Categories
Living in Society

We’re Going Home — Char Hawks

Autumn Blaze maple tree leaves.

Charlene Mae Vorwald Hawks, 93, died on Tuesday, March 21, 2023. During high school, after Father died, I got to know her son Tim and was a frequent visitor to their home on Grand Avenue in Davenport. I don’t remember when we started calling her Char. I have two strong memories of her.

The first was at their family home. The front door of the house opened into the living room where I was waiting for Tim. Char came in to say hello as parents of friends did in those days. As we conversed, one of her daughters came down the stairs ready to go out for the evening. Char immediately sent her back upstairs to address the hem length of her skirt, which was deemed too short to leave the house. There was resistance, then compliance. I can’t recall what Tim and I did afterward as it was anti-climactic.

The second memory is when I returned from military service in November 1979. I contacted her about her recent American Studies degree. We talked about my attending graduate school on the GI Bill. She encouraged me to pursue an American Studies degree. Based on her advice, I tracked down the graduate college dean, D.C. Spriestersbach, over the Christmas holidays when most faculty were not around. Char wrote a letter of recommendation and helped me get enrolled in the January term.

The obituary published on the funeral home website tells her story:

Charlene Mae Vorwald Hawks, 93, of Dubuque died Tuesday, March 21, 2023. Visitation will be from 3 to 7 p.m. Friday, March 31 at the Egelhof, Siegert and Casper Funeral Home and Crematory, 2659 Kennedy Road. Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated 11 a.m. Saturday at Resurrection Catholic Church, preceded by a Eulogy at 10:45 a.m. Graveside services will be at St. Joseph’s Catholic Cemetery, Bellevue, Iowa.

Charlene “Char” was born in Dubuque, Iowa, on Jan. 12, 1930. She was the only child of Elmer and Monica (Theisen) Vorwald. While born an only child, Char saw her cousins on both sides of her family as siblings. She spent many joyous days with them and loved them dearly.

Char earned her BA in Classical Languages from Clarke College. She continued her education while raising her children, earning her MA and PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa.

Char married James Edward “Ed” Hawks on November 19, 1951, at Nativity Church in Dubuque. Together they shared an unparalleled love and an eternal partnership. The years were filled with raising their children, enjoying their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and traveling the country. Wherever their travels took them, Ed commented that they met a relative of Char’s.  Their best days were spent at an old stone house, lovingly called the “Rock House,” near Bellevue.  Their seven children, and their children’s spouses, are Tim (Mary Lew McCormick), Shorewood, WI, Teri (John) Goodmann, Dubuque, IA, Cathy (Tony) Topf, Wonder Lake, IL, Laura Hawks, Iowa City, IA, Susan Hawks, Sugar Grove, IL,  Carolyn (Bill) Bates, Donahue, IA,  and Lisabeth Hawks, South Elgin, IL. Char is also survived by 21 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren. Char was preceded in death by her parents, Elmer and Monica Vorwald and her husband Ed Hawks.

Char was a force of nature and transferred that energy toward many different pursuits through her life. She volunteered for the March of Dimes, Girl Scouts, and the St. Paul the Apostle School Board all in Davenport, IA. Char was a proud member of Rotary International Club and was recognized as a Paul Harris Fellow. After earning her advanced degrees Char worked at Augustana College (Rock Island, IL) as an adjunct professor and the Director of the Reading and Writing (Lab) Center.  At Augustana College, Char became a beloved mentor of many students.  Never one to retire, Char and Ed opened Hawk Hollow Antiques and Collectibles in Bellevue, IA and Galena, IL. In all these endeavors Char developed close, life-long friendships that brought her much joy.

Memorials may be made to Hospice of Dubuque; the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary; Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey; or Luther Manor Communities. Char never met a person, plant, or book she didn’t love. In lieu of a memorial, feel free to donate a book to a library, volunteer time to a literacy organization, plant a tree, or plant some flowers. These meet Char’s greatest wish to make the world a better place. Family, faith, and education were most important to her.  

