Angels Among Us

Wealthy Americans for years have bestowed gifts of higher education on individuals and groups of students whose families’ modest means could not finance college attendance. I know of two such situations from my teen years in Tomahawk, Wisconsin. The work of financial angels in each case got similar results, but the details of how help was given were quite different.

Tom Higgins was a classmate and good friend who probably was the best basketball player in the history of our high school. In one game, against a school with three times the enrollment of ours, Higgins scored 46 points while the entire opposing team had 44. He was twice named to the all-conference team as a center, although he usually played guard or forward, which he could do equally well.

Higgins was slightly above average as a student. He worked hard in school, but academic scholarships would have been beyond his reach. Attendance out-of-state at an excellent university would have been well beyond the financial reach of his family.

A prosperous Notre Dame alumnus made sure Higgins attended his school. The alum, coincidently, lived in Merrill. The Merrill High School team was the one Higgins single-handedly outscored. The alum paid all of Higgins’ school expenses not covered by his athletic scholarship. “All” meant every single thing, including costs of clothing and transportation from school to home during breaks. When Higgins thought he had met the girl of his dreams (as it turned out, she wasn't the one), the sponsor financed a beautiful diamond engagement ring.

The alum’s good work was far from anonymous. Before Higgins left to enroll at Notre Dame, his sponsor threw a party at his Merrill home for anyone the basketball star wanted to invite. I was among the invitees, but I couldn’t attend. Those who did said it was a big, grand, and probably very expensive party.

As a freshman, Higgins was the sixth man on the Notre Dame varsity basketball team playing guard. He was on the squad again during his sophomore year. But then, for reasons unknown to me, he dropped out of the basketball program. His angel, however, didn’t drop out. He continued his financial support until Higgins graduated. Higgins had a successful business career; he became a vice president of a firm operating in the Green Bay area.

Higgins died while a fairly young man, which is why I feel free to write about his personal situation. The other classmate I knew who had an educational angel is very much alive, and I think he might be embarrassed if I identified him. So I’ll call him Sam.

Sam was an above-average student who was serious about hitting the books. Sam’s family was no more prosperous that Higgins’ and Sam had no chance of any financial help with higher education expenses from relatives.

A Tomahawk businessman, who insisted on anonymity, paid most of the expenses, including out-of-state tuition, for Sam to attend a well-regarded university in a Midwestern state. Sam graduated in four years and enjoyed a long and successful career in a technical field.

The businessman had no direct connection to Sam or Sam’s family. He just learned of a deserving young man and stepped in to make sure Sam had an opportunity for advanced education. I know the identity of the angel, because my father was well-acquainted with him. Dad slipped once and told our little family about the educational sponsorship. None of us ever revealed the identity of the angel, and I won’t now.

The two angels from my youth did good things. I’m sure there have been many individuals like them in other places. But when we moved to southwestern Michigan, I learned how educational angels can accomplish incredible things when they decide to combine their efforts.

Their work is called The Kalamazoo Promise.

Five years ago, a group of anonymous donors, assisted by a local educator, launched a program that provides free tuition to any public college or university in Michigan for qualified graduates of Kalamazoo public schools.

To date, the unidentified angels have given $21 million dollars. Individual gifts can cover tuition for a full four years. They can range from a smaller percentage of total costs up to 100 percent, depending on how long the student’s family has resided within the school district. Students must perform satisfactorily to qualify, and if they do, they must maintain 2.0 grade point averages in college to continue in the program.

Results of the promises kept have been little short of amazing. Since 2006, the first school year for Promise students, some 1,900 high school grads have begun receiving advanced educations most would not have been unable to afford. Fifty-six have graduated with bachelor’s degrees.

The majority of tuition money has gone to the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Western Michigan University, but 15 schools are eligible, and Promise students now are attending 14 of them.

The students are graduates of Kalamazoo’s two public high schools and three alternative schools. Unlike many other school districts in Michigan, especially urban districts, enrollment in Kalamazoo schools is increasing. Educators report significant strengthening, year by year, of a college-going culture. Advanced Placement enrollment has increased by 71 percent in the past two years, and the rate is even higher for African-American and Hispanic students.

Observers say the Promise has changed the entire culture in the Kalamazoo public school system virtually overnight. Every student who performs satisfactorily has a chance to go on for higher education. Students are working for, and taking advantage of, the opportunity. Eighty-five percent of eligible white students have used the Promise. Eighty-four percent of eligible African-American students have.

No one claims the Promise is a cure-all for improvement in the public schools, but it brings hope. Children who never could have considered higher education now routinely make it their goal. That seems to be a cornerstone anchoring many other programs for positive change in the schools.

