Elevator Accident Part 2

The trip downtown, though short in distance, seemed to take an eternity. It was slow motion city. Neither Bob J. nor I had much to say. Both of us were thinking about how Greg could have been injured so seriously on an elevator that was used every day. Our silence didn’t make the journey shorter or more comfortable.

The building was locked and the lights were off. We had considerable difficulty finding the light switches in the warehouse where the cutting machine, bindery, and elevators were located. During the typical work week the paper handlers’ morning shift arrived long before we did, so all the lights were on. And we left long before the night shift so we were completely unfamiliar with how to turn on the damn lights. We felt like idiots, stumbling around in the dark, not knowing such an elementary thing about your workplace. I was certain that Bob J. felt the same way.

When we finally succeeded in finding the switches and getting the lights on, we found another problem. The old hydraulic elevator was down another level, in the basement and its electrical supply was off. That caused another hunt in the dark, this time in the stygian gloom of the basement. After ten frustrating minutes Bob J. gave up and went upstairs in disgust, cursing the fact that the dumbest paper handler could have had the place operational in seconds while we sales and management types were still groping around in the dark, unable to find our asses with either hand. It was more than a little funny but Jorgee hardly in the mood to appreciate the humor.

Finally, I had a brainstorm. Instead of looking around the outside of the elevator, I raised the wooden gate, stepped inside and looked on the inside wall. The dim light filtering down the elevator shaft from the first floor provided just enough illumination for me to spot an electrical switch on the brick wall next to the hydraulic cables. In seconds I had the elevator up on the first floor. And yelled for Jorgee.

“Hey, Jorgee. I got it. Come on.”

He emerged from the toilet, zipping his fly. Holding a large flashlight under his arm. He stood silently, looking the old elevator up and down with a great deal of suspicion. “You know how to work this thing?”

“I’ve never operated it myself but I’ve been on it many times with Willy and Jess [Note: two of the paper handlers]. For Christ’s sake, you big pussy. Get on. It’s not going to crash or anything like that.”

“Don’t give me that shit. Can you run it or not?” He was really skittish.

“Of course I can. It’s actually pretty easy.” I was far from being as confident as I may have seemed but my curiosity was much stronger than whatever trepidation I felt. Besides, even then I believed Greg had somehow brought on the accident himself, by doing an as of yet unknown foolish act. Which I was not about to do, under any circumstance. But the pit of my stomach was heaving, despite my outward resolve and nonchalance.

Before continuing with the story, it is necessary to describe the elevator itself, which was of the hydraulic variety, operated by pulling on one of two metal cables that ran vertically along the interior of the shaft. A sharp downward yank on the first steel cable started the elevator up. To stop the upward movement, you grabbed the other cable and held on. A hard down pull on the second cable sent the car down the shaft. It was a simple hydraulic (oil) machine left over from an earlier and more primitive industrial era, circa 1915 to 1925. It advantages were that it was very inexpensive to operate, could carry immense weight without failing, and was extremely expensive to replace, which was the real reason for its longevity. Our building was no longer competitive as a warehouse so the owner, Washington University, was not about to lay out the cash. Besides, prior to that last Friday, we had had no accidents on that elevator.

Physically, the elevator was of the simplest construction. Its only solid component was the floor, which was made of thick, welded steel plates fastened to an underlying framework of steel beams. The three walls and roof were chain link fencing supported by a steel framework and braces. A number of flattened cardboard boxes had been placed over the fencing overhead to give the impression of a roof and to catch dust and debris falling from the shaft. The elevator itself had no doors. And that was more than somewhat disconcerting to anyone who rode it the first time. Each floor had two wooden doors at the opening to the elevator shaft. Those doors were much like the wooden slats used for picket fences. They were spaced several inches apart and were positioned vertically. When operated, one door moved up and the other down so the elevator or a particular floor could be accessed. However, those doors were not safety doors because the elevator could and would operate even though the doors on any floor were open. It was the responsibility of whoever operated the elevators to close the doors when activating the elevator. Yeah. Can anyone out there spell S-A-F-E-T-Y  H-A-Z-A-R-D?

Back to Jorgee, who stepped gingerly into the elevator. It swayed slightly, creaking ominously enough to make both of us start with apprehension. As he pointed the flashlight up the shaft, looking for what I’ll never know, I reached out and jabbed him hard in the ribs, and yelled at the same time: “HEY!”

It scared the living shit out of him. He threw his hands up and jumped straight up in the air. The flashlight went bouncing across the floor. “Jesus, fuck!” he screamed. “You stupid cocksucker! Don’t do that!” He picked up the flashlight to see if it still worked. It did. I was laughing so hard I thought I might piss in my pants. I sagged against the side of the elevator, my knees suddenly weak, laughing hysterically. He looked totally ridiculous, literally shaking in his boots. Yeah, it was dumb but we both needed to release the tension that had been building up. It was simply Jorgee’s misfortune to have given me the right opening.

“Come on, you wimp,” I said. “Shine your flashlight in the wall. Let’s get this over with.”

I tugged gently on the cable. The car bounced slightly and then began its slow ascent up the shaft. The light from the single bulb hanging overhead in the cage was barely strong enough to illuminate the walls but the flashlight beam enabled us to search for marks on the old bricks.

We found nothing significant between the first floor and the second. And nothing on the second floor except a large piece of cardboard lying immediately in front of the elevator door. I stopped the car, opened the doors and we got out. Despite the sunlight streaming through the windows, Jorgee directed the flashlight beam onto the cardboard, letting it stop on two small dark spots.

A strange expression on his face made me ask, “What? Something wrong?”

“This is where he was when we found him. Laying right there. Right where those blood spots are.”

I looked at the two small patches of dried blood. They were so small yet so important. “That’s it? That’s all the blood?” I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a huge pool of blood somewhere. I mean, he had been seriously injured and I had expected a lot more evidence of that.

“That’s it. He was right there, trying to stand up when I got here.”

“Jesus! He was trying to get up?”

“Yeah, he was. I made him lay down on his back but he was in a lot of pain and kept trying to move. It must have been from the collapsed lung.”

“What about his mid-section? Wasn’t that bothering him?”