The family wishes to thank the nurses and staff at Luther Manor Communities and Hospice of Dubuque for their loving care and generous spirit.

I made a couple of trips to the Rock House, once with Tim about the time they were installing a furnace, and another for Tim and Mary Lew’s wedding reception. It was always a time away from quotidian affairs spent with friends and family. Char Hawks has now gone home and will be missed.

Categories
Living in Society

Winding Trail Home

Walking on the Lake Macbride Trail Jan. 14, 2020.

My life in politics is winding down as I turn to long delayed tasks and projects. When I returned to politics at the end of George W. Bush’s first term, I devoted time to everything political. I won an award as an activist. Hopeful candidates continue to see, in the database that tracks such things, I donated sizable amounts to congressional candidates. None of that time and money remains for politics as I stride down the inevitable path toward life’s end. There is too much else to do.

We Iowa Democrats were beaten hard during the last few general elections. While 2010 didn’t kill us, the return of Terry Branstad as governor that year was the beginning of the end. 2022 was the end with Republicans taking all but one statewide office, all four seats in the Congress and increasing their already large majorities in the state legislature. I support what Rita Hart, Zach Wahls and Jennifer Konfrst are doing to resuscitate the Democratic body politic, yet time and money are things of which I have little extra to spare. Basic living has to come first.

Unless we nominate a corrupt, lazy bastard, I expect to vote Democratic.

A generic life expectancy table says I have plus or minus 13 more years to live. It seems like a lot of time, yet if I engage in political campaigns, the days, months, and years will fly by like songbirds migrating back to Iowa in spring.

What is all this stuff that needs doing? I don’t know… we made a list. The bigger problem is thrill is gone from politics. When you get beat down three elections in a row, it is time let go of it so the next generation can make the world they envision. William Butler Yeats summed up where we are in a 1920 verse that continues to resonate:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Categories
Home Life

Prairie Home

Selection of books by Garrison Keillor waiting disposition.

It’s time for decisions… about Garrison Keillor.

Specifically, what should I do with this pile of books? Most were purchased at thrift stores for a dollar or less. I may have purchased the poetry book new, and maybe Homegrown Democrat. I can’t recall. Keillor’s books never made an impression on me the way Saul Bellow, Joan Didion, or John Irving did. He fancied himself a modern day Mark Twain, or something. I didn’t see it. Had I read more of Keillor, it may have been different. It’s getting late to start reading him now.

These nine books have been gathering dust in a row on the bottom shelf of the right-side stacks. They have been within reach for years. I could see them from the chair I bought for a buck from L.P. “Pat” Foster at Sharpless Auctions in the early 1980s. It is my writing chair for Pete’s sake! Keillor is a writer! The collector in me amassed the Keillor volumes back when I was in a more accumulating mood.

Disposing of Keillor’s books is a practical problem. Do I expect to read them? No, not likely. Will I refer to something he wrote in my writing? Maybe, yet it is hard to imagine when the radio show made the dominant impression. Do they have sentimental value? Maybe. Are there more worthy books for retention waiting in the next room for shelf space? Yes definitely and that will be the decider.

Keillor’s allure was when A Prairie Home Companion was live on Saturday night, the signal coming through the clock radio atop the Kenmore refrigerator in our Midwestern home. I did things in the kitchen and listened. In important ways, his show made Saturday nights for a long time. I miss them. Will I miss the stack of books? If I would miss them, I might have picked one of them up over the last ten years.

I remember when he signed off the air in 1987. It felt momentous. Our two-year old child wanted to go for a walk in the neighborhood at the same time. No regrets about going with her instead of hearing Keillor live. We all must make choices.

I rigged my cassette recorder to capture the last show while we were gone. When we returned from our walk, I discovered the tape had run out before the show ended. Keillor never went over, except this time. I was able to re-record it on Sunday when it aired on a different radio station that broadcast from the Quad Cities.

