “If the people are to be adequately informed to exercise their franchise in this democracy, newspapers are going to have to flesh out the news — give them greater details on the stories we in television do cover, and cover the stories we do not.”
That’s what America’s most credible, most respected television newsman told the American Newspaper Publishers Association earlier this spring. Admitting that network news is “reduced primarily to a headline service,” Cronkite added, “I get the who, what, when, where—but the why is often the missing dimension in newspaper stories today.”
The CBS news veteran also reported that he conducted an “unscientific sampling” of young people and found that what they say want in the newspaper is “about the same as that which older readers find interesting and important — international and national news.” He said that finding might, at least partially, be attributable to the possibility that “local and state news is not as interestingly researched, reported and written.” Walter added that he’d like to see more “stories of people who are finding the answers to the problems of today.”
And he asked for more innovation in format — “some experiments, some radical departures; perhaps a front-page of short items with references to longer articles inside...” A few months earlier, the president of ABC-TV told a newspaper convention that newspapers are here to stay.
“Despite its (television’s) formidable growth,” James E. Duffy said, “television cannot displace the newspaper. Anyone who thinks that is possible should have spent time in New York City last summer during the newspaper strike. It seemed like you were in a lost city.
“Nothing can replace newspapers, not television nor any electronic printout in your home communications center of the future,” he said. “Rather, what has evolved is a complimentary relationship with one medium reinforcing the other, each building interest in the other.”
And Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler later told the same convention that he does not believe in competing directly with television, the movies or the huge number of specialist magazines. “Nor do we believe in the style of the populist, sensational newspapering being done in this country. We believe that excellence in journalism represents our best chance for attracting and retaining our readers.”
There are at least two proposed changes in television news that echo the sentiments toward more detailed reporting. NBC’s Fred Silverman has indicated he is considering expanding the “NBC Nightly News” to a full hour. And Ted Turner’s network that originates in Atlanta may soon add a 24-hour news service built around a two-hour evening news program. Turner says the venture would include in-depth features, news analysis and commentaries. “It is a tremendous financial risk,” Turner said, “but I think it is needed.”
Lee Marts, vice president and general manager of WOC-TV in Davenport, the Quad-Cities’ NBC affiliate, said he had no comment on the possibility of the network expanding the “NBC Nightly News” to 60 minutes. Maybe Mr. Marts has no opinion, but Cronkite, Turner and others clearly do. And as a result, news coverage – especially TV news—may never be the same.

February 23, 1979 -- Here’s one release that was read

A newspaper receives scores of news releases every day, the majority of which are of no news value whatever. Why various organizations continue to send them after years of never having one published is a curiosity.
But one news release that managed to evade the quick death awaiting most of its kind was a release from the National Association of Chiefs of Police, headquartered in Washington, D.C. This recent release noted the results gleaned from a questionnaire distributed to 23,000 police chiefs, sheriffs and supervisory personnel.
One of the questions the survey asked was, “Do you think the news media is fair and impartial in reporting the facts?”
Of those key law officers responding to the question, 73.3 percent, almost three-out-of-four, said the news media is not fair and is not impartial.
Only 17.3 percent were satisfied that the news media is fair and impartial in reporting the facts. A few -- 9.4 percent—declined to offer an opinion.
The survey required respondents to list their job title, but their names and departments were not requested. “We felt that the individuals would be able to speak more freely and express their true feelings if their names and department could be kept secret,” explained NACOP president Robert Ferguson.
The questionnaire did not indicate any specific problems in news coverage, simply the fact that most of the top-ranking law officers in America don’t like the media coverage they receive.
It’s not a great surprise to learn that the law views the media with a large measure of scorn. Much of the media is liberal. Many newspaper, magazine, radio and television reporters and broadcasters jump at the chance to report charges of police brutality, for example, while often opposing capital punishment and other strong means of criminal retribution which the lawmen support.
It seems these general media trends have not gone unnoticed. The survey asked other interesting questions and drew some notable responses:
“Do you favor any form of control of the purchase of firearms by citizens of good character for sport or defense of their home or family business. More than 65 percent of the lawmen opposed such gun control while only 31 percent favored it.
“If all states required the death penalty when an officer was ‘killed in the line of duty’, do you feel that this would help reduce the increase in police officers killed in the future?”
An overwhelming 92 percent said yes, that such laws would deter murders of police officers. Only slightly less than 8 percent answered no.
“Do you favor the organization of a national police force to replace that of state, county and local police?”
Nearly 94 percent opposed such a national force while 4.1 percent favored it. “With crime generally increasing, who do you blame for the increase?”
Slightly more than 60 percent of the respondents placed the blame on the courts and judges for failure to impose strict enforcement of the law. Nearly 30 percent said weakening of the family is to blame for the crime increase while 9.2 percent said the general permissiveness of society is to blame.
Those are some enlightening views from the men and women who are charged with protecting an increasingly complex and criminally oriented society.
All of us would do well to pay those views some serious attention.

September 11, 1979 – Printing news first isn’t always best

Heck, it’s no big deal. I mean it’s not like they jumped the gun on an embezzlement case or something. It’s one of those situations where the principle is the thing.
About two weeks ago, you see, newspapers, radio and television stations around the country received a 94-page, 8 ½-by-ll-inch booklet from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. That’s an Evanston-based organization, which, since 1956, has awarded more than $161 million in college scholarships to America’s top high school scholars.
The green-and-white Booklet NMSC sent carries the routine title, “Semi-finalists in the twenty-fifth annual (1980) Merit Scholarship competition.” And in the upper right hand comer, all alone, is this brief paragraph:
“Confidential: for release in evening newspapers of Wednesday, September 19, 1979.”
Marc Nesseler, who handles such releases here at The Argus, noticed the release date, assigned photographers to take pictures of area semi-finalists and made other arrangements for the release of the story on the prescribed date. That’s his job and his ethical responsibility. He has again carried them out, as you will see tomorrow. But not all reporters are as responsible. Despite the clearly noted release date, the paper in the town immediately east of Rock Island failed to abide by it.
Dispatching the news either without regard to the release date or with simple carelessness, the paper carried the names of the semifinalists in its Sept. 12 edition, one week too soon.
Hey, no big deal. But I did wonder what the reaction of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation people would be to this breach of release date, so I phoned John Brauer, NMSC’s public relations director.
“The reason for the Sept. 19 date is to allow time for the various schools to inform their students of the results first, before the news is made public,” Brauer said.
“And we also want the information to be released at the same time so that we keep up good relations with the various papers, radio and TV stations around the country.” Brauer did say that his mailer had made a mistake this year by mailing the booklets too early, thereby creating a situation in which temptation or sloppiness would be more likely to cause problems.
“I have received three calls from papers that have said they inadvertently ran the story before the release date,” Brauer pointed out. “But none of those calls was from Moline.”
The PR man said it is common for his department to withhold future mailing until after the release date for media that fail to adhere to the proper release dates.
Just thought I’d ask. No big deal.

*

MUCH COMMENT has been received concerning my recent column about Anita Bryant. One letter writer asked for an address where Ms. Bryant could be contacted. For that writer and others who may be interested, here is her home address:
Anita Bryant
4682 Bay Road
Miami, Fla. 33140
And thanks for all the calls and letters. They’re always appreciated, whether you agree with the comments expressed in this column or not.

September 29, 1982 – A letter for ‘Mr. Argus’

The letter was from the Republican Presidential Task Force. It was dated Sept. 21, 1982, and was paid for and authorized by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. But what made it special was that it was the first letter we’ve ever received addressed to “Mr. Rock I. Argus.”
At the age of 131, “Mr. Rock I. Argus” has seen a lot of things, but this recent letter has to be among the funniest. Read it and guffaw:
“Dear Mr. Argus: At the direct request of the President of the United States, I am calling upon you to make a most unusual sacrifice.
“Not the kind of sacrifice that a national emergency might require of you or your children or your grandchildren to protect our shores from invasion.
“I pray that will never happen. But today President Reagan and I must jointly ask you to voluntarily make a different kind of sacrifice — a sacrifice that will help us to protect our Republican majority in the Senate.
“And so, on behalf of President Ronald Wilson Reagan, I have the honor of personally inviting you to become a member of the Republican Presidential Task Force.
“I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending that President Reagan mentioned your name specifically, but he did describe the kind of person he wanted at his side at this critical point in America’s history...
“That’s you, Mr. Argus — and President Reagan urgently needs you in his Task Force... “And if you join, your name will be entered in an unprecedented honor roll of Americans that I will personally present to the President and which will remain forever with President Reagan’s permanent papers.
“Imagine your great grandchildren finding your name historically linked with Ronald Reagan in his pursuit of the finest vision of America since 1776...
“But President Reagan cannot carry the burden alone. He’s only one man... And that’s why we’re asking you to become a Task Force Charter Member and send $120 a year (or $10 a month) and more when possible. I realize this is a sacrifice, Mr. Argus, but sacrifice is what made this country great...”
“Sincerely, Howard Baker, Majority Leader, United States Senate.”
Mr. Argus says he’ll think about the invitation, but he’s a little skeptical. He said he thought he’d like a little more information and that maybe he’d send a letter to Mr. T. White House in Washington. Mr. House has been close to every president, except George Washington, and ought to be able to offer some sound advice.

March 19, 1980 – Quad-City journalists go wrong

Traditionally, doctors have agreed not to snitch on each other and lawyers have honored the same unwritten agreement. For some rather astonishing reason, at least to me, the press has —for the most part — also honored a similar practice. As you all well know, fools rush in where angels fear to tread, so I’ve never been one to play it safe by following such tradition.
Of course, by not doing so, I leave myself open to attacks by others, to their scalding criticism and their unmitigated maligning. But then, I think that’s the way it should be — for doctors, for lawyers and, especially, for the press.
When you’re dealing with people’s health, their legal rights and their right to know, how is it possible to justify cover-ups and collusions and a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” philosophy?
Fool that I am, here I go again, criticizing my fellow journalists and their ethics. First to draw my wrath is the new tabloid section being run each Saturday in the Quad-City Times, the newspaper whose publisher compared it favorably to the Washington Post in a highly amusing piece of several months back.
Anyway, this tabloid from across the river seems bent on out-sensationalizing those supermarket tabloids — The National Enquirer, Midnight Globe and The Star. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Chuck Barris, the half-wit responsible for the infamous television productions “The Gong Show” and “The $1.98 Beauty Contest,” is the editor of this new low in professional journalism.
If a junior high newspaper staff were to turn out a publication filled with such gossip, innuendo and other non-news vituperations, the adviser would be fired and the principal would be run out of town. But please, don’t take my word for all this. Judge these samples taken from a recent promotional column about the new publication:
“What gets put on my doorstep is mine, not yours,” raves a Davenport apartment dweller.
“The louse who stole the Mazda logo off my new RX7 is going to get his,” roars a Moline man.
“Watch for it. It’s becoming some of the best reading in the Times.”
They said it, I didn’t. Frankly, some of the reporting the Times does is quite good, but apparently the publisher and his fellows have little respect for that sort of thing. After all, it’s the bottom line that ranks No. 1 with most newspapers, and the Davenport entry in the Lee chain is certainly not the exception. And, of course, more people read the National Enquirer than the New York Times, so there’s money to be made along this path. Just ask the producers at ABC television.
Our other competitors, the folks over in Moline, recently ran an “exclusive” interview with Margaret Kinion, the woman who a county grand jury has indicted on 63 counts of embezzlement from the City of Rock Island.
The story, which was also copyrighted, brings up an interesting question. What made the interview “newsworthy,” and what precedent does it set for area media?
That is, should we rush over to the county jail to secure an interview with Rudy Kloiber, the interesting character who has admitted to the murder of Plantation Restaurant owner, Nicholas Chirekos?
How about an exclusive interview with Waymon Weathers, the man accused of the shooting of Johnnie Bradford and who has been indicted for the murder of her unborn child?
They, like Kinion, would likely explain how they are unwitting victims of circumstance, how the press has treated them unfairly, how their friends have abandoned them, but how it’s all OK because their belief in God and family will pull them through even these dark hours.
Of course, we’d probably also have to agree to print comments from the accused explaining how they are “extremely fortunate to have the best criminal lawyer in the state of Illinois, maybe the best in the Midwest” to defend them, and how this attorney “is the one person I trust implicitly. He’s a genius. His mind works so quickly — but he’s also a good person.”
Then again, with the national television networks selling their souls to the Iranian hoodlums, why should we expect that some daily papers might not follow their bad example?
If the English poet, John Donne, were around, he might put my concern about these recent works by the press like this:
“No newspaper is an island, entire of itself. Every newspaper is a piece of the journalistic continent, a part of the main. Any newspaper’s folly diminishes me, because I am part of the press...”

April 22, 1980 – News Council probes Argus’ complaint

NEW YORK (AP) - The National News Council says publication of a story in Davenport, Iowa, about a teenager charged with murder has prompted it to study the question of a reporter’s responsibility in pre-trial news coverage.
The Council, an independent media watchdog group, on Friday ordered its Freedom of Press Committee to broadly “examine the whole question of journalism’s responsibility, if any, concerning pre-trial publicity.”
The action was initiated by a complaint filed against the Quad-City Times by 14 reporters of The Rock Island Argus, a competing newspaper.
The Argus reporters were upset by the Times’ story giving the background of a 15-year-old boy charged with murder. The story was published before the boy was brought to trial.
Forrest Kilmer, editor of the Times, told the Council, “We saw this story not as a criminal issue, but as a social issue.” Government and judicial officials provided material for the story.
The Council said it would rather look at the matter in a general context rather than consider the problem as a specific complaint.
Tom Smalec, one of the Argus reporters who filed the complaint said, “We felt that to run something like this was just going to cause problems for the press because these kinds of stories obviously are prejudicial to the case and tend to make judges close courtrooms to the media.”
Others signing the complaint were Mike Kielkopf, Jim Crawford, Janet Quick, Ken Golden, John R. Stiles, Jim Deal, Jack Tumbleson, Dean Collins, Murray Hancks, Vera Green, Marc Nesseler, John Michaletti and Dave Giesen.