“No. He even said that he couldn’t feel anything around his stomach. It was numb.”

We stood for a minute in silence, just staring at the cardboard, as if waiting for it to tell us what had happened. I couldn’t stand the thought of Greg lying there, twisting in agony.

“Come on, let’s go.” I walked back to the elevator. Jorgee followed slowly. Although I didn’t look at him directly I knew he was wiping tears from his eyes. Neither of us was a tough as we thought.

From the second floor to the fifth we searched carefully, silently. The faint groans of the elevator the only sounds. I stopped the car at the fifth floor.

“He must have gotten off here,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because this is where the paper samples were. The ones that he needed He was looking for three or four colors of that super glossy stuff from Finland. Mirri. They’re stored around the corner in the east section.”

Bob J. started to walk out of the car but I grabbed his arm to stop him. “Hold it. We haven’t seen any marks on the interior walls yet. Whatever happened, it wasn’t here. Let’s go up to the sixth floor and see if there’s anything out of the ordinary up there.” I started the elevator and immediately grabbed the other cable to stop it.

The elevator lurched and Jorgee looked at me strangely. “What?”

“Did you find any of the Mirri samples of the second floor?”

“No.”

“Were they on the elevator?” I knew immediately I was on to something.

“No. There was nothing in here. Why?”

“How about the bottom of the elevator shaft? Maybe they fell down there.”

“No. I had Topper check last night. Nothing’s down there except oil and dirt.” He frowned and shot me his pseudo-pissed off look. “You gonna tell me what’s going on or do I have to guess.”

“I don’t think Greg ever found the Mirri samples. Whatever happened, happened before he got them.”

Jorgee stood there staring at me without saying a word. Then he slowly nodded. “Maybe. You might be right.”

“My guess is that Greg went up to the sixth floor by mistake, thinking that’s where the Mirri was, and never got to five.”

“Could be. Let’s check it out.” He nodded up at the floor above.

I restarted the elevator and we lurched upward. About one fourth of the way up Jorgee’s flashlight beam caused something on the top of the fifth floor elevator door to sparkle. The elevator seemed to stop of its own accord. At least I have no memory of grabbing the cable to bring it to a halt.

Jorgee stepped forward, hesitating for a moment. I was right behind him and knelt down to see better. The beam of light danced across the sparkling metal. It looked exactly a tiny flattened metal donut. I had no idea why there was such a sick expression on Jorgee’s face.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Looks like an islet from Greg’s tennis shoe,” he said softly, carefully reaching forward to retrieve the piece from the wooden frame. He turned it over in his fingers. “That’s exactly what it is.”

“You sure?” I asked, my stomach suddenly active. All at once I didn’t want to see more about the incident. Or know more. I felt like I wanted to run home to my mother’s comforting arms, to hide under the covers. We stood looking at each other, not saying a word.

The elevator lurched upward, responding to my gentle pull. Inch by slow inch we crept toward the sixth floor, our eyes glued to the track of the flashlight beam as it swept across the brick wall. And suddenly, it was right there, the first physical signs of something well out of the ordinary. Two parallel, bright brick-orange scrapes in the old wall headed vertically up the shaft toward the sixth floor. About one inch wide, they were a little over two feet apart. They stopped approximately four or five inches beneath the metal floor lip that jutted into the shaft. Light from the pitiless beam illuminated fresh metal gouge marks on the floor lip. They stood out as bright scars from the older, rusted marks that covered the metal lip.

I stopped the car. We stood looking at the marks for a long time. Neither of us spoke our terrible thoughts. We knew it had happened right here. I restarted the elevator and slowly we climbed to the sixth floor. We got out, surveying the area around the open door carefully. But failed to notice anything out of the ordinary. There were no signs that Greg had been on that level late Friday afternoon.

Jorgee and I walked slowly back to the elevator but stopped before getting back into the car. Without comment we examined the juncture of the elevator floor and the sixth floor lip.

Without looking up, Jorgee finally broke the heavy silence. “He couldn’t have been caught between the elevator and the floor. The space is too narrow.”

“No,” I agreed. “There’s less than an inch separating the two. If he had been holding on to the floor, half in and half out of the elevator, this metal lip would have cut him in two.” I pushed the elevator floor with my foot, trying to see if it would move backwards in relation to the metal lip. It didn’t. I looked at J. “Plus there’s no way to get the elevator up higher since the sixth floor is the end of the line.”

“Shit, then where could he have been?” The question was asked out of sure frustration. Neither of us had an answer.

We stepped back into the car and began our slow journey down to the first floor. As we descended our eyes were pulled first to the horrible gouges in metal lip and then to the deep scrapes in the brick wall. Without warning I grabbed the elevator cable, jerking it to a sudden halt.

“Goddammit! What the fuck are you doing?” This time J. was really pissed off.

“Shine your light up there,” I pointed. “There. On the horizontal steel roof frame. Look how it meets the floor lip.”

He immediately forgot his anger. The light danced up the bricks to the dirty black bar that formed the horizontal support for the roof fencing.

“How much room is up there. Between the lip and the roof cage?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe five or six inches.”

“Looks less than that to me. We’re going back up.” I stepped out onto the sixth floor, flashlight in hand. “All right,” I told him. “Take the elevator down slowly. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

The car creaked downward at a snail’s pace. My eyes were glued to the descending steel roof frame. When it was almost exactly flush with the floor lip I told Jorgee to stop. I knelt to inspect the frame.

“How wide is the opening?” J. called, his voice soundly distinctly sepulchral as it echoed in the shaft.

“Three and a half inches, max,” I answered quietly, feeling sick enough to vomit. On the top and front of the steel roof frame were bright yellow scratches and metal flakes. “Bring it up a foot or two. But no more than that.”

“What do you see?”

As the top of the elevator car came about waist high to me, J. brought it to a quick stop. If I repeat myself here, please forgive me, but some additional explanation is required so Readers can understand this next part. The roof of the elevator car was formed by chain link fencing attached to a frame of horizontal steel bars. The fencing, in turn, was covered by old cardboard boxes that had been cut apart and laid flat. Their sole function was to catch the grunge falling in the elevator shaft and prevent it from ruining the top sheets of the paper that was being moved to the first floor for cutting and shipment to a client. And also to protect passengers from being splattered with that same oily crap.

