The resolution for 1979-1980 was: “Resolved: That the federal government should significantly strengthen the regulation of mass media communication in the United States.” Once again the resolution was much more limiting than the ones of the middle 1970’s. In the fifteen elimination rounds at the NDT the affirmative teams won eight debates, and the negatives won seven.
The coaching staff was quite different. Vince Follert left for Western Illinois. The Benoits also moved on. Jack Kay earned his PhD and accepted a job at the University of Nebraska. I don’t remember if Sheri Brimm was still around. Tuna Snider, Ron Lee, and Gerry Cox joined the staff.
As in the other years, it was all hands on deck for the first couple of months. We spent a great deal of time working with the inexperienced novices in order to find compatible partners and to get them reasonably well prepared for the novice tournament sponsored by the Michigan Intercollegiate Speech League.
I think that Gerry Cox mostly worked with the novices. The only one with significant high school experience was Dennis Corder.
We also reprised the trip to Ann Arbor to research in U-M’s libraries. I don’t remember who came, but the productivity matched the standard set in the previous year.
Varsity: Kent Martini and Chris Varjabedian graduated. Kevin Buchanan returned to the team, and George paired him with Scott Harris. I don’t know why George skipped over Mike Craig, who had had an excellent year in 1978-79 and had also displayed a great attitude. Maybe it was because neither he nor Scott had been a second negative at Wayne State. At any rate, Mike debated with Dave Debold all year.
Someone entered the ZSR library to study and left with a new (to him) cowboy hat.
I do not remember many specifics from this year. I remember only one tournament that I definitely attended, Wake Forest. I do not remember how we did. What I do remember is that I left my cowboy hat in the Z. Smith Reynolds library there.
I don’t remember what specific cases the Wayne State debaters defended during the year. I do, however, remember the one run by the Sutherland twins who debated for Louisville. Their case was about free speech and the cable television industry that was still in its infancy. I judged them on their affirmative several times. and I always voted for them. So did a lot of other judges; no one was surprised that they received a first round bid to the NDT.
I noticed that the second affirmative for Louisville always gave heavy emphasis in the 2AC to a piece of evidence that had seemed innocuous when it was read in the opening speech. Someone on the Wayne State team found the original source for this quote, and I worked with them to develop a sophisticated block of arguments about it. This foiled their strategy. We never lost to Louisville again.
The other popular case that I remember was one that banned billboards. They supposedly caused “blight” and traffic accidents. I thought back on how much I loved Burma Shave billboards and the countless roadside signs for Wall Drug. Also, we would never have made that pleasurable stop at Reptile Land in the previous year if those ads were banned.
These advantages certainly seemed as real to me as the alleged problems, but I could think of no persuasive way to turn them into debate arguments.
Scott and Kevin had a great year, from start to finish. They earned the distinction of being the first Wayne State team to receive a first round bid1 to the National Debate Tournament, which was held at the University of Arizona. Going into the tournament they were the ninth-ranked team in the country.
Mike and Dave also had a good year. They became the fourth consecutive team from Wayne State to qualify for the NDT at the District 5 tournament. So, in my six years of coaching at U-M and Wayne State, seven of my teams qualified for the NDT, and five teams made it through districts. The one team that did not qualify barely missed after going 0-8 the year before. I was definitely a better coach than I was a debater.
I got to attend the tournament, too. I had seniority, but I had been in the doghouse academically for several months. I knew that George would go, but if he brought anyone else, I thought that it would be Tuna or Ron. At this nationals I spent a lot of time judging.
The adventure of flying to Tucson is described here.
This photo is from 1970 at UA.
We had a great time in Tucson. The weather was fantastic, and the atmosphere at the university was invigorating after nine months in the cold in Detroit. Young men and women were playing Frisbee in shorts and tee shirts on the lawn of one of the buildings. One morning I went on a jog with Scott and Dave. We even persuaded George to take us to an authentic Mexican restaurant for supper one evening.
Scott and Kevin qualified for the elimination rounds with a 6-2 record. Scott was the #8 speaker in the tournament. Unfortunately, the guys were upset in a 3-2 decision by two ladies from Southern Cal even though Wayne State was on the affirmative. I don’t remember Mike and Dave’s record, but I think that they finished near the middle of the field.
I don’t know how George finagled it, but Scott (partnering with Dave Debold) also won a first-round bid to the 1981 tournament. He and Dave were again 6-2, and Scott was the #2 speaker. Wayne State won its octafinal round, but fell to Pittsburgh, the eventual champions, in the quarterfinals.
I was very happy to read in the NDT book for 1981 that Kim Garvin and Nancy Legge also debated at the NDT that year. I wonder what happened to Mike and Kevin. Kim and Nancy also attended the 1982 edition of the tournament.
1. In two consecutive years, 1967 and 1968, Wayne State was exempted from qualifying for the NDT because its team had debated in the final round of the previous year’s tournament. First round bids were first implemented in 1973.
The debate topic for 1978-1979 was: “Resolved: That the federal government should implement a program which guarantees employment opportunities for all United States citizens in the labor force.”
My recollection of this entire year is spotty. I don’t even remember any specific cases that debaters were running. That word “guarantee” was pretty constraining. Anyone who did not like economics was in for a long year. The national unemployment rate at the time was about 6 percent, but it was slowly decreasing.
As in the previous year all of the coaching staff (except George) spent the first few months working with the novices. I don’t remember any details at all.
The varsity team largely remained the same. Debbie McCully did not exactly graduate (as explained here), but she was no longer associated with the team. Kevin Buchanan was still in school, but he decided not to participate in debate. Chris Varjabedian rejoined the team. George paired him with Scott Harris, and they were clearly the top team all year long. However, Mike Craig and Kent Martini also had a very good year.
All of the debate coaches returned from 1977-1978. Sheri Brimm was added.
The top novice team was Dave Debold and Kim Garvin. They were also quite an “item” for most of the year.
The team did not go to Camp Tamarack in 1978. I am not sure why not. I don’t remember anyone discussing it. I offered to organize a research trip to U-M for the varsity debaters. George deemed it a great idea. I drove a group of the debaters to Ann Arbor. It was probably on a Sunday; Saturday in the fall is devoted to football at U-M. I showed everyone where the libraries were. We then split up, researched for a few hours, and then gathered for lunch. Afterwards, people changed locations and continued researching. Everyone had a pretty good time, and a lot was accomplished. The debaters were a little overwhelmed by the amount and quality of materials available at U-M. I knew very well that there was a lot more within a mile or two, but I did not rub it in.
The social side of Tamarack was replaced by a Halloween party. It is described here.
