Category: Autobio – Originally From America

Flying Close to the Sun

The Book of the Week is “Flying Close to the Sun” by Cathy Wilkerson, published in 2007.

Born in January 1945 in Hartsdale, a northern suburb of New York City, the author spent most of her childhood in Connecticut. At a young age, she was drawn to politics. At Swarthmore College, she joined the group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and engaged in political activism for decades. Many young people were brainwashed into thinking that the revolutions in China, Vietnam and Cuba had been successful in creating a societal paradise.

In turbulent 1960’s America, the counter-cultural attitude was:

“If corporations were stealing from us and selling us products that killed, then we too could steal from them and support the movement.”

As is well known, during the Vietnam War, more than a few American companies were cooperating with the U.S. government to supply the U.S. military with napalm and agent orange, two chemicals toxic to vegetation as well as humans.

In June 1969, SDS held a convention for its chapters across the country. However, there was lots of infighting over ideology and the direction of the movement. Later that month, a few SDS members wrote a paper that said that the United States government should be overthrown because it was imperialist, and oppressed blacks and the poor. The plan was that the revolutionaries would impose Marxist-Leninist socialism so that Americans in the new world order could live happily ever after.

The paper inspired some SDS members, including Wilkerson, to form a new group which called itself the Weatherman. She began to think that the only way to change the world was through revolution. Weatherman started to provoke the local Chicago police the way the Black Panthers had been doing. The former became very focused on the Black Power movement, at the expense of the women’s movement.

Wilkerson gave talks that advocated working with women of all ages around issues of domestic violence and workplace harassment. She was bullied at a self-criticism meeting about not being more against racism. She was told she was being selfish; that blacks were being treated worse than women. SDS leaders said that’s why blacks deserved more attention. The group should focus on the blacks and when they achieved equality, then women’s equality would follow.

In summer 1969 in Columbus, Ohio, two dozen SDSers recruited high schoolers in their hangouts such as streets, beaches, bars, etc. In three not-so-great neighborhoods, they incited blacks to riot and commit violence against the police. Unsurprisingly, the mayor called in the National Guard.

That same summer, SDS member Mike Klonsky resigned. He had realized that violence was a childish way to resolve conflicts, and suggested that instead, people work through their anger about injustice by pressuring politicians to combat racism, and raise awareness in workplaces.

The late 1960’s and early 1970’s saw incidents of unrest that scarred the American psyche; the most well-publicized included: Columbia University in spring 1968, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968, San Francisco State College beginning in late 1968, and Kent State in Ohio in May 1970. Wilkerson and others in the “movement” thought that these incidents indicated that activists were catching on and making progress.

As a low-level member of Weatherman, Wilkerson lived in the collective, and did what they did. She learned martial arts, exercised, and discussed and argued for hours about the agenda of the organization. The collective voted to do away with monogamy, as that would allow full participation of all members. The group wanted to have a collective sense of humanity– it was bigger than oneself.

Read the book to learn of a game-changing event that occurred in March 1970 involving Wilkerson, that radically changed her group’s and her circumstances, and of much more about her life and times.

Quiet Strength – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Quiet Strength, The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of A Winning Life” by Tony Dungy with Nathan Whitaker, published in 2007.

Born in 1954, Dungy grew up to become a professional football coach. In 1999, at an after-game press conference, he expressed his displeasure with the referees’ rulings and instant replays. He was fined by the then-NFL commissioner ten thousand dollars.

About four years later, and again, about six years later– an instant replay helped Dungy’s team win in the last play of the game. The way the former win occurred was unprecedented in that the team scored three touchdowns in the last four minutes of an away game on Monday night, against the latest Super Bowl winners, in his original hometown. On his birthday.

Dungy thought God had something to do with that. Read the book to learn much more about his religious bent, philosophy, and the different roles he played in his life, in addition to that of coach.

Tom Landry

The Book of the Week is “Tom Landry, An Autobiography” by Tom Landry with Gregg Lewis, published in 1990.

Landry was born in September 1924 in the small town of Mission, Texas. He enjoyed a boyhood typical for his time and place– bicycle riding, fishing in the Rio Grande, and watching movies at the local theater every Saturday afternoon. Every Saturday night, Methodist and Baptist families mingled at a block party in the neighborhood. Kids in those days organized themselves in their own pick-up football games at the local sandlot.

Although Landry received a full scholarship from the University of Texas, beginning in 1944, he flew thirty missions for the Army Air Corps in the war. When he returned to school in 1947, he played the position of fullback, but suffered various injuries. By the time he graduated in 1949, he had become a rusher, and gotten signed by the football Yankees of the All-American Football Conference. Some of his fellow players were already in their mid-thirties, after having completed their military service and educations.