April 28, 1980 – Self-criticism key to credible press

It is interesting to note how professional journalists react when fellow professionals criticize them. An opportunity to observe this phenomenon presented itself a few days ago when the Quad-City Times responded to a complaint filed against it by 14 Argus reporters, including me, with the National News Council. (See AP story above.)
The Council, an independent media watchdog composed of leading journalists and non-journalists, decided not to rule on our specific complaint against the Times, but to “examine the whole question of journalism’s responsibility, if any, concerning pre-trial publicity.”
Our complaint was filed in protest over the Times’ Aug. 12 story headlined, “Who failed with Scott Darnell?”
Darnell, 15, has been charged with the rape and murder of a 10-year-old Andover, Ill., girl and will be tried as an adult. The trial has not yet begun. It was, and is, our contention that the publication of the sensational story of Darnell’s admittedly bizarre childhood behavior did nothing to advance the art of responsible journalism or — despite the Times’ claims to the contrary — the public’s need to know. If, as the Times has repeatedly stated in defense of its story, the Darnell case was viewed “not as a criminal issue, but as a social issue,” then a number of questions remain unanswered.
If the story is important because of its social implications, why then could it not have been equally effective AFTER the trial? It is possible, you see, that Darnell may be innocent. If this case is not a criminal case, why did the Times choose Scott Darnell, and he alone, to focus their social study on?
Are we to believe that all troubled youngsters end up as Darnell has, as the defendant in a rape-murder case? If this is such a significant, widespread problem, why were no other case studies presented? Can such a socially significant story be adequately dealt with in one newspaper story? Isn’t it worth a series of well-researched pieces? The answers seem obvious to the 14 of us.
On the other hand, if the real purpose of the story were simply to print a sensational account of one particular criminal incident, the one article would be enough. The one article is all that has been printed.
The managing editor of the Times wrote to the council members and told them, “The story speaks for itself.” We agree. We filed our complaint for one reason, and one reason only. We believe it is our responsibility as professional journalists to criticize all institutions which impact on the public and to expose what we perceive to be misconduct.
Newspapers, especially those owned by chains, are included in that list just as are the various levels of government, the schools, the courts and so on.
If The Argus fails to live up to its responsibility to the public — whether by failing to abide by a release date or by printing a sensationalized story — we believe it is the responsibility of other media to expose the misconduct.
There is nothing sacred about a newspaper. Judgments of news people are sometimes wrong, for whatever reason. When errors are made they must not be condoned. We do not condone them when other papers make them and we expect them to report errors we make. It is only in such a situation — a situation in which fair comment and criticism are expected — that a truly free, responsible and effective press can thrive.
We at The Argus do not believe in protecting fellow journalists who may error any more than we believe in shielding the errors of politicians and other public officials. The editor of the Times claims that, before the controversial article was printed, “We asked ourselves: Is the public being better served through the revelations in the story? We believe that it is. We weighed all of the factors...” That’s fine. They made their decision to print the story.
We at The Argus asked ourselves the same questions when we read the story. We came up with opposite conclusions. That’s why we complained to the National News Council. But ultimately, the best watchdog of the press is the press itself.
The press in this country will only remain free so long as it is responsible. We here at The Argus are doing our best to make sure freedom is not confused with license and that the press will, as a result, remain unfettered.

August 11, 1980 – Of media and watchdogs

In a recent letter from a self-proclaimed media watchdog, Rock Islander F.G. Mitchell, The Argus was described as a paper with “a very definite pro-union bias.” Mitchell’s letter was a copy of one he sent to Reed Larson of the National Right to Work Committee. A second letter in the same envelope was addressed to both the publisher of the Quad-City Times and me. In that letter Mitchell opened with what seems to be intended as a rhetorical question: “Is there no limit to the depth of degradation to which some professional journalists will reach in order to create a story or to defame some public figure?”
He later concludes his letter with another question: “Is there any wonder that the courts are stepping in from time to time to hand down a decision that creates wailing and panic among the media?” First things first.
Mr. Mitchell and I have corresponded several times and discussed various press responsibility issues. I’ve always found his views interesting and well founded in fact, although I may not always agree with the conclusions he has drawn.
The charge that The Argus is a paper with a bias in favor of unions is clearly erroneous. I am disappointed that our media watchdog would claim we have such a bias.
When it comes to issues involving unions, I in my signed column and The Argus in its editorials, analyze each issue on its merits. Sometimes we back unions and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we back the school board, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we support presidential policy, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we back city council actions, sometimes we don’t.
We aren’t always right, but we are never biased. There is a Grand Canyon of difference between the two. When the Rock Island Lines finally failed, The Argus editorialized that much of the blame had to lie with the members of the railroad union who went on strike despite the Lines’ serious financial difficulties. We said the union helped drive the Lines out of business and union members out of jobs. The unions had a lot of help from federal regulations, of course, but the unions must share the blame. And we clearly said so.
When various union contracts come up for negotiation and we feel compelled to comment, we decide what position to take based on the circumstance of that specific situation. The Argus carries no bias toward either labor or management.
As for myself, I personally appreciate the good unions have done for workers, my parents and my brothers among them, but I will admit to having a personal anti-union attitude. As I have explained at length in other columns in this space, some unions have become as menacing to workers as any management.
A review of my records shows I have written four of my 273 signed columns in opposition to unions or union tactics and none entirely favorable to unions. Those columns appeared on June 26, Sept. 4 and Sept. 27, 1979, and July 1, 1980. They attacked union violence, union workers’ roles in declining productivity, railroad union members’ threats of violence against the Rock Island Lines and the steady drop in union membership in the U.S.
That record is hardly one indicative of a pro-union bias. Time does not permit a similar study of editorials, but there is no doubt such a study would show an even-handed analysis of unions and their activities by The Argus.
Like most journalists, I am not a union member. My job depends solely on the whims of the publisher. I have no contract, no built-in cost-of-living raises, pension plan or other such items common to union members.
Of course, at the same time Mr. Mitchell suggests we at The Argus carry a pro-union bias, others complain that we’re pro-business and others say we’re anti-union and others say we’re anti-business.
It seems to me that the only thing such charges would prove, if anything, is the truth of my contention that we always attempt to be fair, but we aren’t always right.
Now, as to Mr. Mitchell’s suggestion that some journalists will stoop to any level to get a story, of course he’s right. But none of those journalists work for The Argus.
And no, it isn’t any wonder that the courts are slapping the media these days since there aren’t enough papers like The Argus that are willing to accept the responsibility that the First Amendment places on us along with the rights it protects for us.
And unlike most papers, including the other two dailies in the Quad-Cities, The Argus believes there should be individuals like Mr. Mitchell who keep an eye on the press and who report what they perceive to be abuses. We further believe that the National News Council and Accuracy in Media, national media watchdog groups, serve valuable functions. The other two papers in the Quad-Cities do not agree.
If the press is the watchdog of government, then who is the watchdog of the press? The press? Yes, but if government cannot be left to police itself how naive must you be to believe that the persons who work for newspapers are, in general, any more capable of policing themselves than politicians are?
We welcome the watchdogs. They keep us on our toes just as we in the media serve to keep government and politics from straying too far from the right path.
Of course, just because a watchdog barks doesn’t mean we are automatically guilty of the alleged transgression. Mr. Mitchell, with his allegation that we have a pro-union bias, is barking at a shadow. And that’s not an opinion, that’s verifiable fact.

May 7, 1979 – Reading ‘Ladies Home Journal’

Reading the Ladies Home Journal can be an interesting and educational experience. Tucked into the May issue, along with articles offering new meat loaf recipes and how to give yourself a home permanent, is an article filled with tips for the modem business woman.
Tip number one: “Business colleagues of the opposite sex should not share a suite.” (I think the writer meant to say, “colleagues of opposite sexes”). Anyway, despite the word choice problems, the advice is worth noting.
Tip number two: “They should have separate rooms and, when working in one of the bedrooms, both should be dressed.” Again, words worth remembering.
Tip number three: “If you, as a business woman, are on the road, your briefcase can be your security blanket.”
The theory here is that if the businesswoman enters a bar and a male attempts to pick her up, the fact that she has the briefcase with her will indicate that she means business and can be expected to rebuff any pick-up attempts.
Tip number Four: “In order to save embarrassment all around, who will pay for the next business lunch should be decided, without question, in advance.”
Yes. There are few situations, which will turn the face crimson quite as fast as debating the matter of who will pick-up the check. Let the female businessperson be forewarned.
And you thought being a female businessperson was easy? Those tips and other similar admonitions are the things often left out of a college education in business. But thanks to publication such as the Ladies Home Journal, such deficiencies needn’t be lingering.
Turning from the silly to the just plain ridiculous, let us pay homage to Illinois Republican chairman Don Adams and his candidate for vice president, James Thompson.
That’s right, Adams recently was brazen enough to go on record as saying Thompson would be a “perfect vice presidential candidate.” That is if the governor isn’t able to wrest the GOP presidential nomination.
After my fit of laughter had subsided, the thought occurred to me that Adams could be right. If Thompson were made vice-president, he would no longer be around to bother the good people of Illinois with pay-raise schemes and other boondoggles. What better place for an ambitious politician to whither away?
By the way, whatever became of Walter Mondale?

April 28, 1979 – When ‘exclusive’ news isn’t

We try to read quite a few newspapers, magazines and other publications here in The Argus newsroom in an effort to see what’s happening in other places and to see how other news organizations handle the information they obtain.
Our perusals recently uncovered a startling situation. In glancing through the Quad-City Times on Wednesday morning, April 25, several of us here at The Argus were surprised to find David M. Vogel’s front page lead story headlined, “More Cut-Rate Loans On Way,” tagged as an “exclusive.” The surprise came because we had run a story carrying the same key information on Page One the previous day. That led us to wonder what kind of definition the paper across the river was using for the term “exclusive.”
That meant a phone call to The Times. I contacted someone at the city desk at about 11:45 Wednesday morning. I did not identify myself as an Argus reporter. When I asked what the “exclusive” was intended to designate, this is what I was told: “’Exclusive’ means a story that no one else has, at least to our knowledge. It’s a story written by one of our own staff that nobody else has printed before.” That’s what I thought it meant. How is it then, I wonder, that a story that appeared on Page One of The Argus on April 24 was labeled an “Exclusive!” and placed in the lead spot on Page One in the morning edition of the Times on April 25?
Here for your own judgment are the first two paragraphs of each story:
The Argus, p. 1, Tuesday, April 24: “Low-rate home loan funds in Rock Island all used up,” by Ken Golden — “The money in Rock Island’s innovative low interest home loan program is gone, The Argus learned today. In addition, talks were scheduled for late this afternoon to consider a similar plan for the future.”
The Times, p. 1, Wednesday, April 25: “More Cut-Rate Loans On Way,” by David M. Vogel — “Rock Island Mayor James R. Davis is expected to outline plans today for issuing a second series of bonds to finance continuation of the city’s successful cut-rate home mortgage program.
“Davis met Tuesday afternoon with representatives of five lending institutions to review the first program and reports that the original $17 million mortgage pool is virtually dried up.”
It is my personal contention that, regardless of motive, labeling that April 25 story “exclusive” was a disservice to the reading public. It clearly was not exclusive.
If a public official were to misrepresent information in a similar matter, The Argus would report it. I believe we are equally obligated to report the misrepresentation of other practicing journalists.
If a newspaper, like a public official, loses its credibility, it loses its effectiveness. Being first with the news is important, but only if accuracy and fairness are maintained. Some newspapers should be more careful about slapping an “Exclusive!” tag on a story that is no more exclusive than supper at McDonald’s.

February 27, 1984 – Argus’ editorials No. 1 in U.S.

ROCK ISLAND, ILL. -- The Argus’ Mike Kielkopf, Editorial Page Editor and winner of a number of awards the past few years, has added perhaps his most impressive accomplishment.
Kielkopf ‘s editorials for The Argus were named No. 1 in America in The Argus’ circulation division (10,000-25,000) in the 1984 Editorial Excellence Contest. There are almost as many newspapers in The Argus’ circulation category (over 600) as in the other three circulation divisions combined.
The annual Editorial Excellence Contest is sponsored by the William Allen White Foundation at the University of Kansas/Lawrence, in conjunction with the Inland Daily Press Association.
Kielkopf’s Argus editorials finished ahead of the North Platte (Neb.) Telegraph and the Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner in the final judging.
The White award follows Kielkopf’s first place award from the Illinois Press Association for the consistent excellence of his Argus editorial pages. This award, presented last fall, covered all Illinois dailies with circulations of 5,000 or more, including the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.
Kielkopf has previously received awards from the Education Writers Association of the United States and Canada and the Illinois Associated Press Editors Association for public service reporting, spot news, feature writing and personal columns.

May 27, 1980 – ‘What’s that show? I’ve never seen it.’

I am probably one of a handful of Americans who can truthfully say he did not watch either All the President’s Men or “Dallas” Sunday night. In fact, I am one of a minuscule minority who can truthfully claim never to have seen even a smidgeon of “Dallas” — the TV show or the city. And I have firmly resolved to do everything I can to make sure I never see “Dallas.”
There’s a certain feeling of aloofness, I guess it is, which comes in knowing you’re one of a tiny band who, despite all odds, is able to hold out against the vast majority of society.
I go to the barbershop, for example, and the conversation quickly turns to what’s happening on “Dallas.” The volume and enthusiasm of the discussion reaches a crescendo and then — after a dramatic pause — I’m asked to render an opinion. Smugly I say, “What was the name of that show? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it.”
At that point jaws drop, incredulous expressions jump onto everyone’s face and then, when the words really sink in, they demand to know what’s wrong with me: “Why don’t you watch ‘Dallas’.”
But I never tell them. I intend to keep that a secret. No use worrying about me what with J.R. in such a bad way and all.
Actually, All the President’s Men is the same basic story as “Dallas.” Richard Nixon is J.R., an obviously capable man who most people envy and, therefore, try constantly to discredit. It’s just that Dallas unfolds on a much larger canvass than the Watergate drama. J.R. has Dallas and all of Texas to corral while Nixon is left with merely the entire United States and the world.
Anyway, I’ve seen All the President’s Men before. It was when the movie first came out, back in 1976. Mary and I saw it -- along with 15 other folks -- in a 500-seat theater in Johannesburg, South Africa. You could say the film, even with Robert Redford, didn’t exactly set box office records in that country.
I didn’t want to watch it again on TV Sunday night because we just elected a new president and we’re trying to gather up some hope and some confidence and I didn’t think that was the movie that would do that for me.
And I suspect most other Americans felt the same way. I haven’t seen any ratings for Sunday night yet, but I’d be willing to bet my Hawkeye wastebasket that J.R. out-drew R.M.N. by a huge margin. Even if Dallas hadn’t provided competition, I just don’t think there are many people left who want to continue to wade in the Watergate cesspool.
Life, like comedy, is mostly timing. All the President’s Men is a good movie, perhaps an excellent movie, which not only portrays history but also provides unique insights into the workings of two of America’s most powerful institutions — the presidency and the press. But despite all that, Redford and Dustin Hoffman too, Sunday night was bad timing.
In case you’re wondering, I also didn’t watch The Spy Who Loved Me, the James Bond thriller that also aired Sunday night. It probably had a bigger audience than All the President’s Men, too. That may be a good sign.