Varsity: I must have gone to other tournaments during the course of the year, but the only one that I specifically remember is when I accompanied the two top teams on the “Florida Swing”. Scott, Chris, Mike, Kent, and I piled in a van supplied by the university’s motor pool and set off on I-75 for Tallahassee, the home of Florida State University. My recollection is that George made arrangements for us to stay overnight in his favorite “ma and pa” motel in Tennessee.
Everybody on the trip was quite serious about the upcoming debates. Quite a bit of productive work got done. Even so, it was an awfully long time to sit in the car.
Despite the backbreaking drive the debaters did well at FSU. I think that Scott and Chris made it to the final round. Mike and Kent also qualified for the elimination rounds. I have a vague recollection that they may have even been scheduled to face each other in an elimination round, and I had to decide who should advance.
The second tournament was at Central Florida University in Orlando. We had a free day in between tournaments. Unfortunately, there was not nearly enough time available to stand in line at Disney World or any of the other major tourist attractions in the Orlando area.
Fortune shone on us when we were just about halfway to our destination. I spotted a billboard for an interesting place called Reptile Land on state highway 301 near the town of Lawtey, FL, southeast of Jacksonville. We decided to give it a try.
By the time of our visit it was a little bigger than it appears in the photo. It also actually had more than just snakes and alligators. As I recall, their was at least one chimpanzee and diverse other birds and mammals. And there were no lines!
Reptile Land was obviously a tourist trap, but we all had a good time thee. I regret to tell readers that readers that Reptile Land closed forever not long after our visit.
UCF was not yet known for football, but it had a very good debate team in 1978-1979.
After that nice little break we were all business for the rest of our time in the Sunshine State. In the Central Florida tournament both teams again qualified for the elimination rounds. This time they landed on different sides of the bracket. Both teams won their octafinal rounds. Both teams won their quarterfinal rounds. Both teams also won in the semis.
So, for the first time in the long history of the Wayne State program, two of its teams closed out the finals of a varsity tournament. We brought home both the first and second place trophies. It was quite an accomplishment, and we were all super-pumped. We could not wait to call George and tell him the news. The trip back to Detroit was much longer than the drive down to Florida in terms of miles, but the time flew by.
It seems strange to report that that jubilant return trip is my last clear memory of the 1978-1979 debate season. I remember that Scott and Chris cruised through districts, but I don’t even recall whether I attended with them. Kent and Mike were awarded a second-round bid. So, for the first time ever Wayne State had two teams at the 1979 NDT at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. George did not bring a second coach, even though the team drove. I don’t remember why not.
At the NDT Scott and Chris qualified with a 6-2 record. This was the first time that Wayne State had qualified for the elimination rounds at NDT since 1967. Kent and Mike won five and lost three. They were the only 5-3 team that missed the elimination rounds. They persevered through a very tough schedule; and when their fate was announced, the crowd applauded their performance. I am sure, however, that it was a tough moment, especially for Kent, who was a senior.
Scott and Chris lost in the octafinals to Harvard on a 3-2 decision. Thus ended one of the greatest varsity debate seasons in Wayne State’s history. Wayne’s teams reached the quarterfinals of various tournaments twenty-seven times, the same number as in the previous year, but the close-out and the NDT performance made this year even better.
Televised Debates. For a few months Wayne State participated in a weekly television program on Channel 20 called City Update. It might have been the lowest-rated program on Detroit’s lowest-rated station. I was already quite familiar with the program because the main presenter was a very good-looking young lady whose name I don’t remember. They gave the team a fifteen-minute segment to present a one-on-one debate on a topic of our choosing. Many debaters and some of the IE performers got to appear before the camera.
Fire did not kill Garth Gimble. He was impaled on a Christmas tree.
The best debate was the one in December in which the topic was something like “Is there a Santa Claus?” Mike Craig stole the show as the negative. One of his arguments was entitled “Christmas tree deaths”. He based it on a segment of the Fernwood 2Night show. However, Mike lost; Jack Kay showed up in a Santa suit to deliver the verdict.
I moderated several of these debates. All that I did was to introduce the debaters and the topic. I was surprised that the whole operation was not more professional. The set consisted of a rostrum in an empty room. Only four of us were present—the two debaters, the moderator, and the camera person. On most occasions the camera person was the attractive lady who also hosted the show. Our segment of the show was taped, but we only got one attempt. If someone flubbed something, it was aired anyway.
On one occasion, however, the rules were slightly changed. Three of us that day taped a promo for City Update—the lovely hostess, a debater (I don’t remember which one; it might have been Ruth Kay), and me standing beside one another behind the rostrum. Someone else might have operated the camera, but I think that the presenter set the focus and then just let it run.
We did six takes. I said my lines correctly the first five times, but either the hostess or the debater was not happy with it. On the sixth attempt they both were fine, but I hesitated a little at one point That was the one we used because I said that I didn’t care.
High School Tournament: Every year that I coached at Wayne State the FU hosted a tournament for high school debaters. We all pitched in. In 1979 I was in charge of the tabulation room. Kent Martini and one or two other people helped out. Kent was done with his portion of the final results before the others had finished theirs. When he announced this fact, I told him to check everything again.
Well, he didn’t do it, and George ended up announcing incorrect results. When the mistake was realized, Kent went to George and apologized. He even told George that I had told him to check everything again.
Kent felt terrible, and, as I described here, I knew exactly how he felt. At least he admitted his mistake.
High School Institute. In each summer Wayne State hosted a week-long institute for high school debaters. U-M also hosted an institute, but theirs was more of a camp. Students stayed in the dorms, and it was famous throughout the state. The U-M institute was run by a Wayne State alumna, Jayne Greco1, who was also the debate coach at Kimball High School in Royal Oak, the institution that Kent Martini, Mike Craig, and Dave Debold attended.
In the 1979 edition of Wayne State’s institute I gave a lecture on topicality arguments. I insisted that they were an important part of argumentation in competitive debates. At some point I inserted the phrase “despite what Mrs. Greco might say at the U. of M. Institute”. This got back to her, and she complained to George.
George told me that I should call her and apologize to her. My sweaty hands nearly dialed her number several times, but I never did. I did not know what to say to her. I wasn’t sorry. I chose my words carefully, and I did not say anything untrue or insulting. She was notorious for thinking that only a few cases should be allowed so that no negative team would need to argue about topicality. I strongly disagreed.
Besides, I really did not care what she thought of me.
1. Jayne Greco died in 2000. Her rather sparse obituary can be found here.
I arrived at Wayne State with a masters degree in speech communication from Michigan. If I wanted to get paid to coach debate, I had to be a graduate student. Since I already had a masters, that meant that I needed to commit to work towards a PhD.
