#365 – Dick Bernard: A Troubling National Teacher Day, May 3, 2011

/in , , , , /by

Since May 3, 1985, National Teacher Day in the United States has been observed on the first Tuesday in May. About 1944 an Arkansas teacher first had the idea of a National Teacher Day, and in 1953 the first such day was observed.
May 3, 1985, I was Minnesota Education Association field staff (some would say “teacher union rep”, which I was), on Minnesota’s Iron Range. Home base was Hibbing; my area was from Ely to Deer River and beyond. I don’t recall the specifics of that Teacher Day, except that it was a time of pride to be a public school teacher. I would work for teachers for the next 14 National Teachers Days. They were always good days….
While international events may have scuttled my (and other) submissions on the value of teachers this date, here’s what I sent to the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Sunday:
“Today [May 3) is National Teacher Day in the United States; and this week is Teacher Appreciation Week.
Take the time today or this week to thank a teacher, or two, or more.
First on my own list are my parents who were public school teachers for a total of 71 years between 1929 and 1971. I was a student in their public school classrooms from 8th grade through high school graduation. Thank you, Mom and Dad.
But my parents were only two among many teachers, remembered and not, who made a huge difference in my life, in small and large ways over many years.
To college Prof. George Kennedy, who finally had it with me when I was being lazy and not doing my best in my college Geography major, thank you for getting angry at me. I remember….
To Mr. H, who was, yes, somewhat odd, but was always there and did his best with we “scholars” in high school: thank you. He taught me a great deal about accepting differences, just by being different, himself.
The list could go on and on.
These are harsh days for our teachers.
Today, more than ever, thank them.”
As noted above, this May 3 is not a very kind and gentle time for America’s teachers (which includes school administrators), and particularly for their and other public unions. One hardly needs a PhD to see the success of a campaign to demonize a great profession and the unions which represent public workers. The architects of the movement to enshrine as symbols of “teaching” the always-anonymous persons called “bad” or “ineffective”, and their unions, have been successful, probably beyond their wildest dreams. This campaign to denigrate began years ago.
There are big long term dangers to labeling groups based on actions of the few, but in the short term negative labeling does work….
The amateur “experts” are legion: from the guy I’d never seen before, who recently and loudly declared that teaching was too lowly an occupation to need a license (he noticed the headline of an editorial I was reading); to a freshman legislator wringing her hands in a public meeting about the problem of “bad” teachers – a topic about which she quite obviously knew nothing, beyond the script she was holding while reading.
Then there’s a good and respected friend who spends much of his time in the company of ‘movers and shakers’ of this major city and has apparently come to think, sincerely, that things like unions, seniority, salary schedules, contracts and due process protections are destroying good education by protecting “bad” teachers who should be replaced by fresh young faces unblemished by union things.
I’ve about heard it all.
(The amateur experts take their cue, of course, from the ‘movers and shakers’ who by and large control information. As stated so well by Connecticut Superintendent Gary Chesley in an Education Week commentary accessible below, there is “a national search for a scapegoat…teachers and the tenure laws present a fertile target for bombast and demagoguery.”)
There are, of course, big gaps in the information provided, like the specific names and circumstances of these supposedly “bad” and “ineffective” people who supposedly represent teaching. Revealing the names is apparently a risk (and responsibility) no one wishes to take. But that’s not relevant. If you can make an anonymous and supposedly defective teacher the symbol of an entire profession, why not? Indeed, creating a caricature – a cartoon – is even better than a fact.
There are other conjured issues: a friend who trusts me asked about teacher pensions, pretty obviously resenting the fact that teachers even receive pensions. Luckily I had an informed answer (which I don’t think he liked): Pensions Public001
But, this is National Teacher Day: If one can get past the negative, there is a huge amount of good out there, not hard to find. I saw it Thursday night at my Kindergarten granddaughters spring music concert for family and friends (click on photo to enlarge).

Kindergarten program at Lincoln Center elementary So. St. Paul MN April 28, 2011


I saw it Sunday morning at Church when a wonderful A Cappella high school choir (directed by a teacher) from a northern Minnesota city performed for us after services.
There was an excellent column in Sunday’s New York Times.
There is infinite room for true dialogue IF people are at all interested. There are ideas out there just begging for conversation. But dialogue and ideas require openness to other points of view; the possibility of other conclusions.
But the overall official mantra I feel this National Teacher Day 2011 is distinctly vicious and negative.
It’s time for teachers and administrators to buck up and go to work where they live, delivering an alternative (and more honest) message about teachers and teaching and public schools.