April 17, 1979 – No Pulitzer Prize (again)

“Go ahead, build the fireplace,” she said. “You’ll win this year.”
Since I have the utmost respect for Mary’s judgment in these things, I did it. I mean, where’s a prestigious award to rest if not on the mantel of a fireplace? But when the announcement of the winners came over the Associated Press wire late last Monday afternoon, the fire went out.
“They gave my Pulitzer to somebody else!”
My colleagues in the newsroom were stunned. “Oh,” seethed David Giesen, so upset that he was unable to raise his head from behind the stack of notes on his desk.
“Hey, I just heard the news about the Pulitzers,” sighed education reporter Marc Nesseler. “I’ll bet if The Argus were published in Boston you’d have won.”
Thanks, gang, but it’s no use.
They’ve given my Pulitzer to some big-city columnist at the Boston Globe who probably wouldn’t know a president from a peanut farmer.
But, heck, Miss Piggy didn’t win an Oscar, so you know the people who vote on these award things can’t be too good at it.
“Yeh,” Marc agreed. “But what’re you going to do with the mantel now?”
That’s just like Nesseler, always clearing away the smoke and getting to the fire.
“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have to join a bowling league. Or maybe I should just start buying lots of Cracker Jacks.”

*

THE WAILING and mashing of teeth continues in the wake of the United States Olympic Committee’s official vote last week to decline its invitation to send a team to the Olympics in Moscow this summer.
Despite public opinion polls that show that about 7 of every 10 Americans favor the USOC’s vote, a vocal minority of both the public and the athletes involved has been sharply critical of the move.
Their cry, which has become an Olympic cliché, is that the Olympics ought to be spared from political considerations. They’re right, of course, it should. But correct philosophical positions have little merit in the real world, a world that for several years has refused to allow South African athletes to participate in the Olympics for nothing but political reasons.
Where have all these people who cry about politics in the Games been all this time? And at Lake Placid, where the U.S. hockey team gained a measure of immortality along with its gold medal, the Republic of China on Taiwan was banned from participation for solely political reasons.
People who would make policies must learn to take the world as it exists and then try to reform it. There is no value whatsoever — regardless of the goal — in taking the ideal and attempting to conform the world to it.
For my part, I continue to support the Olympic boycott. It appears a near certainty that, led by West Germany, the nations of Western Europe, Japan. Australia and Great Britain, among others, will join the U.S. on the sidelines come summer.
Meanwhile, despite the admitted sacrifice the athletes are making, let them also ponder the words of an American Olympic boxer: “I’d much rather fight the Russians by staying home from the Olympics than I would by taking a rifle over there and shooting at them.”
Sure, vice president Walter Mondale spoke ludicrously when he said the “future of the free world” hinged on the vote of the USOC. You’d think a fella from Minnesota would be smarter than that. Anyway, I’m going to enjoy NOT watching NBC’s Olympic coverage this summer.
But I AM going to enjoy thinking about how the Soviet leaders will explain to their subjects how it is they’re throwing this big bash, but nobody’s coming.

America and the World

January 14, 1980 – Is U.S. ‘Coward of the County’?

“This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of the bitter cup which will be proferred to us year by year, unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor we rise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden times.”
In the dark hours following the crushing of Czechoslovakia by Hitler’s Nazis at the beginning of World War II, Winston Churchill issued this challenge to his countrymen. And that same challenge is at least as applicable to America today as it was to Great Britain then.
Many Americans are running out of patience after more than two months of Iranian game playing with the 50 – or is it 43 – American hostages taken back on Nov. 4.
President Carter, with the solid support of the American people, has taken America’s case to the United Nations and the World Court. He has sent ambassadors who have been shunned. He has rounded up the backing of other nations. A few days ago Carter received a briefing from U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim after his visit to Iran.
But the options are fewer now, for despite the successes in obtaining the almost unanimous international censure of Iran, the Iranians remain implacable.
With our national patience running out, Russia barges into Afghanistan with more than 100,000 troops and implants a puppet government to add another challenge to our national resolve. How often can America be expected to turn the other cheek?
Cries for military action have begun to filter through from such writers as George Will and James Kilpatrick. Other powerful forces, including the New York Times, have emphasized the need to maintain our patience and to avoid the temptation to force the issue with some sort of potentially cataclysmic ultimatum.
Sheik Zaki Yamani, Saudi oil minister, has told “60 Minutes,” that the U.S. should not use military force in Iran: “The price is so high. If you are strong and a giant, it doesn’t mean that you react like a weak person. Patience is the character of a strong man. It is not the character of a weak man.”
And the sheik is right, of course, but there is more to the question of patience than his simplistic, philosophical treatment recognizes.
When does patience cease to be a virtue and become a vice instead?
Most people are aware of the advice of Jesus to turn the other cheek. But there is also the Biblical account of the day when Jesus himself reached the limit to his patience. When He came upon the moneychangers in the temple, the Son of God had had enough.
Jesus wasted little time in physically throwing the merchants and their wares out of the Temple. Enough was enough. The line had been crossed.
Yes, Jesus said that the meek shall inherit the earth, but he also clearly shows us that we are not expected to be perpetual doormats.
I’m also reminded of a Kenny Rogers song that is popular now: “Coward of the County.” The song tells the story of a young man who made a vow to his dying father that he would not settle disputes with violence, that he would always walk away from trouble because his dad had told him, “You don’t have to fight to be a man.”
And so the son goes through life living up to his vow despite being mocked and called a coward at every turn. In fact he is labeled, “the coward of the county.”
But finally, the kid’s girlfriend is assaulted. He arrives on the scene too late to save her, but soon enough to meet the perpetrators. He then turns to leave as the catcalls follow him to the door.
But that’s where the kid draws the line.
Instead of walking away, this time he locks the doors and beats the bullies to a pulp. When he unlocks the doors, he leaves with respect and awe.
The song ends with the kid saying, “Sometimes you’ve got to fight when you’re a man.”
Churchill knew that. I hope Jimmy Carter does.

April 29, 1980 – How to end the hostage crisis

During the Easter Sunday visit of seven clergymen to the hostages in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran about three weeks ago, the oldest of the hostages, 64-year-old Robert C. Ode, rose to read an Easter message to his wife and family back here in America. Tears swelled in his eyes as he finished. Then one of the clergymen asked him if there was anything he needed.
“We need to get out of here, that’s what we need,” he barked. We need more than some prayers. We need action.”
Last Thursday night and early Friday morning, 174 days after the Iranian terrorists captured the 53 Americans, action came.
But this action was destined to fail tragically. It was destined to be compared with the April 17, 1961, Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba rather than the thrilling Israeli success at Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976.
I thought I might be dreaming when I groggily awoke to our clock radio and heard KSTT newscaster Fran Riley explaining what had transpired in an Iranian desert while Americans were asleep in their beds, unaware.
It was 5:51 a.m. Central time, April 25, 1980.
About ten minutes later President Carter delivered his brief explanation of the aborted rescue mission and the loss of eight American lives. What had been attempted began to sink in.
Calls poured in to the Davenport radio station from all over the Quad-Cities. The wisecracking banter of DJ Spike O’Dell gave way to a muffled sense of wounded pride.
As one caller put it, “It didn’t work, but at least we tried something. Now they know they can only push us so far. We’re tried everything else and it didn’t work. I’m glad we tried the rescue, I’m just sorry it wasn’t successful.”
Perhaps Republican presidential campaign dropout Howard Baker was right when he said Carter had done the right thing, but that it was about 173 days late.
An Argus telephone survey revealed similar feelings of grim acceptance with an increased fear among some that war had inched closer.
“I think we should take military action,” said Brad Burmahl of East Moline. “I don’t like the idea of a little country like Iran pushing us around. If we ever had a war with them, we could beat them in a month.”
So far, war does not seem likely. But we have broken our line of predictability.
Jimmy Carter was playing it by the book. He went to the United Nations, he tried the World Court, he sought UN approved sanctions, he negotiated, he broke off diplomatic relations, he sought allied support.
And all along the Iranians stood smirking, content in the knowledge that as long as they had the hostages, America would do nothing overt. The smugness of that attitude has been turned into a very nervous smile.
If America will try this, what else might it try?
None of this is of any importance to many congressional leaders, of course. All they can think about – like most of our allies – is how important they are and what a terrible snub it was for the president to launch an apparent rescue attempt without their knowledge.
As more of the details ooze out, we will finally know why the president chose the time and the method that he did. We will know why the mission failed. In the meantime it may be for us to take heart from this failure and turn it to our advantage.
For if nothing else, this failed rescue effort did demonstrate that America does still have the resolve to take risks to protect its people and to preserve our freedoms.

October 14, 1981 – What are ‘Moslem Extremists’?

A reader recently wondered what exactly The Argus and other media mean when we write or speak of “Islamic or Moslem fundamentalists.” It’s a good question and one we will attempt to answer with ample aid from the current issue of U.S. News & World Report.
With the turmoil in the Middle East come reports of a people of whom most Americans have almost no knowledge. Neither the religions nor the cultures, neither the histories nor the worldviews of those peoples are well known to most Americans. As a result, when the assassination of Anwar Sadat is reported to have been the work of “Moslem extremists,” many wonder who such people are and what they believe.
First, you should know that Islam is the name of the religion and those who practice it are Moslems. Moslems revere Mohammed, an Arabian prophet who lived from 570 to 632 A.D., more than 13 centuries ago. The Koran is Islam’s equivalent of the Christian Bible.
Mohammed, a humble shepherd, acquired a reputation for his unusual wisdom by the time he was in his 20s. When Mohammed came to the belief that he was God’s prophet, he went into a period of private preparation on Mt. Hira, near Mecca in Saudi Arabia. He then formed his followers into a secret society and did not make his first appearance as a public preacher until about 616, when he was about 46 years old.
As his following increased, he is said to have sought an alliance with the Jews, but finding neither a possibility of compromise on religious questions nor of obtaining their loyal support, he turned on them, literally. For he changed the direction of prayer, which had been toward Jerusalem, toward Mecca instead. It was about this same time that the name Allah was adopted to mean the Islamic deity.
After a drunken riot led by one of his followers, Mohammed banned liquor. And the, as his religious order spread, he established two simple tests of loyalty: the statement of faith in Allah and Mohammed and the payment of an income tax.
Several military engagements marked his career and led to the establishment of the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca.
Mohammed claimed that his revelations confirmed both the Jewish and Christian scriptures. He does not appear to have cast any doubt on the validity of Biblical history, the miracles nor the laws of Moses. He even allows that Israel (the Jews), is God’s chosen people.
Mohammed seems to have accepted the virgin birth of Jesus and his miracles of healing the sick and raising the dead and Jesus’ ascension to heaven, but those who told him of the Gospel rejected the crucifixion and the resurrection and he, therefore, rejected them as well.
Mohammed’s leadership was violent and assassinations were common. That precedent has been upheld over the centuries, most recently by Khomeini’s political murders in Iran and by Moslem extremists who assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat for daring to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
Shortly after Sadat’s death, Egyptian officials linked his murderers to the Takfir wa Hijra (Repentant and Holy Fight) Moslem group that is dedicated to rejecting all modern ways. At least three other Moslem sects approved of the Sadat assassination for they, too, claimed credit for it.
U.S. News writes, “Experts say the fundamentalist Islamic movement has turned into a political and religious drive against both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, with consequences that may rival those of the Crusades.”
The magazine also noted these foreboding remarks by Georgetown University’s Amira Sonbol, an expert on Islamic history who expects Moslems to keep fighting the changes under way in their societies: “What they want,” she said, “is to go back to the way things were in Mohammed’s time.”
That time was 13 centuries ago. It would a long journey and one that would be marked by continued violence and bloodshed, as was the life of Mohammed himself. It is a journey that could drag us further into the fanatical morass of the Moslem fundamentalists.

November 9, 1983 – Freedom and security

“To help make your visit more pleasant, please observe the following rules of the United States Senate Galleries:
“No packages, bundles, cameras, suitcases or briefcases are allowed in the galleries…. Firearms and dangerous weapons are prohibited within the Capitol Buildings and Grounds.”
-- from the back of the U.S. Senate visitor’s pass

Bombs have exploded inside the U.S. Capitol only three times since it opened in 1800 – once in 1915, once in 1971 and, most recently of course, last Monday night.
Many individuals and groups have disagreed with U.S. policy since the Capitol was first occupied in November of 1800. But nobody resorted to placing a bomb in the building in protest for 115 years.
After that first bomb desecrated the seat of democratic government in 1915 in protest of U.S. aid to its European allies in World War I, it was another 56 years before this terrorist act was repeated. That 1971 bomb blast was the work of the Weatherman underground protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam. But it took only 12 more years before another bomb blast ripped at the Capitol. That Monday night blast that rocked a corridor outside the Senate chambers was apparently the work of another group of terrorist maniacs who call themselves The Armed Resistance Unit. They sent a note to National Public Radio in Washington to take credit for the bomb. They claimed it was protest against American military activities overseas.
In response to the blast, Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker said, “The Senate will not be deterred or intimidated.” And indeed the Senate has not missed a session since the bombing, working much of the time with the sounds of the cleanup in the background.
Nonetheless, tighter security rules are already being implemented at the Capitol. Instead of 10 entrances open to the public, now there are only four. More metal detectors have been installed and made more sensitive and some areas once freely open to the public have been closed or restricted.
But as we rightly consider improved security, we should never forget that the American government is not one building or even one person or one group of people. The American government is, in fact, the American spirit.
Buildings can be bombed and presidents can even be assassinated, but the spirit of American freedom cannot be snuffed out.
Democracy is a vulnerable system, for its openness makes it an easy target for terrorists. So while we must take prudent measures in the name of security, we must never capitulate to intimidation. For only then would the terrorists finally win.
Today, democracy and the American spirit remain the victors.