PhD candidates were required to take a given number of additional graduate-level classes. A few had to be outside of the department. Repeating classes in the same basic subject taken at other institutions was perfectly acceptable.
A dissertation was also required. The basic requirement was that it include original research in an important topic under the aegis of speech communication. My unhappy experience in that endeavor is described here.
PhD candidates at Wayne State were required to make three oral presentations. The audience for all three was the student’s committee of “advisers”, which consisted of three professors from the speech department and one from another department. The advisers could ask questions, make statements, and suggest improvements. At the end each presentation met and told the candidate whether he passed or failed.
The required presentations were these:
The oral examination. The outside adviser was not included in this exercise. Each adviser could ask any number of questions about any subject.
The defense of the prospectus for the dissertation. The prospectus is a printed document that outlines the purpose of the study, the plans for research, and the method of evaluation.
Defense of the dissertation.
In general, Michigan is a much more demanding school than Wayne State. These figures are from 2019:
Acceptance
Graduation
Michigan
23%
91%
Wayne State
73%
38%
This does not mean that every department at U-M was better. I was not favorably impressed by the faculty in my area of the speech department at Michigan. My favorite teacher at U-M (Dr. Cartwright) was in the psychology department. The one impressive person at U-M’s speech department (Bob Norton) did not take teaching speech seriously. I would say that the speech professors at Wayne State were slightly better.
The graduate students in speech communications at both schools impressed me equally little. Practically none of them would have been able to handle a rigorous curriculum, as in a math, science, or language department. I studied the bare minimum amount to get by, and I had no difficulties with any of the classes.
I think that I took at least one class from every professor who resided on the fifth floor except George Ziegelmueller1, who had been in the department for ages. I don’t remember George teaching any graduate-level classes while I was at Wayne State. If he did, it was probably in directing forensics.
Here are my impressions of the other teachers. They are listed in alphabetical order, with the ones whose names escape me at the bottom.
I think that Steve Alderton2, whose first year was 1977-78, taught a class in group communication. I don’t remember much about it. Steve got his PhD at Indiana, which had a very good reputation in speech circles.
Both George and Steve were on my dissertation committee. That experience is described here.
A museum in Esperance, Australia has some of Skylab’s actual debris on display.
I remember taking a class from Jim Measell3, but I don’t remember what the subject was. Sheri Brimm was in the class with me. That experience is described here.
In July of 1979 the Skylab satellite fell into earth’s atmosphere and broke into a lot of debris. Jim removed a ceiling tile from over his desk and scattered some fairly realistic-looking electronic parts around his office in hopes of persuading people that pieces of the satellite had crashed through the roof of Manoogian.
Barb O’Keefe3, earned her PhD at the University of Illinois, a gathering point of disciples of George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory. I think that her husband was also a devotee. She taught a class in communication theory, in which she described the “evolution” of communication theory. The second-to-last step was systems theory, which she dismissed because a system is never truly closed. Of course, that is true. The researcher tries to exclude externalities when possible and account for them when it isn’t. However, the externalities exist regardless of which construct is used to analyze the transactions.
The culmination, according to Barb, was PCT, which postulates that people have dichotomous (i.e., two dimensional) constructs that they use to evaluate everything. Examples are light-heavy and tall-short. I asked her about colors, and she replied with something like, “Oh, there’s an answer to that.” She never looked it up or told me where I could find it. She was quite intelligent and an effective teacher, but she was also a “True Believer”, and that scared me.
She also really upset me when she let slip that she thought that debate training “turned students into monsters.” I kept my distance from her.
This picture is from before the days when I knew Ray Ross.
I remember taking one seminar from Ray Ross5, the author of the Speech 100 textbook. It might have been about persuasion. All I remember is that it was the least demanding of all of the courses that I took, and everything that he taught was at least twenty years old.
Lie Ray, Gary Shulman received his PhD from Purdue. I took two of his classes. The first was statistics, which covered much of the same material as the class that Bob Norton taught at Michigan. The number of students enrolled was more than for Bob’s class. I remember that everyone was assigned a topic to explain to the class. Most of these topics were very straightforward, but the one that I was assigned was a complicated statistical tool that I had never heard of. I spent a lot of time working on my lecture, but it was just impossible (IMAO) to present it in a fashion that was comprehensible for speech students within the time limit, which I think was fifteen minutes. I got a bad grade on this exercise. This was the only time in my life that I complained about a grade. It didn’t matter; I aced the tests.
Gary’s other class, which, as I recall, was taught at night, was industrial communications. Vince Follert and Pam Benoit were also in this class. We had several exercises to perform as teams of three or four. The catchphrase was “Learn by doing”. The first project challenged each team to construct a castle using some tools that each group was provided—a stapler, some tape, string, some crayons, and construction paper. The castles were then judged on sturdiness, height, and esthetics.
Pam, whom I knew to be a good artist, was in our group. I gave all of the construction paper and crayons to her and told her to decorate them so that we did not finish last in esthetics. The rest of us then affixed one end of the string to one of the ceiling panels next to a wall. We then stapled the decorated paper to the string and taped the whole contraption to the wall. It looked nothing like a castle, but it was by far the tallest, easily the sturdiest, and as esthetically pleasing as any. De gustibus non est disputandum. We won the competition, but Vince claimed that we cheated.
In the second, much longer exercise, we had different roles in a factory that made some doodads from tinker toys. I was the foreman in the first segment. Gary never prohibited us from rearranging the furniture, and so I ordered that the desks of the people who were charged with locating the pieces moved so that they were next to those of the people who assembled them. This made everything very efficient and made the rest of the exercise, which culminated (on Gary’s order) in a strike of employees who were as jolly as Santa’s elves, totally inappropriate.
I had heard through the grapevine that getting a consulting gig with one of the auto companies was the Holy Grail for the faculty members in the speech and psychology department. I never found how many, if any, completed the sacred quest.
I am not sure that I ever saw this face in my three years at WSU.
I am pretty sure that I never met Geneva Smitherman7. I may not have even seen her. I have no recollection of where her office was. She definitely taught classes while I was at Wayne State. However, I never took any, and nobody that I knew well did either.
A surprisingly large number of graduate students in Wayne State’s speech department held outside jobs. A fairly large portion of this group took all of Prof. Smitherman’s classes and very few others. One of these students took the class that Ray Ross taught that I was in. She confided that she had many friends who would not take classes from any of the other professors. It was actually feasible to get a masters degree at Wayne State using this approach. If the student was willing to write a thesis (supervised by Prof. Smitherman), it could be accomplished in only a few years.