Mom, then Esther Busch and in first grade, front left, in 1915 at Henrietta School, rural Berlin ND. She and her sister Lucina, front row right, both became career public school teachers. Their teacher is Miss Gates.


Dad, Henry Bernard, with his first class at Allandale School near Grand Forks ND, 1929.


Teacher Mary Garvey with her 30 students in rural St. Paul MN ca 1939

#360 – Dick Bernard: Returning to the Eighth Grade

/in , , , /by

April 15 we were invited to an event at Friendly Hills Middle School in Mendota Heights MN. “Telling the Story of WWII and the Holocaust” was the event: “An Interdisciplinary Project between Language Arts & Social Studies” involving eighth graders in five classes at the school, each of whom had worked on a particular project for the preceding three weeks, culminating in their own museum display.
It was a fascinating program: great learning and great public relations. I congratulate the students, teachers and school.
I remembered back to the 1960s when I taught 8th graders for nine years. Yes, the ‘genus and species’ remains the same: kids are kids. I remembered further back, to 1953-54, when I was in eighth grade. The same….
We went from display to display. They were as one would expect, many very nicely done. In 1953-54 and my last year of teaching, 1971-72, they would have been assembled in roughly the same way: paper glued on pieces of recycled cardboard, etc. But such a gathering would be very unusual.
The difference, and it is a huge one, is technology and accessibility to research data. In 1953-54 we perhaps had one old encyclopedia on which to rely, and no copy machines, or newspapers to clip from. No television and (to my recollection) no movies. Such projects would be very difficult and thus very unusual. Only in recent years would you see, as we saw on Friday, kids with laptops and movies pulled off of the internet. Pretty incredible.
We didn’t have time to visit every display. There were a great number of displays and a great number of visiting family members. At each one I visited, I asked the student what was the most interesting thing that he or she had learned. Every one of them was able to answer the question confidently.
World War II was a long time ago. One student said her great-grandfather was in the War. Even though that made sense to me, it still took me aback. My oldest Uncle in the war – my Dad’s brother Frank – died at age 26 on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. I was 5 years old when the war ended in Europe in 1945; and when I was in eighth grade in 1953-54, my uncle Art, the youngest family member to join the military in June, 1945, was only 26, and not yet married. Time flies.
At Friendly Hills, students picked from a potpourri of potential topics. The brochure said:
“We have discussed
Why do people look for strong leaders when times get tough?
How can “good”people get caught up in “bad” things like the Nazi movement?
How are the ideas of community, identity, discipline, and power connected?
How can the ideas above also lead to conflict among people and nations?
What is our responsibility when we see things happen that are against our values?
How can each of us take ACTION to stand up for the things we believe in?”
These are all good questions for all of us.
A number of students did their research on the dropping of the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945.
One of them was taking a poll, where respondents could pick one of three choices:
“1. Yes, I think it was a good decision[to drop the bombs], and it helped end WWII.
2. I don’t really like what we did, but I don’t have a better solution for it.
3. I think it was a terrible idea to kill so many people to destroy two major cities.”
I picked #3, and joined three others in so voting. #1 had 5 votes, and #2 had 20. Our 29 hach marks added to the conversation.
I felt and feel that killing someone else is never a solution…it only creates a new problem. But that’s not a very popular concept.
War, then and now has its moral dilemmas. The morning after the display the paper had a front page article about the Libyan leaders disgraceful use of cluster bombs against its own citizens. Nestled in the same article was reference to our own countries recent use of cluster bombs in places like Afghanistan. There was nothing about who developed and later perfected and profited from the cluster bomb concept.
Late today came a photo montage of the reality of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Let us never forget.

#348 – Dick Bernard: Part 17. Garrison Keillor "…and all the children are above average"

/in , , , , , , /by

Today’s newspaper brought news that Garrison Keillor might, just might, retire in 2013, leaving Prairie Home Companion (PHC) in the hands of someone else.
Precisely when Garrison will no longer be part of the picture is an unknown, probably including to himself. But as someone a couple of years senior to Keillor in age, I can attest that he is not getting any younger; he’s no longer a kid.
I was one of the lucky ones who first saw him in the olden days of PHC (which began in 1974). The first time was in the fall of 1977, probably at Macalester College in St. Paul, where you could walk in off the street to buy a ticket, and find a good seat as well.
I was never a regular at Prairie Home Companion, but I showed up a great plenty, and during my time as Director of the Anoka-Hennepin Education Association we once hired the show band, “The Powdermilk Biscuit” bunch, to do a dance gig for our teacher’s association in Keillor’s home town of Anoka MN. Those were the days….
Once, I saw him crossing the street at the Swayed Pines Festival at St. John’s University in Collegeville MN. It was in late April, 1979. Here’s the snapshot, for the first time in public! (Click on the photo to enlarge.) St. John’s is where Keillor first went on air late in the 1960s, and it is in the heart of his mythical Lake Wobegon.