In 1954, Landry’s leadership talent was recognized. He served as an assistant coach, punter and played defense for the New York Giants football team in the NFL. At that time, they played in Yankee Stadium. On the day of the Championship game in December 1956, the field was frozen. The Giants’ management provided the team with basketball sneakers so they wouldn’t slip and slide on the ice.

Landry remarked that his and Vince Lombardi’s coaching styles were both successful, although they were starkly different. Lombardi’s team, the Green Bay Packers, played well because if they didn’t, they would receive the coach’s wrath. They emotionally bonded like soldiers (whom they had been) so that they wanted to win for their teammates more than themselves. Landry didn’t make his players fear him, but armed them with knowledge and confidence.

In their generations, Landry and Lombardi experienced an extremely serious: financial crisis, and war. These forced them to adopt a team-oriented mentality in order to survive. Their children’s and grandchildren’s generations– who came of age in the 1960’s– prompted a tumultuous shift in American culture that resulted in the recognition of the value of the individual. Unfortunately, that mindset has been taken to the extreme with the current younger generation. The technology of the Internet allows everyone on earth to express themselves with few filters– making for a very cluttered global communications environment.

Landry opined that Lombardi gave the impression that he was hellbent on winning, but– he still cared about people. These days, the kinds of people who garner the most attention on social media tend to be sociopathic (of course there are exceptions). Landry characterized them thusly: “If winning is the only thing that matters… You’d cheat. You’d sacrifice your marriage or your family to win. Relationships wouldn’t matter.” The god-fearing Methodist Landry believed that his religion led people to behave better, but now he’d roll over in his grave.

Anyway, the summer of 1960 saw Landry talent-spotting and recruiting 193 potential members of the Dallas Cowboys– an expansion team that was later drastically winnowed down to a few tens of players at their training camp in Oregon. In their first season, the Cowboys tied the Giants in the second-to-last game, else they would have lost all of their then-twelve games. Nonetheless, the Cowboys’ owner knew that nurturing a winning football team takes time, and had faith in Landry’s abilities as a coach. In 1964, he awarded Landry a ten-year contract as head coach. Landry took that as a religious sign that coaching a professional football team was what he should continue to do with his life.

Landry contracted with IBM to use a computer program to analyze potential players’ talents in the NFL draft in order to reap the cream of the crop for his Cowboys. After the 1963 season and thereafter, he reviewed films of his existing players in actual games to identify their strengths and weaknesses. In 1965, he hired an industrial psychologist, who helped his players set team and individual goals. Preparing Lambeau Field in Green Bay for the 1967 season, Lombardi installed an underground heating system, which cost $80,000. On playoff day, December 31, the temperature hovered around negative 16 degrees Fahrenheit.

Read the book to learn about the Cowboys’ star quarterback of the 1970’s, the team’s amazing comebacks, and much more about Landry’s trials, tribulations and triumphs in coaching and in life.

The Generous Years – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “The Generous Years, Remembrances of a Frontier Boyhood” by Chet Huntley, published in 1968.

Born in March 1911, the author grew up in Montana. When he was about two years old, his immediate family took advantage of the Homestead Act, claiming 320 acres of ranch and farm land in northern Montana. Extended family members acquired hundreds of additional acres. His mother’s father was particularly helpful in beginning to make the land livable and workable. The author detailed the extensive hard manual labor required for doing so.

They had to dig a well, construct various buildings on the site as residences for people and animals, for storage; not to mention outhouses. They had to purchase and maintain farm machinery (primitive at the time, of course), and install fences. The author learned how to approach and care for farm animals without getting injured. Regardless of the author’s grandfather’s accumulation of life experiences that warded off reasonably preventable problems, there still occurred all kinds of disasters beyond the family’s control.

One year, in less than ten minutes, a hailstorm ruined the flax crop. Other years, devastation was wrought by: locusts, rust spores, tumbleweed of thistle, fires resulting from a lightning storm and other causes, blizzards, drought, etc., etc., etc. The author described the tenor of the times– one of virtue and cooperation among the members (not just his relatives) of his community. “There were bills to be paid in town. They must be settled; that was a point of honor and conscience.”

Due to financial struggle, the author’s father was forced to return to his previous career as a railroad telegrapher, which required the family to move around Montana every few months or years. The author began his formal education in a one-room schoolhouse, with about a dozen other kids (which eventually included his three younger sisters) in grades one through eight, and one teacher.

Read the book to learn how the author’s education of the outside world accelerated when his family moved to urban areas such as Saco and Butte (hint: he and his high school friends were treated almost like adults in the gambling halls, speakeasies, bordellos and elsewhere), and many more aspects of the kinder, simpler America of his generation.