The effect that Prof. Smitherman and her ideas had on the department as a whole is discussed here. Jimmie Trent was the chairman of Wayne State’s speech department up until 1972 or 1973. I don’t know when Prof. Smitherman was hired, but it is fun to speculate that Jimmie hired her as a parting gift to the department. She is eight years older than I am. The timing could be right.
There was also a professor in the department who taught classes in rhetoric and oratorical analysis. I am not certain whether I took any of them or not. I definitely remember that he brought his adolescent son to our house on Chelsea one evening to witness one of our D&D adventures. We would have let them join the party of adventurers—I had a computer program that could generate a character in seconds and generate a nice printout with all of the characteristics. They declined the invitation.
I took one graduate-level class in psychology. I don’t remember the professor’s name, but he was both entertaining and handsome. I was more interested in the first characteristic than the second, but I did notice that about 80 percent of the students were female. I wanted to ask this professor to be the “outside” member of my PhD committee, but he was on sabbatical.
I found the psych students in this class to be no more capable than the graduate students in the speech department. I received an A with very little effort.
This guy probably aced his orals.
In one class session the psych professor discussed oral exams. He said that it was very difficult for the faculty members to assess the performance of the candidates. In general, they were mostly surprisingly awful. He said that some professors used a 10 percent standard. That is, if 10 percent of the answers seemed acceptable, that was good enough.
He also mentioned an exception. He told us about one fellow who was not considered a very good student. However, his performance in the oral exam was the best that any of the professors had ever witnessed. It turned out that he worked as a disk jockey (whoops; the meaning of that term has changed in the intervening years) “presenter” at the college’s radio stationed, and he was used to ad-libbing and responding to unexpected questions.
Well, if a little radio time had that effect, I figured that all my years of debate experience would certainly serve me even better. I did not waste even one hour cramming for my orals, and I passed with flying colors.
I took one other class; I cannot even remember the exact nature of the subject matter. It might have concerned statistics for the social sciences or the the use of computers in social science research. The instructor was weak. I remember that on one of his multiple-choice tests he asked for the definition of an algorithm. When he graded the test he marked the right answer (a set of rules to be followed in calculations or problem-solving) wrong and refused to admit that it was a mistake. I might have dropped the class or just stopped attending.
One desk that should have been empty had my marvy body in it. So what?
You may be wondering how a student could have “just stopped attending”. Well, the university had a requirement that the prospectus be presented and defended before completing the coursework. I don’t remember the details. I was not ready to write my prospectus on time, and, besides, I was busy coaching debate. So, for a semester or two I attended classes for which I had not registered. This was not the smartest scheme that I had ever devised, but, since I did not pay tuition either way, I could not see that it would harm anyone.
I do not understand why none of my instructors challenged my presence. I am quite certain that the university provided every instructor with a roster of all enrolled students.
Occasionally someone who was not on the roster attended one of the classes that I taught. I took attendance every day and, in a friendly way, challenged all the interlopers. Occasionally they were just guests of one of the enrolled students8. None of the people whom I challenged ever came to a second class.
My failure to enroll went undetected for quite a while. When someone in the administration finally noticed I was ordered to report to the dean’s office. He grilled me about why I did this. I told him frankly that I had no excuse, but I wanted to do whatever was necessary to get back in good standing. He grilled me about this over the course of a handful of interrogations. He apparently thought that my actions were part of a nefarious scheme.
I discovered during these exchanges that the school was reimbursed by the state based on enrollment numbers. So, what I did cost Wayne State some money. Of course, it also saved the state of Michigan the same amount of money.
I also had to go to track down the instructors and ask them to submit grades for me. Fortunately they were all still on campus. None of them gave me the slightest bit of grief.
Of course, if I had stopped attending a class because I could no longer tolerate it, I just never asked for a grade. I had plenty of credits without those classes.
I spent a lot more time researching than I did studying for these classes, which for the most part, I considered useless. None of my research concerned anything that I had studied in classes at Wayne State. It was concentrated in two areas: 1) the social science research that used the ten standard questions in the “shift to risk” research, and 2) the medical research concerning hemispheric specialization. The former was compiled in anticipation of doing a dissertation on some aspect of the area. The latter was because I was intellectually curious about the subject. In the late seventies almost no one outside of the medical community was aware of all the recent breakthroughs in understanding the function of the brain.
There was no Internet; there were only libraries. I had boxes full of 3″x5″ file cards on both subjects. I used the “shift to risk” file to prepare my prospectus. I used the hemispheric specialization data for a paper that I submitted in 1980 to the Journal of the American Forensic Association9. I wrote it in response to a two-part article in the journal by Charles Arthur Willard10 (whom I knew as the debate coach at Dartmouth College) entitled “The Epistemic Functions of Argument: Reasoning and Decision-Making From A Constructivist/Interactionist Point of View”.
I knew that Dr. Willard, like Barb O’Keefe, received his masters and PhD degrees from Illinois in the speech department that promulgated Personal Construct Theory. My paper presented a short review of the current state of the neurological evidence about the way that the human brain makes decisions. It argued that some of the fundamental elements of PCT were inherently inconsistent with the fundamental postulates of PCT.
Before sending my paper to the same journal I let George read it. He agreed with me that people in communications theory were not conversant with research by neuroscientists. He asked me if I was sure about “all of this”. I assured him that when something was questionable I had been careful to include disclaimers.
My paper was quickly accepted for publication, but the principal reviewer wanted me to make a few minor changes. By then, however, I had decided to change careers. I let it drop.
1. George died in 2019. A press release from Wayne State can be read here.
2. While writing this I discovered that only a few years after I departed in 1980 Steve Alderton changed careers entirely. He got a law degree and then became (for almost three decades) an official of the federal government, a world traveler, and an artist! His obituary is here.
3. Jim Measell left academia in 1997 to specialize in public relations. His experiences are described here.
5. Ray Ross died at the age of ninety in 2015. He was at the Battle of the Bulge! His obituary is here.
6. Gary is a professor of strategic communication at Miami University in Oxford, OH. Information about him can be found here. I wonder if Jimmie Trent hired him.
7. It appears that Geneva Smitherman is now at Michigan State. Here is her Wikipedia page.
8. The most memorable of these occasions was when one of the students brought her identical twin sister. This was the same student who started one of her speeches with, “I want to take this occasion to introduce all of you to my best friend, Jesus.”
9. The journal’s title was later expanded to Argument and Advocacy: the Journal of the American Forensic Association.
Any treatment of any aspect of debate at Wayne State University in the second half of the twentieth century must begin with George Ziegelmueller1. During the course of my seven years of debate I had formed two opinions of him: 1) He was a mediocre debate coach; 2) He was a horrible judge. I certainly underrated him as a coach (at least on the affirmative), but not as a judge. Of course, I was (and still am) prejudiced. After my last tournament (districts in 1970, which is described here) I hated him as much as I have ever hated anyone in my life.