Garrison Keillor late April, 1979


I signed my first Anoka-Hennepin teaching contract in the office of the Superintendent July 21, 1965. The office was in the same school Garrison Keillor had attended high school and graduated from a few short years earlier. A few years later I would begin to represent in teacher union work some of the same teachers who had Garrison as a student. Of course, at the time I had no idea there was such a person as Garrison Keillor, nor would I till he began to be noticed ten years or so later.
While Keillor’s Lake Wobegon is a collage of bits and pieces from many places, there has always been a very heavy foundation of Anoka in his sketches of Lake Wobegon. I know this, since I moved to Anoka in 1965, and except for three years absence 1966-68, I either lived or worked in or near the suburban community till the early 1980s. Too many of the characters and geographic images are far too “spitting image” to be successfully denied.
Keillor’s forever and ever signature is his description of the good people of Lake Wobegon, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”
I have no idea how he came up with this phrase so many years ago, but it is clear to me, living in our contemporary society, he had us “nailed”. We seem, collectively, to think we are all exceptional. Maybe we all have exceptional qualities, but basically we are just people, as Garrison Keillor is.
As is true with most of us, the now-famed Mr. Keillor probably came across as very much an average and ordinary kid in those school years. One or more of them did their part in helping him develop his own latent but immense talents; as they and legions of other teachers in other places and times have helped others develop their own talents. Having taught myself, I know we basically try to do our best with everyone. We don’t always succeed. But often we do, and more often than not we touch someone in some ways we will never realize.
Teachers and indeed all the supporting staff in public schools do an immense service.
Thank school employees.
(As I’ve been writing this I’ve had as background music the work of another commoner who took her talents to the next level. Take a listen.)

#347 – Annelee Woodstrom: A Woman's Perspective on the Ravages of War and the Elusiveness of Peace.

/in , , , /by

Note from Dick Bernard: This Essay seems particularly appropriate to present at the anniversary of the bombing of Iraq March 19, 2003, and our seeming continued reverence for War as a solution for human problems.