November 11, 1983 -- Service to country

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. ‘Tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
-- Thomas Paine in The American Crisis, Dec. 23, 1776

A volunteer military force is the wrong way to defend America. The rights and privileges of freedom and justice belong to all -- and so should the ultimate responsibility of defending them.
Today, a holiday for some, another day of work for others, is also the one special day each year that has been set aside to honor those who have helped defend this nation. For one reason or another, many of us have never had to personally face the prospect of dying for our country. Many of us say we’d do it, but few of us look forward to the opportunity.
If you’ve noticed the faces of the American military personnel serving in Beirut and Grenada, if you’ve noticed their names, if you’ve seen the TV interviews with their families, you may have been struck by the fact that so many are minorities or working-class whites.
Blacks comprise 29.3 percent of the United States Army, 19.6 percent of the Marines and about 20 percent of overall U.S. military manpower even though blacks comprise only about 12 percent of the U.S. population.
This means that men who come from a relatively narrow section of society are defending America. This is not the way it should be in America. We all share the benefits of freedom. Surely we should all share the responsibility of defending it.
I have not served in the U.S. military. One year of Army ROTC in college hardly counts. Yet I enjoy the benefits that countless men and women have sacrificed to provide, benefits often purchased with their lives. Me? I have made no sacrifices. Instead, I have quietly accepted the way things are. But I don’t think they should stay that way.
Many times I have recommended some form of universal service to America. Today seems a good time to suggest it again.
America is a splintered nation. It has been fragmented into groups that pursue their self-interests ahead of the national interest. It is a country in need of a focused effort, in need of a means of challenging aimless youth, in need of a means of making it clear that the freedom we enjoy in America cannot continue unless we all pay a price.
Details of the plan to adopt universal service could be developed easily enough once the concept was accepted. One year of service would probably be enough to require. There would be no exemptions whatsoever, except perhaps in rare cases of demonstrable mental or physical incapacity.
The armed forces would be a fundamental outlet of service, but there would be many other opportunities, too: cleaning the land and the water, caring for the parks and forests, building better housing, helping in hospitals and daycare centers and schools and nursing homes. Each individual could choose the time of their service, but would be required to complete it between the time they graduate from high school (or reach age 18) and age 29. Most would elect to perform their year of service after graduating from high school or college.
We could certainly count on the ACLU to challenge any universal service law on the grounds that the government has no right to force its citizens into involuntary service, short of a national emergency such as war. And surely there would be many individuals who would adamantly oppose the requirement. But those people would have forgotten the truth and fairness of Thomas Paine’s observation of two centuries ago: “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must…undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
Why should some Americans die in France, in the Philippines, in Korea or Vietnam, in the Middle East or Grenada or some other land to protect a nation filled with individuals unwilling to give even a year of service to their country, let alone risk their lives?
We do not honor the summer soldier nor the sunshine patriot today, but the men and women whose sacrifices have kept this nation free, men like my dad who know most personally what Thomas Paine meant when he wrote, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; ‘tis dearness only that gives everything its value.”
I am ashamed to say I have sacrificed nothing, but I have been given everything.

December 12, 1979 – Time for military action?

What the ultimate reaction of the American people, President Carter and the Congress will be is as yet uncertain, but with the completely unprovoked attack on the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan on Wednesday adding to the furor already blazing over the Tehran siege, the United States may soon be forced to take serious retaliatory measures – perhaps as serious as military action.
Obviously such a decision cannot be made in haste or in a moment of frustration. But it is becoming increasingly clear that much of the rest of the world will continue to bait the United States until some definitive response is launched.
When American diplomats are not safe overseas, when a Marine at an American Embassy is killed in the line of duty by a rampaging mob of hoodlums, this country is placed in a position in which it must either be seen to cower or to act boldly.
It may be that there has been no single time in American history since the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 that the United States has been so directly challenged and must now – as it did then – react with unmistakable confidence and strength.
When Kennedy acted boldly against the Soviet missiles in Cuba, the Organization of American States voted unanimously to support the U.S. Five days later, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev backed down. The missiles were removed from Cuba and the world stepped back from the brink of nuclear war. Had Kennedy and the U.S. wavered, we might not be here now.
When America has taken a stand, the rest of the world has backed off. It’s time for America to once again take a stand.

February 8, 1984 -- A new spirit is abroad in the land

“The Can’t Do Spirit is all around us, everywhere, smothering us like a malodorous cloud.”
So observed former Des Moines Register columnist Donald Kaul back on May 29, 1977. Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale presided over the nation.
“Once we were a great nation that sneered at obstacles,” Kaul wrote seven years ago. “We flung railroads across a vast continent, raised great towers to the sky, bridged mighty chasms with bridges of spider-like grace. We took our motto from our Marine Corps: ‘The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.’ Now, everything is impossible; even the easy.”
Kaul, for those unfamiliar with him, would be to the left of John Glenn and to the right of Walter Mondale. He was – and still is, I presume – a liberal with moderate leanings, so him lament during the Carter-Mondale years was not politically motivated. Kaul merely explained what he saw. And he was right.
But that was 1977. That was Jimmy Carter. This is 1984. This is Ronald Reagan.
Today the American spirit has been rejuvenated. Once more Americans believe in ourselves and in our country.
A few days ago we marked the anniversary of placing our first successful satellite into orbit. Explorer I weighed 17 pounds and was seven feet long back there in 1964, Five-and-a-half years later, America’s Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon.
That was impossible. Yet Americans did it.
But how? From a space plaything in 1964 to the moon and back safely in mid-1969, Americans had created another miracle. And I believe we’re ready to do it again.
Under Jimmy Carter, the champion of the Can’t Do, Think Small school, Americans found themselves doubting themselves and their country. The president’s malaise infected nearly everyone. When the president says America’s time is past, when the president says get used to being a second-rate country, when the president says there’s nothing we can do to help ourselves and keeps saying it often enough, most people believe it.
The American spirit has seldom fallen as low as it did during those years. Things had been a lot worse for us – a lot worse – but during most those bad times we continued to believe in ourselves because our leaders believed in us. We continued to believe that if we worked hard enough and smart enough we could reclaim and surpass past glories. But Jimmy Carter told us to forget. Jimmy Carter told us it wasn’t going to be like that anymore.
Thank goodness Ronald Reagan didn’t believe Jimmy Carter. That Can’t Do spirit that was dogging the land in 1977 has been thrown out of America. President Reagan has restored our faith in ourselves, our nation and in our ability to control our own destiny.

*

REMEMBER THE LATE Shah of Iran? He was the constant target of self-proclaimed humanitarians on campuses all over America before his regime fell to the forces of the Ayotollah Khomeini. This new Iranian regime, however, hasn’t exactly been the enlightenment. It is as brutal as any in the world.
Just a few days ago an Iranian government official called for more suicide attacks against troops in Lebanon. He didn’t volunteer for such a mission himself. Instead, he asked for more “self-sacrificing youths to bring blows to the enemy,” the multinational peacekeeping force. That heartwarming revolutionary appeal was reported in the Islamic Republic newspaper.
American campuses will probably erupt in “Down with the Ayotollah” demonstrations any minute now – won’t they?

October 26, 1983 – So sudden and so final

More than 200 U.S. Marines had died in Lebanon, a Des Moines Register columnist had committed a double murder-suicide and Jessica Savitch, the tough and beautiful NBC-TV news correspondent, had died in an auto accident near, of all places, New Hope, Penn. All-in-all last weekend was as disheartening as any moment I can remember for a long, long time.
Any one of those three tragic events might have been enough to take wipe the smile and the laughter from the most cheerful hyena, let alone a bedraggled newspaper columnist.
I don’t know about you, but when word comes that 200 Marines are murdered in their sleep, I wonder about the lives that each leaves behind. And that brings me quickly to ponder all the ramifications that my own unexpected death might bring. I think of all those things I have never done, all those places I have never been, all those people I have never met, all those years that would not be lived, all those people who would be left behind – my wife, my family and my friends. Selfish thoughts, sure, but very human, too.
And when a well-known person in a high-profile role such as a network news correspondent dies such an unexpected death as Savitch did, thoughts of our own mortality cannot be avoided.
I had never met Jessica Savitch. But since the first time I saw her on NBC a few years ago, I thought she’d be somebody worth meeting. She had a stern gentleness, a firm friendliness that revealed a person who was capable, confident and in control. Sure, she was beautiful, but so are a lot of other women, including other network TV correspondents. But there was something unique about Savitch. I think it was that glint in her eyes. It seemed to radiate right through the TV screen and fill the room with her powerful personality.
In a column a few years ago I wrote that Savitch was the best news anchor on network TV and predicted that NBC would soon tab her as the first woman ever to anchor a network newscast alone. It never happened. But for me, Jessica Savitch was the most interesting, believable newscaster on TV. Dan Rather is OK. So are Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw. But Connie Chung and all the others are pedestrian at best. And now Savitch, the best of them all, is dead at 35. I am 34.
John Donne had it right a few centuries back when he made the classic observation that “no man is an island…” He said, “Every man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”
A little bit of all of us died with those Marines in Lebanon, with those victims of that Register columnist, and with that NBC newscaster last weekend. The bell we hear is for them, but it’s also for us.

September 18, 1979 – The Berlin Wall: Lesson in freedom

The snow was raging so hard that we were blinking constantly. Looking like Dr. Zhivago and Laura fighting our way through frozen Siberia, Mary and I crossed the border, through Checkpoint Charlie, and into communist East Berlin.
The helmeted East German soldiers, without expression, checked our passports and rummaged through my camera bag and Mary’s purse before we were allowed through the communist checkpoint and into East Berlin itself, a week before Christmas, 1976.
It was a lesson in freedom that cannot be duplicated anywhere else.
Those were the thoughts that rushed to me most quickly after reading earlier this week of the successful escape by eight East Germans into West Berlin.
Peter Strelzek, an airplane mechanic, his wife and two children were joined by stonemason Andreas Wetzel, his wife and two children in a hot air balloon made of nylon and bed sheets for the 12-mile flight from oppression to freedom.
“It was no longer possible for us to lie to our children,” Strelzak said, “and put up with the political conditions in East Germany.” Those were his first words after landing safely in the Western sector of the city that has been divided by 600 miles of concrete and barbed wire since Aug. 13, 1961.
The wall was built to stem the surging exodus of East Germans into West Berlin. But despite the communist efforts, the daring balloonists have become the most recent of 40,000 people who have risked their lives in the past 18 years to flee from the tyranny of the communists.
And the balloon itself will undoubtedly take its place in the museum only a few hundred yards into West Berlin where the shocking sage of the wall and those who have defied it is recorded.
Mary and I visited the museum where the famous Isetta minicar is displayed. It had carried nine refugees into the West – one at a time – before authorities discovered the hiding place that had been carved from the area where the battery and heating systems were normally located.
There was the one-man submarine, the remnants of the homemade chairlift, and pictures of the 175-yard long, 40-foot deep tunnel that was dug from an outhouse in the East to a baker’s storage room in the West.
But not everybody has survived the attempt to reach freedom.
There were photos of the trucks and buses, riddled with bullet holes; there were the stories of tunnels that had been discovered and that led, not to freedom, but to death.
And there were the pictures of many who had leaped from upper stories of buildings adjacent to the wall. A few managed to survive the fall into freedom, but most were killed – if not by the impact of the fall, then by the bullets of the communist guards.
More than 30,000 people have also been convicted of conspiracy to flee from East Germany. The average sentence for such lawlessness: 22 months in prison.
We had seen pictures of the wall, we had studied about the wall in school, we had philosophized about the wall in college. But none of that compared to the reality of seeing and touching the wall and standing in the same spots where people had died simply because they wanted to be on freedom’s side.
We visited the platform that had been specially built for president John F. Kennedy’s visit to the Berlin Wall in early June of 1963.
It was on that platform overlooking the wall from only a few yards away that Kennedy addressed tens of thousands of frenzied Germans.
“The wall is the most obvious example of the failures of the communist system,” Kennedy told them, “for it divides husbands and wives, brothers and sisters – it divides a nation that wishes to be joined together.”
As the Germans cheered wildly, Kennedy continued:
“Freedom has many difficulties, and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in!”
And that is the message that once again was brought to the world by the freedom flight of the homemade balloon. The Berlin Wall has grown taller and stronger over its 18 years, but it will never be so tall or so strong that it will kill the desire of the oppressed to escape it.
And to those people who would question that, I say – as president Kennedy said – “…Let them come to Berlin.”

August 9, 1981 – Sadat, Reagan and the Middle East

Anwar Sadat has completed his brief stay in Washington and is headed back for Egypt. At the same time, the man Sadat came to meet, President Reagan, is on vacation at his California ranch. And the cease-fire holds in the Middle East.
“Every day that goes by gives it a little more credence,” says one U.S. diplomat in Israel. “Don’t be overly optimistic. It could end in gunfire tomorrow. But I think both sides wee it as in their interest to keep the lid on.”
Both sides, of course, are Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The breakthrough toward peace is a tiny, uncertain one, but it could be the seed of a powerful tree. Perhaps it will grow as sturdily as the 1974 disengagement agreement between Egypt and Israel, also negotiated by the United States. From such a tiny seed came the Camp David peace accords, now nearly three years old.
Sadat and other moderate Arab leaders realize the U.S. is poised at the edge of a new diplomatic effort aimed at a lasting peace in the Middle East. A few days ago in Washington, Sadat gave public voice to the cry of many Arab moderates when he suggested to Reagan that the U.S. begin to deal directly with the PLO, the underlying source of Lebanon’s problems.
The official U.S. reaction to that so far is to say the PLO must first recognize Israel’s right to exist. Unsurprisingly, the reaction from Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin was even harsher. Under no circumstances whatsoever would Israel negotiate with the PLO.
Nonetheless, the process of the moment seems to be toward a less hard line U.S. attitude toward the PLO. The simple fact that the U.S. negotiated cease-fire has succeeded in bringing an end to the fighting in northern Israel and southern Lebanon has given the PLO greater status as a party to that agreement.
As repugnant as it may be at first to ponder the inclusion of the PLO, long hated for its terrorist activities, into the peace process in the Middle East, the facts would appear to require it eventually. As long as such negotiations take place under rules acceptable to the U.S. and to Israel, it would not be wise to reject them.
If Yasser Arafat and his PLO would take the not insignificant step of publicly admitting Israel’s right to exist, the U.S. ought to call for the group’s inclusion in long-range peace talks. Peace in the region cannot be stable without a resolution of the Palestinian problem. And to have a public acknowledgment by Arafat that Israel is here to stay would be a great victory for the Jewish people, a rare victory without bloodshed.
And it could lead one day to an even greater triumph – peace throughout the Middle East.