Nevertheless, I can usually compartmentalize. George and I had a good working relationship from the start. I did whatever he told me to do. I had great respect for his ability to deal with the bureaucracy, and I have no doubt whatever that the welfare and success of his debaters meant the world to him.
Welcome to Phoenix!
My favorite George story took place in the Detroit Metro Airport in 1980. Six of us were preparing to attend the National Debate Tournament at the University of Arizona. George and I were the coaches. The debaters were senior Scott Harris, juniors Kevin Buchanan and Mike Craig, and Dave Debold, who was only a sophomore.
We were all very excited. For three of the four guys it was the very first time that they had flown to a tournament. For me it was also very special. I had never been to the state of Arizona. Also, I knew that this might well be my last debate tournament ever.
George handed out the tickets to each of us. He informed us of the gate from which the plane would depart. Before we went through security, however, Dave noticed something amiss. “These tickets are for Phoenix,” he said. “Isn’t the University of Arizona in Tucson?”
Our tickets were indeed non-stop tickets to Phoenix on Frontier Airlines. Incredibly, George was able to exchange the tickets for ones to and from Tucson. We only had to wait in the terminal for an hour or so, and all of our luggage was also transferred to our new flight.
George did not really believe in tipping. Having been to Europe several times, I agree with him in principle. However, this is not Europe; most American restaurants paid (and still pay) their employees scandalously low wages.
The way George expressed his philosophy about tipping was this: “I pay for the meal out of the back-pocket of my pants; the tip comes from the front pocket.” That is, he paid for the bill with folding money and the tip with change.
I only accompanied George on a few trips. When I did, I would covertly pass the hat among the debaters. I would add my donation and give the total collection to one of the debaters. On our way to the car he/she would remember something left behind in the restaurant, return to the table, and supplement the tip with what we had collected.
The tournament in Denver was held at Metropolitan State College, now known as Metropolitan State University. It was an excellent venue.
I worked very hard during my first year at Wayne. I went to whatever tournaments George selected for me, and I did not step on anyone’s toes. Even before districts I asked George if I could go to the National Debate Tournament in Denver in the spring. George was taken aback by this request.
Jack Kay, after all, was his right-hand man. George said that I could accompany the team to districts, but he and Jack would judge. I replied that the team (Debbie McCully and Scott Harris) did not need me at districts. However, they had very little experience on the national circuit, and I had a lot. I knew many of the debaters on the national scene and almost all of the coaches. I even volunteered to pay my own way to Denver if and when our team qualified. George eventually agreed, and he found the money.
This helped diminish, but not erase, the memory of the round against Ohio U. at districts in 1970.
Pam and Billy Benoit2 (beh NOYT) were my office-mates in Manoogian Hall. They had both attended Ball State University in Muncie, IN, and Central Michigan in Mount Pleasant. In 1979 Billy presented a paper on philosophy at a conference in Amsterdam. Pam went with him. I don’t remember how they got away with this. They both taught several classes.
Maybe in 2021.
Sue Comparetto somehow persuaded them to allow her to join them on this trip. She enjoyed the city immensely, and has wanted to return3 for the last forty-two years.
The Benoits once invited Sue and me over for supper in their apartment, which was near the campus. The repast itself was a little skimpy by my standards until they pulled out their fondue pot and the dipping snacks.
Billy and Pam were among the first players of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) after I had purchased the original boxed set on August 17, 1978, as a present for myself on my thirtieth birthday. In the first few adventures we took turns as Dungeon Master. These were “Monte Haul” dungeons. The player characters soon reached level 5 or 6.Outlandishly rich orcs were slain by the thousand.
When the Player’s Handbook appeared a year or so later, I constructed a dungeon with a style that was more verismo. Deep in that dungeon was the lair of the fiercest monster they had yet to encounter, Frix the White Dragon. Non-player characters had warned everyone that he was very powerful because of his super-cold breath. One day Pam, Billy, and Vince Follert decided to go after him.
After a few minor skirmishes they found Frix’s cave, but, alas, Frix struck first and turned the entire party all to icicles. All three players were very angry at me for not providing them with a way to resurrect their highly prized characters.
The denouement of this story is in Vince’s section of this blog.
In 2021 I unearthed my slightly warped copy the graduate student’s bible.
By the time that Billy and Pam were ready to submit their dissertations in the spring of 1980 Sue and I had an IBM 5120 computer in our house. Sue used it for her fledgling programming business. I also tinkered with it. I had written a word processing program that printed documents in the format approved by the American Psychological Association. The only printer that it could use was a dot-matrix, but that was not yet considered gauche. I called my program “Amanuensis”.
The 5120 supported this printer and no other.
The university allowed graduate students a fixed number of minutes of computer time per semester. Pam and Billy traded me their minutes for one or two semesters in exchange for my printing of their dissertations using Amanuensis. Needless to say, I had to enter the text and footnotes through the keyboard. Producing a long paper with footnotes perfectly on a manual typewriter was a daunting task.
I ran into a few problems because, of course, no one checked my work. They became very jittery as the deadline day approached, but I was able to hand the final copies over to them with a few hours to spare.
In the winter of 1978-1979 Pam and Billy invited Sue, me, Vince, and, I think, John Pfeiffer to a weekend at a family cabin near Pokagon (poh-KAY-gun) State Park4. My recollection is that we drove there on Friday evening and returned on Sunday afternoon. Two thing stand out in my mind from this event. The first was mundane. Evidently there was a shortage of water in the plumbing system. The bathroom bore a sign that read: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” Five of us shared that toilet.
A long line to the top.
The other memory of that trip is epic. The toboggan run in the park is long and fast. The channels for the toboggans were not particularly narrow, but Billy was a big guy, and, to put it in nautical terms, he was broad in the beam. I think that we only participated in one run. We split into two groups of three. I went with Vince and John. Sue was in the Benoit’s group. The safety precautions for the ride were minimal. A guy at the top yelled “Keep your legs in!” before he gave the toboggan a shove.
Speed up to 43 mph coming down.
Our toboggan ride was somewhat thrilling because the pace was fast, and the riders had absolutely no control. I was in front. I just made myself as small as I could. The guy behind me had his legs on both sides of me. The guy behind him likewise put a leglock on the middle man. By the time that we reached the bottom, which was a quarter mile from the launching tower, one of Vince’s legs had rubbed against the side of the track a few times. He was sore but not injured. John and I were unscathed.
