#313 – Dick Bernard: Old Music and Family History

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Last night we attended the Minnesota Orchestra, where we’ve had season tickets for many years.
I’m a fan of classical music, but not a particularly well-informed one. Before we left home, Cathy asked “what are we seeing tonight?“, and I said “I don’t know.” The ticket wasn’t helpful: “Symphony and Song” is all it said.
The program turned out to be a delightful potpourri of all-Mozart, including the always outstanding Minnesota Chorale.
I never tire of Mozart-anything. One of the pieces played, Veni Sancte Spiritus, was composed by Mozart when he was twelve years old! (That was about the age when I first became a terminally resistant pianist. It took a while for me to get around to truly appreciating music. I got a D in Music Appreciation in college….)
But, January 16 was a delightful evening, as evenings at “long-hair” music events almost always are for me.
This particular night, for some reason, I fixed on Wolfgang Amade Mozart’s biography: born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg; died December 5, 1791, Vienna. His was a short, intense and extraordinarily productive life. Apparently the music never went out in his head.
1756, his birth year, had a particular attraction this night.
It was about 1757, when Mozart was a year old, that my last French-Canadian ancestor, Francois Collet, came across the big pond from Bretagne (Brittany) to Quebec. (The first known ancestor in North America was Jean Nicolet in 1618.)
Two years after Francois Collet arrived, the English defeated the French at the Plains of Abraham and Quebec became part of the British empire.
Sixteen years later came the American Revolution; and fourteen years after that the French Revolution of 1789 (Les Miserables, and all that).
In 1791, at the ripe old age of 35, Mozart died. In 1805, Francois Collet died in Quebec at the age of about 64, and life went on for families left behind: one with a famous descendant; the second whose story lives on in his surname (now spelled Collette) and many descendants, one of which is me, 7th generation downline.
As one of our families historians, I know that the history of all families, most especially ‘ordinary’ ones, are full of blank spaces, many of those spaces never to be filled. Indeed some of those blank spaces are intentional…”know all, tell some”…we all have our share of secrets….
All we know is that we descended from an almost infinitely long line of predecessors who left us with certain pieces of their abilities or disabilities. We are a sum of many parts.
During intermission I continued to read the program and came across an Essay on Mozart’s Ave verum corpus, by one Dan Chouinard. This piece was part of the program. (You can read the Essay here: Dan Chouinard Essay001)
Chouinard is most definitely a French surname, and in this case Dan Chouinard rang a bell: Dec. 7, 2010, my sister wrote about meeting Dan at an event in the town where she lives, and talk got around to our shared French-Canadian histories. Were we related, she wondered. “Dan Chouinard (Prairie Home Companion, pianist extraordinaire) and Prudence Johnson performed here in Park Rapids on Friday, hosted by the Kitchigami Regional Library with Legacy Amendment funding. Dan introduced himself as French-Canadian ancestry, whose early family immigrated to NE Minneapolis before Minnesota was a state. Of course, I told that I, too, was French Canadian, and told him about your family history project. He wondered if it was archived at the Minnesota Historical Society, and I’m glad to see that I was correct when I told him I was sure it was!
I briefly cruised through the genealogy part of the document we have and couldn’t see any Chouinards. Apparently some people in his family have also done a great deal of work on their genealogy, too.”
I don’t know how or if our families intersect in a genealogy sense, but I do know family pioneers were in the present day Twin Cities area “before Minnesota was a state” [1858]. I haven’t heard much about music as a special talent in my French-Canadian ancestry; my interest seems to come from my mother’s German side. But, who knows?
I’m going to see about meeting this Dan Chouinard….

#312 – "The first rough draft" post-Bells for Haiti, January 12, 2011

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I always remember my first visit to the then-brand new Newseum in Arlington VA. It was sometime in the late 90s, and I happened to be at the right place at the right time to catch a shuttle to the new, and then free, Museum to print and visual media.
A prominent quote, there, was this (or words to this effect): “Journalism is the first rough draft of history“. It was a statement full of meaning: any breaking news is fraught with peril, possibly inaccurate, but still news nonetheless.
Wednesday of this week an ad hoc group saw the results of “Bells for Haiti”, a tribute to Haitians on the one year anniversary of the devastating earthquake January 12, 2010.
Following is my ‘first rough draft’ of the event, of which I was proud to be a part:
On Wednesday, Cathy and I chose to join a group of eight people on a downtown Minneapolis MN bridge to witness the Bells ringing at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Mark (a block behind us in the photo) and at our own church, the Basilica of St. Mary (in the photo). (Click on photo to enlarge it.)

Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis, from the bridge, 3:53 p.m. CST January 12, 2012


Adjacent to the Baslica on the left is a very busy and noisy freeway, then nearing rush hour, but when the immense primary bell began to ring, precisely at 3:53 p.m., I was overcome with not sadness, but elation.
It was about December 9, 2010, that Basilica had signed on as the first place to ring their bells in Bells for Haiti.
Our little project had actually come to pass.
A year earlier, January 10, 2010, in that same Basilica, Fr. Tom Hagan, long-time Priest in Cite Soleil, had given the homily at all Masses at Basilica. January 11, he was back in Port-au-Prince…little did he know….
Like all great things, Bells for Haiti started with an idea in conversation: in this case, Bells for Haiti began with two women in conversation at the American Refugee Committee (ARC) in Minneapolis (whose headquarters is two blocks behind and to the right of Sue, the lady with the camera).
For a month a small ad hoc committee, never exceeding 11 people, initially mostly “strangers” to the rest, came together in a conference room at ARC to make the idea happen. We elected to keep Bells for Haiti simple.
By January 12, as any of you know who visited Facebook, over 3,500 people from who-knows-where had enrolled in the remembrance via Facebook. (Our committee was largely Facebook-illiterate when this project began. No more.)
Bells were ringing all over the United States, and probably other places, all at the same time and for the same reason.
We will never know how many places, how many people, in how many ways, people remembered Haiti on Wednesday, January 12, 2011.
The project gives meaning to the famous quote of Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”
Thank you. Extra special thanks to the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network and the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers who co-sponsored the event.
Those who participated on the Bells for Haiti committee: Therese Gales, Jenna Myrland, Lisa Van Dyke, Lisa Rothstein, Bonnie Steele, Dale Snyder, Jacqueline Regis, Ruth Anne Olson, Sue Grundhoffer, Mike Haasl, Rebecca Cramer, Dick Bernard. Jane Peck also deserves much credit, though she could not participate directly. She initiated the idea for gathering groups together last spring to keep working for Haiti. At the moment, there are 25 groups loosely and informally affiliated in what is now known as Konbit [“cone beet”]- Haiti/MN.
For more background, click here.

#311 – Dick Bernard: Tucson: Seeking sanity in civic conversation. We are Participants, not simply Spectators.

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Post directly related to the following: here
It’s nearing a week since the horrific massacre in Tucson.
Most everyone has weighed in – predictably one way, or the other, cleverly supporting their own bias by carefully groomed and manicured statements.
What is clear to me is this: it will be impossible to establish direct cause and effect between the actions of a mentally ill killer, and the political and media and fringe political establishments as the Tea Party. Equally, it will be impossible to convincingly deny the indirect impact that their actions have in contributing to this single piece of evidence of national insanity. We change our national behavior, or we will continue to kill ourselves in all senses of that word “kill”.
As the last few days have passed, several recurrent thoughts – memories, really – come to mind:
On Halloween evening 2000, a week before the 2000 election, my wife and I were in Washington D.C. and had an opportunity to see the U.S. House of Representatives in an unusual evening session. There were only a few of us in the Gallery that evening, and below us were two clumps of legislators, one to our left, the other to our right. Presumably, they were Republicans and Democrats, divided as if by a wall. No one seemed to be paying attention to the speakers. Most were standing.
At some point a man appeared in the Gallery and identified himself as one of the Congressmen. He was a Republican, and he was from somewhere in Illinois, and he apologized for his colleagues behavior down below. There was no particular drama occurring below, but the way in which business was being conducted clearly bothered him. I don’t remember his name. What was happening had likely been troubling to him for some time.
Six years later, in May of 2006, we were back in Washington, and this time we visited Ford’s Theatre, as well as the museum in the lower level of the Theatre. There were many interesting artifacts in this museum, just below where Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated 141 years earlier, but one particularly caught my eye – a political campaign poster from the 1860 campaign. Actually, what attracted my eye was the caption on the poster (click on the photo to enlarge it).