We now know Denmark didn’t work out, nor did his then new marriage. He came back to radio. There were other problems, they said. I’m not sure what happened, or in what order. I didn’t pay much attention to his personal life. The star of the show was always the yarns he spun. It felt like it would never end.

In a June 16, 2016 New York Times article aligning with his second departure from the radio program, Cara Buckley wrote, “Everything about “Prairie Home” — the Guy Noir and Lives of the Cowboys sketches, the spots for Powdermilk Biscuits and the Ketchup Advisory Board, the monologues about the fictional Lake Wobegon — sprang from Mr. Keillor’s imagination. But the man spinning the plates at the center of it all managed to stay a mystery, even to people who know him well.”

These days, I’m spinning my own plates. To use a more local metaphor, I don’t have enough time to card my own wool, and spin my own yarn to make a sweater. Plate-spinners have gone out of fashion.

I wish I could have one of those Saturday nights back. Like the one I shared with our child in Colorado Springs in their first apartment there. We went to the grocer together, prepared dinner, and talked to each other with the sounds of a Prairie Home Companion in the background. Those were golden times whose embrace is fleeting.

I will figure it out. These septuagenarian days are also fleeting. In the universe of things to do with used books, these will likely go to the public library’s used book sale. I may have bought some of them there. It seems likely they will find readers in our community, even if I can’t find the time in our prairie home to be one of them.

Categories
Writing

To WCW

Set my skepticism regarding doctors
     aside for now,
     while considering
     the pediatrician and poet.

Set it on that basket,
     where it's shine might
     illuminate this moment.

Would we have him as our physician?
Would we travel into the city with him?
Would we seek his company?
Would he have sought ours?

To have his eyes, his struggles...
     his medical practice,
     his practice of poetry...
     It was all one.

I took the basket to the garden,
     to dig potatoes,
     and struggle to get out
     from where I rooted with singular purpose.

~ Written in the Calumet, circa 1990.
Categories
Writing

Writing Caesura

Writing desk in 1980.

The first draft of part one of my autobiography is finished. The narrative begins with my maternal great, great grandfather’s arrival in 19th Century Minnesota and continues until I finished graduate school in 1981. It is a good place to end winter writing as my focus turns to the garden. Caesura.

I’m not finished with the narrative. I sent part one to a reader, and may send it to one or two more. I needed a break from the writing.

I identified as a writer after returning from military service. It persisted. I diligently worked at writing during the first year of our marriage. I felt the urge to do more to earn money and support our small family, and found a new job by March of year two. The birth of our child in year three changed everything. I found outlets for writing through the years yet it wasn’t until 2007, when our child left Iowa, and I started a blog, that I began to find a consistent voice.

Much research and sorting remains. On Saturday I spent several hours reviewing digital files. I deleted so many, One Drive sent me an email asking if I was sure I wanted to delete them. There were some useful passages and many more hours of this lie ahead.

That’s not to mention the artifacts laying around in boxes. All of it needs review. Yet there is a garden to plant and tend to. I’ll work things out in the pre-dawn hours of each day.

The next chapters will be more challenging, as by the time of our marriage, life had gotten complicated. A spouse, a new job, a child, and the challenges of working in the Reagan era all created demands. I met them as well as I was able.

I wrote the outline for part two and have about 60,000 words. As I find relevant writing and subjects, I can copy and paste them there. Once the garden is in, hopefully by Memorial Day, I can take another look at what I have.

In the meanwhile, I had no idea what a big task this would be. As long as my health remains good, I’ll continue to write and edit until this work is done. There is so much invested in it, I can’t abandon it now.

Categories
Living in Society

The Great Shuffle

Filled Bankers Boxes.

The back seat of the Chevy Spark is loaded with boxes of books to be donated to Goodwill. Between this load and the previous two, I downsized by about 500 books. It doesn’t look like I made a bit of progress.

The goal is to reduce the library so it fits in my writing room, which holds about 2,000 books. Remaining books should be linked to some actual or potential writing project. I’m done keeping books because I might refer to them later. As I look at each book, this is a litmus test: am I going to read or use it now, or not. There is a long way to go to reduce the quantity to fit the space.

