UMM backers dug in with vivid imagery in 1960

It's hard to spot but this archived photo includes a noose.

Controversy over UMM's survival? Yes there was a time. We can step into the Wayback Machine and retreat to the year 1960. We were a year away from seeing the start of big league baseball and football in Minnesota. Out here on the prairie, our campus in Morris was in flux. 

Jim Morrison will smile when he reads the word flux because he'll remember the time I used it in a headline that aroused some ire from our school superintendent, Dennis Rettke. On the whole, yours truly had rapport with Rettke who I'm sad to remind has passed on. He and I navigated some rough waters as our school district plodded ahead in the late 1980s. We may have seen the issues the same way but he had different constituencies than me. 

My only constituency was the truth. Oh yes, I was not completely autonomous as a writer but let's just say I decided to "call 'em as I see 'em." I wrote headlines for the paper among my other roles. Morrison once told me he had an occasional nightmare about the paper box being sent to Quinco Press in Lowry with blank spaces for the headlines. "And it would be your fault," he told me. 

I cannot blame Rettke for being sensitive to his constituencies. As the "super" he couldn't just get on his high horse. He actually confided in me quite a bit. So I sensed he had a rather clear lens as he surveyed what was going on. But then again, one can never be sure about people in these positions. Steve Lang advised me when I joined the Morris paper full-time in 1979, how various people in local influential positions "will lie to you." 

"Lie" is a pretty coarse term. But it does happen, I can affirm after a newspaper career of 27 years. 

The community friction had already gone on a while when I wrote a headline about how school administration was "in flux." Technically it was an absolutely precise term. You judge a headline by whether it reflects the contents of the article. This headline did, but the superintendent decided he would interpret "flux" by an alternate definition. I think it was in a supt. memo to the board that Dennis expressed dismay about the headline. 

Whatever was going on with administration, which I cannot recall now, was "an orderly process," the super argued. It seems back in those days, school administrators were more susceptible to being drawn into a vortex of controversy. What happened? Well, the powers-that-be decided we needed a less turbulent atmosphere in school management. Was it the concept of "conflict resolution?" Maybe. 

Well, there was sure as heck conflict in our school as the '80s drew to a close. I sat at the newspaper, could not avoid it. Not even if I had tried, could I be oblivious somehow. Various forces came at me. Was I worried? Deep down, I sensed a greater deference to the journalistic ethos bred by Watergate. "Damn the torpedoes," I guess. So I had a nice career of 27 years. Better to be honest and brave than meek and withdrawn. 

 

UMM's mea culpa for photo

UMM inadvertently stepped in it recently with a photo it communicated. From the archives, it showed a UMM advocate using some, ahem, symbolism to attack a skeptic of our fledgling local liberal arts institution. Morris legend has always insisted that UMM was on shaky ground early-on. Apparently there were threats of termination, and classification as a junior college. 

November of 1960 was a pivotal time. There was an organization called the Western and Southwestern Minnnesota College Committee. "Western" was not taken to mean Morris. Quite the opposite, as we learned in a statement from its chairman. This was the "ogre" in the minds of the Morris-oriented folks. Ah, the "evil" O.B. Rekow. As quoted in the Montevideo News, Mr. Rekow asserted: "It would not be in the best interest of the taxpayers of this state or in the best interest of the University of Minnesota and its great metropolitan expansion program to appropriate further moneys for the continuance of the Morris experiment. Its future is highly doubtful." 

Yes, and Ed Lopat once said of Tony Oliva before Oliva broke in: "The kid will never hit in the big leagues." (The quote is from Jim Bouton's "Ball Four.") 

Fulton's Folly, eh? (When something gets called a "folly," you can be sure it will make it big.) 

UMM students responded to the Rekow statement by hanging signs throughout the campus showing their school pride and commitment to UMM. It was the first November of UMM's existence. Yours truly was here as a member of the Williams family, part of the network of founders. My father took the UMM men's chorus to Seattle in 1962 to open the Minnesota Day program at the Seattle World's Fair/Century 21 Exposition. 

We were bursting buttons with pride even if having to watch our back some, the brickbats coming from south of us. I have always felt that UMM had an insurmountable advantage just by being able to "inherit" the WCSA campus. I felt it was like a trump card. 

Oh, speaking of "hanging" signs out and around, someone decided it would be amusing to support a literal "hanging" of Rekow, symbolically of course. This brings us to the present and a revisit of this photo through UMM communications. UMM has now apologized. Apology necessary? Well I can understand why it was done, given the fact that all public universities bleed of political correctness these days, and mostly I think this is a good thing. For example, handicapped awareness.

 

Consider the new "softball complex"

So, as I walk through the new "softball complex" on east edge of campus, I have to wonder: "Is this place going to be handicapped accessible?" It sure does not seem to be the case now. It doesn't seem accessible at all: no sidewalks etc. 

Except that maybe down the road, we'll hear that sidewalks must be added, and then the City of Morris among others will be hit up for more mother's milk, the milk of "money." The city has already turned down a second request for money. 

You'll notice I have become animated on this subject over the last couple weeks. I do not desire this. 

While I was skeptical of the project from the get-go, because of the proportionality of sports issue, I was at least expecting the "complex" to have a "wow" factor when it was done. Hey, it does not! It absolutely does not, so now I am asking reasonable questions. I sent a reasonable email to Mary Holmberg on Thursday and she has not responded. I wanted to know about fan seating. Simple question. 

I looked up the article on the radio station website about the groundbreaking. I wrinkled my forehead a little as I noticed the several UMM names, people with self-interest attached to UMM, turning on the happy talk about the project. And I had to wonder: are these people primarily interested in how the complex will serve the interests of UMM, as opposed to being truly broad-purposed? 

In 1962, the year my father took his singers to the Pacific Northwest, UMM supporters in a united effort prevented junior college classification by the Minnesota legislature. In April 1963, UMM received approval to offer a four-year program. UMM did not have varsity women's sports in those days! 

The question on this very day is: how are we to view hanging as a metaphor? We all understand UMM sensitivity based on the vigilante background of the practice, especially tied to race. But hanging also has a legitimate background in the exercise of law enforcement as we saw in the Clint Eastwood movie "Hang 'Em High" (1968), about the days of territorial government. Human beings once tolerated the guillotine. We wince. But it's all in our background. 

Should UMM have apologized over reviving the old photo? IMHO no. Let it pass.

 

Addendum: Another controversial headline I wrote, in two decks: "C-A coming to Morris? Hints reportedly heard." Jim Morrison was rather befuddled because once again, the headline reflected perfectly the content of the article. But some Chokio-oriented citizens took umbrage and said we were "toying with their feelings."

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com