I reasoned that if Greg had grabbed onto the top of the elevator cage the oily dirt covering the cardboard should have been disturbed. I looked carefully but it didn’t take an engineer or an accident investigator to see that the dirt had recently been scraped away. Especially in the vicinity of the metal scratches on the roof frame and the floor lip.

“Come on, what do you see?” Jorgee asked impatiently.

“Was Greg wearing a belt buckle that night?”

“Yeah. A brass buckle. Why?” His head appeared at my feet as the elevator rose slowly.

“There are a lot of fresh scratches and metal flakes on the roof frame,” I said softly.

“Jesus, when I found him his buckle was broken into three or four pieces.”

“What happened to it?”

“I threw it in the trash downstairs. I’m sure it was picked up last night.”

“Shit!” Though why I was so upset about the belt buckle I still don’t know. I stepped into the car and slowly took it down the shaft so Jorgee could see the top of the cage. He gently touched the scratches and then the flakes. Even in the dim light I could follow the tiny shower of sparking pieces of metal as they fell.

“They look fresh. Really fresh.” His tone was very subdued.

On the way down to the first floor we talked about how the accident could have happened. “So, what do you think?” He looked and sounded terrible. Beyond his depth, he needed my company as desperately as I needed his. The funny thing was we weren’t all that close until that day.

“It happened on six,” I said with conviction and believed it.

“But how?”

“He jumped on top of the cage and got caught by the lip as the car went down.”

“But why? Greg was a solid kid. Why would he do something so goddamn stupid?”

“My guess is he went up to the sixth floor, thinking that’s where the Mirri was. Maybe when he pulled the cable to stop the car it bounced a couple times and he got off, thinking it had come to a full stop. Then it either started down on its own or . . .” I hesitated for a brief moment, not knowing if I should reveal what I really thought. What the hell, I thought, a real accident investigator will come to the same conclusions. “Or one of the paper handlers on a lower floor leaned in the shaft, grabbed the cable and started it down.”

Jorgee frowned at me. “For Christ’s sake, Bob. Don’t ever repeat that. You don’t know exactly what happened. So don’t make it worse than it already is by guessing.”

“Okay, let’s assume that it started down on its own. Greg could have walked a few steps away from the elevator and then realized he was on the wrong floor. By the time he turned around and hurried back to the elevator it was about halfway down. He must have panicked, thinking he had really fucked up the elevator by not stopping it right the first time and had a runaway on his hands.”

“Yeah? Then what?”

“He jumped on top of the elevator cage, thinking he could easily swing his feet and upper body into the elevator. Or not realizing the floor lip was there, sticking out into the shaft. And maybe he miscalculated its speed. It might have been going faster than he anticipated. Either that or once he was holding on to the roof, with his legs hanging inside the car, he had no leverage to swing down into the elevator and he was crushed between the floor lip and the steel roof frame. Where we found the scratches and the metal flakes.” Shit, I remember thinking, crushed. A terrible word and an even more awful fate. I wished that I had used a word less evocative of the reality.

“Sweet Jesus, you might be right. It all fits.” Jorgee’s sigh held a deep finality.

We didn’t say much more then or on the ride back to Chesterfield. We had too much to think about to talk.

Later Saturday afternoon I called the Rectory and asked our pastor to include Greg in the prayers at all the Sunday Masses. This admittedly was an unusual thing for me to do since, at that time, I neither believed in the efficacy of prayer or in the existence of God. It was in effect a measure of my feelings of desperation and helplessness. How else could I help Greg in his struggle for his life? As I told Fr. Drennan the extent of Greg’s injuries I became so choked with emotion I had to apologize and hang up. Once the tears started I couldn’t seem to stop them.

Penny Kennedy called at 7:30 that evening and asked me if I had had a chance to talk to my doctor friend about the surgeon and the Hospital. I apologized profusely, telling her that I had meant to relay the message earlier and simply forgot. My OB-GYN friend, Kurt, had called one of his closest friends, a neurosurgeon at the University Medical Center and asked about Karpinski. He was told that Karpinski was a full professor in the Medical School, the Chief of Thoracic Surgery at the hospital, and the head of the Intensive Care Division. He was regarded by all the staff as an extraordinarily competent surgeon. The Head Nurse of the Intensive Care Unit told Kurt that the nursing staff thought that Karpinski walked on water. And that she thought that Greg had the best physician in the whole hospital. Especially given the nature of his condition. Plus, the hospital was the highest rated trauma care center in the metropolitan area. Penny softly thanked me for being so kind and hung up. I felt like a complete asshole for failing to call her.

The next day, Sunday, at the Medical Center was grim city. When San and I arrived at 10:30, Tom F., Beacon’s President, and his wife Kathy were with the Kennedy’s. Their faces were drawn with tension and apprehension. No one smiled a greeting.

San squeezed my hand tightly. “You don’t think that he . . .”

We hugged and kissed Tom and Kathy and the Kennedys, feeling a close bond with the suffering parents.

“How is he doing?” I asked Tom Kennedy, not wanting to know the truth I could read in the lines on his face.

“Not good. They can’t stabilize his blood pressure. It keeps jumping up and down. It’s so damned erratic.” He wiped his tear-reddened eyes with a crumpled tissue.

“They don’t give us much hope,” Penny sobbed.” All they tell us is bad news and then worse news. It doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I don’t think he’s strong enough.” Her thin body shook as the tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks. San put her arm around her and hugged tightly.

“We can’t give up hope, Penny.” Tom voice was adamant. Greg’s still fighting. We’ve got to help him by staying positive. If we lose hope he might be able to sense it and quit on us. We don’t want that.”

“Have you been able to see him this morning?” I asked Kennedy.

“Yes. He’s not as alert as he was yesterday but he knows we’re here. He tried to talk but it’s difficult to understand him with the oxygen mask on. I know he said, ‘Hi, Mom.’” Suddenly he turned and with a mumbled, “Excuse me,” hurried down the hall to the Men’s Room and much needed privacy.