1864 Presidential Campaign Poster


Fast forward to the fall of 2008. We had received the November, 2008, issue of Smithsonian Magazine, and there was a fascinating article by Harold Holzer (Election Day 1860) about the 1860 Presidential election which brought Abraham Lincoln into office. At page 51 I saw this quote “…more than four million white males began registering their choices for the presidency.”
In 1860, the U.S. population was a bit over 31 million. Roughly one of eight Americans were participants in that election. Today we are a country with ten times the 1860 population: well over 300,000,000.
In 1860, unless you were a white man, probably educated and property owner to boot, you did not participate in the U.S. elections. It was a white man’s world, then, and duels and physical violence were almost a part of the political tradition and lore. For purposes of apportioning representatives to Congress, slaves counted as 3/5 of a person. Women did not receive the franchise until 1920. During the Civil War, slaves were emancipated, but only by proclamation, and it was 100 years before their descendants would, grudgingly, be allowed to engage fully as citizens. .
In those days of old, there was political violence, but it was personal and mostly in person. By 1864 telegraph could spread the word, and there were newspapers which some could read. It was unlike today when messages can suggest violence without actually saying so out loud and reach everyone 24 hours a day. The un-hinged can pick up suggestions to do evil things, without anyone worrying about being blamed for putting them up to the evil.
I feel this backdrop is a useful framework of reference for personally considering the blatantly suggestive violent talk in today’s heated political conversations.
What is surprising is that the politicians who are most high profile in this current debate are prominent women politicians, and they are high profile because they had no problem suggesting violent methods to take charge of government. Suggestions of violent means to overtake the government are red meat for their core base.
I think sanity can prevail in the coming months and years, and that change is possible, but only if individuals in sundry ways make absolutely clear to their elected representatives, and their political parties, that the violent suggestions and talk must stop, and ‘winner take all’ politics is destroying us all – including the temporary winners.
Several years ago I attended a workshop conducted by a Catholic Priest and a Rabbi on the Ten Commandments. It was a most interesting and useful workshop.
One of the lessons which stuck was about the Jewish interpretation of murder…in the Jewish view, one important kind of murder was what we would now call character assassination.
Were this to prevail in our society today, political campaigns as we presently see them would basically cease to exist – character assassination is a staple.
My bottom line: The caption on the 1864 campaign poster says it all: politics has been and is a spectator sport. Today, we simply watch it at home, 24 hours a day, if we wish. Our passive reaction to political violence, particularly daily character assassination, is killing us all.
Perhaps there’s hope for change in the political conversation, but only if we make it so. But we will have to make it so – no one else can do it for us.
UPDATE JANUARY 15, 2011:
I’ve decided to add in the contents of an e-mail received today, from someone identified only as JoJo (see comment from Jeff, following JoJo’s). It is an interesting commentary: (I am Statistics-challenged….)
Boston, MA
January 14th, 2011
8:09 pm
Was the Violence in Tucson Unrelated to Politics and Political Rhetoric?
I’m a professional statistician (and a political moderate). How likely is it that the recent violence in Tucson had nothing to do with politics and excessive political rhetoric in the media and among some politicians, alleged to be mostly coming from the right end of the political spectrum?
Assuming the violence had nothing to do with politics and political rhetoric:
The probability that this happened by chance alone in arguably the state having the most contentious political discourse (Arizona) = approximately 1/50 = 0.02 (because there are 50 states and Arizona is roughly average in size and population).
The probability that this happened by chance to a liberal/centrist Democratic congressperson (Ms. Gabrielle Giffords) as opposed to a Republican congressperson =1/2 = 0.5. (One of the other victims, Judge John Roll, was a Republican who received threats last year because he made a controversial ruling in favor of illegal Mexican immigrants, but was apparently not an intended target in Tucson).
What is the probability of this happening at this point in time in Arizona when the political atmosphere is so heated because of the recently passed healthcare law and the illegal immigrant problem? This is very difficult to assign, but erring on the side of being mid-range to high, I’ll say 0.5.
The probability of all three of these things happening at the same time by chance, assuming they are independent = 0.02 X 0.5 X 0.5 = 0.005, i.e., half of one percent. (The convention in the behavioral sciences for tentatively rejecting a hypothesis is that the probability of the observed event, assuming that hypothesis is true, is less than or equal to 0.05).
This is admittedly a crude estimation, based on assumptions (e.g., that beyond the political issues, it was rhetoric per se that was operative), incomplete evidence, and possibly omitting important considerations (e.g., the legal availability of guns in Arizona, previous violent politically related threats and actions against Giffords and Roll, the florid insanity of the perpetrator, etc.), which could make the estimate go up or down. This doesn’t prove anything with certainty, and even something with a low probability can still be true.
Assuming the violence in Tucson had nothing to do with politics or excessive political rhetoric, the probability of this happening for purely unrelated reasons and/or chance alone, and that therefore we need do nothing about toning down political rhetoric on both sides of the spectrum, is less than one percent by this estimation process. In making decisions we should also weigh the costs of errors in both directions, e.g., unnecessarily inhibiting freedom of speech vs. inciting more violent incidents against innocents.
Decide for yourself.
My intent is not to support any extreme unsubstantiated position that blames the Tucson tragedy entirely on partisan political rhetoric on one side or the other, but any claim that the one had nothing at all to do with the other, seems to me suspect based on what we know now. As President Obama suggested in his speech in Tucson, given the seemingly deranged mind of the perpetrator, we may never know for sure the reasons that led to these events, and not recriminations, but perhaps a voluntary, precautionary return to civility by all sides would seem to be wise.
From Jeff: It [above] was in a comment to an opinionator piece in the NYT [New York Times] today. I found it interesting as well.
Rachel Maddow [MSNBC] had stats last week on gun related murders by state … the top 5 states of gun ownership have the top 5 murder rates by gunshot, the bottom 5 states for gun ownership have the 5 lowest rates
Of murder by gunshot.
UPDATE Jan. 16, 2011:
from Mary B. – In my job, I had to give the Tennesen warnings [http://www.ipad.state.mn.us/docs/tw.pdf] during certain interviews about areas that might involve criminal violations.
I also educated my clients about terroristic threats given or received.
In my civilian role, I end up still educating people about the law regarding terroristic threats, and I wonder if others do the same.
Or do we just dismiss violent words as part of the culture…and threats as blowing off steam. Or are we cynical about the laws being implemented.(a lot of energy and money goes for implementing anti-terrorism strategies)
I would remind the speakers of vitriolic thoughts that the witnesses were also injured by words – not just the intended victim.
I sense currently our American people are like domestic emotional abuse victims who identify with the bully for survival, in an emotionally damaging public interchange.
I could use support for my stance which does not seem congruent with common culture. We seem awash in nastiness that I am not yet numbed by.
Also-where is the conversation about the fragmentation of our health care system in this Tucson horrifying scenario…..
Mary
Later, Mary added this:
As a public sector social worker, I was in a professional role to assess risk and defuse and de-escalate varied situations – adult and student threats of various types, from playground stuff to very serious issues,like gang threats, weapons in school(both staff and students) kidnapping, suicide, trafficking, etc. Most situations varied in the levels of support or involvement from co-workers or administration. I was asked to do home visits when students were suspended for weapons.
In the space of my career It became more and more difficult to find or bring resources to students and families in need of health and mental health services. Many slip through the ever widening cracks.
I am proud to have had no one under my direct guard physically injured except myself in 30 years of social service. I have attempted to intervene and been thwarted with students who later were murdered or murdered. I have also prevented violence, quietly, with teamwork at its best. Children who have not had voices snuffed or blotted by media want a safer world and contributed greatly to this teamwork. I wish we did not need them to see truth and danger related, but it is related.

