CHI-RHO sigli monogram onto the armour of his army before
defeating his co-Emperor, Maxentius, at
the Milvian Bridge (Ponte Milvio) over the Tiber, north of Rome.
Rushing to the front of this 'earth shaking religious transition',
Constantine, once he became emperor, ensured that Christianity propagated
much faster and under more controlled (at least while he was alive)
circumstances.
• 1972 - Chinese Leader Mao Dze Dung shaking hands with United States President Richard M. Nixon as he stepped off Air Force One upon arrival in China after two decades of antangonistic Chinese-American relations. Having not been seen by the disconcerted Chinese people for several months, Mao's sudden reappearance heartened them and immediately transferred their feelings of goodwill onto the American people through their representative leader, President Nixon. (This 'sudden and immediate transference of goodwill' phenomenon had been discovered by the previous reappearance of Mao swimming in the Yangtse River after another long absence that had also caused much consternation among the Chinese people. The eventual result can be seen by the rise of China as a leading economic power over the ensuing decades.)
• 1983 - Shootdown and killing of all onboard Korean Airlines flight #??? on the sole authority of a Far Eastern Russian general that DID NOT PRECIPITATE WORLD WAR III and the subsequent destruction of all life on the planet earth but did increase the speed of the collapse of the USSR and Communisim as a viable socio-economic-political system. This proved that political posturing, including threats of violence, is more about poker-style bluff than real threat - especially by the most powerful force in the world, the USA. Discovered, during tonight's FOX-TV 9:00 pm news, that Dr. James Cameron passed away this morning - he the dedicated and persevering FOUNDER of America's Black Holocaust Museum located between Garfield and North on North 4th Street -- my last visit to the museum being May 9th, 2003 when my brother Tom was in town for Mother's Day.
Dr. Cameron is one of the people making me proud and privileged to have shaken his hand - that being at one of his frequent appearances at the monthly Community Brainstorming Breakfasts -- me getting the chance to tell him how his perseverance and dedication inspired me --- the inspiration coming from the way he rose during the 'Community Announcements' portion of each Community Brainstorming Breakfast during the 1990s to speak his truth quietly and clearly ---- his truth being his vision for the museum eventually funded and built on North 4th Street. I am very grateful to have been able to witness such a powerful and impactful individual - the world was a much better place during his time on it -- his family should be very proud for having supported and sustained him over his 92 years among us. Had close to an hour long conversation with Assistant District Attorney on the street outside the church at 39th & Garfield - he being the lead DA behind the Community Prosecutor concept. He'd followed me out to talk after I'd left a meeting regarding same. I'd indicated that their plans and procedure were going to do nothing for us Inner City residents. (John was elected DA in 2007.)
My objections centered around their strategy to 'evict problems' rather than go after the higher ups who manipulate the system to avoid prosecution by making that system waste all its time on inconsequential strategies such as that being proposed at this meeting. I recommended the recently read Freakonomics book to him and gave him some insight into the role of the non-paid participants in typical drug operations in Milwaukee - the people also causing many of the problems us residents face on a daily basis. Heard Mike McGee Jr. speak several times before I actually shook his hand at a Community Brainstorming Breakfast meeting. Donated money to his 'Emergency Response Team' efforts since that's a policy I've supported all my life. He impresses me as one of the very few politicians who puts his money and actions where his mouth is. Shook hands with future President Barack Obama after yesterday's GOTV (Get Out The Vote) rally at the Washington Park Emil Blatz bandshell. Then candidate for U. S. Senator from Illinois and Illinois State Senator Barack Obama was sitting in the passenger seat of a black GMC suburban waiting for his driver to take him to his next stop in Milwaukee. After snapping the picture (you can see the concerned trooper to the left pondering my actions) I decided, 'what the hell', I may as well shake his hand, too.
It was sort of a 'Godfather' moment for me - me being a little tongue tied while expressing my pride in shaking the hand of such an impressive individual. Both he and our first Wisconsin African American political representative to Congress, Gwen Moore, were elected to the U. S. Senate and Congress, respectively, the following month.
Barack first impressed me (AND A WHOLE BUNCH OF OTHERS) when he gave the Keynote Speech a few months earlier at the Democratic National Convention - his cadence, elocution and substance were something not heard since John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s - when Barack was not yet born or just a baby. His speech at this rally was equally impressive. (Another very impressive speaker is Alfre Woodard who spoke at another GOTV rally twenty days earlier.)
A notable side-note regarding this event is that Merrie Felder and I
had detoured to this venue from another meeting ongoing in the basement
of the old St. Anne's church at
38th & Wright - a mile or so NE of the Washington Park event. That
meeting was for 'all community organizers/activists' in Milwaukee to come
together, yet again, to form another umbrella organization to begin, yet
again, resolving all the problems in our Inner City. Upon arriving
late to this meeting, I announced just having detoured to the GOTV rally
and shaking Barack Obama's hand. Nobody was impressed. Few
of these so-called 'activists' had even heard of Barack Obama. Fewer
still even recognized his potential for the political future of our
country. I wonder if any of them do now.