It snowed overnight and the ground is covered. It should melt during the next couple of days, yet today will be indoors work. I’m ready for spring.

The house is getting crowded with vegetable and flower seedlings. I finished with early planting yesterday. Next week I tackle tomatoes, peppers, arugula, and lettuce. Once there is a warm, clear day, I’ll move the mulch and set up the portable greenhouse so all the seedlings can move there. With the cold, wintry mix weather, I haven’t felt like outdoors work.

I drafted an obituary for my high school friend‘s widow this morning. It is difficult to compress 71 years of life into 500 words. This is especially true for a physician who has had countless contacts with people in the community, and lived a full life. An obituary still serves as a public notice of death and is important.

Facts need research before going to publication. In several ways, the obituary is a last chance to get things right. We owe getting it right to the deceased, and to the survivors. I tend to be less specific if I don’t know something with certainty. Thus far, no one has complained I left anything out.

I finished my 19th book of the year and need to browse the stacks for the twentieth. Lucky for me, there are still plenty of options.

Categories
Living in Society

We’re Going Home — Joe Garrity

Fallen Leaves

Tracking down remaining folks from our cohort in the old neighborhood was possible. Joe Garrity died Wednesday night and his grade school classmates at Saint Vincent’s deserved to hear the news. That neighborhood no longer exists in the real world, yet I found most of them.

Joe was born the day before I was on Dec. 27, 1951. He lived with his father after his mother died in an automobile crash. Saint Vincent’s, where since 1895 the Catholic Church had cared for children as an orphanage and school, was not far from where they lived.

I met Joe in high school in 1966. We remained friends until near the end when Parkinson’s Disease had his spouse writing his letters and emails. He would occasionally sign a holiday card. We corresponded by mail, and later, email after we both left Davenport in 1970 for university.

I would sleep over at his house when his father was on the road as a truck driver for The Rock Island Lines. In one of my first cooking experiences, Joe and I would make pizza using a Chef Boyardee boxed pizza kit. They had a big house and we had it all to ourselves. The pizza was good.

I referred Joe to the Turn-Style department store where I worked in high school. He started work and didn’t last long. I remember him wearing the vest that made a uniform for us as we worked the sales floor.

We were both in the National Honor Society. A group of us high achievers formed an inter-mural basketball team. We had a high grade point average yet weren’t very good at basketball. We also recruited the only Hispanic in our class to join our team. He later showed us around the LULAC club in West Davenport.

After graduation, Joe went to Georgetown for his undergraduate studies. A group of us from high school visited him and another fellow classmate at Georgetown over the Thanksgiving weekend during our freshman year. He graduated and returned to Iowa to attend medical school, receiving his MD in 1978. When orthopedics didn’t work out for him after an initial period in the program, he became an emergency room physician. We lived together in University Heights while I finished graduate school and he commuted to Dubuque and other workplaces.

While I lived in Mainz, Germany, Joe and his brother Bill made a brief stop on a European tour. Bill lived in Washington, D.C. and attended many cultural events there. He wanted to see an opera at the Mainz Opera House. I got us tickets to Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca. After a long day at work we had dinner at a Yugoslavian restaurant near the opera house. I made it through most of the story. Then… just as Tosca was dramatically preparing to jump from the parapet to her death… I fell asleep. When we visited a jazz club the following day, Bill fell asleep on his bar stool and fell. We were all very tired.

The last few years have been tough for Joe with recovery from a fall, surgery, and fractures, in addition to Parkinson’s Disease. At the end, the coronavirus invaded the household and Joe didn’t survive.

There are only so many friends of more than 50 years. Joe Garrity will be missed.

UPDATE: I helped Bonnie write the following obituary, which was distributed graveside:

Joseph G. Garrity, 71, of Dubuque, died on March 22, 2023. He was interred at Casper Creek Natural Cemetery near Galena, Ill.