January 6, 1980 – Reagan campaign visits Quad-Cities

The acknowledged leader in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination left the warmth of southern California yesterday for the bitter winter winds of the Quad-Cities and, Ronald Reagan hopes, a major victory in the Jan. 21 Iowa caucuses.
But Reagan, who refused to appear in Des Moines Saturday night with his rivals for the GOP nomination because he said he was afraid the event would be “divisive,” did not seem quite so concerned about that in some of his responses in a Black Hawk Hotel press conference last night.
Reagan said John Connally “must be living under a rock” if he isn’t aware of Reagan’s policy positions. “I’ve been speaking in specifics for a long time,” he said. Reagan then blasted the Carter administration for its decision to embargo grain sales to the Soviet Union in protest of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
“I’ve never thought that food should be a part of our diplomacy,” Reagan said. “I’m opposed to what’s been done.”
But when repeatedly asked what he would have done instead, Reagan was clearly at a loss for words.
After a long and awkward pause, he finally said, “I don’t know what I’d do about Afghanistan. I don’t have all the facts and therefore I don’t know what options may have been available to us.”
He then assailed the Carter administration’s handling of foreign policy in general. Reagan charged that the U.S. under Carter has no clear priorities or guiding philosophies, thus leaving the U.S. in a position of always reacting to what others do. The former California governor charged that the country needs a well-devised plan that contains contingencies to allow the nation to deal swiftly and effectively in cases such as Iran and Afghanistan.
Reagan said he campaign has not been curtailed or altered by the Iranian hostage situation: “I think we’re right in not talking about Iran,” he said, “but that does not mean we should avoid criticizing the exercise of foreign policy.”
Reagan blamed part of American foreign policy problems on the decline of the American intelligence community, calling it “washed out.”
When a reporter asked Reagan to respond to the common Democratic charge that he is too old to be president, the Republican leader snapped, “What do they want to do? Arm-wrestle?”
Reagan, who will be 69 next month, also addressed a crowd of about 1,500 at the Palmer Auditorium in Davenport last night. There he drew enthusiastic applause for his promises to return the welfare system to the states, to eliminate the estate tax, to beef-up the military and sharply deregulate business.
The Palmer crowd was at least a few hundred larger than the one for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Edward Kennedy’s Davenport appearance several weeks earlier. It may be an interesting footnote, however, that both men entered the auditorium to the theme from “Rocky.” Whether either one turns out to have been prophetic will not be known until November.

October 26, 1983 – ‘If not now, when?’

“We cannot pick and choose where we will defend freedom. We can only choose how.” – President Ronald Reagan, Oct. 24, 1983

It is our duty as a free nation to play a role in bringing an opportunity for peace and freedom to Lebanon and the Middle East. There is room for debate, however – as President Reagan himself noted – on how we should perform that duty.
After the Soviet Union wantonly murdered 269 people when it recently shot down the Korean airliner, America’s response was measured and generally appropriate. Under the circumstances, there was little else we could prudently do.
Now, after making it clear we will continue to do our duty to world peace and national security by keeping the Marines in Lebanon, what remains for is for us to decide how those Marines will be used.
It is time for the United States – in conjunction with such allies as France, Italy, Great Britain and Israel – to respond to reality and to immediately become the hunters rather than the hunted. It is time for Syria and Iran and, yes, the Soviet Union, to know that America and the free world will not only show up, they’ll fight.
The military build-up that President Reagan has wisely advocated is foolish and useless if we refuse to use that force when force is required. Force appears to be required now in Beirut.
America and its allies ought to send in massive numbers of troops to search out and destroy the radical forces who prey upon the peaceful intent of the free world by bombing Marines as they sleep.
Certainly there is grave danger in pursuing such an aggressive response to the latest tragedy in Lebanon, but there is more danger in continuing to turn the other cheek.
Let the free world stand up now in Lebanon.
Let President Reagan make it clear that, from now on, American forces sent anywhere in the world will be there to preserve the peace not by dying at the hands of cowardly terrorists, but by forcefully rooting out the enemies of peace.
This may be the most crucial test of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. A couple of years ago, in another context, Reagan asked these pointed questions: “If not us, who? If not now, when?”
I ask those questions today of the president.
If America is to generate fear in its enemies and promote trust in its allies, it must prove it is no longer the paper tiger that sat in the corner and stewed because some Iranian kids held some Americans hostage for more than a year in Tehran.
If not us, Mr. President, who? If not now, when?

April 6, 1984 – They keep coming to America

There are millions of refugees today, people who have fled their native lands in the hope of escaping political or military or economic oppression. Many of these refugees come from Southeast Asia. But where do they go?
Statistics from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees show that the U.S.A. was the new home of choice for more than 650,000 refugees between 1975 and 1983.
The next popular choice was France (93,218). Others in the top ten were Canada (89,777); Australia (84,079); West Germany (22,387); Britain (16,388); Taiwan (13,353); Hong Kong (9,610); Switzerland (7,785); and New Zealand (5,374).
What happens to these refugees once they arrive in America? According to the Church World Service (CWS), after a period of adjustment, most refugees find jobs and become self-sufficient.
“Generally, they have not been a burden to the system,” says Dale de Haan, refugee program director for CWS. “These newcomers open businesses. They pay taxes. They create jobs. They’ve contributed a great deal.”
Of the refugee families who arrived in the United States in 1980, CWS reports that 74 percent now have at least one person employed full time. In contrast, by 1983, only seven percent were on welfare and only 20 percent were Food Stamp recipients.
From 1820-1920 Americans opened our golden door to more than 34 million immigrants. More than three-fourths of them never left.
It seems certain that refugees will continue to seek homes in the United States and in other nations of the free world. Those of us who, through the grace of God, had the good fortune to be born in America, ought to accept the never-ending tide of new Americans with the same spirit that we would hope to be accepted if we were in the same boat. We must turn those idealistic lines chiseled into the Statue of Liberty from cold stone into warm reality:
“…Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Yes, we’ll keep the light on for you.

It’s All a Game

February 20, 1980 – ‘USA, USA, USA!’

Al Michaels tried to sum-up the accomplishments of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team this way: “There’s just nothing to say. This is the kind of time when you wish you were a writer so you could sit back, mull it over, and put it into the right words.”
I have, on occasion, been accused of being a writer, so I feel an obligation to accept Al’s challenge and attempt to pick up where Al left off so memorably.
Al may not be a writer, but he is a brilliant sportscaster who may have found words no writer could improve upon as the final seconds fell off the clock and the U.S.A. completed what may have been the greatest upset in any Olympic event by defeating the undefeatable Soviet hockey team: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
Hockey is not my favorite sport. It ranks somewhere between horseshoes and badminton. But Olympic hockey is another story.
I even listened to the broadcast of the pre-Olympic exhibition match between the U.S. and the Soviets at Madison Square Garden. The Soviets, as expected, toyed with the band of American collegians, hardly working up a sweat in a 10-3 annihilation.
U.S. Coach Herb Brooks said his team was “a good group of collegians,” but one that would have to be lucky to even have an outside chance at a bronze medal.
“These kids have talent,” Brooks said, “but they’re young, inexperienced and really have no business in competition with a veteran team of professional stars such as the Soviets. The Soviets are the best team in the world, bar none.”
Whether that was part of a planned motivational campaign or not, what the coach said was the truth. And everybody knew it. The gold belonged to the Soviets. Most Americans were simply hoping our young hockey team wouldn’t be totally embarrassed.
But that was on paper. Hockey is played on ice.
The Soviets underestimated the U.S. kids. The Soviets underestimated the intangibles of pride, character, guts. With Americans being held hostage in Iran, with the nation in the grips of economic crises and shadowed by what the president described as a national “malaise,” the Soviets may have been lulled into complacency.
But there was no complacency in Lake Placid as the young Americans did the impossible by nipping the greatest hockey team in the world, 4-3. I will never forget those emotional chants of “USA! USA! USA!” echoing through the arena and thundering into millions of American living rooms from New York to Oregon. It was the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Fourth of July, Christmas and New Year’s Eve all rolled into one overwhelming moment of national pride.
As I sat there in my living room watching those American flags waving, seeing the tears stream down the faces of many in the crowd, seeing the huge “USA” embroidered on those hockey jerseys, I was reminded of those times, only four years ago, when I was playing baseball in Africa and wearing a “USA” uniform.
Mayors of major cities and prime ministers of nations were among the dignitaries who turned out to shake hands with each of us as we stood along the first base line in stadiums throughout southern Africa – from Salisbury to Johannesburg to Cape Town.
I had an inkling of how those hockey players felt when the “Star Spangled Banner” was played and their victory acknowledged. We played before crowds that usually ranged around 5,000, we were the overwhelming favorites to win, and it was far from the Olympic spotlight. But it was international competition and we knew we were playing not just for ourselves or our sport, but for our country.
That opportunity to represent the United States of America in athletic competition on foreign soil is one I will never forget. You can be sure those kids wearing the USA hockey jerseys will never forget, either.
These 1980 Winter Olympics have revealed everything that is good about America. And despite all the problems we face now, we should take heart in knowing that this nation has always come back against the odds, just as our hockey team has, and that we will do it again.
Almost as memorable as the joy of the Americans in the wake of the Soviet upset were the reactions of the Soviet players. There they were, perhaps the greatest hockey team ever assembled, leaning on their sticks, bewildered and shocked, staring in amazement at the Americans going wild. The Soviets could not understand it, for it was that uniquely American spirit. It was the same spirit that a mother displays when she works overtime to pay for her kid’s college education; it was the same spirit that a father embodies when he hugs his son after he strikes out; it was the same spirit that Americans everywhere demonstrate every day in battling bigger, stronger, more powerful opponents.
That American spirit may have been dormant, but it has been revived by a hockey team filled with anonymous college kids who are not so anonymous anymore. Eric Heiden, Phil Mahre, Mike Eruzione – none of us who saw them will ever forget them.
Sure, it was just a hockey match. And the sun is just a star.

December 5, 1979 – Meet real winners: Iowa, Hayden Fry

“On Iowa, proudly at the fore,
On Iowa, on forevermore,
Ev’ry loyal son will give a rousing toast to you,
Ev’ry daughter loves you true.
On, Iowa, with your wealth untold,
A heritage to us you did unfold,
Love of family, love of friend,
Love of country, too, makes us proud for what you stand,
Our dear Old Gold.” – On Iowa

A few days after the Iowa Hawkeyes of the Big 10 conference closed their football season with a 33-23 win over Michigan State in Iowa City, their first-year coach was closing his talk show on WHO radio in Des Moines.
Hayden Fry, the Texan who led Iowa to a 5-6 record this season, was told by talk show host Jim Zabel that Iowa swimming coach Glenn Patton was giving Fry a great deal of credit for the outstanding start made by the Hawkeye swimming team.
“Well, he should,” drawled Fry. “If it hadn’t been for my advice they wouldn’t be enjoying such great success. I went to watch practice one day and Coach Patton asked me for some advice, so I told him, ‘I think you’d do a lot better if you put water in the pool.’ ”
It’s that kind of self-deprecating humor that has endeared Fry to the press and the public ever since he began “plowing up snakes and killin’ ‘em” by taking the Iowa post almost exactly one year ago.
By that “snake” reference, Fry meant that his first priority was to establish a winning tradition at a school that has now amassed the nation’s longest string of non-winning seasons – 19.
But Hayden did what he set out to do, despite several narrow defeats that could have yielded an 8-3 season but for the 30-26 loss to Holiday-Bowl bound Indiana; the 24-21 heartbreaker to Cotton Bowl-bound Nebraska; and the 20-14 cliffhanger to Bluebonnet Bowl-bound Purdue.
And that doesn’t even include the 21-6 loss to Big Eight champion and Orange Bowl-bound Oklahoma after the Hawks had trailed only 7-6 entering the fourth quarter in Norman.
Before the season started, Fry guaranteed an exciting brand of football and an attack that would include the school’s first ever 1,000-yard rusher. And, “Bless his heart,” as Hayden would say, the new coach made good on those promises with offensive and defensive ploys that kept opponents guessing – usually wrong – all season long.
Dennis Mosley emerged from the depths of mediocrity to rush for about 1,300 yards and lead the Big Ten’s runners.
Add to this the fact that Iowa set an attendance record, selling-out five of six home games with the other only about a thousand short of the 60,000 capacity. Of course, Iowa has been among the nation’s leaders in attendance, despite its lack of success over the years, so the attendance record is not all that surprising.
What is surprising is that a Chicago Tribune columnist can be so ignorant. Although the Trib’s David Israel has never met Fry, his powers are such that he knows the Iowa coach is without merit. That was the gist of his recent column headlined, “Meet a real loser, Iowa’s Hayden Fry.” The only loser is Mr. Israel. Check back in a few years and see.
But it may be that Iowa not only has a great new football coach, but also has the finest all-around collection of coaches in America. Who can boast a better staff than Fry; Lute Olson of Iowa’s defending Big Ten champion basketball team; Patton, whose swimming team has overwhelmed perennial Big Ten champion Indiana and walloped last year’s NCAA champions from the University of California; and Dan Gable and his wrestling powerhouse?
The 1980s seem destined to witness a golden era for the University of Iowa in what could become an unprecedented level of athletic achievement. At least it looks that way now, so long as we remember to put water in the pool.