Tom F. caught my eye and signaled for me to walk over to the drinking fountain with him.

“When did you guys get in?” I asked.

“About 8:00 last night. We came straight from the airport to see Greg.”

“How did you know about the accident?”

“Jorgee left a message with American Airline for me to call him immediately. Said that is was a medical emergency. Sort of scared the shit out of us, thinking it was a problem with one of our kids.” He looked at me and frowned, “Not that we . . .”

I interrupted him. “For Christ’s sake, Tom, I know exactly what you mean. Did the nurse let you in to see him?”

“They did but only by mistake. The Kennedys and their friends from Detroit had just left. Apparently the nurse knew he was expecting his brother and sister-in-law to arrive and when we said we had just flown in she assumed we were the relatives. Since she said we could go in for a few minutes I didn’t bother to set her straight.”

“Naturally. Was he awake?”

“Not only awake but very alert. Surprised the hell out of me after what Jorgee had told me on the phone at the Ft. Myers Airport. He recognized me as soon as I walked into the room. He was smiling big time under the oxygen mask.”

“Did he say anything about the accident?”

“Not really. He just said, ‘I really screwed up this time, Tom. I’m sorry. I really screwed up.’ I told him to forget it. All we wanted was for him to get better and come back to work. He smiled and told me that he’d be back in three days.” Tom turned away, wiping a tear from his eye.

“Three days he said and he meant it. When I took his hand he was so strong it shocked me. He looked so bad but was really gripping my hand hard. I just can’t believe he’s doing so awful this morning.” He wiped his eyes again and blew his nose. None of us tough guys could keep the tears in check.

“How are the Kennedys? They seem pretty torn up.”

“They are. About a half hour ago the doctor came out and told them that they were having trouble getting Greg stabilized. And that if they weren’t successful pretty soon he might not make it through the day. That’s when they both broke down. Greg must have been doing all right yesterday evening when they last talked to him and now all they can think about is losing him, Man, how hard it that for a parent?”

There was nothing I could say.

“Jorgee told me that the two of you went back to the warehouse yesterday. Did you find anything?”

“Not much, but enough to make a couple good guesses. We found gouges in the brick where he must have tried to dug his heels in and stop the elevator and metal scratches from his belt buckle on the steel frame. It looked like he tried to jump on top part of the elevator as it was on its way down. And got crushed between the floor lip and the metal frame.”

Tom F. sighed deeply, shook his head in pained disbelief, and didn’t say another word.

Why Liberals Dislike the States’ Rights Doctrine

          Please note at the outset that this essay does not directly address either of the two major American political parties. Rather, it is focused on the political ideologies of the right and left.

          It is obvious to observers of the U.S. political scene that many on the left of the political spectrum intensely dislike the states’ rights principle so beloved by conservatives, libertarians, and others to the right of the political aisle. As a lifelong leftist, I freely admit to distrusting people who are vociferous proponents of states rights as the primary Constitutional position. Recently, I reflected on why and how that situation evolved, not just for me personally but for many thousands who hold leftist-liberal-progressive points of view. Those reflections, as they appear herein, are not based on lofty philosophical concepts or ethical ideals. Rather, they are grounded in the American historical record since I believe the old saw attributed to Winston Churchill, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” So, let’s start with a brief foray into American history.
          We all know that the original Thirteen Colonies permitted slavery and that the far greater majority of those slaves were in the plantations of the South. When, after Britain called it quits and withdrew their armies, it came time to talk about forming a new nation, all the southern colonies insisted that a condition of their joining was keeping their slaves. In fact, part of the original doctrine of states’ rights stemmed from the determination of those southern slave owners to grow their slaves in order to expand their properties and thus increase their wealth.
          After the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, all former slave states adopted laws, collectively known as Black Codes, that restricted freedmen, the former slaves who had been emancipated but were not universally recognized as full citizens. While the Southern and Southwestern states pursued re-admission to the Union after the Civil War, they sharply constrained the rights of freedmen in a successful effort to control former slaves and to ensure they could not claim social or legal equality with the white majority that held power.

          The Black Codes granted African Americans certain restricted rights, such as legalized marriage (but only within their race) and limited access to the courts. But those same Codes denied freedmen many other rights, including to testify against whites in trials, to serve on juries or in state militias, to vote, and to express legal concerns publicly. In response to plantation owners’ demands that freedmen be required to work in agricultural occupations, many Black Codes mandated that former slaves who failed to sign yearly contracts as field hands, tenant farmers, or share croppers could be arrested and involuntarily hired out to white landowners. Most of those same states passed laws decreeing that any tenant farmer or sharecropper (and all family members) who owed a debt to the landowner could not move from the property until the debt was paid in full, effectively eliminating their right to move freely or to migrate within or out of state and creating a form of involuntary servitude known as debt slavery (also called debt bondage or debt peonage) that was passed on from generation to generation.

          The Black Codes in some states strictly limited the occupations open to African Americans. Other states barred freedmen from acquiring title to land. Still others allowed judges to force African American children to work for their former owners without parental consent. Many states enacted loosely defined vagrancy laws that resulted in the arrest and conviction of many thousands of black men who were then sentenced to work without pay in one of hundreds of forced labor camps operated by state and county governments or for large corporations (such as the United States Steel Corporation and railroads), small-time entrepreneurs, and land owners. For those and additional historical details of racial oppression and subjugation with which many if not most Americans may not be familiar, interested Readers should consult the works of the prominent Emory University historian, Leon F. Litwack (Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. New York: Vintage Books; Winner of the 1980 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; and Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. 1998. New York: Alfred A. Knopf) and Charles Blackmon, (Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. 2008. New York: Doubleday Press).

          But the Black Codes weren’t the only tool used by states to legally oppress and discriminate against black Americans. Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enacted between 1876 and 1965 that mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans. In reality, those laws led to treatment and accommodations that were drastically inferior to those provided for white Americans. The result was to institutionalize a large number of socioeconomic and educational disadvantages for blacks, including the prohibition of racial intermarriage; requiring separate waiting rooms for public transportation (buses and trains); establishing separate schools for whites and blacks where the teachers, facilities, and educational materials were never of equal quality; and prohibiting whites and blacks from eating in the same dining rooms, from staying in the same hotels; from using the same toilet facilities, from using park or other public facilities reserved for whites. And on and on and on.