The three in the other toboggan did not fare as well. All three suffered scrapes. Billy was by far the worst. He stuck out on both sides of the toboggan and suffered rather ugly burns. We did not take him to the hospital, but he could hardly walk for a day or two, and he was sore for weeks.
Sheri Brimm joined the program in the fall semester of 1978. She had just graduated from Wright State University in Dayton, OH. She knew very little about debate. If Wright State had a debate team, I never heard of it, and they were in our district.
Sheri lived in an apartment near campus with her husband David. I seem to remember that he was going to Law School at Wayne State.
I was in one class with Sheri. I think that it was with the rhetoric professor, Dr. Jim Measell. For one of our assigned papers he provided very explicit instructions for what he wanted. I knew this guy and warned Sheri that she should do it exactly the way that he prescribed. She said that she thought that what he really was looking for was creativity. She may have been kidding, but she got a bad grade on the paper.
This is hydroplaning.
I also took one trip with Sheri. We were in charge of a van full of debaters headed for a nearby tournament. Akron University comes to mind, but I may be wrong. I let her drive because I wanted to work with some of the debaters. While we were still in Detroit it began to snow or sleet, and there was a little ice on the road. Basically, it was a normal winter day in Michigan in the seventies. The van started to skid. I yelled to her from the back of the van, “Slow down.”
“The car is hydroplaning,” she explained, but she did not drive noticeably slower.
“Hydroplaning is on water. This is ice. SLOW DOWN!” I countered.
I did not have many dealings with Sheri even though she returned for 1979-80. George may have let her work with some of the novice debaters, and she kept a chair warm during practice rounds.
Gerry Cox5 was my age. George was eighteen years older than I was. Everyone else in the FU was younger than I. Gerry joined the staff in 1979 after finally earning his bachelor’s degree the previous spring. I coached Gerry in my first two years. We became good friends, even though we had almost nothing in common. I also kept in touch with Gerry after I left Wayne St. He came to visit Sue and me twice while we lived in Rockville, CT. More memories of him can be read here.
I have three vivid recollections of Gerry from that last year. For years Gerry had been associated with the department off and on. I remember well the way that he treated the departmental secretary, whose name was, I think, Janet. On one occasion Gerry approached her desk and greeted her with the following: “Why don’t we rent a room at a hotel, rub Crisco all over both of our bodies, and see what happens?”
This approach was quite a bit different from my short conversations with her.
The second strong memory is of the only time that I ever saw Gerry nervous. He was for some reason chosen to give a speech on traffic safety to members of the Detroit Police Department. It may have been a contest. I drove him there for moral support.
Gerry had seen these up close a few times.
Gerry was reluctant even to enter the room. Apparently he feared that one of Detroit’s finest would recognize him from years gone for encounters in markedly less formal encounters, probably bars. At last we entered and took a seat. Gerry kept his eyes lowered while we were so seated.
Eventually Gerry gave his speech, which argued that requiring helmets for riders of motorcycles was a bad idea. It was a terrible speech. He claimed that requiring helmets would not reduce injuries much and that in some cases it would be counterproductive. I was shocked that a former Wayne State debater would make such a claim without a whiff of evidence.
Helmets are obviously counterproductive.
The close of his speech was greeted with tepid applause. As he approached me, he said softly, “Let’s get out of here.”
In the car I asked him why he made those claims without any evidence. He was stunned. He asked me, “Are you saying that I forgot to read the evidence?”
When I confirmed it he laughed and laughed and buried his head in his hands.
Steve D’Agostino coached some of the Individual Events (IE) people in 1977-78. I hardly knew him. I think that he had academic problems and left after one year.
Vince Follert6 was a pretty good debater at Loyola in Chicago, a Jesuit university. I judged him a few times before he graduated in 1977. His partner was weak, and the coaching at Loyola was not great. Even so, they did pretty well. I was favorably impressed.
Vince had a studio apartment near the campus. I am not sure that I ever entered it. He came to supper at our house on Chelsea a few times. We became pretty close friends. We usually ate lunch together at one of a few favorite restaurants on Woodward. Woodward Coney Island is still there in 2021! Their loose hamburger sandwiches were very tasty. I don’t remember the name of the other restaurant. Vince was enchanted by one of the waitresses who never wore a bra.
Vince stayed at Wayne for two years. I taught his classes whenever he was at a tournament, and he returned the favor when I was out of town. In the fall of 1978 he made the mistake of asking me to take his very first class. Here is how I began: “My name is Mike Wavada. Don’t write it down; I am not your teacher. Your real teacher is named Vince Follert. He is away at a debate tournament today. You won’t like him. He is fat, he smokes like a chimney, and he talks too fast.”
I did not mention it, but he also went through several six packs of Diet Pepsi every day.
Vince was as fond as I was of Dungeons and Dragons. He played every chance that he got. He was even more angry than the Benoits were at the instantaneous demise of his beloved characters when they stormed into Frix’s lair. I think that Vince’s main character was named Guelph the Elf.
Several months later he confronted me about the incident. “Resist Cold is a first level clerical spell, isn’t it? We were just idiots. We deserved to die.” He was right. They probably could have absconded with Frix’s fabulous treasure horde if they had bothered to prepare for cold weather with spells that any rookie cleric would know.
Vince and I attended a convention of the Central States Speech Association7 in the spring of 1979. We both presented papers there.
I don’t remember why we did not take Greenie. Instead, we rented a car from Budget. We got a good deal. There was a modest daily charge, but there was no mileage limit. My recollection is that we drove to St. Louis, went to the convention, and then drove back within twenty-four hours. That seems almost incredible. Maybe the trip took two days. In any case the man at Budget was astounded when he looked at the odometer.
I did not witness Vince’s presentation. His panel occurred at the same time as mine. Walter Ulrich, a very fine coach at the University of Houston, presented the first paper in our room. He argued that the value of the proposition should always be from the perspective of the collective interest of the people of the United States. There was time for questions after the evaluations. I asked Walter what he thought of propositions that were stated at a different level. For example, one of them that I debated in high school said that nuclear weapons should be controlled by an unspecified international organization. He opined that those resolutions were illegitimate.
The approach I called unfair is based on Archbishop Whately’s view of presumption.
My paper, which was the last one in our session, was on causality. I posited was not a useful construct in argumentation. Debates should focus on necessary conditions and sufficient conditions. I also argued that the negative teams had the responsibility to defend something in every debate. It was perfectly OK to defend what currently existed or what the government might do, but arguing that a case should be rejected because Congress could just pass a law to solve the problem or provide the benefit was an unfair reliance on the concept of presumption.