October 22, 1979 -- Nothing’s changed at Wisconsin

Madison, Wis., was one of the hotbeds of campus violence against the Vietnam War about a decade ago. That energy and violent nature has not withered away, it has simply been channeled from the UW campus to the school’s Camp Randall football stadium.
No longer do the Badger students scream and throw bricks and demonstrate against battles in Southeast Asia. Instead, they have adopted the routine of holding keggers in the end zone stands and tossing footballs that are kicked into the stands up to the rim of the stadium where they are matter-of-factly spiked to the concrete outside, 80 rows below. Action on the part of school and security officials has finally succeeded, for the time being, in stopping the tradition of passing a female person up to the top of the stadium where it was feared a drunk might mistake the young thing for a football and toss her over the side.
“We had to reach some sort of compromise for public safety,” explained Wisconsin assistant athletic director Otto Breitenbach.
After having survived last Saturday’s Iowa game in the midst of the Madison maniacs, I thought the folks would stagger away to their lairs, not to be seen again until the next Badger home game. But no, the worst was yet to come.
As Mary, my parents, my brothers and their wives and I waited patiently for the crowd to thin before embarking on the long trek to our car, we were amazed by the thousands of people who were hanging around in the stands.
And then, about 15 minutes after the game had ended (with Iowa winning 24-13, by the way), the Wisconsin marching band, in formation on the field, struck up the “Budweiser Song.”
Of the crowd of 79,000 there must have been at least 50,000 still on hand, shouting the words as the university band played that beer song.
It was awesome. They were raucous during the game, usually for no particular reason, but now these Wisconsin people were going completely bananas over a beer song.
The pompon squad danced, people rushed out of the stands and onto the field to join them while those who stayed behind jumped up and down and sang with such gusto that the second deck of the west stands and press box perched atop it swayed noticeably.
And that brings me to another point: University officials were recently petitioned by several hundred of the few sane Wisconsin fans. These fans demanded an end to the playing of the beer song in the interest of public safety. And so, naturally, university officials initiated a study of the stadium’s structural soundness.
The fans’ petition noted that they feared for their lives, what with tens of thousands of people making noise and rocking the two-tiered stadium enough to make them sea-sick.
But rather than banning the playing of the song and the barbaric behavior it inspires, Wisconsin officials spent $25,000 on the engineering study.
That’s why the band and their thousands of devotees had to wait 15 minutes before bursting into the beer song following the Badgers loss to Iowa on Saturday. The costly study revealed that there was danger of the stadium collapsing in the midst of the revelry, so the 15-minute moratorium was devised in order to allow those wished to escape to do so while others would be allowed to remain at their own risk.
Of course I didn’t know any of this until AFTER I was safely back in the Quad-Cities.
So when it comes to maniacs, when you’ve said University of Wisconsin, you’ve said it all….

January 29, 1982 – Athletes make best students

With budgets growing ever tighter in almost every school district in Iowa, Illinois and most of the rest of the country, extracurricular activities, including sports, often become the first targets of budget-cutters. But the evidence continues to mount that cutting athletic programs may do serious harm to the academic performance and socialization of many students.
It has been established in previous columns that, on the basis of studies at universities including Northwestern, Iowa and Iowa State, less than percent of entering freshmen who are non-athletes graduate within five years. In contrast, athletes graduate within five years at a rate of between 70 and 90 percent.
And now comes a study, released only a few days ago, that punches more huge holes in the “dumb jock” stereotype.
A study of 6, 635 Iowa high school seniors clearly demonstrates that athletes – both male and female – attain significantly higher grades than do their non-athlete peers. And not only that, but the study also found that the more sports a student participates in, the better the student performs academically.
Mike Schafer, athletic director at Sibley High School in extreme northwest Iowa, completed the extensive study as part of his work toward a specialist’s degree from Mankato State University in Minnesota.
“What we found was that the more athletically involved the students are,” Schafer said, “the higher their grade point is. I guess I always thought it was possible that athletes were as good academically as non-athletes, but I didn’t really know they were better.” Now he knows, and so do we.
Schafer’s survey was conducted last fall and included every senior at 76 Iowa high schools.
The average grade point average for those seniors not participating in any sport was 2.39, about a C plus. That average jumped to 2.61 for students playing one sport and leaped to 2.82, about a B minus, for students playing two or more sports.
A similar study conducted at Cedar Rapids Jefferson High School turned up similar results.
Why are athletes scoring higher grades than non-athletes?
“I think one of the reasons for the higher scores is that students who are involved in athletics are just basically more conscientious and more disciplined students than those who are not,” Schafer said. “I think they are this way because of their involvement in athletic programs…and I think there is some carry-over into their personal lives.”
The Sherrard, Ill., School Board a few days ago voted 5-2 to drop sports and other extracurricular activities that were not self-supporting. To board members there and districts contemplating similar moves, Schafer suggests that in light of his study they may wish to reassess their decisions and not only maintain current programs but expand them, especially in the area of intramurals so that students not talented enough for interscholastic play could still have the advantages sports participation provides.
“I think the carry-over values should tell school administrators that students enjoy being involved,” Schafer said. “It would seem to me to start chopping out athletic activities, music and other activities would have a direct, negative impact on the academic lives of the students.”
Those are not the unsupported opinions of a biased coach, but the thoroughly documented facts of a high school educator supported by similar evidence at the college level. You don’t have to accept these facts, of course, anymore than you have to accept the mounting evidence that the earth is round. Why, there are even a few folks who maintain that Richard Nixon is an honest man.
In conjunction with this recent information on athletes and academics comes word of the college football recruiting that is nearly complete. Committed to Hayden Fry’s Iowa team are 24 players so far, 15 of whom are either members of the National Honor Society or students with at least a 3.0 GPA. Heading that list is Omaha linebacker Larry Station. One of the top five linebacker recruits in the nation, Station carries a 3.8 GPA and says one of the main reasons he opted for Iowa over his home state school, Nebraska, is Iowa’s academic superiority. Station was referring to a recent East Coast study that rated America’s colleges and universities on a five-star academic scale. The University of Iowa rated four stars. The University of Nebraska rated one.
A check on things at the University of Illinois revealed that the sports information department had “no idea” what the academic credentials of its football recruits might be. “That’s not one of the questions on our questionnaire,” I was told by an athletic spokesman, “but I know it’d be nowhere near that (Iowa’s) high.”
Illini Coach Mike White may have taught the Big Ten something about recruiting JC football talent, but maybe he could use a few pointers in other areas. Or maybe it’s all academic.

May 28, 1979 – Equality goes beyond Title IX concept

There has been much gnashing of teeth, not to mention wailing, over the provisions of Title IX. That’s the Department of Health, Education and Welfare’s rule that requires all schools receiving federal funding to provide equal athletic opportunities for students regardless of sex.
Clarification of the language is now pending and some sports officials, including Christine Grant, head of the University of Iowa’s women’s intercollegiate sports program, are growing impatient. They believe HEW is stalling over the interpretation of exactly what is meant by “equality” in the financial aspects of athletic programs.
The women, of course, are demanding an interpretation that would give them dollar-for-dollar with men’s programs. Those who run men’s programs say that such an interpretation could ruin men’s intercollegiate athletics as they have traditionally existed.
In a related controversy that HEW backed away from last winter, the Iowa Civil Rights Commission has recently gone on record as favoring the abolition of six-girl basketball in Iowa high schools. The commission claims the practice discriminates against Iowa girls in that it limits their opportunities to earn college basketball scholarships.
All colleges and all but three states’ high schools play five-girl basketball with rules similar to the boys’ and the colleges.
Iowa Gov. Robert D. Ray, shortly after the commission made its stand, declined to reappoint the chairman and another commissioner who were advocates of the five-girl game.
While such Title IX tempests have flared before, I have heard no comment from the Iowa Civil Rights Commission or similar groups who fearlessly weed out the discrimination in our sporting lives, on the inequality visited on those students, male and female, who would like to participate in sports but whose ability level is average or below.
Yet don’t those students have the same right to participate as their more talented peers? European schools have traditionally provided equal opportunities for all the boys who want to play cricket or rugby or basketball to do so. They have open tryouts, no one is cut, but players are assigned to teams based on ability. There may be five or six teams from one school, whatever it takes to accommodate everyone who wants to play. The “E” level of one school plays the “E” team of the other school, so players are matched with ones of similar ability, but everyone plays an interscholastic schedule. This is athletic equality.
If, as the evidence clearly shows, athletic participation is an excellent educational tool, why is it denied to so many students who aren’t talented enough to make the varsity? Those students who want to play but who are not allowed because someone says they aren’t talented enough are the ones who are clearly victims of discrimination. And intramural programs, while better than nothing, are not equal to interscholastic experiences.
If we’re going to have equality, let’s have it, not just for the tiny minority of talented athletes of both genders, but for all. If we really believe in equality, let’s not make some athletes more equal than others – by ability level or gender.

September 21, 1982 – Hiram could have a point

“Hiram,” I said, “it’s nice of you to call. Haven’t heard from you in months.”
“Well, Mike, you know how it goes. Been awful busy lately sloppin’ the hogs, drivin’ the combine, keepin’ an eye on college football.”
“So what’s up?”
“Well, I was out drivin’ the combine pretty late the other night so I switched on the radio and listened to Hayden Fry. He was answering questions from reporters in his weekly press conference in Iowa City. It was pretty dull most of the time, but then, after awhile, Fry started bad-mouthin’ the reporters for writin’ bad stuff about his Hawkeye boys.”
“They haven’t done too well so far this season, though, have they?”
“No, they lost their first two games and the offense only scored one touchdown as was boring doin’ it, but it didn’t sit well with me to have them reporters treatin’ Hayden and the boys thata way. Besides, I think they’ll do a lot better ‘gainst Arizona.”
“I’m afraid you may be wrong about those sportswriters, Hiram. They aren’t cheerleaders, you know. They aren’t supposed to be writing puff pieces and PR releases. They’re supposed to write the facts. If the facts are bad, that’s hardly their fault. They don’t coach Iowa’s offense. In fact, I’ve heard some folks around here say they don’t think anybody coaches the Iowa offense.”
“See, that’s what I mean. Those sports reporters have been writing and saying things like that, too. And they’ve been saying that maybe getting to the Rose Bowl last year was a fluke. I don’t get it, Mike. The sports writers criticize coaches who believe winning is everything, then they still criticize when a team loses. I don’t get it.”
“Hiram, I think the Hawkeye in you is blotting out your usual good sense. Why, sports writers are just as fair as the rest of us in the news business. They have a tough job, but somebody has to do it. You think sports writers enjoy flying off to southern California to cover the Rose Bowl when they could be back here in the Quad-Cities shoveling snow out of the driveway? You think having to visit Tucson in September is fun? No, Hiram, sports writing is a job, a tough job, right down there with slopping the hogs and mending the fences.”
“Maybe, but I still think a lot of sports writers are hypocrites. If they really believe winnin’ isn’t everything, then why is it that winnin’ – or failin’ to win – is nearly all they ever write about? Why don’t we see stories about how hard players are workin’ to improve and about how disciplined they are in balancin’ that dadgum school work with playin’ football? And why are coaches judged by how many games their teams win instead of how much they improve and how good of grades they get?
“Why, Mike, do sports writers keep makin’ fun of the boys over at Northwestern? Sure, they lose just about every football game, but they’re in there tryin’ – and they didn’t go there to get ready for pro football, they went there to learn how to run businesses and to be leaders. I think it’s a good thing for a leader to know how to lose and not give up, don’t you, Mike?”
“Now, now, Hiram. Don’t get so worked up. You’re a heart attack waiting to happen. To listen to you someone would think sports writers a combination of the Ayatollah Khomeini and Yassar Arafat.”
“I’m just tellin’ the truth, Mike. I’m just givin’ ya the facts, like you news guys like to brag about. Don’t blame me if the facts ain’t pretty. And here’s something else: How come so many sports writers use so much space writing about the cheating that goes on in college sports yet they vote for convicted cheaters?”
“What are you talking about, Hiram?”
“The polls, that’s what. And I don’t mean the ones in Warsaw. Take the football polls this fall, for example. The University of Southern California has admitted to a decade of NCAA violations that involve more than 200 athletes, most of them football players. As a result, USC is on probation: no PAC 10 championship, no bowl game. Still, the sports writers voted for USC so much that it was No. 10 in the preseason Associated Press poll of sports writers and broadcasters. Why? The United Press International poll, in which only coaches vote, prohibits teams on probation from being ranked. Why don’t the sports writers read what they write? Why don’t they do what they tell others to do? Why do they reward cheaters at the expense of honest folks? Because, Mike, despite what they say, to most sports writers it’s all about winning, period. At least, that’s what the facts show.”
“I don’t know, Hiram. I think maybe you’ve been spending too much time slopping those hogs lately. You’re taking all this football stuff way too seriously. You’ve got to learn to relax. What you need is a hobby.”
“I’ve got a hobby, Mike. It’s college football. And if it weren’t for those dadgum sports writers, I could relax and enjoy it. It’s really old Mrs. Jackson’s fault.”
“How’s that, Hiram.”
“She’s the one who made me learn readin’.”
“I think I get your drift, Hiram.”

February 4, 1979 – Do basketball refs need tennis lessons?

It won’t be long now. While some college basketball coaches have gotten the jump on their colleagues by denouncing the quality of officiating, the numbers doing so always seem to swell in February when championships are decided.
Coaches will claim that officials are “taking the game away from the players,” that the men in the striped shirts are incompetent, inconsistent and worse. And I would contend that the coaches, in many cases, would be correct.
Many attempts have been made to improve the quality of officiating, but none of the innovations so far, such as the three-man teams working Big Ten games in recent seasons, seems to have made any significant improvement.
It is with this background that I would suggest maintaining a three-man crew, but with a news system of deployment.
Instead of having all three officials roaming the floor with the players, I would suggest leaving two to patrol the floor while elevating the third official to a higher level – literally.
The third official would sit 25 or 30 feet above court level at center court, along the lines of a tennis or volleyball official. Former Iowa Hawkeye head coach Ralph Miller made this suggestion a few years ago. It has never been taken seriously, but it should be.
Many of the complaints about officiating are couched with comments that blame the size, speed and quickness of today’s players with often catching officials out of position. In many cases, the referee on the court is victimized by the problem of being too close to the forest to see the trees.
It may be that it is almost as impossible for even three basketball officials to do a consistent job of policing today’s high-speed, physical game of college basketball from close range as it would be for a line judge in tennis to pull on his sneakers and try to chase the volley back-and-forth.
The basketball official in the high perch would gain the benefit of perspective. He could see what officials on the floor are often too close to see. This wider perspective that most fans have, whether in the arena or watching on TV, often lead them to wonder what game the officials were watching. That rhetorical observation, usually uttered in a mocking tone, actually identifies a serious problem. From a distance you do see the game differently than if you’re in the middle of it.
Using one elevated ref could help solve that problem. The ref could simply push a button to sound a whistle or a horn when he spotted a violation. The call could be relayed to the head official on the floor simply and quickly enough via a wireless mike system.
Perhaps this proposal could be tried in exhibition games, scrimmages and so on to see how the game might be more effectively officiated.
From here, it seems it could only help.