Needless to say, this latest umbrella organization fell
apart within the first year and served only as a 'Potemkin Village' type
entity justifying the salaries of the outsiders paid with grant moneies
from more outsiders that pop-up every few years in Inner Cities
everywhere. Very few of these 'paid' outsiders dare spend much time
actually helping and supporting inner city residents in very dangerous
and resource needy neighborhoods and the grant organizations don't trust
those residents enough to pay them to do it.
[ 1/10/08 update: I have contributed to his
campaign and created my own blog at his
campaign web site. ]
Alfre Woodard
left an invitation on my machine yesterday afternoon to attend a Get Out The Vote (GOTV) Rally
in Sherman Park at 2:00 pm this afternoon - the pictures proving I accepted.
Also got to shake her hand and express my honor in being able to do so -
also expressed my appreciation for everything she does -- she long being
one of my favorite actors --- her whole demeanor being one of character
and respect ---- one which all growing children can use as a role
model. She is also an OUTSTANDING public speaker - maybe national
political office is in her future?! Also there from out of state
were Representatives Mel Watt of North Carolina and Stephanie Tubbs-Jones
of Ohio. Almost every local Black elected politician also attended
- most of the Aldermen and a few county supervisors were absent.
Worked the Primary Election at Hi Mount yesterday - the voters thereat
being most excited about Gwen Moore
becoming both the first woman (from Southeast Wisconsin) and the
.
I've supported her (both verbally and financially) since her first run
for the Wisconsin State Senate in the early 1990s. We first met
when she did doors around our family homestead on 40th & Meinecke back in
1988 - she then going on my mailing list for various School Choice and other
during my HIGHLY ACTIVIST 1988 ~ 1994 period. She was also a fellow
Board of Directors member of the Better Self Community Center back in
1992-3.
Had the honor of shaking hands with Art Kumbalek,
satirical columnist for the weekly Shepherd Express and author of
some of the best jokes and satirical articles I've ever read - he being the guest
during the 5:00 pm segment of the OUTSTANDING daily Evening Rush show
hosted by Eric Von on WMCS-1290 every afternoon from 2:00 to
6:00 pm. I was there for the 4:00 pm segment to relate an
experience I'd had earlier that afternoon with some adolescent thugs and their
dogs. (The studio 'fluorescence' wasn't bright enough to get a
better picture of Eric Von and Art Kumbalek with my pocket digital
camera.)
Shook the hand of Bernard Loeb while he was eating lunch with
my mother at Alexian Village - he sitting with her by happenstance - we
just then discovering that his family lived at 2423 N. 44th Street a
decade before our family began more than a half-century of living at 2421
N. 40th Street back in September 1950.
Who, you ask, is Bernard Loeb?! Well, Bernard happens to be a WWII veteran who was in Oman on a British ship at the very beginning of the American involvement in the war. He was in the battles described in the recent Pulitzer Prize winning An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson - the book I'd just finished reading in May and gave to Tom when he was here over Mothers Day.
Bernard indicated that he'd joined the Army in March 1941 at the age of 24 after 2 years of college/technical school - a duration that was sufficent in those days to attain employment in highly technical skills. Trained as an accountant, the Army, naturally, made him a stevedore. He also became a lieutenant - luckily for him, he said, because if he had to do the work his men accomplished, he'd have never survived. He was in charge of one of the groups of men loading the LSTs (landing ship tank) for the invasion of Sicily - which is to be covered in the 2nd book in the trilogy by Rick Atkinson. (Rick would probably love to talk with Bernard - if only he knew about him.)
Bernard is Jewish and all his troops were Black. They'd been trained as stevedores in the States even before the war began in 1941. He'd lived at 7th and Cherry in Milwaukee before his dad had the house built for them on 44th in 1923. Their upper flat neighbor-tenants were African-American at the Cherry Street house. His father had 2419-21 N. 44th St built for his sister - it being an almost exact duplicate of their own duplex next door.
Bernard related some of the circumstances outlined in the book. He remembers using the sun and stars to determine that their British convoy was going in circles in the Atlantic - later discovering they were just maneuvering to avoid sub attacks while waiting for the other convoys from North America.
He also related the story about there being no pistols, even for officers, and that the Thompson sub-machine guns and rifles they were issued were not accompanied by any ammunition. He remembers the scuttling of the ships in the harbor by the defenders in order to impede the quick offloading of the allied ships.
After Africa and Italy, before the build-up for the Normandy Invasion, when everyone was transferred to England, Bernard was given a choice: Stay a Lieutenant and return stateside to finish out the war or be promoted to Captain and join the others for D-Day. He chose the former - "a wise choice", I said.
After Pearl Harbor, Bernard and everyone else in the military were told they'd have to serve for the duration plus six months - 4 1/2 years for him -- he'd only joined up for one year! But, he says it was all a valuable experience and he learned from everything. He's the kind of person that makes the world a better place to live - I told him so and will try to see him the next time I visit mother -- this time getting a picture of them together. (Bernard was in the Health Center for evaluation due to congestive heart failure. He went for a conference to discuss his eventual move over to the assisted living area where mother had been while we were visiting her.)