#310 – Dick Bernard: Haiti, 35 seconds and a year later

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Today several of us will gather at the bridge which connects Loring Park and the Sculpture Garden in Minneapolis for the 3:53 p.m. CST ringing of the bells for Haiti.
Up to date details about Bells for Haiti are here.
Here is a song, sent via Ezili Danto of Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network a couple of days ago, which deserves a listen this day. Her note, included with the song: “Re-MEMBERing the over 300,000 gone one year ago in 33 seconds and those left behind to uncrumble the fallen.”
At our final meeting before the 35 second Bells for Haiti observance our committee observed a moment of silence – 35 seconds in duration – the approximate duration of the Haiti earthquake January 12, 2010.
Ours is a society that abhors ‘dead air’. 35 seconds is noticeable. But we could take in the silence in a comfortable meeting room. Very few of us can imagine the horror of living through the experience of a 35-second earthquake, much less living in the aftermath of those horrible 35 seconds.
In those few seconds one year ago today, perhaps one of every seven people in the affected area of Haiti instantly lost his or her life, or were trapped, maybe to be rescued, but possibly die later. Virtually everyone was rendered homeless, and most remain homeless still today. The symbols that bring pride to the heart of a citizen anywhere: places like the Presidential Palace, destroyed. So, too, the prisons, releasing into the streets innocent…and guilty. Destroyed, too, was ‘government’….
How would it be for me, for my town, state and nation, were we similarly affected? The collective psychological aftershock is beyond understanding, though I try.
Nothing is simple for Haiti now or in the future and I need to recognize that. This is a place one-eighth the size of my own state, with a greater population. (Click on the map to enlarge. Thanks to Paul Miller for the rendering.)