June 6, 1980 – The World Series is on in college baseball

Back on the evening of June 9, 1972, almost exactly eight years ago, I was loosening up in front of the first base dugout at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha where a sell-out crowd of nearly 14,000 fans had gathered for a first round game in the College World Series.
My University of Iowa teammates and I had drawn No. 1-ranked Arizona State. The Sun Devils brought an incredible and unprecedented 60 wins and only 4 losses into the Series. In contrast, we had won only 27 games and lost 15, but we had set a Hawkeye record that still stands by winning 11 in a row in the Big Ten. That winning streak propelled us to a 13-3 record and Iowa’s first conference championship in 39 years.
The 1980 Series opened Friday night in virtual anonymity. Had Major League Baseball been on strike, as it appeared it would, you would have been able to watch Clemson battle Miami Saturday night on NBC. That would have been the first live telecast of college baseball on one of the three major networks. Alas, the bigs managed to botch that one, too.
But let’s go back to that 1972 game. We lost 2-1 despite out hitting Arizona State eight to three. We had the tying run thrown out at the plate by an eyelash in the ninth and stranded another runner at third the same inning. And we had several other scoring opportunities during the game that we missed, and one that an umpire missed. Nobody had given us a chance of avoiding embarrassment, let alone winning, and yet we outplayed the Sun Devils in every respect, yet still fell short when a pair of errors and a squeeze bunt in the third inning accounted for all of Arizona State’s offense.
You may have heard of a few of the guys involved in that game. The ASU starting pitcher was Craig Swan, now the leader of the New York Mets’ staff and one of the Mets’ highest-paid players.
At shortstop that night for ASU was Alan Bannister, for the past several seasons a good hitter who can’t find a defensive position with the Chicago White Sox.
At second base was Bump Wills, who is now the starter at the same position for the Texas Rangers. And a teammate of Wills at Texas is Jim Sundberg, perhaps the best defensive catcher in baseball. “Sunny” was our starting catcher that night in the College World Series.
More and more major leaguers are coming from the college ranks, and many have passed through Omaha and the College World Series on their way to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other Major League venues.
Back in 1977 I returned to Omaha for the first time since playing there to see a great battle between Baylor and South Carolina. It was another of those games that made it clear the college series deserves more TV coverage. And it shouldn’t require a major league strike to get it.
Meanwhile, the remaining games of this 1980 College World Series are scheduled for telecast by the ESPN sports cable network. The games will be available to viewers in this area who subscribe to Quint-Cities Cablevision. Tonight’s coverage begins at 7:30.
Tune in and you’re likely to see not only some future major league stars, but some old-fashioned, hustling, spirited baseball. For at the amateur level, there’s nothing like the College World Series.

April 1, 1983 – An open letter to the Olsons

Dear Lute and Bobbi,
The shock is only now beginning to wear off. You’re really leaving. And even though we Hawkeye fans can understand why you’ve decided to forsake Iowa for Arizona, we can’t help feeling a little sorry for ourselves. It may not have been a perfect marriage, you folks and the Hawkeye fans, but the occasional scraps we got into were just love spats, nothing more.
We first learned of your plans to leave Monday night. A phone call from my dad in Cedar Rapids woke me up about 11:30. It’s seldom good news when the phone rings at that time of night, so fearing the worst I picked up the receiver.
“Have you heard the latest?”
“No, but it is late.”
“Well, Bob Hogue just announced that Lute’s taking the Arizona job. Hogue was so shook up about it he could hardly get it out.”
“Oh, my!”
It was the worst.
And it was so sudden. One minute 6,000 of us are in Kansas City in hopes of cheering you and the Hawks on to another Final Four then, before many of us have had time to unpack, you folks were in Tucson and Lute was “the former head basketball coach at the University of Iowa.” We’d have hardly been more surprised if the Soviets had unilaterally disarmed.
Of course, we thought we had lost you four years ago when reports were that you would accept the job at USC. But after much speculation and days of anxiety, you decided to stay in Iowa City rather than move to L.A. Then it was quickly announced that a new arena would be built and that your contract had been extended through 1989. The long contract and the promise of the new arena made us feel secure. And the fact that you turned down southern California in favor of eastern Iowa made us proud.
But that pride was dented Monday night when you decided to desert the most loyal fans in the universe for a clump of palm trees, a pool in the backyard and forests of cacti. And, oh yes, a destitute Arizona basketball program.
How all that contrasts with the images that will remain with us for a lifetime.
There is Steve Waite poised at the left of the lane about 18 feet from the hoop. He pauses for a moment, gives a little head-and-shoulders fake and for one of the few times in his career, drops his shoulder and drives. Only seconds remain in the NCAA regional final against Georgetown. It’s March of 1980.
As the Iowa City West grad nears the bucket, the basketball rolls firmly and accurately off his fingertips. The body of a Georgetown player crashes into him as the basketball slithers down through the soft, white nylon net. The game is tied and a free throw is coming that can send the Hawks to the Final Four for the first time since 1956.
Waite eases the free throw toward the rim. It lands in the bottom of the net, in the midst of racing Hawkeye hearts. It lands very far away, in a dimension named disbelief, in a place of gladness and joy, in a world where miracles live and dreams never die. It lands in the souls of the loyal sons and daughters of the Black-and-Gold whose long-suffering has at last been rewarded.
There’s the emotion of 15,000 Iowa fans waiting for more than six hours in the old Field House for you and the team to return after that 81-80 victory over Georgetown. It’s midnight before you arrive, but we don’t mind. Can’t you hear those crazy Hawkeye fans cheering still?
There there is the emotion of Ronnie Lester’s last game at Iowa and the ceremony that retired his jersey. Few thought Ronnie was worth recruiting, but you saw his potential, Lute, and you nurtured it. And thanks to both you and Bobbi, Ronnie matured off the court as well as on and now has his degree. Like almost every Hawkeye player you recruited, Ronnie Lester is a great human being who also happens to be a pretty fair basketball player.
There are so many other moments, Lute and Bobbi, that it would take a book to recount them all and to thank you for the joy – and, yes, even the frustration – they sometimes brought.
Much more could be said, but this must end. And so let Hawkeye fans everywhere thank you for what you’ve done so well and wish you continued success knowing that, as we are told in Ecclesiastes:
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven… A time to plant and a time to reap… A time to get and a time to lose… A time to keep and a time to cast away. A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance….”
So, Lute and Bobbi, thanks for the memories. You have given Iowa fans lots of reasons to dance over the last nine years. But now, at least for a little while, it is a time to mourn.

December 4, 1981 – Those Hawks sure are lucky

Few believed Iowa’s 1981 Hawkeye football team could even make it close when Nebraska’s Big Red opened the season in Iowa City back on Sept. 12. Pity the poor Hawks, they said. Maybe, if they’re lucky, not too many Iowa players will be seriously injured. And it was true that Nebraska had humiliated the Hawks 57-0 in Lincoln one year earlier. And so the only real question was how bad a beating the Cornhuskers would dish out to Iowa this time. That’s what they were saying.
But Hayden Fry’s Hawkeyes weren’t listening.
As the final seconds evaporated into that warm September afternoon, the Hawks headed to the locker room with a 10-7 win while some among the 60,000 SRO crowd giddily chanted, “Rose Bowl! Rose Bowl! Rose Bowl!”
But then came the post-game analysis and they were saying it was just a fluke. Nebraska was caught looking past the Hawkeyes, they said. And those people who were chanting “Rose Bowl!” – why, they were either crazy or even more drunk than usual. That’s what they said.
And when the Hawks suffered a 23-12 loss the very next Saturday in Ames they all nodded and said, “We told you so.”
Then UCLA pranced into Iowa City. As Nebraska had two weeks earlier, the star-laden powerhouse from California brought a No. 6 national ranking to Kinnick Stadium.
And, like Nebraska, the Bruins left town with a single touchdown and their first defeat. Somehow the Hawkeyes had done it again. This time Iowa had defeated the sixth-ranked team in America by an even larger margin, 20-7.
A few more fans joined in the “Rose Bowl!” chorus but they, well, they just shook their heads and talked about what a shame it was that a great team like UCLA had been manhandled – not by the Hawkeyes, you understand – but by jet lag.
The next two weeks the Hawkeyes slammed Northwestern and humbled Indiana to push their record to 4-1.
“We’ll see what kind of team Iowa is now,” they said. “Let’s see if the Hawkeyes can go up to Ann Arbor with 100,000 people supporting Bo and his boys, the defending Big Ten and Rose Bowl champions, and come out of there alive.”
That’s what they said.
And so when that warm, mid-October day had ended and the Hawks had scored a 9-7 win over a sixth-ranked team for the third time in six games, Bo was blue and they, well, they said it surely must have been another fluke. Meanwhile, about 2,000 Iowans who had made the journey to Ann Arbor chanted “Rose Bow! Rose Bowl! Rose Bowl!” while 98,000 Michigan fans listened in dazed silence.
But they still said the Rose Bowl was a crazy thought for Iowa.
Two Saturdays later, after successive losses to Minnesota at home and Illinois on the road, it looked like they were right after all. “We told you so,” they said. “Luck has run out on the Hawkeyes, and without luck what do they have?”
That’s what they were saying. But the Hawks, well, I guess they still weren’t listening.
There were no more of those silly Rose Bowl chants. Instead, most folks wondered if the Hawks would even be able to finally have a winning season, would they even be able to manage a sixth win. They hadn’t beaten the next foe, Purdue, in 20 seasons. Why, Iowa might not win another game with Wisconsin and Michigan State also left to play. That’s what they were saying.
But the Hawkeyes, once again, weren’t listening.
Iowa clobbered Purdue and 20 years of futility, 33-7. A winning season was, after two decades, a reality.
A trip to the den of the maniacs of Madison was next up, though, and they said the Hawks could not win there.
Final score: Iowa 17, Wisconsin 7
Yes, they said, but Iowa was lucky Wisconsin didn’t play very well that day. Why, if the Badgers had played like they could….
But no matter what they said, the facts were clear. Despite the flukes and the luck, Iowa’s record had somehow ballooned to 7 wins and 3 losses. And some of the real crazies were even beginning to think, if not to shout aloud, “Rose Bowl” again.
Not many took the thought seriously, though. Hadn’t every Big Ten football title and Rose Bowl appearance since 1967 gone to the winner of the Michigan-Ohio State game? “It’s just like it’s always been,” Michigan Coach Schembechler told the Chicago Tribune. “The Big Ten title and Rose Bowl bid are coming down to this game again. That’s the way it should be.”
Meanwhile, as the network TV cameras showed the big game up in Ann Arbor and prepared to follow that with the big game from L.A. between USC and UCLA, in TV anonymity the Hawkeyes were concluding the regular season by battering Michigan State into submission in Iowa City, 36-7.
That eighth victory earned Iowa a share of the Big Ten championship. Late in that victory, when word began filtering through Kinnick Stadium that Ohio State had upset Michigan, an undertow among the 60,000 folks jam-packed into Kinnick began to reverberate across Iowa City. It was reminiscent of that warm Sept. 12, only this time it was no dream. This time those chants were simply fact. You could look it up: “Rose Bowl! Rose Bowl! Rose Bowl!”
Kinnick Stadium rocked as never before, roses were tossed into the stands from the press box, grown men had tears in their eyes, and University of Iowa students were hugging and kissing and dancing with anyone in reach.
It would be Iowa’s first trip to Pasadena since 1959. And remember those TV teams? They were left to sob in their root beer and console themselves with trips to things called the Liberty Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, the Holiday Bowl and the Bluebonnet Bowl.
On that gray, damp, 30-degree Saturday afternoon in Iowa City more than two decades of frustration roared to an end.
And they, well, they stood aside and silently shook their heads in total bewilderment while that crescendo of sound carried all the way to Ann Arbor.
Iowa and its third-year coach, Hayden Fry, had defeated Big 8 champion and Orange Bowl-bound Nebraska, Bluebonnet Bowl opponents UCLA and Michigan plus Garden State Bowl-bound Wisconsin.
But they are still calling it a fluke, even while they mail their applications for Rose Bowl tickets. They just want to see if there can be one more fluke, I guess.

Nov. 25, 1983 -- Bowls, bingo and boondoggles

So Notre Dame is going to Memphis and the Liberty Bowl to face Boston College on Dec. 29 after all. Knute Rockne and the boys must be turning over in their graves.
Notre Dame has lost three straight games, sports a 6-5 record and has not beaten a team with a winning record all season, yet is going to a bowl game. That is not right.
The opponent for Notre Dame will be 15th-ranked Boston College that, after tonight’s season-finale against Alabama, will have either a 9-2 or 8-3 record compiled against opponents that have included Morgan State, Rutgers, Temple, Yale, Army and Holy Cross.
When the Notre Dame-Boston College match-up was first proposed, I suggested a bingo game as the halftime entertainment. I now see that was a bad suggestion. Now it would seem more appropriate for the two teams to play four quarters of bingo and play football only at halftime. After all, the match has been arranged as a TV attraction, so why not turn it into a great game show, an NCAA version of “Family Feud”? That might actually attract some passionate viewers, but who other than family and close friends could care about the outcome of a football game between these two pretenders?
This Liberty Bowl fiasco is only the most obvious example of the inequity that is threatening the integrity of the bowl game system. If the NCAA is going to continue to sanction these postseason games then it must make some meaningful rules changes before next season.
For one, the NCAA should establish an official starting date for major college football games. No school should be allowed to play a game earlier than that date, and no bowl match-ups should be allowed before all regular-season games have been played. The Southeastern Conference is especially adept at scheduling key games late in the season to enhance its teams’ chances of going to bowl games. It works, but it’s unethical.
It would be like the Big Ten conspiring so that Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Ohio State would never play each other at all, or if they did meet, those games would be delayed until December so all those teams could have a chance at being undefeated and highly ranked when bowl invitations were issued in late November. Then, as the SEC knows so well, whoever loses late is unaffected because it’s too late to alter bowl match-ups and all that money that flows from them.
Unless the NCAA acts, the situation will only get worse and schedule-makers, TV executives, alumni, tradition and who you know will determine success in major college football, instead of what happens on the field. That is not fair. That is not sports, and most fans know it. But does the NCAA?