In case Readers feel a sense of moral superiority because they live in states that couldn’t possibly have been involved in anything so sordid and degrading as de jure segregation, the following 35 states, or nearly 75 percent, enacted and enforced Jim Crow laws:

Arizona                      Arkansas                    California

Colorado                   Connecticut                 Florida

Georgia                      Idaho                          Illinois

Indiana                       Kansas                       Kentucky

Louisiana                   Maine                          Maryland

Mississippi                 Missouri                      Montana

Nebraska                  New Mexico               North Carolina

North Dakota            Ohio                           Oklahoma

Oregon                      Pennsylvania               Rhode Island

South Carolina           South Dakota             Texas

Utah                          Virginia                       Washington

West Virginia            Wyoming

          After World War II, President Harry Truman issued three executive orders that desegregated the military and supported a civil rights bill by making it illegal to use race to discriminate against persons applying for civil service positions and prohibited defense contractors from discriminating against anyone because of race. Those policy shifts caused a split in the Democratic Party that led to the formation of the States' Rights Democratic Party (commonly known as Dixiecrats) led by Strom Thurmond. The States' Rights Party vehemently opposed racial integration and was determined to protect what they portrayed as the “southern way of life” against an oppressive federal government by retaining the Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and white supremacy. For historical correctness and to help clarify what the States' Rights Party believed in and actively promoted, I have provided a quote from its 1948 platform: "We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race." That political position is pretty hard to misrepresent or to spin into a more acceptable conservative posture with regard to exactly what people who believed in states’ rights meant in the real world.

          Thurmond ran as the States' Rights candidate for President in 1948, losing the election to Truman. It is important to note that in 2002, incoming U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said of his good friend, Thurmond: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." For the historical record, that’s the same Strom Thurmond who famously said when he was the States' Rights Party candidate for President: “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches." No hidden racial innuendos in that straightforward states’ rights position.

          For over one hundred years after the Civil War the term states' rights was code for state and local government-condoned terrorism directed against racial minorities, especially black Americans. Today, no one who has used the phrase states' rights can be unaware of the massive resistance movement across the South and Southwest organized to oppose federally forced desegregation that catapulted onto the national stage after World War II or the powerful message of solidarity it historically sent to Southern whites about racial oppression and segregation. To deny that reality, while claiming the states' rights Constitutional provision should be solely understood as providing States with power against the potential tyranny of the federal government, is to be willfully and churlishly blind to American history. As an aside, it is a delicious historical irony for leftists like me that the practice of the states’ rights doctrine by Confederate governors directly contributed to the defeat of the Confederate states in the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.

          Many on the left side of the political fence still take considerable offense at use of the term because of its past service as a euphemism of the bigotry of conservatives like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. Which is why, in my opinion, so many liberals were outraged when Ronald Reagan, a staunch proponent of overturning California’s 1963 Fair Housing Act and thus allowing racial and ethnic discrimination in the sale or rental of homes, launched his 1980 Presidential election campaign by invoking states’ rights at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, that bastion of White Citizens’ Councils and unrepentant racial hatred. Reagan’s use of states’ rights in that speech was a tacit endorsement of racism and de facto and de jure segregation. Anyone who believes otherwise either does not fully understand the history of Mississippi, the American South, Ronald Reagan, is being intentionally disingenuous, or has chosen to wear mental blinders that restrict analysis and judgment.

          Of course, conservative apologists like David Brooks have piously absolved Reagan of racism while studiously ignoring the broader significance of his Neshoba County appearance and earlier support of California’s Proposition 14 that in 1964 overturned the State’s Fair Housing Act as well as his denouncing civil rights laws in his successful campaign for the California governorship. Here’s a direct quote from Reagan’s lips during that campaign: "If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, it is his right to do so." (Source: Kyle Longley et al. Deconstructing Reagan: Conservative mythology and America's fortieth president. M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 2007, p. 76. ISBN-10: 0765615916).

          Despite conservative columnists’ labored defense of Reagan, he also used racially loaded remarks in 1976, when he tried to defeat Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination. Those remarks characterized welfare recipients as Cadillac-driving welfare queens and "young bucks" buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. And, yes, those quotes are a matter of historical record and were not fabricated by rabid leftists or by the liberal media. My definition of a racist includes anyone who intentionally uses racially focused language to further a political or social position that discriminates against or inappropriately affects a racial group, which qualifies Reagan as a racist despite his and his supporters’ facile denials.

          After the 1980 Neshoba County watershed event, Ronald Reagan, George Bush (remember the vicious Willie Horton attack ads crafted by James Pinkerton and Andrew Card?), and other right-wing politicians created a conservative political ideology that expressed implicit yet powerful racial messages easily understood by their supporters. But since then, conservatives have developed a strategy in which they throw their hands up in self-righteous indignation while claiming that any allegations of racism against them are scurrilous smears and slurs on their character and in so doing have been effective in discrediting the entire discussion by focusing it on accusations of individual prejudice rather than intentional political strategy.

          It’s very easy for conservatives to appeal to the advocacy of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson with respect to states’ rights and even to state nullification of federal law as Constitutional First Principles and not as implicit or explicit racism. However, I have yet to read conservative commentary that puts that advocacy in the context of Madison and Jefferson having been lifelong slave owners and authors of critical constitutional documents that institutionalized slavery and allowed it to flourish or, more importantly, in the context of the horrific violence states’ rights advocates systematically visited on their slaves and later on black freedmen through enacting and enforcing Black Codes and Jim Crow laws up to the 1970s. Draping the meaning of states’ rights solely with the supposedly noble cloak of the Founders is a hypocritical technique that purposefully ignores the next two hundred violent years of American history and disparages the struggle of racial minorities against the bigotry and tyranny of the white majority.