The Kalamazoo Promise structure (for details, go to http://www.kalamazoopromise.com/) is adaptable to other districts, and similar programs have begun to spring up around the U.S. Some are supported by tax dollars; some are financed by various combinations of individual and business donations. Some are public-private partnerships. All promise hope.

Great things can happen when angels flock together.

Look Out, Turkey

In Jerry Kramer’s Farewell to Football, the author describes a gridiron invention claimed by his fellow guard Fuzzy Thurston. The Green Bay Packers were thrashed by the Detroit Lions in a contest on Thanksgiving Day, 1962. One reason for the beating was a lack of effective pass blocking, especially by guards Kramer and Thurston.

The Lions sacked quarterback Bart Starr 11 times, a league record. After the debacle, Thurston joked that he and Kramer had invented the “lookout” block. He said throughout the game the guards would make unsuccessful attempts to block charging opponents, and then yell, “Look out, Bart.”

Well, maybe Thurston and Kramer launched the first lookout blocks in the National Football League, but they certainly were not the first players to use the term. A pair of high school gridders practiced a version of the “lookout” 10 years earlier.

In 1952, I played right guard and my pal Gordy Newborg was the right tackle for the Tomahawk Hatchets, a Wisconsin high school team somewhat less renowned than the Packers, and not nearly as fearsome as its name implies. Newborg intensely disliked one of our halfbacks. I wasn’t too fond of the guy, either. During most practice scrimmages, the back usually managed to infuriate Newborg and antagonize me in one way or another.

When that happened, Newborg nudged me as we broke the huddle after the halfback’s number was called. He whispered, “Let “em in.” We would fake blocks, turn, and yell, “Lookout.” The “play” usually resulted in two hefty defensemen bashing our mouthy halfback before he could get under way.

Hair-splitters may claim that the ineffective Klade-Newborg blocks were intentional, and therefore not the same as the Kramer-Thurston “lookouts.” That’s true. If the Packers had known of the Tomahawk play, perhaps they would have yelled, “Sorry, Bart; Lookout,” to better define their modification of our invention.

One thing’s for sure, they didn’t yell, “Happy Thanksgiving,” but that’s my shout to you today.

The Fatty Factories

Agreement seems general that Americans are getting fatter, posing significant health problems that negatively impact the overly plump ones and our society in many ways. Perhaps most distressing are numbers for school-age youths.

We are told 10 million youngsters ages 6-19 are overweight, and a good many of them are obese. A recent study indicates the number of overweight kids in each class increases as the students grow older.

Recently, I had an opportunity to chat with the local superintendent of schools, and the talk turned to high school athletics. The superintendent said she was very pleased that week to have hired a well-qualified athletic director. I said I wondered why a high school needed a full-time athletic director.

It turned out I was a dinosaur on the subject. The local school district and the one in my hometown are roughly the same size. When I was a student (1949-53) the entire sports program in the Tomahawk, Wisconsin, district consisted of high school boys’ football, basketball, and baseball, plus small intramural basketball programs for boys and girls. The Plainwell, Michigan, schools superintendent said her district sponsors 72 team sports! She was right; Plainwell needs an athletic director.

Assuming this dramatic increase in the number of organized sports activities over a half-century reflects national trends, something doesn’t add up. Why the dramatic increase in the number of fat kids at the same time?

It is possible that junk food diets, more prevalent today than when I was growing up, contribute more to the national overweight problem than does a lack of exercise. However, health professionals are in agreement that both good diet and exercise practices are needed to develop and maintain healthy lifestyles.

One factor may be a decline in physical education training. A 2008 study by the Center for Education Policy found many schools cutting back on physical education because of financial pressures or curriculum priorities for other types of instruction.

Another study, reported in 2007 by the Centers for Disease Control, found 22 percent of schools had no physical education courses at all. Only 3.8 percent of U.S. elementary schools, 7.9 percent of middle schools, and 2.1 percent of high schools offered daily physical education classes for the entire school year.

If school boards are serious about doing their part to help slim students down, they might get serious about slimming down the number of team sport offerings.

Many team sports allow only a few students to participate. The cost savings of eliminating some of them could finance physical education programs for all students. Information on good eating habits ought to be included in the instruction.

A Record Run

We’ve reached the “dog days of summer,” which is bad enough in itself, but for thousands of young male bodies this is a horrible time. Boys (and a few girls) across the land who fancy themselves as football players are about at the midpoint of preseason practices.

Just the thought of this late-summer punishment nearly six decades after my last gut-wrenching pushup on a hot, humid August day is sufficient to take most of the fun out of one of my current better days. An old (very) song advised “You Gotta Be a Football Hero” to “get along with the beautiful girls.” Well folks. the goal is worthwhile, but the price is too high.

I went out for the football team at Tomahawk High School as a freshman because it was the thing to do. For me, it probably wasn’t the thing to do. I liked the games, but I hated those practice drills.