June 17, 1981 – Maybe some can understand

It was a land that never really existed except, perhaps, in the mind of the eight-year-old boy. But to that boy, the spring and summer of 1958 were wonderful. Oh sure, the Cubs were as bad as ever – maybe even worse – but as long as shortstop Ernie Banks was slamming those line drive home runs through the gale off Lake Michigan and onto Waveland Avenue, as long as Ernie was always ready to play two, as long as the ivy was green on the red brick walls of Wrigley Field, as long as the games were played only in the Chicago sunshine, what else could really matter?
The ice cream man would peddle his cart slowly along the street of the Midwestern town while reaching up to pull the cord that sent his bell into a series of casual clangings. The eight-year-old and several of the neighborhood kids would leave their bicycles, their model dump trucks, their jump ropes, their foursquare games – even their baseball gloves – to gather ‘round.
“Do you have any cherry Popsicles?” the eight-year-old would always ask. The ice cream man would always say yes. He’d pull open the door on top of his mobile freezer and the vapor would stream into the heat and humidity of a warm Midwestern afternoon. A gaggle of hands would stretch, fingertips straining in the hope of being the next one served. The eight-year-old would often be last, waiting patiently to give the ice cream man a dime and to take possession of the cherry Popsicle. And this day – May 13, 1958 – would be no exception.
It was a few minutes before one when the youngster strolled into the house while taking his last licks on the Popsicle. With red lips and tongue he picked up the family’s transistor radio and sequestered himself in the cool shade of the back porch. There in a corner was his homemade scorecard, built from a lined notebook page with pen and ruler.
He started filling in the batting order for the Cubs, then the Cardinals. He knew them both by heart, as he did the starting lineups for the other six teams in the National League. He entered the players on his scorecard in pencil, though, remembering last season when he had used ink and once day Cub first baseman Ed Bouche was ill and couldn’t play and the scorecard ended up too messy.
As he was finishing the lineups, the radio – tuned to Chicago’s WGN – blared with that familiar crack of the bat followed by the Cub theme song:
“It’s a beautiful day for a ball game, for a ball game today. The fans are out to get a ticket or two, from Walla Walla, Washington, to Kalamazoo. It’s a beautiful day for a home run… We’re gonna cheer and boo and raise a hullabaloo at the ball game today.”
Jack Quinlan’s enthusiastic voice then shouted a welcome to the eight-year-old listener and, after a commercial word for the Serta mattress company – “That’s ‘S’ like in sleep, S-E-R-T-A” – Jack would read off the starting lineups for the contest at Wrigley Field.
“Cardinal manager Fred Hutchinson has decided to keep Musial on the bench today,” Quinlan reported. “Hutch is hoping he can beat the Cubs without his start first baseman-right fielder and then let him go for his historic 3,000th hit in front of the home folks in St. Louis in their upcoming series.”
The eight-year-old listening on his back porch was disappointed. Even though Musial played for the hated Cardinals, he loved to listen to him play. The kid was a left-hand batter himself, like The Man, although Musial’s batting style and stance were so unusual the kid never tried to copy them. But still, in pick-up games, he liked to think of himself in Busch Stadium aiming for that right field screen, just like Stan The Man.
As the game progressed, the Cubs managed to build a 3-1 lead. Then, in the top of the sixth and still trailing by two runs, the Cards generated a mild rally by getting a runner to second with only one out. Hutchinson had a decision to make, Quinlan told the kid and the rest of the WGN audience. The Cardinal manager could take his chances on losing and leave Musial on the bench, or he could send The Man up to pinch-hit and perhaps win the game. But if he chose that course Musial could get his 3,000th hit in enemy territory at Wrigley Field instead of in front of the home fans in Busch Stadium.
Hutchinson went for the win.
The Wrigley Field crowd roared as Musial stepped out of the dugout swinging a couple of bats, and the fans really went crazy when he was officially announced as the pinch hitter.
About 300 miles away in southeast Iowa the kid’s heart was racing as Quinlan’s words helped him picture the scene at Wrigley, a place he had never been. But how he wished he were there now. He hoped the Cubs could hold on and win, but he also hoped that Musial would get that historic 3,000th hit.
As the tension built on the north side of Chicago and on that back porch in Ottumwa, Musial contorted himself into that inimitable twisting crouch at the plate and waited. Then, at the precise moment, he uncoiled.
“There’s a swing and a drive!” Quinlan shouted. “Deep right field!” And the kid got goose bumps. Would this be it? The crowd was roaring so loud that it nearly drowned out the Cub announcer as he screamed, “That’s it! It’s off the vines in right. Stan Musial has just gotten his 3,000th hit!”
The eight-year-old doesn’t remember who want the game that day, although he could look it up, but he does remember that historic pinch double. And he remembers players like Banks and Musial, players who toiled their entire careers for only one team, players who had as much class as they did appreciation for the God-given talent that permitted them to star in the big leagues for a couple of decades.
But it’s been a long time since Banks retired, and even longer since The Man last stepped into the batter’s box. But Stan is back in the headlines now because one of today’s baseball heroes, Pete Rose, has tied Musial’s all-time National League record of 3,630 career hits. But no one knows when Rose will again have the chance to break the mark, for the big leaguers are on strike.
When Musial played there was no artificial turf, no domed stadiums, no cable TV rights, no brightly colored double-knit uniforms. There were no teams in Canada. There were no teams in Atlanta or Seattle and no million-dollar ballplayers who carried union cards. And there was no free agency.
In those days of the eight-year-old and of Musial, ballplayers played. Meatpacking workers, plumbers, farmers and coal miners – like Musial’s dad back there in Donora, Pa., -- worked for a living, and sometimes they had no choice but to strike.
If somebody had told Musial back there in 1958 that, come 1981, major leaguers would be on strike and America’s big-league ballparks would echo not the sounds of roaring crowds and doubles off the wall, but the sounds of pigeons nesting in the box seats and ancient hot dog wrappers swirling around second base he never would have believed it.
Maybe kids who are eight years old today can understand this strike by baseball players. But there are some who were eight years old back there in 1958 who remember a time that, perhaps, never was, and they will never understand.

Education

September 3, 1980 – Homework on the first day?

“May I have your attention, please, class? We’d all like to get this year off on the right foot, I’m sure, so let’s stop the talking and pay attention.
“As you know, today is the first day of school in the Rock Island-Milan District, and fortunately for you, you are obligated to stay for only an hour. But don’t get too thrilled about that, because we’ll have you for the whole day starting tomorrow.
“Now if you’ll take out your pencils and notebooks, you can then write down your assignment I have written on the board. It’s no use making all those noises. All they’ll get you is another assignment – there are more where this one came from, you know.
“Quietly now, let’s all copy the assignment and get to work. Any questions?
“Good.”
For those of you who can’t see the board, the assignment is to choose one of the items listed and in about 300 words explain what it means to you. Here are the choices:
• “Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.” – James A. Garfield, July 12, 1880
• “Preach, my dear sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people.” – Thomas Jefferson, Aug. 13, 1786
• “A child miseducated is a child lost.” – John F. Kennedy, Jan. 11, 1962
• “Our educational system teaches us not to think, but to know the answer.” – Norman Mailer, 1963
• “Learn to live, and live to learn.” – Bayard Taylor, 1857
• “Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local government.” – Chief Justice Earl Warren, May 17, 1954.
• “We do not know what education could do for us, because we have never tried it.” – Robert M. Hutchins, 1951
• “Let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then better be able to find out the natural bent.” – Plato, 380 B.C.
• “Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence.” – Albert E. Wiggam, 1921
• “By being so long in the lowest form (grade) at Harrow, I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys… I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence – which is a noble thing. Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor and Greek as a treat.” – Winston Churchill, 1933
• “Education is a thing of which only the few are capable; teach as you will, only a small percentage will profit by your most zealous energy.” – George Gissing, 1889
• “It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.” – James Russell Lowell, 1881

“Before the bell rings, class, let me assure you that these papers will be read and that, having read them, I will learn a great deal about you. See ya tomorrow.”

April 11, 1986 – Testing for competency

“If you believe in excellence in education, if you believe that our system of education must be improved, this is the first step forward.”
Iowa State Sen. Wally Horn, D-Cedar Rapids, offered those inspiring words in Des Moines Tuesday shortly before the Senate narrowly approved legislation that would require would-be teachers to pass competency tests before being certified to teach in Iowa. To require teacher competency is simply common sense, but the Senate bill will not help achieve that objective.
The bill would require new teachers, beginning Oct. 1, 1987, to pass a competency test in basic skills and in their subject area before they would be allowed to teach. Implied in this bill are far more important issues than the superficial ones it purports to address.
First, what is the meaning of a college diploma and completion of college teaching certification requirements if this sort of competency test is necessary? But beyond that, does Sen. Horn and those who supported his bill really believe that tests in basic skills and subject area will prove “teacher competency”? Teaching is more art than science. Empathy and compassion and fairness are vital to successful teaching. Teachers must have a sense of humor. They must respect their students. They must realize they are not teaching subjects, they are teaching people. Where are such vital characteristics of would-be teachers to be tested, Sen. Horn?
It doesn’t appear to be in any aspect of this bill, which goes on to create a nine-member board of educational examiners comprised of four teachers, one principal, one college faculty member and three members of the general public. The board would have broad powers to set licensing standards, prepare the examinations and require continuing education classes for experienced teachers.
The fact is the bill does little more than replace the present certification body, the Department of Public Instruction, with another.
If the bill were to become law, it would require teachers to perform additional hours of college work to retain their certification, something that most teachers do anyway, but the bill would not provide any more pay for this higher level of education, nor would the bill help teachers pay for the costs of their ongoing educations the state would be mandating.
In Davenport, for example, a teacher with 20 years of experience and a Ph.D. is paid about $25,000 per year. That is scandalous, and so is this Iowa Senate bill for failing to address the two biggest issues in education: the crucial human relations elements of successful teaching, and teacher pay.
It has been said of teachers, “Students don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
Certainly teachers ought to be able to read and write and think, and math teachers ought to be able to decipher an algebraic equation, and science teachers probably should have some knowledge of the Periodic Table, and history teachers might be expected to know who the combatants were in the American Revolution, but do those “competencies” make you a teacher?
Think of the teachers you remember. They may have been brilliant, or not, but most likely you learned from them not so much because of their IQ, but because of their humanity.
Here’s an idea, Sen. Horn: If you believe in excellence in state government, if you believe that our system of government must be improved, the first step would be to require a competency test of all prospective state legislators. After all, state legislators should hardly be held to lesser standards than teachers, should they, Sen. Horn?
As for your alleged teacher competency bill, senator, I would give it an F.

December 9, 1979 – Religious holidays and public schools

“When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs.
“To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe. We find no constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence.”
-- U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas,
Zorach v. Clauson, 1952

Our friends across the great river are, once again, being assaulted by an organization that calls itself the Iowa Civil Liberties Union (ICLU).
That group of self-proclaimed guardians of their version of civil liberties in this state and nation have taken it upon themselves to ask each public school superintendent in Iowa – about 500 – to refrain from using religious songs or programs in Christmas programs, concerts and other school-sponsored holiday events.
“The introduction of religious materials into Christmas assemblies,” writes Steve Brown, executive director of the ICLU, “violates not only your public trust, but also one of the basic principles upon which this country was founded – separation of church and state.”
Before we hear what some local superintendents have to say, let’s look at the incredible letter Brown has written them. Look at the farcical irony of Steve’s words: “…the introduction of religious materials into Christmas assemblies…” Steve! By its very definition, “Christmas” IS a religious event. Frankly, if you were to follow your own advice, you would not use the word “Christmas” at all. Certainly that word is fraught with religious significance and could offend untold numbers. Look at it, Steve: “Christ-mas.” Get it? (Go ahead, folks, laugh out loud. I did. And Justice Douglas would have.)
But Rock Island Supt. James Hopson didn’t tell me whether he laughed or not. He simply said he has received no complaints about the content of various Christmas programs presented in his district.
“I hope no one’s sensibilities are assaulted,” Hopson said. “I don’t think anyone’s trying to do that. I think we are very tolerant people here and we don’t anticipate any problems at all.”
Things appear to be much the same in Moline where superintendent Theodore Rockafellow said there have been no problems and no requests for changes in any of the school’s Christmas presentations.
“Our celebrations are quite traditional,” he said, “and include the singing of such songs as ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful,’ so if you consider such songs religious then, yes, we do include religion in our programs.”
(Yes, Dr. Rockafellow, most people would consider “O Come, All Ye Faithful” a “religious” song. To refresh everyone’s memories, here are a few excerpts from it: “O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord… True God of true God, Light from Light Eternal… Son of the Father, begotten, not created… Jesus, to thee all glory be given.” Yep. Sounds seriously Christian to me. But then, it IS called “Christmas”….)
And as you might have guessed, Rockafellow declined to comment on Brown’s ICLU epistle, saying he didn’t see any reason “to scratch where it doesn’t itch.”
Davenport’s Supt. Ted Gray was unavailable for comment.
Back across the Mississippi, the Chicago-based Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken a wait-and-see approach to this question of religious content of public school Christmas programs.
“We have taken the position here in Illinois,” said Sheila Meyer, public information director for the Illinois chapter, “that we’ll wait until the courts decide on the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, case. Last year we did file suit against the display of a nativity scene on public grounds and financed by public funds, but that has been resolved so that it is now privately financed and a sign has been put up which indicates that fact and also says that the city does not sponsor the nativity scene.”
I guess not too many folks can read Justice Douglas’ opinion. Or else they don’t understand it. Or they elect to disregard it. Or, like Iowa’s Steve Brown, they don’t know that there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that says anything about “separation of church and state.” Go ahead. Check it out. This “separation” thing is nothing more than some people’s recent re-interpretation of what the Constitution does say: that there shall be no establishment of religion by the government. That was a big concern of the founders, of course, since they were familiar with the conflicts between the British government and the Church of England. Wisely enough, they did not want government here to establish a Church of America. That’s all.
Until the early ‘60s, everyone seemed to understand that. No one seriously questioned that religion has a legitimate role in public life in America. Justice Douglas’ opinion was merely restating the facts. But for nearly 20 years there has been a movement, pushed by the ACLU, to turn the Constitution’s relation to religion on its head.
The Sioux Falls case, currently in the U.S. District Court of Appeals in St. Louis, is one example. It was sparked by a 1978 ACLU challenge to the district’s religious Christmas programs that included the singing of “Silent Night” and other songs generally agreed to be religious.
Ms. Meyer says it’s not clear how soon the court of appeals will rule on the Sioux Falls case, but that when it does the ACLU is likely to seek a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
She said that no one has complained to her about the content of Christmas programs in Illinois schools, but that she has received a few complaints about schools displaying Christmas trees.
“We think the line has to be drawn somewhere,” Ms. Meyer said, “and it lies between Christmas trees and religious songs. That’s why we’re waiting for the courts to draw that line.”
But Ms. Meyer, that line was drawn in the Constitution about two centuries ago. There was no problem with that line until folks like you started erasing it with the objective of redrawing it to suit your own misguided agenda.
I suspect Ms. Meyer and most other ACLU members, whether in Iowa or Illinois or elsewhere in America, are sincere people who believe in the ideas and ideals with which they become involved. But when it comes to the proper role of religion in American public life in general and public schools in particular, that sincerity does not alter the fact that they are absolutely wrong.
Justice Douglas was sincere, too. But he was right.

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