And, to top it all off, Bernard grew up in the lower flat at 2423 N. 44th Street, !four blocks due west of us! and had graduated from Washington High School. He'd left the neighborhood 9 years before we moved into it. Here he was sitting across from a woman who'd raised her family just 4 blocks away from where he had been raised. I first met David Clarke just after he'd been appointed by then Governor Scott McCallum to Milwaukee County Sheriff after a resignation. He was in the basement coffee shop of the Sherman Park Boy's & Girls Club - where I mistook him for the also recently appointed Director of same. His lack of disjointedness or other concern for being mistaken for a person in a seemingly less exalted position was the reason we hit it off immediately and have maintained cordial communications at various community meetings and (re)election forums since then. I had seen and heard District Attorney Mike McCann on numerous occasions at various 'community activism' events but had not met him one on one until he was signing in just before me at the funeral of Ace Backus. Spencer Coggs was also in our small grouping in the long line filing past the casket at Krause Funeral home on 90th & Capitol Drive. Willie Hines was early out of the box in the race to become the 2nd Alderman representing the new 17th district. He came by the house on September 9th, 1995 to introduce himself. I indicated that I was entirely dissatisfied with the performance of the incumbant, Faye Anderson, and was looking to support her replacment. She won her position by less than 40 votes against Nate Conyers - I supported them both until the last week when, after his supporters made a very abusive personal attack on her at the Washington Park Senior Center candidate forum, I threw my support to her. (Having been one of the nine candidates in the primary, I got to know them both pretty good.)
Willie also won his election by less than 50 votes - both those elections seeing above average voter turnouts and votes for the winner in my ward after I'd placed candidate support signs (converted yard signs) in the windows of both houses I owned along 40th street. He won his re-election, again against Faye, in a landslide and has been coasting to victories ever since. He'll probably be the next mayor of Milwaukee after Barrett. The most memorable event amongst more than half a dozen where either or both Bernell Ross & Mike McGee Sr. were in attendance was the one on the steps of the Milwaukee Public Library at N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and West Locust - immediately adjacent to the 5th District police station. Bernell, a newly arisen highly publicly active community leader who I'd never encountered at dozens of community meetings on either the north or south sides of Milwaukee over the previous several years, had called the gathering to protest some latest police atrocity against some Black citizen(s) of Milwaukee. I'm pretty sure this occurred within a month of a Mayoral Press Conference at the Center Street Library where Bernell and I were both quoted in an article in the Milwaukee Times newspaper. Then Alderman Mike McGee Sr. eventually came and took over the gathering to get several participants to walk the few feet over to rock and then overturn a police squad car - an incident that gave McGee Senior more credibility within his community and outrage without it than was warranted from what I saw. Met Jim Doyle to shake his hand only once, that the night before he won his first election to Wisconsin Attorney General back in 1990. Bob Harris and I were at City Hall checking on some election matter when we ran into him and Bob introduced Jim to me. My political instincts at that time told me that the incumbent Republican AG had so pissed off the electorate by the highly partisan decisions during his term that almost any opponent could defeat him. Accordingly, I informed Jim Doyle that he was going to win the next day, which he did. Jim's sister was long known to me from her involvement in our shared neighborhood and the Sherman Park Community Association (SPCA) of the late 1980s and early 1990s - I prepared and donated to SPCA the colored, laminated map that showed the for sale signs throughout the SPCA area that motivated Katie Doyle and others to develop the "Not For Sale" sign response of the time - many of the signs represented STILL PANICKING White residents voting with their feet rather than continually wait for leadership from the obviously inadequate Milwaukee pool of prospects. Anyone attending the monthly Community Brainstorming Conference (CBC) breakfast meetings at St. Mark's Church on 9th & Locust will get to know Vel Phillips - she being one of the most famous of the Community Elders spending their entire lives on behalf of their community. The October 2002 breakfast meeting included copies of her
Vel interviewed me for some TV news segment back in the early 1990s -
me representing a typical White attendee of the CBC meetings at the time.
[ Pictures:
.
Sep 2005 - Polly helping collect donations for Hurricane Katrina
victims at Midtown (former Capitol Court); and
Nov 2003 with fellow Wisconsin State House Representative Leon Young
at a Community
Brainstorming Conference breakfast. ]
When first deciding to close my business (instead of restarting it in Wisconsin) and devote my energies to community activism back in 1988, it was only natural to rapidly discover Polly Williams. She was a newly elected Wisconsin State Representative back then and one of the very few 'elected' or other 'leadership positioned' people looking out for children and their welfare. My first meaningful involvement with her was in late 1989 regarding the Parental Choice Bill (AB-601) then bottled up (as usual) in the legislative committee headed up by Representative Barbara Notestein. The usual way to avoid making one's significant contributors, constituents and/or fellow legislators angry over some legislative issue is to have that legislation subjected to seemingly continuous hearings, meetings, revisions, negotiations and/or shelving for later review in committee. Since the unions representing teachers were (and still are) the most significant power group affecting Democrats were against the bill, it and the others before it were never being brought up for discussion and vote by he entire legislature.
After just a couple years of volunteer community activism in the Inner City, I'd quickly come to the realization that MPS (Milwaukee Public Schools) was dragging its feet when it came to any significant change regarding how Black children in Milwaukee were being educated - and change was needed because many Inner City kids WERE NOT BEING EDUCATED BY MPS. Poor parents were confronted with no alternative for the kids who they new were being ignored or ill attended to by the MPS bureaucracy. The Parental Choice Bill (AB-601) would allow alternative Choice Schools run by non-MPS organizations which would compete with MPS and thereby, hopefully, force MPS officials to give higher regard to parents attempting to negotiate better conditions for their children within the public school system. In other words, I highly supported the bill for it being the quickest way to HIT THE PUBLIC SCHOOL BUREAURCRACY OVER THE HEAD WITH A TWO BY FOUR in order to get them to pay more attention to poor and mostly Black Inner City parents.