I can’t realistically or accurately describe “Minnesota” in some stereotypical way; neither can Haiti or Haitians be simply reduced to a generalization by myself or anyone.
From all the individual stories in Haiti I select a single one to recall.
Seven years ago, early December, 2003, I received an envelope a few days into my first trip to Haiti. The envelope included 20 simple but beautiful greeting cards produced by a group called Atelier des Artisans Reunis in the community of Varreux, somewhere in Port-au-Prince environs. Here’s a sample:

Greeting Card by Atelier des Artisans Reunis, Varreux Haiti


The envelope included an e-mail address and a website, which I had visited (which no longer exist.)
Within the last few days I asked Brian Concannon of IJDH, the person who connected me with the group in the first place, if he could reconnect me with this group.
He responded as follows (printed with permission):
“The Atelier rises and falls based on the challenges that Haiti keeps presenting. Since you bought those cards, two of the three leaders were executed and the workshop was destroyed because gangs thought they were MINUSTAH informants. Much of the reconstituted Atelier was then destroyed in the earthquake. People have been sick and died, everyone has run out of money.
But they keep persisting – we got an order a few months ago. We have been bringing down our own blank cards, with IJDH’s contact info printed on the back, and had them do the decoration. I am actually not sure exactly where they are, because Wisly, our contact, has been willing to do pickups and drop-offs for us. I do not believe they have anything online. I helped them get [a website] up years ago, but it fell apart.
I would suggest contacting Wisly Jean Louis, who is our main contact with the Atelier: wislyjeanlouisATyahooDOTfr, and see if you can work something out with him that fits your needs.”
Wisly’s e-address worked, but I’m language challenged, and our computers were not exactly compatible.
But perhaps a reader or two might want to find out more about this modest enterprise, of Haitians simply trying to earn an honest living. And maybe a little bit of good can be done.
Today is an awful anniversary. Perhaps somewhere in the seemingly insurmountable difficulties we can all do a little bit – or more – to help.
I hope to continue to seek to understand, and to help in whatever small ways I can.
Remember Haiti at least for those 35 seconds today.

#309 – Dick Bernard: Prelude to Bells for Haiti, 3:53 p.m. CST January 12, 2011

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One year ago today – it was Sunday, January 10, 2010 at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis MN – I was privileged to hear one of the most powerful messages for justice I have ever heard.
The event is described in a blog post I did at the time. You can access it here, and it speaks for itself.
The speaker, a Catholic Priest long serving in Cite Soleil, arrived in Minneapolis late the previous day, and left early the next, and was back home in Haiti when the earthquake took its awful toll.
I have thought often of Fr. Tom since that extraordinary Sunday one year ago; and the following Tuesday when he escaped serious physical injury, but not so the residents he served, nor the facilities of his ministry.
Someone has said that he’s now back home on leave, the stress of the past year having taken its toll.
We live in comfort as the Haitian continue to struggle. We all have our stories about where we were when we heard about the devastation of the Haiti earthquake, or our personal connections. We each can continue to do our part.
Bells will ring at Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis Wednesday afternoon.
I hope to be there for those 35 seconds.
More about the Bells for Haiti observance Wednesday, January 12, 2011, here.