Our wonderful friend, Annelee Woodstrom, grew up in Nazi Germany. She was 7 when Hitler came to power in 1933, and in 1947, after WWII, she came to the United States to marry the “Gentleman Soldier” from Crookston MN who she had met when the Army liberated her town of Mitterteich, which was and is near the Czech border, and later was just inside what became West Germany after the War. Since her marriage in 1947, she has lived in northwest Minnesota, most of that time in the community of Ada MN. She is a retired teacher.
The following essay is one which she presented recently to a woman’s group in her town. This is designed to go with a power-point presentation which I cannot present here, of course. It is her script for the presentation, thus the capitalized letters for emphasis. This essay is passed along with her permission.
Uncle Pepp was a prominent small businessman in the town – a baker. There were two Jewish families in the town. To my knowledge, both left and both survived the war.
Annelee has written two very well received books: War Child: Growing up in Adolf Hitler’s Germany; and Empty Chairs, about her life in the U.S. Her website is here.
Annelee Woodstrom:
During March 1945 I had been ill. In this excerpt from my book WAR CHILD you will meet my Uncle Pepp. He isn’t easy to forget!!
I knocked softly. Uncle Pepp opened the door and motioned to the big chair. “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing. — I came to say good-bye.”
“So good-bye it is,” Uncle Pepp mumbled. His voice and his demeanor startled me.
“If you are busy, I’ll leave.”
“No, you just sit there, and I’ll tell you when you can leave.”
RESTING HIS CHIN in his hands, he looked at me, pondering. “Everybody comes and tells me, ‘I’m leaving.’ Are you leaving today? You should be home with your mother, but you are out there, getting bombed and shot at just like the men.” His gaze went past me. “The men went and fought, but most of them didn’t come HOME.
The ones who DID are crippled for life in one way or another. Tell me, for what?” He nodded. “Oh, yes, for the THOUSAND Year Reich. What a Reich it is!!! It started with Adolf Hitler and a few crazy men — who hollered and screamed as they led us and lied — until everyone followed blindly into THE abysmal destruction of humanity. Now,— we drown in our own blood. How they have changed us.”
“Uncle . . .”
He didn’t hear me, and I didn’t dare to move as he went on.
“They didn’t change us, we did that ourselves. Now, the whole world will hold us accountable.”
He shook his head. “All my life I tried to do right. Then, in one minute, I ruined it all. Just because Cousin Karl joined the Nazi party and didn’t tell me, I pushed him into this damn war. Now he is in France, doing God knows what? Killing, fighting, or RUNNING to save himself. He shouldn’t have joined the Nazi party without telling me . . . SO I REFUSED TO sign that I needed him in the bakery TO SECURE FOOD FOR THE TOWN. Now, nothing is the SAME . — He and I have changed.”
I had never seen Uncle Pepp like this. I got up and GINGERLY
put my hand on his shoulder AND TRIED TO CONSOLE HIM. “It wasn’t your fault! It’s the war! The Government would have taken Karl anyway. Everybody has to go to war. AFTERnTHIS WAR ENDS, there won’t be any more wars, because there isn’t anyone left to fight.”
Uncle Pepp laughed bitterly. “You would think so. We learn a lot in a lifetime, but no one in THIS world learns about keeping peace. Every time there is a war, they say it is for some cause, and then it will bring peace FOR EVER !!! The human race is the dumbest species there is. For thousands of years legions of people have fought and maimed each other for one cause or another. They TOOK LAND FROM THEIR so-called enemy. When you look around, you see that years later they gave it back. Never mind the corpses UNDERNEATH THE LAND the young were told to conquer.”
Uncle Pepp’s eyes bored into mine. “You think this war is the
last war? Anneliese, don’t mind MY LAUGHING. Some day YOU MAY HAVE A SON who will get his draft notice to fight in another WAR . . . AND AGAIN they’ll promise you, ‘THIS IS THE LAST WAR OF ALL WARS.’ On the other side there will be a mother who will have to send her son for the same reason — TO STOP WAR! What we have NOT YET learned is the simple truth: Wars lay the seeds and breed another more horrible war than the ones before.”
Uncle Pepp came close to me. “I always told your papa you should
have been his first born son, but I’m glad you’re not. Maybe you will
make it through this war. You will, if you’re lucky and have a say
about it.” He kissed me on THE CHEEK,— “Now go, and do come back, you hear me!”
IT WAS March 1947 I WAS LEAVING GERMANY TO COME TO AMERICA AND MARRY KENNEY. MY COUSIN Erna boarded the train with me.
The wheels of the train grated over the worn-out tracks and sparks spewed as we reached Nuremberg. The train stopped near MOUNTAINOUS DEBRIS THAT FOUR YEARS AGO had been the railroad station.
Instantly, we were engulfed by moving masses and WE PUSHED AND SHOVED until we found an empty platform space. Dreading the layover, we PUT our luggage behind our backs, huddled to keep warm and watched. Children, women and men, stood SPRINT READY as they LOOKED and pointed down the trodden path where an American PATROL CAR turned the corner.
At will, the soldiers flipped cigarettes and cigarette butts IIN THE watchers’ direction. The Americans talked, laughed and shook their heads at the spectacle they had created. The watchers sprinted forward until they spied a cigarette landing near them. Within a flash, they threw themselves on the ground, pushing, and fighting until SOMEONE ROSE, arms raised, jumping joyfully and clutching their treasure while their friends cheered.