Representative Polly Williams called for a meeting with parents about the bill at the Center Street Library (where Fond du Lac, Center and 27th streets meet) in mid-December 1989. More than two dozen parents showed up to voice their frustration with the runaround and lack of respect they received from officials where their children attended school - many couldn't get their children into a nieghborhood school within one or just a few blocks from their homes. (I was the only White person attending this meeting.)
After the meeting, I telephoned Polly to discuss what needed to be done next and decided to write a letter on her behalf to Barbara Notestein and various other leading decision makers. It took a couple days to draft and refine that letter, one among many other written by me at the time. The bill eventually passed and has been in force since the mid-1990s.
Over the next decade after that meeting, I attended many meetings called by Polly regarding school choice and parental involvement - usually bringing one or more of the kids from across alley who really typified the kids from poor families being ignored by MPS. Polly and I also met a couple times in the then new Sam's Club on 76th & Bender back when the patrons were mostly White. I first met now Mayor and former Congressman Tom Barrett when he was a state Congressman running for the Wisconsin State Senate - he volunteering to help out at bingo for Sherman Park Community Association when Val Gabriel ran the crew and I was the caller. We got together for the normal post-Washington Park Community Center bingo party at Val's really nice woodwork (internal and external) house around 46th & Concordia. He and I also moved some picnic tables at Sherman Park before one of the various annual Shermanfest neighborhood get-togethers back in the early 1990s.
We also met at the old House of Peace when he ran in the Congressional primary against Terrance Pitts - me greeting him then as Congressman and telling him he would win the primary, which he did with comfort. His unsuccessful race for Governor may have had a lot to do with his campaign people not reaching out to Inner City residents like me who could have helped.
Since leaving Congress and becoming Mayor, Tom's made several
appearances at the Community
Brainstorming Conference breakfast at St. Matthew's on 9th & Locust
the 4th Saturday of each month - this picture
shows Tom, Judge Russell Stamper and Vel Phillips at the 4/23/05
meeting. Another shows him with Sheriff Clark, DA John
Chisholm and CBC's photo-historian Richard Prestor.
Spent several hours with Terrance Pitts at one of the early 'Yacht Races'
sponsored by then County Supervisor Paul Matthews at Sherman Park -
before the new Boys & Girls Club was built. The 'Pitts' name was in
my memory but I couldn't remember his father was Orville, and he wouldn't
fill-in any information during any of my repeated mentionings of why the
name was familiar to me - he probably feeling insulted that I didn't
already know and not realizing that I'd just returned to Milwaukee after
17 years or so in New Mexico and didn't remember a lot of the politics of
Wisconsin from the 1960s or so. Most memorable af that event,
though, was the 12 year old (or so) girl from across the alley, Denise,
who hung on me like a sweater - me being the only person she knew there
and she probably feeling protected (away from her home) by my presence -
her female cousin being one of the best alley cleaning helpers and
outgoing adolescents I'd met during the first year of my return to
Milwaukee - she being memorable for her fearless demeanor and repeated
inquiries (wishful thinking) that there were going to be rewards for
doing the alley cleaning work - those rewards being sodas, fruit and
granola bars but not the money she would have preferred.
The most memorable experience I had regarding former President Ronald Reagan happened in Albuquerque on June
15th, 1983. The Annual Convention of the National Parent-Teacher
Association was being held in Albuquerque at the time and my cousin, Jeanne,
was among the leaders representing Wisconsin. She and the incoming and
outgoing Presidents of the National and Wisconsin PTAs came over to my house
for personally prepared stoned oven
pizza the night before the 'talk' by the President. [ If my memory serves me correctly, this was the first 'major
public talk' (the White House didn't want to call it a speech) by the
President since the assassination attempt on him 26 1/2 months
earlier - (text)
The Russians didn't shoot down the
until August 31st/September 1st, 1983 - the International Dateline meant it
was a day earlier here in the USA, so both dates are referenced) - a
circumstance that proved President Reagan was bluffing regarding his war
making threats against the Soviets. Click here to read a fairly comprehensive intelligence report on Soviet-USA
military relationships at the time. Get the latest DVD for the late
1984 released
, starring 21
year old
and featuring many other then novice actors, to get a feel for the psyche of
many of us Americans at that time. Patrick Swayze is also connected to
me via the movie 'Ghost' which also featured my brother-in-law and childhood
'best' friend also included among these memories, Thom Curley. ]
They, in turn, invited me to attend the President's 'talk' the next day. Well, when I got down to the new Albuquerque Convention Center to get in the long crowd of people waiting to get into the Kiva Auditorium, I met my step-mother Jean and her son Kevin also waiting in line - Jean was a life-long political activist and former Secretary-Treasurer of the Republican Party of New Mexico. While talking with them, someone came out and called out my name (several times - Kevin had to tell me about it) to escort me to a special seating area to the right of the stage where the President was to speak - we being to the President's left as he spoke.