#308 – Dick Bernard: Susan Boyle, Ted Williams…and Elaine Page

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Give 35 seconds for Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 4:53 p.m. (Haiti, Eastern time).
One of my earliest blog posts was this one on April 16, 2009, celebrating a stunning performance by unknown Susan Boyle at Britain’s Got Talent. (The original video referenced in the blog is no longer available. The same video appears to be here. The videos have probably been seen over 100,000,000 times.)
At her debut she said, to a doubting panel of judges and audience, that “she wanted to be like Elaine Page”. To be honest, I didn’t know who Elaine Page was at the time.
In December, 2009, about a year ago, Susan Boyle got her chance to sing with Elaine Page. Check their performance out, here.
The video speaks for itself.
Susan, and the doubting that accompanied her performance…to the extent that there were thoughts that she might not actually be singing the song…was soon discovered to be “the real deal”. Susan got on the roller-coaster that comes with new-found fame and had her ups and downs.
A few weeks ago I bought her second annual CD as a Christmas gift to myself. Apparently her autobiography is on sale at the bookstores. Maybe a purchase….
She is testimony to each of we commoners that we do, indeed, have talent.
Then comes the incredible story of one homeless guy in Columbus OH, Ted Williams, who two days after the story broke found himself in the studios of NBC in New York City as a major guest on today. You can view an extended clip here. (I am not sure how this video will be on YouTube. The first segment I watched was taken down for copyright reasons. If you can get lucky, you’ll see this phenomenal story.)
Again, from obscurity to instant fame…and the wondering whether this alcohol and drug addict will make it. Mr. Williams – it seems more appropriate than saying “Ted” – will face the same roller coaster ride as Susan Boyle, and hopefully will get the kind of support he needs to ride the waves of fame back into a normal life.
This time, again, I’m going to bet on the underdog: you go, Ted!

#307 – Dick Bernard: Jackie, reflecting at a moment 50 years later

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January 2 I was going through a box of old papers and came across a somewhat ragged green high school folder kept by my first wife, Barbara.
Leafing through the contents I came across an envelope whose cover and contents need no embellishment (click on the photo to enlarge it).

I don’t know the history of this little card: Barbara died in 1965 and her fatal illness preoccupied our two years together.
I was a college senior during JFK’s first year in office, and it was in 1961 that Barbara graduated from Valley City (ND) High School.
The card, with raised lettering, was certainly not a unique personally signed note from the First Lady; on the other hand, I highly doubt such a message went to every high school graduate in the land that particular year. There is a story, exactly what I’m not sure, but there is a story….
It is now 50 years from that hopeful time of 1961.
Those were not necessarily the best of times. John Kennedy barely won election, facing bitterness from many quarters – politics has always been a sordid affair. During JFK’s term, In October, 1962, I was in the Army during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was one month out of the Army, teaching school, when JFK was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, etc.
But those brief Kennedy years were times of hope and of optimism and of a certain civility in the political conversation. Not long ago a speaker reminded us that Kennedy’s Peace Corps was the Kennedy administration followup on an idea of MN Sen. Hubert Humphrey…. I have good memories of President Eisenhower.
Fast forward fifty years:
Yesterday began the terms of a new Congress, and a new State legislature in Minnesota.
It is hard to see a repeat of those hopeful “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country“.
But one can hope.
But if there is to be hope, it needs to be accompanied by individual and group action. At the website built as a tribute to two friends, Lynn Elling and Joe Schwartzberg, who chose to make a difference in their world, are two quotes, of Margaret Mead and Gandhi, which merit reflection. Take a look…they’re easily found at the beginning and the end of the page.
Happy New Year!

#306 – Dick Bernard: Frank Peter Bernard, U.S. Navy 1935 – 1941, USS Arizona

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It was on a Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, that my Uncle, Frank Peter Bernard, was killed on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor HI.
Each December 7 I remember that day, and indeed, am reminded of that day, as the iconic film clip of the Arizona being hit by the bomb is shown.
Dec. 7, 2010, was no different, until an e-mail arrived late in the afternoon from Dave Calvert, someone unknown to me. The e-mail included two photographs of his Dad, Max Calvert, and my Uncle, taken in 1938 at Long Beach CA. The photographs (below) seemed familiar, and I looked in my collection and found two photos taken at exactly the same place on the same day, one of them identical to the one of Max and Frank; the second with my Uncle and his Dad, my Grandpa Henry Bernard.
The miracle of the internet!

Max Calvert and Frank Bernard, Long Beach CA 1938



Max’s son and I met each other through the ‘twin’ photos. His Dad, he said, was an Iowa farm kid actual first name Howard, who had joined the Navy and at the time of the photo was secretary for the Commander of the Pacific Fleet, Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, on the USS San Francisco. Uncle Frank, two or three years older, was a small town kid from North Dakota. How Max and Frank became friends is unknown; as is why they happened to show up at the same place as my grandparents were then visiting. But it was a fascinating story.
The handwritten caption on the back of Max’s photo said it was taken in November of 1938. The mechanical stamp on the back of my photos identified the date the film was processed as August 15, 1938. Such small discrepancies are common in history work. Most likely, because of the photo processing date stamp, the photos were taken in August in Long Beach. The Arizona was in port at San Pedro August 12-15.
The surprise event caused me to write an e-mail to the National Park Service at Pearl Harbor, telling them I had some photos to share of Uncle Frank. In late December, I received a reply, and sent jpeg’s of all of them for the National Park Service Library at Pearl Harbor.
Last night I decided to post the collection on Facebook. You can view them all here. Double click on any photo to get a larger version. Hold the cursor on the photo to see the caption.
Not at Facebook, but also provided to the Park Service, are three text items relating to my Uncle Frank who, in his short 26 years of life, became, unintentionally, an actor in World War II: Arizona014; Memory017; Fam History015
Frank is at peace; May we all be at Peace as well.