Erna and I knew that cigarettes were sometimes better than money. With a good barterer, enough cigarettes could sustain the hungry or sick. We watched silently as men traded seven cigarettes for a pound of flour. Another group traded for water, and while the hunger-driven sat and salivated, their chosen leader mixed the flour with water until he held a lumpy dough. Eager hands pulled the dough into sheets that hardened none too soon for the lucky owners. No one took chances WITH THEFT; they devoured the finished product and the hunger pains were stilled for now.
Near us crude scaffolds covered with scribbled messages and weather-beaten pictures of soldiers, children, and families were the meeting places for refugees and all the other survivors of the war. These messages and pictures were the lost and found network of Germany’s twentieth century’s mayhem and madness.
We were overwhelmed by the constant motion that surrounded us. Dressed in tattered clothes, which were probably all they owned, bedraggled hollow-eyed homeless walked by looking for a space where they could perhaps stay for a few hours, or maybe a night. Others searched for a familiar face, or someone who might know the whereabouts of missing family members, friends, or acquaintances.
Groups of people groped through the rubble for anything that could keep them warm.
The most pitiful sight was the refugees. They had lost their homes which had been built by their ancestors centuries ago. Torn apart for the past four years by the ravages of war, families still huddled on their wagons or on the ground. Their nomadic life had taken its toll, and there was no end to the misery that surrounded us.
Disbelieving, WE STARED at bands of German soldiers who had withstood years of fighting on all fronts and were now clad in ill-
fitting shirts, pants, and jackets. Some had lost their limbs, their
hearing, or their sight. The more fortunate ones still had shoes, others had rags tied around their feet. Most soldiers had discarded their Army uniforms, while others wore them ONLY in the darkness OF NIGHT to keep warm. The daily struggle for survival, the unsuccessful searches for their loved ones, and the constant reminders of a lost war had robbed them of their once proud stance.
Children who had been taken from air-raided cities and relocated in designated safety zones WERE NOW ORPHANS — they survived because they had joined street gangs.
Tired and discouraged, we boarded the Wurzburg-bound train.
We stood by the window and viewed in silence what once had been THE BEAUTIFUL CITY OF NUREMBERG. We had heard that unrelenting bombing raids had obliterated the city, but we had never seen such total chaos before.
For miles, — as far as the eye could see, burned-out shells of homes
stood only because the mountains of rubble did not permit them to fall and come to rest. Uninhabitable buildings stood with gaping holes in their sides exposing denuded rooms, and the JAGGED remnants of walls thrust their ragged edges toward the heavens, lamenting their fate. Streets were now winding footpaths through piles of debris.
Throughout the remainder of our trip, through Wurzburg and onto our final destination, Frankfurt/Main, ERNA AND I realized that our Fuehrer had gotten his wish. In 1944, as the Allies encircled the
borders of Germany, shortly before his self-inflicted death Adolf
Hitler had shifted responsibility and blame for Germany’s military collapse onto his people. At meetings, he raved at his district leaders and generals that his people had betrayed him. They were cowards, and they deserved DEFEAT, HUMILIATION and even DEATH at the hands of GERMANY’S enemies. Now, his wish was reality. Germany lay in ruins, its people were destitute, and the once-feared Army had been annihilated. Germany’s regions were divided, and its borders were guarded by four allied nations.
Frankfurt, in twilight, was an image of grotesqueness and it embodied the savagery of war. The stately, CENTURIES OLD stone and brick houses lay reduced to rubble that flowed like lava out into the streets. Weather-beaten cardboard signs with crude, black letters pointed the way to avenues and streets. As the train stopped, we noted that the customary friendliness toward strangers we had taken for granted before the war, was no longer with us.
After my heart-breaking good-by with Erna, I landed in New York , met Kenny , and we took the train to Washington DC
TO MEET WITH [then-Minnesota] Congressman Hagen.
As we left the UNION STATION, Kenny hailed a taxi. The driver joined the evening traffic. The darkness of the night did not penetrate the streets of Washington, D.C. Lights glared everywhere, YET, the traffic flowed smoothly and steadily. I found no chaos here, nor morbid darkness. Everything was so unlike the Germany I had known these past eight years.
I continued deep in thought while Kenny and the driver talked. Suddenly, Kenny put his hands over my eyes and made sure
I could not peek out.
The taxi stopped. KENNY REMOVED HIS HANDS, — Lights engulfed everything around us, and the brightness made me blink rapidly.
Abruptly, I sucked in my breath and shivered as goose bumps crawled through my skin. Wonderstruck, I sat SILENTLY. The beauty and the massiveness of the [U.S.] Capitol Building was beyond anything I could have imagined.
It seemed the past and the future HAD merged RIGHT HERE, and penetrated into the very interior of our car. Thoughts and feelings bombarded and captivated my whole being. I felt so SMALL and insignificant, YET so special at the same time. I hugged my own body and sat still until Kenny spoke to the driver. He started the car and we were silent while he drove past the White House, the house where President Harry Truman lived.
Slowly, I understood I WAS TRULY in another world. How beautiful it was! How stately! How serene!
Realization crept into my mind and took hold. “So that is the way PEOPLE LIVE — where there is peace!” I said softly. TEARS welled up IN MY EYES until the lights were a blur. I THOUGHT OF MY LOVED ONES IN GERMANY AND WISHED, “If only Mama and everyone, everyone in the world could live where there is peace!”
I suddenly felt drained and sad. I had not known peace and serenity since I was in SEVENTH GRADE waiting to celebrate my thirteenth birthday.