The two reviewers hated my paper. Dave Ling, the coach from Central Michigan (and a Wayne State alum), was at least nice about it. The other reviewer was from Washington University of St. Louis, a guy who was renowned as the worst judge on the circuit. He made fun of me. The time allotted was exhausted by the time that they finished. I did not get a chance to rebut what they said.
Most top coaches would have agreed with every word that I said, but they did not often attend conventions like this one.
One last memory of Vince popped into my head. One day in 1979 he came into Manoogian with a hickey on his neck. He made no attempt to hide it, but he would not talk about it.
Vince received his masters degree in the spring of 1979. He coached debate for Dale Hample at Western Illinois in 1979-1980.
Ken Haught might have been on the staff in my last year, 1979-1980. I remember him, but only vaguely
Jack Kay was George’s right-hand man when I arrived. He was still a graduate student, but he had an office of his own. I came to learn that Jack had been a member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in his younger years. Reportedly he had actually met Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.
Jack married Ruth Colwander, who was just a sophomore in my first year at Wayne State. Jack had been the coach of Ruth and the other novices in the previous year. They had done very well.
I don’t know why, but I interacted very little with Jack. I remember only two fairly innocuous incidents. The first occurred at a staff meeting. George told us that some financial assistance had become available for one debater. I don’t remember the amount. George asked for suggestions as to who should get it. I immediately recommended that Ruth, who was the only serious debater who had a job, should be considered. Jack, who was involved with but not married to Ruth, was astonished at my suggestion. I guess that he thought of me as a foe. If so, it was not mutual.
The second event occurred at the National Debate Tournament in 1978 in Denver. Wayne State sent one team (Debbie McCully and Scott Harris) and three coaches to this tournament.
Wayne State’s team met (I think) one of the teams from Redlands in the eighth round. The whole tournament knew that both teams from Redlands were running a case that had something to do with infanticide. I had never heard it, and I no idea of the substance of Redlands’ plan.
Jack ran into the library. I don’t know if he found anything. I kept out of his way.
Jack had, however, heard the case in a previous round. When he saw that our team was facing Redlands, he rushed to the library to try to photocopy something. He then spent the little remaining time lecturing Debbie and Scott on how to attack the cse.
I wished that he had shared his ideas with us earlier—there were fairly long breaks for power-matching after every round. I said absolutely nothing at the time; he might have had an inspired argument.
Scott and Debbie lost 3-0. If Jack had not taken over, I would have advised them to relax and avoid the temptation to twist any of their prepared arguments to fit this case. Instead, they should just try to challenge everything, make reasonable claims of their own, and watch for mistakes. They should then concentrate on finding one decisive argument that they could win and sell it dramatically in the last rebuttal.
Of course, they still probably would have lost to a team with more high-level experience.
Jack was a big guy. He was also, unless I am mistaken, the only Jewish member of the staff. He was, I guess because of his size, recruited to play Santa Claus at the FU Christmas party. However, his “ho-ho-ho” was worse than pathetic. So, I made the big laugh from off-stage while he was entering.
Ron Lee joined the staff in 1979-80 wife his wife Karen. She was my age and debated at either Southern Illinois or Illinois State. She might have done something with the team at Wayne, too.
Ron debated at Wayne State, at times with Jack Kay. The only thing that I remember about his coaching technique was that he insisted that the team eat at restaurants that had waiters and/or waitresses. He hated going to counters for his food.
It was probably better on skates.
John Pfeiffer came from Florida He was at Wayne State for my first two years. In the second year he was the IE director.
John had an interesting background. He had worked at Disneyland as a strolling bear character. He said that it was the worst job in the world. He had also appeared as a character on roller skates in Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Donaldson’s Covenant books were my favorites.
Tuna Snider10 came to Wayne State in 1979-80, my last year, and was installed in Jack’s old office. I had known him a little when he was the coach at Boston College. I never heard anyone call him anything but Tuna.
I don’t think that I went to any tournaments with Tuna. In fact, the only interaction with him that I remembered was when he noticed that I was often sitting around the debate lounge reading a paperback book. One day he asked what kind of fiction I liked, and I answered, “Swords and sorcery”. He made a positive noise and returned to his office. In truth I read most of these fantasy books just to get ideas for D&D dungeons.
For some reason Tuna did not attend the NDT with us in Arizona in 1980, and my memories of his involvement with the program seemed to be minimal. Perhaps he had a falling out with George.
1. George died in 2019. A press release from the university can be read here.
2. In 2021 the Benoits are on the faculty of the communications department of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Billy’s Wikipedia page is here. His boss’s career is described on this webpage. Click on her photo or the blue text.
3. Sue and I have a river cruise scheduled for October of 2021. It departs from Amsterdam, and we have also scheduled one extra day there.
4. The toboggan run at Pokagon State Park remained open through the pandemic winter of 2020-2021. Its website is here.
5. Gerry died in an automobile accident in, I think, the eighties. At the time he owned a company that produced machined parts for auto dealers. It was located in his family’s home town in Kentucky.
6. Vince died of colon cancer in the early eighties.
7. In the twenty-first century it is called the Central States Communications Association.
8. In 2021 Ken is the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Dickinson State University in North Dakota.
9. Jack died in 2015. A tribute to him can be read here.
10. Tuna Snider got his PhD from Kansas, not Wayne State. He died in 2015 after spending more than thirty years at the University of Vermont. His Wikipedia page is here.
The social life at Wayne State was far more active than at U-M. In point of fact there was no social life at U-M to speak of. At Wayne there were highly organized activities, spontaneous activities, and pretty much every level in-between.
A Tamarack cabin in 2021. I remember something a little more rustic.
The outing to Camp Tamarack, a resort/campground in Ortonville, MI, had been an annual event at Wayne State every year through 1977. Occasionally it was held somewhere else, but even those weekends included many of the same activities.
We drove up in a few vehicles on a Friday in October, had some social activities in the evening, slept overnight, worked on research for most of the day on Saturday, and returned to Detroit on Saturday evening. When the tradition started, the debaters had stayed two nights.
As I remember it, perhaps twenty-five or thirty people attended the event in 1977. The main social activity on Friday evening was a scavenger hunt, the highlight of which was described here. In previous years George had led the group on a midnight hike. I don’t remember that at all. If it occurred, I think that I opted to turn in early.
The event was a good opportunity for the novices and the experienced kids to get to know one another in an nonthreatening setting. There were also some sporting events. I seem to remember a co-ed volleyball game.
To my surprise the food served was kosher. Jack Kay had to explain the rules to everyone.
For some reason George Ziegelmueller decided not to sponsor this activity in 1978 and 1979. I wasn’t officially coaching in 1980, but I don’t remember the FU going there that year either.