Garrity was born on Dec. 27, 1951, of Eileen Honore Quinn and Harry Patrick Garrity, in Davenport. He grew up there, attending St. Vincent’s Catholic School and Assumption High School. In 1970, he entered Georgetown University, where he earned his undergraduate science degree. Returning to Iowa, he earned his Doctor of Medicine at the University of Iowa in 1978.

Joe Garrity practiced medicine as an emergency room physician in Evansville, Indiana, and in Dubuque, later working at Medical Associates’ Acute Care clinic and Occupational Medicine for 30 years. He was a 36-year resident of Galena. Toward the end of his life, he and Bonnie split their time between Galena and Washington, D.C., eventually moving to Dubuque.

He married Bonnie Lamar on February 14, 1987, in Galena. His life’s passions were art, exploring the world, and trekking in the foothills of the Himalayas. He especially enjoyed his treks to the base camps of Mt. Everest, K-2, Mt. Elbrus in Russia, and to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Joe Garrity is survived by his wife Bonnie Garrity, by his brother Michael Garrity (Diane) in Dubuque, sister Nancy Waack (Jim) in Rutledge, Missouri, and ten nieces and nephews. In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by his brothers William and Harry, and nephews Michael and Gregory Waack.

Memorial contributions made be made to:
Casper Creek Natural Cemetery
P. O. Box 195
Elizabeth, Illinois 61028

Joe’s expanded obituary appeared on April 19, 2023 in the Galena Illinois Gazette here.

Categories
Living in Society

Thursday Mood in the Iowa Legislature

My writing desk in 1980.

Editor’s Note: The Iowa legislature is considering a law that requires our county and two others where state universities are located, to divide into districts where each district elects only one county supervisor. Currently, we elect all five supervisors at large. I tried to persuade my State Representative Brad Sherman to vote no should leadership bring this bill up.

Brad,

It is in every Johnson County voter’s interest to vote no on SF 443.

The population of Johnson County is such that creating districts would lock in Democratic supervisors in all five districts, which is exactly the opposite of what proponents of this bill want. I don’t know about you, but I want the freedom to vote for the best candidates for all five supervisor seats as the current at-large elections enable. Don’t impinge on my freedom!

The one recent supervisor election won by Republican John Etheredge was won by Republicans getting out the vote in the entire county in a low turnout election. So, there’s another reason to favor the at-large system. It elected the first Republican supervisor in many years.

Maintaining the current at-large supervisor election process is in our best interests. Republicans have the votes to do almost whatever they want. In this case, voting no on SF 443 is the right choice. Do what makes sense and is right if leadership brings the bill up for a vote. Vote no.

Thanks for reading my email. Make it a great day!

Regards, Paul
Paul Deaton
House District 91 Constituent

Categories
Writing

Box of Reality

Shoe box full of print photographs, March 21, 2023.

I found a passport I thought was lost in a box of photographs on Monday. It expired in 1983, issued by the American Consulate in Frankfurt, Germany. I put it in the drawer with the previously expired passport it replaced. One less thing nagging at me as a result of the discovery.

I was opening unlabeled bankers boxes to see what was inside. It makes no sense to stuff things in a box without a label, yet that’s where I find myself. Along with some transportation memorabilia, one box contained this shoe box full of photographs. The images covered the entire timeline of the book draft I had finished Sunday. I thought these photos were lost forever.

My habit of making photo albums (using selected images after developing and printing batches of photos) resulted in this collection. It contains remainders of rolls of film from several of those albums. The prints are all mixed up, with different sets of film stuck in the shoe box in what appeared to be random order. At a minimum, I must organize them the way I discussed a few days ago. This is a big and welcome find!

Next will be to organize and edit the images to create another layer of the book narrative. I also want to label them in groups, so I can more quickly find something for my writing. This will take longer than I want, yet it should improve the writing.

I looked through a few hundred photographs yesterday afternoon after chores. I have living memory of taking most of those shots, recognizing them and the place they were taken almost immediately. The harder part is determining what these moments of reality mean in the context of my septuagenarian life. I expect that will be a collaborative project. Already I sent a duplicate of a photo taken in 1981 to the subjects. There will be more of that type of sharing.