#346 – Dick Bernard: Part 16. "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

/in , , , , /by

Sunday afternoon, enroute to other things, I found a cartoon I had saved for some reason back in March of 2002. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

About the same time I found the cartoon, came a CBS “60 Minutes” segment on a New York City experimental school that pays $125,000 a year. You can see the segment here.
A few hours earlier, a couple of folks had forwarded on a Nicholas Kristof post on the same general topic. One suspects that he had access to the same general source as did 60 Minutes.
The previous day my local legislator and some in her audience were lamenting being unable to get rid of “bad” teachers….
The song goes on and on and on and on: get rid of unions, and so-called “tenure” laws which give “bad” teachers life-time no-cut contracts and all will be well.
Having been in the trenches for many years, including growing up in a family whose Mom and Dad were public school teachers (and excellent ones, including their public citizenship), I know that the cartoon catches the reality far better than the high-falootin’ philosophizin’. For assorted reasons, the Power that runs things cannot abide its Public Workers having any status even roughly equivalent to it. It, including that angry Dad in the cartoon above, demands a subordinate class.
It would be truly nice to have a substantive conversation about ideas such as the $125,000 teacher in every classroom. The way things are going, when that $125,000 goal is reached; poverty level will be, perhaps, $130,000.
I have all of my Mom and Dad’s old teaching contracts – there are 71 of them in all. I pulled them out for the year I graduated from high school – 1957-1958.
1957-58 was Dad’s 28th year of teaching. He had been serving as “Superintendent” of many tiny schools since 1940-41.
We had lived in this town before, from 1945-51; in the interim, there were three other places, till Dad and Mom got another contract here. In addition to doing the assorted kinds of administrative things that go along with administrating even a tiny school, Dad had to teach two classes, as well as Drivers Ed, and he had to Coach sports. The latter was something he wasn’t interested in and was not good at, but there would have been no Basketball or Football had he not taken it on.
There were about 45 students and two other teachers in his tiny high school; my Mother taught the elementary (most elementary kids, including three of her five children, were in the Catholic elementary school down the street.)
That year Dad was paid $4800 with no fringe benefits and, excepting a one year contract, no legal protections whatever. At the end of the year his reemployment was completely at the whim of the local school board.
For Mom, it was her 17th year as a teacher – the off years were to bear and raise we kids. Her salary was $3000.
Likely there were plenty of people in that little town who were envious of this two-income couple.

Bernard family 1958. Mom was then 48 and Dad 50.


They lasted three more years in that place they were content to be, but their contract was non-renewed by the school board for some reason they had no right to know, and off they went again.
Teachers everywhere and in every age can tell similar stories. Even the ones who confide to their friends that they don’t like the Union, are the first ones to call for help in times of trouble.
Trust me. I know.
Something else has become very noticeable today. In the relatively short time I watch TV each day: the ads heavily focus on the “me”. No longer is it adequate to be covered only by a group insurance plan (if you are so fortunate as to be in one). Now the rage is to build a plan to your own specifications. Etc. Of course, with sophistication of data management, such things are possible these days. On the other hand, such schemes are just further evidence of the breakdown of our society into a mass that is the have-nots, versus the truly elite individuals who are the haves, and who believe they have earned and deserved their right to make choices.
This is a time of back-sliding. It is only a matter of time before there will be a reaction, and it won’t be pleasant. Unions didn’t happen because of benevolent and enlightened management. Quite the opposite.
One reaps what one sews.
Teachers, their unions, as well as other employees and their unions as well, may be open to criticism, as any other persons or entities are open to criticism, but we will all rue the day Unions go out of existence or are stripped of their power. Most of us are, after all, subordinates, and Wisdom does not necessarily follow Power.

Minneapolis Star Tribune cartoon September 25, 1995


This series began with Part 1 on February 17. It will likely continue.