In 1978 and 1979 I led one-day research trips to Ann Arbor. There wasn’t much socializing, but we did all eat lunch together. I should have taken them to Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burgers, but I did not think of kt.
The Benoits would need XXL.
There was a Halloween Party in the FU lounge in 1978 and possibly in 1979. I remember that Pam and Billy Benoit came dressed as Raggedy Ann and Andy and won an award for the best costume. Vince Follert won an award for having the most outrageous costume. I don’t remember what it was.
I probably came as a soldier (I still had my combat boots, olive drab jeans, and field jacket) or a cowboy (boots and hat). I am sure that I did not make or buy a costume.
I remember Kent Martini and Linda Calo wearing naked-person costumes. Kent was the woman and Linda was the man. They did not win an award in 1978, and so I assume that this was in 1979. It might have been at an unofficial party. George might not have been amused. In 1980 Sue and I drove to Brooklyn for Halloween. I don’t remember whether Wayne State had a party that year or not.
A banquet was held just before the Christmas break every year. We all ate somewhere in Manoogian Hall. In 1977 the theme for the supper was Chinese. Debby McCully and her colleagues at the Golden Mushroom restaurant served the meal.
At these events some of the staff members did skits. I remember that I performed the world’s worst magic act as Wavada the Weird. I did a mind-reading act with a see-through blindfold. I think that I threw a few cards, too. My big trick was to pull a rabbit out of the cardboard box that contained the hanging files for each FU member. I showed the box to the audience, and it really did look empty except, of course, for the hanging files. I then gave voice to the proper incantation and pulled a “rabbit” out of the box.
The rabbit was actually Charlie, one of our long-haired guinea pigs, with a pair of long ears attached to his head. Everyone hated W the W, but Charlie was a big hit.
I don’t remember much about the other Christmas parties. I do remember that Jack Kay (one of the very few Jews in the program) liked to play Santa. However, his ho-ho-ho was pathetic. So, I boomed out a hearty laugh from the hallway just before he entered.
The biggest social event of the year was the DSR-TKA1 (pronounced DISS er tick uh) Banquet, which was held every spring a few weeks after NDT but well before final exams. In 1979 the group of new inductees into the fraternity included me, Vince Follert, Ruth Colwander, Scott Harris, and a few other people. We were expected to put on a skit. Vince wrote most of the script for ours. It loosely revolved around the Tonight Show. Scott was Johnny Carson; I was Ed McMahon. Scott did a Carnac the Magnificent routine with envelopes that I handed him.
Debbie really filled out this outfit; Ruth not so much.
Then the show stopped for a commercial for Debbie Debater Dolls. I was responsible for this part of the script. Ruth came on stage wearing Debbie’s trademark outfit, a blue denim pantsuit. It hung a little loose on Ruth’s wiry frame. I described all of the features of the doll, and Ruth robotically imitated Debbie’s debate mannerisms, saying “Moreover” again and again.
When I spoke the line that began with “Fully inflatable…”, I paused for a beat, peaked behind Ruth, and added a clause that I had left out of the script2: “although this model does not appear to be fully inflated.” Even Ruth cracked up when I did this.
I had two other short roles. I appeared as Andre Debuschere with a tie that almost reached my knees. I also had one singing line in a sketch that Vince wrote about something debate-oriented (I don’t remember what it was). I belted out in the lowest register that I could handle “For he could not ,,, our spread defeat” to the tune of the “For we like sheep” section of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah.
The crowd loved our skit. I must have attended two more banquets in 1979 and 1980, but I don’t remember them. I suspect that their skits did not measure up to ours.
This was a very good way to end the year. It made everyone feel like they were part of a family. We only met socially a few times a year, but everyone had a warm feeling for the others in the FU.
We also had fundraising events every year. We set up a table in the elevator lobby of Manoogian Hall. In 1978 we sold crepes. Sue Comparetto came in to help out. The other primary inhabitants of the building were the foreign language departments. They were very tough competition. They usually sold bratwursts and knackwursts. Both were absolutely delicious.
This is my chart. Apparently I will do something very emotional and stupid on March 31.
I thought about bringing in our 5120 computer and printer in 1980. It came with a program that print out a 30-day biorhythm graph for someone. The only input required was a birth date and the current date. I thought that people might be willing to pay a couple of bucks for that. It was completely bogus, but I thought that people might be intrigued. At the time biorhythms were a novelty.
I did not suggest this because the computer and printer would have taken up too much space. We only got one table. Also, the machines both weighed a ton. The latter probably would not have been a problem. If I said that no one could carry them from the car to the lobby, Scott would have carried them both in at once to prove me wrong.
300 meld. Write it down.
Every year George had a pinochle party. I played a little when I was an undergraduate, but it did not take me long to get back up to speed. There was often a game in progress in the lounge, and I sometimes sat in. I considered pinochle as bridge for idiots.
In 1979 I was playing in a game in the lounge; one of the novices, Steve Rapaski, was my partner. He played so badly that I wrote up an affidavit for him in which he promised never to play pinochle again. I coerced him into signing it.
A few weeks later George announced the pairings for the party. My partner was Steve. I told him relax and have a good time. Wouldn’t you know it? We won first prize.
Celebrity watching at Shield’s usually meant keeping an eye peeled for Dickie V.
There were many impromptu outings. The question was usually Buddy’s or Shield’s? They both had absolutely great pizza at a reasonable price. It was usually a tough decision, but neither choice was ever a bad one.
Shield’s was Dick Vitale’s favorite restaurant. He was a flop as the coach of the Pistons, but he had been very good at U of D. He had not become a TV star yet, but he was a big celebrity in Detroit, baby. If we went to Shield’s, we might see him. The atmosphere there was very cordial.
Buddy’s was more of a family place. The atmosphere was not as warm as at Shield’s, but it was larger. There was a better chance that they could find a big table for us.
I actually liked Buddy’s better, but by the thinnest of margins. I have only tasted better pizza once, and that was in Naples.
I have one last story. In the spring of 1979, when I was 31, a group of us went to a bar that was near the campus. When we ordered our drinks the waitress said that she would need to see ID from everyone who did not order a coke.
I sprang to my feet and got out my wallet so that I could quickly retrieve my driver’s license. “Too late to take it back,” I insisted. “You carded me, and I insist on showing my license to you.”
I was pretty certain that this was the last time in my life that someone would question my purchase of an alcoholic beverage. My hair was already at least 10 percent grey.
1. DSR-TKA was (and is) a fraternal organization founded to promote competitive speech events in colleges. I never took it seriously, but George definitely did. In researching for these blogs I came to realize that many of the biggest names in debate were officers of the organization.