          Today, I personally do not think many, if not most, conservatives who advocate states' rights are racists. I do believe, however, that most conservatives have intentionally chosen to ignore or sharply devalue the heavy freight that has been an inseparable part of that term through two centuries of bloody repression and systemic terrorism inflicted on racial minorities. The fact that that terrorism was home-grown and encouraged or tolerated by civil authorities for over one hundred years does not mitigate the evil it visited on millions of blacks and other minorities. It is a reprehensible facet of American history that will not go away no matter how desperately conservatives attempt to ignore it or to spin its many political implications into something more palatable.

          If liberals are able to recognize that conservatives have legitimate concerns with respect to states’ versus federal rights, whether they agree with those concerns or not, perhaps conservatives can acknowledge the historical use of states’ rights, both as a tool to viciously oppress black Americans and later as a code that continues to appeal to racial prejudice, adversely affects today’s understanding of the term. Note the operative word in the above sentence is perhaps. But I wouldn’t recommend holding your breath while waiting for many conservatives to respond in a forthright manner.

Elevator Accident Part 1

It is important to note that this material was originally written in the fall of 1984.

In 1984, Beacon Paper Company hired a young man named Gregory Kennedy as a management trainee. For reasons no one bothered to explain properly, it fell to me to organize and supervise his training program. I suppose the simple answer was no one else wanted to be bothered and they knew I’d take the assignment seriously. Suddenly, my responsibilities in running Spec Sales and Promotions had to include seeing that Greg learned all aspects of the paper business.

It was more than a little unusual for Beacon to hire someone fresh out of college with no graphic arts training or sales experience. So I nosed around and found out that Greg’s father was a close personal friend of the executive vice-president of the conglomerate that owned Beacon Paper. When Greg graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in finance and economics but no interest in working in that field, his father, a very successful paper broker with major contacts throughout the country, dropped a few subtle hints and viola, his son was invited to join our firm. Another example of the good old boy network doing what comes naturally.

Initially, I let on that I was less than pleased with the assignment, even though it was a testament to my having learned at least a significant part of the paper business in a little over two years. Training Greg would require me to take time away from my accounts, something I discussed in detail with Tom F., my boss and Beacon’s President. But in truth I didn’t mind, partly because it fed my ego to be teaching again and partly because I had grown disenchanted with the lack of intellectual challenge in selling paper and was looking for a little diversion. The fact that Tom F. had chosen me for the job was a nice feather in my cap. It also didn’t hurt that Greg and I hit it off immediately. He was bright, enthusiastic, eager to learn, and had a sense of humor in sync with my own.

The first thing I did was to establish a training schedule for Greg’s first six months. Although my assigned job was to expose him to every facet of the business, my secret goal was to ensure that he fell in love with paper. Okay, that may sound ridiculous but it wasn’t. Yes, I had become increasingly bored with my job, which was to persuade large end-users and advertising and graphic design firms to specify our paper. But I had come to love paper and the many ways it could be used to tell a story or advance a point of view. Paper is such a fascinating medium. For all practical purposes it appears two-dimensional. But in reality it has four dimensions: length, height, depth, and an almost indefinable dimension that combines appearance, feel, texture, and substance that make paper so incredibly sensual.

The training program I developed, which was properly blessed by the powers that be, required us to meet at least three mornings each week, from 7:00 to 9:00, in formal classroom type lectures that were to cover the intricacies of paper. In addition, Greg was assigned to work periods varying from one week to several months in each of our different departments. After the first few hesitant days, I threw myself into the task with real excitement. Greg was so anxious to learn he stimulated the teacher reflex in me to the extent I began neglecting my sales responsibilities, which didn’t bother me much initially but would eventually have adversely impacted my commissions had it continued.

Greg was an eager and willing student, impressing even Beacon’s jaded salesmen with his ability to grasp concepts quickly and also with his sharp wit and cool demeanor. At twenty-two, he was full of a youthful self-confidence that was genuine but presented not the slightest hint of arrogance or inflated self-importance.

Some description is required. Greg was tall, a shade over 6 feet 2 inches, had black curly hair, and weighed around 170. His hair and saturnine features made him look more Italian than the Irish of both his parents. He wore his attractive good looks casually, without that insufferable arrogance exuded too often by tall, “beautiful” people born to money. It was a good sign that all the young women in the office liked him. On the way to the john one day I overheard bits and pieces of a conversation between two of the female workers in our mill department about his cute buns. In short, Greg was a very nice, likeable young man with exceptional ability and maturity for his age.

Greg progressed quickly in the next several weeks, working diligently in our morning sessions and in the various departments to which he was assigned. As we spent more and more time together, especially over lunch, we began discussing topics other than printing. It quickly became obvious that he was very proud of his family. He spoke frequently of his mother, who had, about two years previously, re-entered graduate school, studying for a doctorate in psychology. But he seldom said much about his father. Initially, biased no doubt by the miserable relationship I had had with my father, I assumed the two weren’t close. It wasn’t long before I discovered the reverse was the case. Despite talking little about his father, it soon became obvious that he cared for him deeply and wanted his dad to think highly of him. As a paper broker with a national clientele, Greg’s dad was very well known and extremely successful in a cutthroat business. Without ever voicing his concerns, it became evident that Greg wanted to prove that he could carve his own niche in life and become every bit as successful as dear old dad. That’s why he had refused an offer from his father’s firm and also why he left Detroit for a job in St. Louis. He wanted to succeed on his own terms.

Not having had a good relationship with my father, I caught myself almost envying Greg for his. Hearing him talk about his family and their vacations and all the good times they enjoyed made me sad for the absence of those high-quality experiences in my own life.

When we ate lunch together we never talked about the paper business but focused on far more vital topics, like religion, politics, and philosophy. To my astonishment, I discovered that Greg had never heard of many of the world’s great philosophers, including Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein or Martin Heidegger and only barely recognized the names Sorën Kierkegaard or Sartre and knew precious little about their contributions to the world of intellection. With some prodding he admitted to have taken only an introductory philosophy course, one that was strictly concerned with such contemporary topics as abortion, substance abuse, and sexual “ethics,” as he put it.