There wasn't anyone else sitting in that area except ABC News reporter Sam Donaldson and me - the several dozen other folding chairs empty the whole time. Apparently we were either the only two Democratic leaning persons (lefties) in the room or were considered not to be a security threat for having been vouchsafed for by high officials involved with the event. The Blue Cross & Blue Shield of New Mexico job was memorable for the person who become known as the "real estate rapist". He a co-worker in another department who ate lunch with some of us quite frequently - sitting directly across from me several times. On his days off (or maybe even on extended lunches when he wasn't 'brown bagging' it), he'd make an appointment to see a house for sale and then rape the realtor inside during the viewing. He committed suicide after his identity became known. In addition to the
- (1980+-)Real Estate Rapist; I'd also known
- (1980+) a next door neighbor who went to jail for molesting the teenage school girls placed under his tutelage as a gym teacher;
- (1978) a fellow pool player from Okie's who was shot to death in that area after the bars had closed (I still have a cancelled check with his signature that represented a loan of money he needed for some reason - he repaid the loan without problem);
- (1977) William Wayne Gilbert & Johnny Zinn also noted on this page;
- (1976) a young 12 year old girl who I told (over the phone - never met her in person) to stop making salacious telephone calls to my 11 year old stepson - subsequent to that she became notorious for stabbing her father while a group of freinds were around to support her.
July 6, 1987 New York Times article (AP)
I first met Wayne [ he preferred Wayne to William - (ever notice how many mass murderers have 'Wayne', as in John Wayne, among their given names?!)) ] around April of 1977. Later that year, I started Columbia Business Consultants (photo) - a business designed to help 'Mom & Pop' sized businesses get off the ground.
My boss at Neff & Company sent Wayne (they handled his business books and tax returns) to me to help him with his inventory problem. The problem being to establish what he had on hand at any given time at Gilbert's Home Furnishings in order to satisfy the requirments of lendors. He was my very first business consulting client. He also came to me after I'd finished my first stint as the primary tax preparer at Neff to have his then several months late 1976 personal tax return prepared. He paid me $20 - an amount in line with the simplicity of his 'personal' versus 'business' return -- don't remember if I signed it or not --- probably not, since I'd yet to 'officially' begin the tax preparation segment of my as yet unopened business AND I didn't retain a copy of it.
The first notable memory I had (while I was setting up a computerized inventory system for him) was when Wayne asked me to leave his office while he broke out an expensive scale from a matching case - obviously to cut, weigh and package some cocaine for resale - that being my first encounter with a 'presumed' cocaine drug operation. Another was when he brought me up to his 'fancy and expensive' house on the side of the Sandia Mountains to meet his wife - I noticed that he hardly had any furniture in the house - unusual, since he was the owner and operator of Gilbert's Home Furnishings, a medium scale furniture store. (He was mostly impressed with the fact that I was in the process of getting an MBA and also knew a lot about computers and was willing to work at minimum wage - the personal computer not yet introduced to the public at the time - the work I did took advantage of the capabilities of the diskette based IBM keypunch machine, ?Model 3741? or such, to prepare inventory sheets that looked just like they'd been prepared by a real computer - the keypunch machine had some mathematical capabilities about which most owners were unaware - I went around to various owners in Albuquerque to 'borrow' their machines to do the work - still have some of the 8 inch 'diskettes' used in those machines.)
I remember the news reports of his big weekend murder spree (Jan 1980) - me figuring that he'd gotten on a 'paranoid binge' from the cocaine of which he'd been snorting too much - killing one of his salesmen and his new wife, his own girlfriend and estranged wife - his wife or her family presumably also providing much of the money for his failing furniture store business - the business failing even at the time I was consulting for him. [ I may have met the salesman, but not his future wife, along with Wayne's estranged wife back in 1977. ]
The infamous Santa Fe prison riot happened around the same time. (Wayne may have been in jail in Albuquerque awaiting trial at the time.)
His escape ?by helicopter? on July 4, 1987 from the Santa Fe prison was the basis for the "made for TV" movie. (Can't find an online report about the , though - maybe my memory has manipulated the helicopters used by the police to catch them into the escape portion, too.)
News reports regarding Wayne's being an informer - I remembered it being for the FBI, not the DEA, at the time - and numerous other instances of informers turned murderers in Albuquerque around then made me first think that:
-
if we eliminated the FBI, we'd also eliminate half the crime occurring in
the USA! Primarily due to the apparent fact that the 'snitching' deals
offered criminals under the ?care? of the FBI seem to be enabling and
encouraging them to commit more crimes - AND/OR because a lot of the
'crimes' are really sting operations instigated entirely by the FBI to
ensnare individuals who may never have committed the criminal acts without
'strong, enabling' encouragement by the FBI.