Model of USS Arizona hand-crafted by Bob Tonra ca 1996; goblet, one of six made by Frank Bernard on USS Arizona (size 6 inches high); leaves are Hawaiian, gift from a friend in 1998.


A newspaper column I wrote in 2005 about the end of WWII is at this link:Atomic Bomb 1945001

#305 – Dick Bernard: "Happy New Year"?

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Last night, New Years Eve, we had the final Christmas gathering of a few family members who’d missed the earlier get-together. When they left for home, the 2010 Christmas season was officially concluded, and New Years Eve was winding down to the New Year. I suppose it was about the stroke of midnight in Iceland, perhaps, when my day ended. Cathy was on the phone with a friend. That is how the season is for we older people.
Happy New Year.
One of the guests last night was a 46 year old. His 11 year old son was out of town with his former wife. This family member is unemployed with no prospects other than an hourly part-time job with no benefits which he now has. I would guess that in the statistics he counts as one of the 10% or so who are unemployed as this New Year begins since he qualifies for unemployment, and likely for the extension which passed in the cliff-hanger of last minute legislation in Congress. He is a worker, like most of us, identifying himself through his job. After a month or two unemployment last spring, until about Thanksgiving time he had a temporary full-time job with benefits, but one day he was let go for some unexplained reason. Reasons don’t need to be given, and besides there was no due process protection. I gathered the job was a very stressful one for him so perhaps in one sense it was a small loss.
Christmas Day my wife invited a lady friend, in her 50s, who’s unmarried and now unemployed for over a year, to attend Christmas Day Mass with us. She, too, will benefit from the unemployment extension. Through the friend we see the difficult realities of unemployment. She’s had a knee replacement so can’t do a job that requires long-term standing. She is too poor to afford or keep up an automobile, so any job she gets needs to be accessible by bus. She recently interviewed for a job which, if she had gotten it, would have required a bus trip with five transfers each way. Last Wednesday Cathy took her to a work force office which is not on any bus line, and a very expensive cab ride. She is actively looking for full time job.
Through these two folks, I see the reality of unemployment in this country. The male is obviously emotionally down – what should have been a festive occasion for him was not. He went home by himself last night. The female seems more at peace with her situation, though I know that she wants to work and she has a long history of doing good work. It is easy to say to both of them, “buck up, and keep on looking – good things will happen”. It is not quite so easy in their shoes.
Both want to work, but there are barriers.
It has occurred to me that this unemployment is a difficult issue for our country to gets its emotions around. If there is 10% unemployment, that means there is 90% employment, and most of the employed people are making more or less what they think is a fair wage and have some kinds of benefits. Similarly, retirees like we are generally are not poor; many are, in fact, very well off due to pensions, investments, and social security and medicare. Unemployment is not our problem, unless we happen to have it within our own family – as my wife and I do.
On the other hand, American big business is flush with wealth, profit obsessed, and a major news report earlier this week suggested that a major dent in the unemployment could have been made if that business had hired domestically in this country, rather than opting for cheaper job markets overseas. American business has little if any loyalty to its own countries citizens. In too many ways they are considered a cost to be controlled, rather than a benefit. The corporate ethic has loyalty only to the bottom line….
For business and the already wealthy, I think the “piper will be paid” down the road. It is the poor, and the increasingly stretched middle class, who produce, by buying goods and services, the profit margins lusted after by companies and the rich. The continuation of the tax reductions for the wealthiest Americans further increases the national deficit, and the extra money they retain is normally not part of the national income stream: it is saved, often in off-shore tax shelters, whereas the poor and the middle class keep the money in circulation.
It is not easy to convince the already well off that spreading the wealth is helpful to them, too.
They may have to learn the hard lesson, along with the rest of us.