Facilities at our small northern Wisconsin school hardly matched student enthusiasm for athletics. Our tiny, overcrowded locker room was upstairs from the school boiler room. When a lot of sweat from a lot of over-worked bodies and steam from the even smaller communal shower permeated the locker room, the boiler room might have been the better place. Football practices and games were conducted at Pride Park, six long blocks from where we suited up in front of our lockers.

Pride Park was named for a person, not as an endorsement of the quality of the facilities. When we went there for summer football practices, the restrooms were locked. Relieving a full kidney, throbbing bowel, or unsettled stomach required a run to the woods behind the decrepit baseball grandstand. When you got to Pride Park in football regalia, you were six long blocks from civilization.

In my freshman year, a benevolent coach, Ed Kidde, let us walk those six blocks to and from practices. Unfortunately for the slackers among us, Otis Mehlberg, a fitness fanatic, took over a year later. He required us to run the six blocks. Upon arriving at the practice field, we ran a couple of laps around the perimeter of the field, did a couple of hundred yards of wind sprints, had a calisthenics session, and then started practice. It was brutal.

A few over-enthusiastic team leaders actually sprinted for most of the six blocks in a macho contest. The rest of us dogged it as much as we could. We hid behind trees to avoid coaches’ eyes. Or, we jogged when we spotted the coaches nearby (they drove in Mehlberg’s personal car, yelling at any slackers they spotted), and then lapsed into a brisk walk, or a slow one if we could get away with it.

The sprinters posted some impressive times, but a plodder set the standard for the six-block trip. A big tackle, Bill (Gunny) Sachs, covered the distance in record time. Sachs was a good athlete, who also was a very nice guy. He got the high school-practice field sprint title in a way he didn’t deserve.

Our manager, Jack (Doc Swab) Hanson, dispensed few medications, but he was known to occasionally rub on some Atomic Balm (also known as red hot) to loosen taut, aching muscles. On the day Gunny Sachs set the speed record, someone rubbed a bit of balm into his jock strap before he put it on.

We noticed Sachs twitching around and performing strange gyrations when the team assembled at the practice field before starting the usual lap runs. He finally went over to Mehlberg, urgently whispered something into the coach’s ear, and tore out of the practice area in the direction of the high school. With the shower room as the goal, we were sure Sachs covered that six blocks faster than any runner before or since.

We blamed the prank on Gene Schreiber, not necessarily because he was the culprit. We automatically blamed anything like that on Schreiber. Usually, he was guilty. Schreiber once showed up in the boys’ locker room wearing a pair of girl’s gym shorts he somehow liberated from the locker room next door.

Were I to counsel teenage males nowadays on how to “get along with the beautiful girls,” I would tell them to forget about striving to be a football hero. A better idea would be to buy a guitar and try to make it as a rock star.

Speak to Me

Talking this spring with Sebastian Rilling, a German teenager who was learning English, French, and Italian in addition to his native tongue in school (see July 16 post) brought to mind how different educational systems can be. We don’t train American high school students that broadly or intensely in languages.

Until fairly recently, it didn’t matter much. The British forgave us for butchering their language; people in other lands who wanted to do business internationally learned English. We rarely had to be able to speak anything but our own language to get by in most parts of the world.

But now there is new emphasis on linguistics. We woke up to a serious problem when military commanders ordered our soldiers to “win the hearts and minds” of legions of mostly illiterate Arabs without being able to talk to them. If not impossible, that mission is extremely difficult.

Some critics of our educational system claim we never included foreign languages. That is not true. My high school in Tomahawk, Wisconsin, for many years offered two years of training . . . in Latin. My parents demanded that I sign up to learn the ancient language, as did others who thought their little darlings might be headed toward higher education. The theory was that Latin was the root of many languages, and understanding it would help us understand all sorts of things.

My high school freshman year, 1949, was a milestone in language education at Tomahawk High School. Spanish classes were offered for the first time. The reasons for the new courses were different than those that prompted all the years of Latin offerings. Our school board was told that millions of people near our borders spoke Spanish, and it would be useful to be able to talk to Latinos. That line of thinking turned out to be correct. Millions of those millions now live in the USA. I didn’t sign up for Spanish lessons in 1949, but now I wish I had.

The Latin taught by Mrs. Harriet Borkenhagen, a lovely lady who was strict in the classroom, did help me now and then to understand the meaning of various words used by Americans and others. Nowadays, it often helps me solve the daily crossword. Latin training never helped me talk to anyone. Not many years after 1949 only a few old priests still spoke Latin.

A pseudo-Latin phrase did provide daily encouragement for years when I started off to face the rigors of the workplace. A sign on our garage wall said:

Illegitimi non Carborundum

The saying is not proper Latin, and the translation is pretty loose, but the thought was helpful:

“Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down”