At the time I first met him, while living in my post-separation, pre-divorce apartment on Truman, I also became acquainted with another notorious killer of the time - Johnny Zinn. [ Zinn may have been one of the other death row inmates, in addition to Wayne, pardoned by Governor Tony Anaya in 1986 - an action seemingly having more to do with Anaya's Roman Catholic religion than any 'respect for life' and causing me and many others to stop supporting/respecting him. ]
The Zinn Bakery was a block away from my apartment and at the end of the same block as the laundromat I used - a laundromat that Johnny managed - it possibly being owned by the family - both being in a strip mall along the main street a block east of me. Johnny was notable for the 'criminal' looking face he had - most Hollywood prison movies have at least one leading character with a face like his. Also notable was the fact that he liked to have a lot of youthful sycophants surrounding him - me standing out when at the laundromat for not joining with the others in idolizing him. (His killing involved using a couple of those types of hangers-on, I doubt if they were the same ones I'd met, to abduct, rape, kill and abandon in the national forest a young woman returning to her apartment from a shopping trip - sort of like Charlie Manson.) Driving my nieces and nephews around Beverly Hills, Hollywood and Los Angeles just after they'd moved out to Carpinteria from Milwaukee was my special treat to them during one of my few vacations away from Albuquerque. During this tour, we drove past where our as yet to be connected (to the family tree) cousin Hollywood Fred's mansion was located across from Universal Studios on Lankershim Blvd. The drive was up Coldwater Canyon Road from Beverly Hills, the same route Johnny Carson drove every weekday to do his show at the infamous Burbank Studios of NBC.
Well, the car in front of us was a Mercedes (or other nice vehicle) and had a driver with whitish grey hair who looked just like Johnny Carson from the back - never found out if it was him or not, but we figured it probably wasn't because the time of day or day of the week may not have coincided with what was presumed to be his daily taping schedule for the Tonight Show. I first met Tova Indritz in 1974 or so when an old attorney friend and some of her fellow lawyer-feminists introduced Tova to Okies on Central & University. At the time Okies was "THE PLACE" to go for diversity in the entire Southwest. I met Tova's father at her inauguration to become the first female Federal Public Defender in the United States. Lee was the official photographer for the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center who also took the picture of my ex-wife Marge and myself (on our pool table - we met over the pool tables at Oki's on Central & University) during our combination marriage & house warming party. He also sponsored an annual weekend long July 4th celebration on the top of a mesa near Acoma Pueblo - one we attended as a family in 1976. His daughter is the author Leslie Marmon Silko. Pablita Velarde () was on the board of directors of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center (IPCC) and was usually home when I, as Business Manager, needed a 2nd signature on large checks written to contractors during the construction process - the brand new IPCC center had its Grand Opening in September 1976. I'd call to make sure she was home and then go over to get her signature. She gave my ex-wife and I one of her paintings as a wedding present - Stella Teller, another famous artist and co-worker, gave us a dual spouted wedding vase - Marge kept them as part of our amicable divorce settlement in 1977. (We married at the county courthouse on our lunch breaks in February 1976. The divorce was handled by a newly minted attorney mate of another newly minted attorney and best friend for $50 - I wrote-up the agreed upon settlement.) The Village Inn Pancake House on Central near San Mateo was the oldest and first (of three at that time) in Albuquerque. Many of the powers that be went there for late breakfasts when it was fairly empty. When I filled in for managers on their days off, I usually allowed these dignitaries to sit in the quieter, just cleaned, normally closed half of the restaurant when they so desired. Governor Bruce King and a few others I didn't recognize came in one time - didn't shake his hand, though. Ben Abruzzo, Maxey Anderson and Larry Newman were world famous balloonists who used to come in to the Village Inn Pancake House on East Central Avenue in mid-1974 while I was the roving fill-in manager for each of the 3 locational managers on their days off. [ Larry Newman owned the shop that built Electro Gliders (powered hang gliders) a block or more east and across the street from the pancake house. His foreman was another Ruben who had worked with me a year earlier (1973) at IMS Corporation. He, I and a friend of his also named Ruben were sitting at a table drinking beer on North Edith near IMS when I discovered we were each named Ruben. I'd never met another Ruben aside from my father my whole life and here were three of us sitting together at one table!! ] This was one of my more memorable 'faux pas' events. A leading women's activist (feminist was not as popular a term in those days) living on Morrow Road near the University of New Mexico hosted a gathering of students and other young women (and future leaders) where Gloria Steinem, Publisher, Author and one of the original Feminists would speak.
My 'feminist' friends invited me as one of the very few males attending the get-together. When we got there, the living room was crowded - many of us sat on the rug more or less circling around Gloria as she spoke a few feet away. Many vocalized comments of support and agreement came from the audience while she spoke.
At one point, the extraneous noise became so loud that Gloria couldn't be heard, and I said, "Adease fleas, there's a fungus amongus." That being one of my older brother's favorite high school sayings - he being 5 years older than me and in Gloria's age group. She looked at me with a 'that's stupid, but I recognize it from my past' glance while everyone else stopped to ponder just what the hell I was talking about - it may have made me look as stupid as I felt after making the comment, but it stopped the chattering and allowed Ms Steinem to contunue without further interruption. Joe Louis refereed a wrestling match between Gorgeous George (I think) and another then famous but now forgotten wrestler up in Wautoma, Wisconsin - at a time when both the former World Heavy Weight Boxing Champion Louis and wrestling itself were down in the dumps. My brother Mike and I attended a 'dress rehearsal' of the match as the guest of Mr. Reilly, who may have been the promoter putting it all on - there were fewer than ten people in the room the entire time.