It seems best for the autobiography to have been drafted before looking at these photos. Tapping memory and public documents enabled a reasonably researched narrative. Now that I found more photos, we’ll see what else memory dredges up for inclusion in the book.

With Spring arriving yesterday afternoon, it will be challenging to make time for writing. Yard and garden work is also important. After sunrise, I will be drawn outdoors. All the same, how could writing about these memories not be meaningful? I can’t wait!

Categories
Living in Society

Next for Iowa Democrats

Rita Hart

A letter-to the editor writer in the Cedar Rapids Gazette admonished readers this morning.

Wake up, Iowans, and get off the sidelines — because the next freedom they take away could be yours.

“LGBTQ+ bills in Legislature a sign of what’s to come,” by Karen Butler, Cedar Rapids Gazette, March 20, 2023.

Wake up call noted, yet it wasn’t really needed. For people who still follow local news, we are quite aware of Republican hegemony in our state government. We are aware of political attitudes toward trans-gender surgery and support because our state legislators quote chapter and verse from the New Testament in support of their belief God assigned biological sex at birth. Describing something they call “gender fluidity” as a political movement, Republicans oppose it. As they remind us, they won the 2022 midterm election. As the recent Selzer poll found, “Majorities of Iowans support Republican legislation to restrict instruction on LGBTQ topics in schools and ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors.”

What are we going to do besides wake up since most of us never went to sleep?

The Iowa Democratic Party elected Rita Hart as chair on Jan. 28, and she has been steady at it answering that question. She appeared on the March 10 edition of Iowa Press where she outlined her plans to stay in conversations about presidential preference during the 2024 Democratic caucuses. She approached the party’s future in a thoughtful manner typical of her management style.

She recently sent a letter outlining what’s been happening since her election as Chair. Hart wrote, “My focus is squarely on how we can start winning elections again.” She introduced a “Mandate for Change” to facilitate winning elections:

  • Reconnect with folks on the ground.
  • Rebuild our fundraising base — and make it sustainable.
  • Organize everywhere, all year.
  • Improve our data and technology.
  • Hold Republicans accountable in the media.

As part of the rollout of this new Democratic mandate, Hart appeared on Sunday, March 19, at Terry Trueblood Park in Iowa City at a fundraiser. Also speaking were Iowa Senate Minority Leader Zach Wahls and Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst. I discontinued donating to political causes because with the increases in utilities, groceries, property taxes, and other retirement expenses and living costs, the $50 requested donation was more than our budget could afford. Wahls posted two photographs of the event on social media, so we know it happened. The event was lost in the noise of the Iowa Women’s Basketball team advancing to the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA championship. I hope they raised a lot of money.

The problem Iowa Democrats have is we need to change how we relate to other members of society. While the five-point mandate Hart outlined includes essential requirements for the party infrastructure, we have missed the boat on messaging in media, and in relating to our neighbors. The latter is more critical, although media, especially radio and television, influences the electorate of which pollster Ann Selzer is taking the pulse.

Most of the people with whom I interact every day are Republicans. This is Iowa, and for the most part, that’s to be expected. I learned that lesson after the 1960 presidential campaign when Richard Nixon won Iowa. For those historically challenged, John F. Kennedy became president after that election. We Iowa Democrats took refuge in our national politics, not unlike what we did after the 2020 general election that brought us President Joe Biden. National politics doesn’t adequately help us win local elections.

I plan to do what I can to support Rita Hart in her newest role as party chair. She said, “I’ll level with you, we have a lot of work to do, and building up the infrastructure we need to win is not going to be easy…” We knew that, the same way we heard the wake up call from Karen Butler in her letter. There are limits to what we can do as individuals. There are few in my area interested in spending any time on politics, let alone building the Democratic Party. This doesn’t bode well for electing Democrats here, yet we Iowa Democrats are a tenacious bunch. I haven’t given up on Iowa, nor should readers.