As a former university professor I was disappointed with his lack of preparation for the most important task life puts before everyone: thinking. Ever the teacher, despite having been removed for some seven years from my last full-time university position, I determined to give Greg at least a small inkling of the sweep of philosophy and show him how absolutely necessary it had been to the development of Western history and civilization. Since lunch breaks are not particularly conducive to discussing how Socrates-Plato-Aristotle and countless others have changed their worlds and ours, I determined to excite his innate sense of curiosity by lending him books from my home library by William Barrett, Jules Henry, Ashley Montagu, and Philip Slater, among others. Once he discovered the world of ideas I knew he would pursue it on his own.

About two months into Greg’s training we became all extremely busy preparing Beacon Paper’s display booth and promotional materials for the largest graphic arts exhibition in the St. Louis area. As Manager of Sales Promotions I was responsible for making sure every little thing was perfect, from the booth’s set-up, paper display’s, name tags, printed handouts, advertising blurbs, to the typical coffee mug and business card holder give-aways. All the hundred small but supposedly essential details. For three weeks before the big event Greg and I worked hand in hand to make sure every piece we were going to use was perfect, which was critical since representatives of the holding company from Detroit that owned Beacon would be in town to see what we were doing to increase our sales. The naked sword was hanging over our heads. It was perform or else. And none of us wanted to find out exactly what the or-else meant.

For some unexplained reason that Friday before the big event was even more crazy than usual. All day long we were kept running around like fools. By 4:30 I had had it. Everything had been counted, packed, unpacked, re-counted, and re-packed. We were both exhausted. I told Greg to sit down, relax, and start dreaming about the hot date he had been talking about for the last two days and forget the paper bullshit until the big show. I breathed a sigh of relief and headed for home, a warm shower, a cold beer or two and early bed, leaving Greg to finish up the last few remaining things.

About 8:30 that night the phone rang. It was Bob J., Beacon’s VP of Operations. His voice was grim as he told me that Greg had been in an accident at work. Around 4:55 one of our larger clients called with an urgent request for several boxes of printed materials we had been holding for them. Bob told Greg to bring them from the warehouse. The electric freight elevator was in use so Greg, in a big hurry to get the brochures and be on his way home to clean up for his hot date, took the old hydraulic elevator that only the warehousemen were supposed to use. Somewhere between the second and the sixth floors Greg had become trapped between the wall and the elevator and had been badly bruised.

“Bruised?” I asked, a cold dark pit opening in my stomach. “What the hell does that mean? Just how bad it is?”

“It’s not really that bad,” Jorgee insisted. “The paramedics took him to St. Louis University Hospital. They thought he might be bleeding internally. But it’s not all that serious. He had a collapsed lung but the Emergency Room doctors re-inflated it. So that’s no big problem. The surgeon told me he might have to open Greg’s abdominal cavity to see what’s causing the loss of blood.” His voice, unanimated in the best of circumstances was flat and devoid of emotion but was not without hope.

“Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed. “Collapsed lung, internal bleeding. What do you mean, it’s not too bad? How the hell did it happen?” Despite Jorgee’s reassurances, I felt sick with apprehension.

“Hell, I don’t know. He was alone in the elevator.”

“Who found him?”

“One of the shipping clerks saw the hydraulic elevator come down with no one on it. So he called up the shaft to see who was using it. He heard Greg moaning for help. He ran upstairs and found him lying on the second floor in front of the elevator door.”

“Was he bleeding badly?”

“No. That’s the crazy part. He wasn’t bleeding externally at all. His shirt was torn in the back and the skin on his back was scraped but there was almost no blood. When I got there Greg tried to get up and walk but he couldn’t. That’s when I called 911. The police arrived first but took one look and said it was only a minor accident, not enough to justify a report. The EMS people took his vital signs and got him into the ambulance right away because he was going into shock. His pulse was weak and rapid and his blood pressure was really low, like 70 over 40.”

“That’s not a good sign. Where’d you say they took him?”

“To the University Trauma Center. By the time I got here at 6:00 his blood pressure was back to normal and he was alert. He even asked the nurse to call his girlfriend and cancel their date.”

“That’s Greg all right.” I chuckled with an ease I didn’t feel. “Always organized. Did you ask him how it happened?”

“Yeah, but all he said was that he was sorry he had messed up and would tell me about it later. When he felt better.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. He told Bill, the warehouseman who found him that he was riding between the elevator and the wall and got stuck.”

“What? Stuck where? How could he get stuck between the elevator and the wall? How’s that possible? There’s no room. Besides, which wall did he mean? The front or the back?” Nothing Bob J. said was making sense.

“Shit, I don’t know. I really don’t.” He sounded as puzzled as I was. “I called his parents and they’re flying from Detroit first thing tomorrow morning. The surgeon told them it didn’t look too serious but they’re coming anyway.”

“Did you call Tom yet?” Beacon’s President and his wife were vacationing in Florida and weren’t scheduled to return for several days.

“No. He can’t do anything but get upset and worry all night. If it’s necessary I’ll get in touch with him in the morning.”

I sighed, feeling helpless, worried, and shocked that such a serious accident could happen to one of our friends and co-workers. “You need me to come down there?”

“No. Carol and Kim from the accounting department are here. They’ll stay and see if the surgeon decides to open him up. I can only be here for an hour. My oldest is running a high fever so I have to get a prescription on my way home. My wife Mary Lou can’t pick it up because her car is on the fritz so I have to head out before the drug store closes.”

“Okay. Tell Carol or Kim to call me if anything happens, will you? I mean anything.”

“Sure. But take it easy. Don’t tie yourself in knots. Greg is in good hands. He’s awake and talking to anyone who’ll listen. He’ll be fine. It was just a nasty scrape. He’ll probably be back at work by Monday at the latest.”

I felt reassured by the confidence in his voice. After all, he was on the scene talking to the doctor and I wasn’t. After I hung up San wanted to know all the details. But there wasn’t much to tell her. Even though I saw that old freight elevator every day I was completely incapable of visualizing how Greg could have been riding between it and the wall. No matter how I thought about it I could not imagine how the accident had occurred. It was a puzzle.