Mr. Reilly owned a vacation cabin on Pine Lake (aka Bughes Lake) next to our Uncle Harold and had a large family similar to my own, two of whom, Charlie and Wayne, were my fishing, swimming and carousing buddies each June when our family spent a week or two as Uncle Harold and Aunt Cora's guests. My mother's paternal Aunt Cora was born several months after her in 1912, so they grew up together more as cousins than niece and aunt and maintained a life-long friendship. (I taught myself how to swim in the company of Charlie and Wayne in that lake; caught my first fish in that lake; got terrible sunburns almost every summer at that lake.)
The exact year and date of this event has yet to be determined, but I do remember being very honored to shake both Joe Louis' hand and that of his wife who was also there - don't remember the wrestlers as much or shaking their hands. Various web sites found in March 2009 indicate that Mr. Louis earned extra money as a referee during the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, but "was used more often as a main event referee, working at many of the biggest arenas in the country into the early ’70s." Charles Daniels, the newly appointed New Mexico Supreme Court Justice (Spring 2008) used to date another good friend of mine back in 1971 - he being among a group of us who sat in our college housing living room in Albuquerque when President Nixon gave the televised speech announcing the wage-price freeze on August 15, 1971. Also remember attending one of the parties he threw at his south valley house a few years later. [ Although he also had a band that played around Albuquerque, it wasn't the one of the same name that was more popular around the U.S. ] Tony Scalia - NOT the future Supreme Court Justice?! The one I knew during my last 2 years in the U. S. Navy while we both served with Patrol Squadron 22 in Hawaii had the same physique and was a fellow night school attendee at the U. of Hawaii in 1967. We met at the off station bus stop some times. Tony was a very straight arrow married man who had my respect for withstanding the mutiple lures for philandering while in Hawaii. I met Roland Leong through my father just as Roland was leaving and I was arriving at the Honolulu International Airport (for my final tour of duty in the U. S. Navy with Patrol Squadron 22 at Barber's Point Naval Air Station). Roland was the Top Fuel Dragster Champion of Hawaii and on his way to becoming so on the mainland. My father was the manager of the newly built Hawaii Raceway Park where Roland and other 'drag racers' competed on weekends. (My father raced sports cars with and worked for Jimmy Pflueger at his Lincoln-Mercury dealership in Honolulu - Jimmy built Hawaii Raceway Park with the intention of he and my dad making it a big success - needless to say, like most new businesses, it took quite longer than either one of them expected.) I was too new to my assignment in the car pool at U. S. Naval Security Group Headquarters to be assigned as a chauffer for any of the various dignitaries attending President Lyndon Baines Johnson (re)inauguration, but did attend it on my own. It was a cold, cloudy day with less than an inch of melting snow cover. To keep warm and because I've been hyperactive all my life, I moved around continuously in my new Petrocelli suit (the same kind worn and promoted back then by Caesar Romero) - many other attendees probably mistook me for another Secret Service agent. On one of my forays about the Capitol building, I stood by the fence overlooking the driveway leading underneath the inaugural site on the steps of Congress and witnessed some of the limosines bringing dignitaries - Bobby & Edward Kennedy in one limo together and Alfred Hitchcock (who was said to have donated a legal at the time $1 million dollars to LBJ's reelection campaign) in another - the famous Director was sitting aside the driver in the front passenger seat while the rear seats remained empty. (Alfred Hitchcock was one of the 'movie' people called upon to record on film the horror of the Bergen-Belson (and other) concentration camp as the victorious allies discovered it in the first days after VE-Day in 1945 - that camp being within 30 miles or so of our own Ciriacks family concentrated ancestral homeland of Bremen, Germany - our earliest known ancestor migrated to the Bremen area from somewhere else in Germany at the end of the 16th century.) Raymond Burr, the Perry Mason actor, went around to various U. S. Navy bases in the Far East to talk with regular enlisted men about their treatment and accomodations. He came into our chow hall (at the San Miguel, Philippines navy base) while I was leaving it to catch the 'cattle car' for work, but he wasn't allowed to talk with any of us 'high security level' enlisted men, anyway. (We called it the 'cattle car' because it had no seats and crammed as many of us as could fit for the 3 mile trip to our 'high security' work place in the middle of nowhere. [ 12/31/09: May 1963 - Belly Dancer - On my second trip overseas (the first was to Okinawa in 1961) through the U. S. Navy transit terminal at Treasure Island, I met a fellow Navy man who lived in San Francisco. He took me out to a belly dancer nightclub - forgot the name on ?Market? Street just where it goes gradually upill from ?Commercial? near where the Greyhound bus station was located.
We were both in our formal navy blue uniforms with white striping on the large collars and just happened to sit in a booth across from the critic for one of the leading San Francisco newspapers and his date. That being the case, the new and really OUTSTANDING belly dancer came to sit with us after her very impressive dance routine - she being able to shake her hips in a way that glorified the tradition of the mid-eastern dance. Before long she was sitting on my lap but NOT TO smooch or otherwise embarass anyone - everyone was just having a great time celebrating the fantastic performance of a new entertainer in the San Francisco night life scene. [ 12/31/09: April 1961 - Henry Miller's wife - At the start of Easter break at the Army Language School in Monterey, California (now the Defense Language Institute), I walked down the Pacific Coast Highway to Big Sur. After getting there and spending the day climbing the various hills and seeing what I could, and not wanting to sleep out in the open, I started walking again toward Los Angeles. Almost immediately, a car filled with one girl from Mills College and two guys and another girl from UC Berkeley picked me up to help them find author Henry Miller's home in order to get his autograph on their copy of his Tropic of Cancer, his latest Tropic of Capricorn not yet for sale if I remember correctly.