#323 – Dick Bernard: Taking Leave…Brooke, Vince

/in , , /by

Sometimes events intersect and their very intersection adds to their individual meaning.
Such happened in my own life during the last two weeks.
It began with a phone call on Jan. 20. I heard Cathy gasp, and say “oh no.”
The call was about her niece’s 8-month old daughter, Brooke, hospitalized in critical condition with severe bleeding on the brain. She was not expected to survive. It was a genuine shock. A day earlier Brooke had been a normal, happy, eight month old child, born May 5, 2010.
Within 24 hours, an e-mail arrived from my cousin, concerning her brother and my cousin Vince, age 58, in the hospital “and is not expected to survive. Multiple systems are failing….” With Vince, the announcement did not come as a shock. He had not been well.
January 22, Vince died. Brooke followed January 23. One eight months old; the other nearly 59 – too young, yes, but 58 years older than little “Brooke-e” as the minister described her at her funeral, renaming Cinco de Mayo, “Cinco de Brooke-e“. Less than two months earlier he’d had Brooke in front of the congregation, he said. Like everyone else, he was still in shock.
(Click on photos to enlarge them)

Vince, January 17, 2000


Brooke on the family Christmas card, December, 2010


For Vince, there was no funeral. He was not married, and his surviving family members lived long distances away. His dog and two cats were rescued after his hospitalization and death. Memories are being shared in phone calls, letters, photos and e-mails. Best as I know, he would not have liked a funeral: crowds were something he abhorred. He was very intelligent; one sister described him as having the highest IQ in the family – and the family was blessed with very high IQ’s.
Most of us had not seen Vince for years. When he left his town, as for his brother’s funeral in 2000 (photo above), he came across as a very good humored guy. But life in the spotlight was not his kind of life. My guess is that he departed as he wished: no pretense, cared for, but not too many people to deal with. His struggles behind him. “Free at last…” to borrow a phrase.
Brooke, on the other hand, with all of eight months of living behind her, packed the church for her funeral. Her Dad is a policeman, and police care for their own: there had to be 100 or more law enforcement officers at the service, and they were an honor guard for the family.
She was eulogized, and laid to rest in the Church cemetery.
One hundred years ago, a death of someone her age would have been quite common; but today, an infant death is almost unheard of, and brings much grieving.
The whole town, it seemed, was out at the wintry cemetery where little Brooke was buried.
Vince’s ashes are now with the family…a tangible memory of his having been in our company for almost 60 years.
Funerals, memorials, ashes, are for the living, not for the dead.
All of us who were touched in any way by Vince and/or Brooke have our own thoughts on what their deaths mean in our own living with others, and in our own lives.
In their way, they teach us lessons about ourselves.
I feel blessed to having known them, their parents, siblings, grandparents and everyone in their circles.
They are at peace.

The cemetery where Brooke was buried January 29, 2011

#313 – Dick Bernard: Old Music and Family History

/in , , , , /by

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….

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

/in , , , , /by

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

/in , , /by

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

#302 – Dick Bernard: Christmas Eve, a story of winter in rural Minnesota

/in , , , , /by

Yesterday, on my daily walk, I came across a guy who, I thought, was acting strangely.
He had a shovel, and was on the right side of the street, taking a clod of snow out of the abundant snowbank there. Then, oddly, he carried the clod across to the left side of the street, and returned to repeat the process.
Being curious, I asked “why?”
Quite matter-of-factly the young man said “I’m building a snow fort for my daughter”.
Oh….

Show Fort on a suburban street


Such it is at the season where we seem to have a great abundance of White Christmas – 6″ more by our house again this morning.
I just walked by the man’s house again, and there it was, a snow fort. As kids interest span goes, there probably was a flurry of activity at the fort yesterday; today it’s on to other things. But it was a nice piece of “Christmas”.
Maybe because it’s cold up here, and indoors is more a normal state of affairs this time of year, thoughts turn quite easily to reminiscing, especially as one moves on in years.
I could build on the snow fort story with my own recollections in long ago North Dakota; or I could reprint a Grandpa story sent to me by a friend, himself a Grandpa, with this years Christmas card.
Rather, I’d like to offer a more lengthy story, shared by a Minnesota French-Canadian in the winter of 1996, in a newsletter I was then editing called Chez Nous. The story link is Lowell Mercil – Winter 001 . Most recently I included it as part of a family history book I’ve written about my father’s family and their 400 year history in North America.
It’s about 7 pages, so take your time. But you’ll enjoy the trip back in time to, perhaps, the 1930s in northwestern Minnesota near Crookston and Gentilly.
All best wishes.