We drove around the foothills east of the highway, stopping several times for directions and eventually found his hillside cottage. The college kids were too shy to ask, so I, a non-high school graduate at the time, and one of the guys went up to the door to find his wife but not him. She explained that he was in Spain and may also have indicated that his mistress was with him and a divorce was in progress. She was pleasant and sorry she couldn't help us out.
The students invited me to accompany them back to San Francisco, so I did - we stopping at the beach in Santa Cruz to sleep, two of us in the car and the other three on the beach. After dropping the Mills girl off at her dormitory, we proceeded on to San Francisco and Berkeley. Spent part of the day watching some 'other' college kids practice their rock climbing skills before catching a bus back to Monterey. (One of the guys was a U. S. Marine going to college under the NESCEP program - he obligated to serve a year of service for each year of subsidized education after he graduated or quit - never heard from any of them, again.) While staying in Laurel, Maryland with the family of my dad's girlfriend (before she became his 3rd and last wife several years later), he took us to an area sports car race where Jackie Cooper, the child and adult actor, was one of the racers. We went down to the track after the race to meet him but I don't remember if we got close enough to shake his hand or not. (My dad was a sports car and racing afficiando most of his life.) Shortly after he'd been fired by President Truman, General Douglas MacArthur was given a hero's welcome home parade by Milwaukee - some of our family went up to 35th & North Avenue to see him standing tall in the convertible as it turned at that intersection of the parade route. My parents had divorced in 1948, with my mother bringing all six of her children back to Milwaukee to be with her family while continued his U. S. Army career as a Captain and then Major in Korea after having served on General MacArthur's staff in Japan after WWII. Seeing General MacArthur served as a stand-in for seeing my long absent dad back then.
[ The "This Month in History" section on page 21 of the April 2011 issue of Smithsonian magazine indicates that April 11, 1951 was the firing date - "rank insubordination" was one of the reasons per Truman's diary. ] Thom Curley actor/childhood friend/brother-in-law - his older sister married my older brother in 1959. (Click here to see his web site.)
We were best friends during the early 1950s when our family returned to Milwaukee from 4 years in Riverside, California. Later, he became a family friend who came over to our house often to play our piano and make-up comedy sketches (in the old Bob & Ray of radio fame and Mad Magazine modes) - his family lived 300 feet up and across the alley on the next block south of us. I mostly remember him for his great sense of humor and similar ability to play (by ear) any musical instrument handed to him. He inherited my newly purchased bongo drums after I joined the U.S. Navy in June 1960. His sister and my brother gave our family the first member of our succeeding generation.
We more or less lost contact with each other (along with almost everyone else from pre-college days) after 1960 when I joined the Navy and Thom went off to college and a career as a stand-up comic and movie actor until a heart attack cut it short. - singer/song writer fellow student at West Riverside elementary school in what is now Rubidoux, California. While finishing 2nd grade, just before we left our Scenic Drive home on Sunnyslope in West Riverside, Jimmy and I were part of a square dance performance put on for parents at what was probably the annual graduation ceremony. There were 4 squares of 4 people (eight couples) and we practiced several times before the occasion.
Well, when performance time came Jimmy was in the wrong square, mine, but he was there before me and when I became the 5th wheel, the teachers took me to his square - thereby, giving me an early life lesson about expediency over accuracy when crunch time comes. Don't remember anything going wrong with our performances but I think I gave Jimmy 'mean mugging' glances the few times we saw each other after that - he being 4 years older according to his biography at the Wikipedia site and already a well known and recognized 'child-star' singing phenomenon. - (youngest) 1952 Indy 500 winner and midget car racer in the late 1940s. I remember shaking his hand in the late 1940s at some midget car race near Riverside (maybe Pomona or Ontario) that our dad took us to - getting a signed photo of him in the process that I saw a decade later but not since - my father's third wife may still have it.
Troy was one of the racers making the small oval races more exciting by
being able to make his car do several turns (sideways summersalts) in the
air while going around a turn - or, at least, that what's in my memory of
that time. That may be how he got the injuries referenced at his
Wikipedia page. Needless to say, he was a hero for many (if not
all) of us adolescents and teenagers of the late 1940s.
According to family legend, I shook W. C. Fields hand back when we lived
in Gilman Hot Springs, California from April 1943 to October 1944 - a
time when I aged from 3 months to 21 months. I don't remember it,
of course, but it may have happened when my dad took me 'exercise'
walking in Beverly Hills. (We may have also lived in Hemet and San
Jacinto during this period when dad was at what may have been his first
of many U. S. Army training camps from 1943 to 1945 - the information
provided to the FBI on my security clearance form, filled out with the
help of my mother's memory in July 1960 while I was in U. S. Navy
bootcamp in San Diego, may have only showed Gilman Hot Springs for this
period of time - the source for my information comes from the biography I
submitted to the College
of Artesia when applying there in late 1969 - my copy was destroyed
in late 1974 but a college buddy recently provided me with a copy he had
that I'd given him back in 1970.)
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