By the time we climbed into bed, both San and I assumed everything was under control. Since we hadn’t heard from anyone at the Hospital we took refuge in the comforting attitude that no news is good news. But it took me over an hour to fall asleep. And when I did it wasn’t a sound sleep. I tossed and turned on the edge of consciousness until the ringing of the downstairs phone jolted me wide-awake. We ordinarily disconnected our bedroom phone to ward off prank, post-midnight calls to one of our teenaged children. In the dark and more than half-asleep San couldn’t find the switch on the side of the phone that would turn it on. As she fumbled the kitchen phone continued ringing. The red numbers of the clock on the night stand winked 2:12.

“Quick,” I said, frantic with worry. “It might be the Hospital.”

She finally found the button and handed me the phone.

“Hello.”

“Bob?”

“Yeah, Kim. What’s going on?” I replied, instantly recognizing the pain in her voice.

“It’s really bad news.” She choked back a sob, trying to steady her voice. “They just took Greg from the operating room to Intensive Care. The surgeon came out and explained everything to us because Carol and I are the only ones here. He told us it doesn’t look like Greg’s going to make it.”

“What! Oh my God!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Not going to make it? A couple hours ago Jorgee told me he was doing fine. What the hell happened?”

“They knew he was bleeding internally so at 10:00 the surgeon made a small incision in the stomach wall to see if they could spot the trouble. Right before they took Greg in the doctor told us it was a routine procedure. But once he was open they found all his internal organs were crushed.”

“Jesus Christ. Crushed? What the hell?” Waves of nausea crashed over me.

Kim continued in a rush before I could say anything more. I realized she had to keep talking or she would break down. “They removed his spleen, part of his stomach, most of his colon, part of his liver, half of his pancreas. One of the arteries leading to the right kidney was torn apart. That’s where most of the bleeding was coming from. They repaired the artery but the doctor is afraid the kidney is shot. They can’t be sure at this time but wanted to give him every chance.”

“Oh my God. Oh my God.” I was unable to say anything else. My entire body had turned cold as a marble slab but I couldn’t even shiver.

“His blood pressure is fluctuating very erratically and they’re worried about some problem called ARDS in the collapsed lungs. It’s got something to do with a mucous membrane forming in his lungs but I’m not sure what that means. I just know it’s really serious. The doctor also said that because of the extensive bleeding he’s worried about Greg using up all the clotting factor in his blood. But I don’t know what they’re doing about it. My head is numb and I can’t seem to think straight. I, I just feel so overwhelmed.”

“Hang in there, Kim. You’re doing great. Give me a few minutes to throw my clothes on and I’ll be there in . . .”

“No. You don’t need to come down. Greg’s still unconscious. Just sitting around here wouldn’t do you or him any good. Try to get some sleep and come in the morning.”

“Okay. Do you think he’ll make it through the night?”

“Oh God, I don’t know.” Her sigh was a cross between a cry and a moan. “Have to tell you his surgeon is very pessimistic. But he said Greg has a slim chance if his blood pressure stabilizes. Right now it just doesn’t look good.”

“Did you call Jorgee?”

“Yeah, right before I called you.”

“What about Greg’s parents?”

“Dr. Karpinski phoned them before he talked to me and Carol.”

“Who’s Karpinski?”

“The surgeon who operated on Greg.”

“Oh.” Feeling empty, useless and deep down depressed I had little more to say but found myself searching for some way to reassure the two of us. “You’ve got to keep your hopes up. He’ll pull through. Greg’s a strong kid.”

“Maybe,” she sniffed, not buying my bullshit optimism.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, belatedly remembering she was one of the gals at work I had overheard commenting about Greg’s attractive body.

“Not good. All Carol and I can do is cry and hold on to each other.”

“Are you guys going home now?”

“No. We’ll stay. Greg’s parents are supposed to arrive at the airport a little after 8:00. Bob J. and his wife are picking them up. They’ll get here around 9:00. As soon as they arrive we’ll leave. Carol and I don’t want them to think we left him all alone through the night.”

“Listen,” I said, feeling weariness that couldn’t be explained by the lateness of the hour. “I want you to call me if his condition changes. No matter what. I want to be there if . . .”

She interrupted immediately, like she didn’t want me to finish the thought. “Okay. One of us will call you right away.”

The rest of the night was a tossing, turning, pacing nightmare. Hope, despair, fear, uncertainty, and resurgent hope fought across the battlefield of my mind. I struggled to understand what had happened and failed. I dozed, woke, fell back into a fitful half-sleep only to jump up in unknowing fright at 5:00 AM when I gave up in frustration and went downstairs. The book I attempted to read lay open on my lap. Concentrating on the words proved too much and effort. The pages refused to stay in focus. So, I stared at the brick fireplace but found no comfort there.

Of all things, a month previously I had volunteered to give a seminar on how to conduct community research to the Junior League. A friend had asked me so many times I had felt guilty for refusing her so finally had agreed. The lecture was scheduled for 8:30. I was grateful for something to think about other that Greg lying helplessly in the Hospital and tried to organize my ideas on how to discover the nature of urban social problems so some of them might to acceptable to upper middle class do-gooders. That effort only worker for a short time.

One of the Junior Leaguers picked me up at 8:00 and drove me to their stylish headquarters in Frontenac, an upscale suburb. For an hour and thirty minutes I was able to banish all the mind-numbing thoughts about Greg’s injury and worse and concentrate on helping over-anxious upper crust American women, smartly dressed in their elegant woolen casuals and asking such polite, inane questions, sort out how they could make a difference in resolving the enormous racial and economic problems of St. Louis. Not when their bank president husbands were making millions on red-lining slum properties owned by poor blacks. Can you spell fat fucking chance?

San picked me up after I made good my escape and we rushed into the City, not talking, not thinking. This precarious medical emergency was so like what had happened to Karin we could barely articulate our fears. Our grey spirits were matched perfectly by the leaden skies and intermittent rain. We had heard no more news from the Hospital but our unfettered imaginations conjured up the worst.

The University Medical Center towers thrust their way past half-empty parking lots, abandoned single- and multi-family residences soon to be converted to medical offices and more parking lots. It was a triumph of institutional power over the housing needs of poor blacks who had been banished to even drearier neighborhoods and ever more dilapidated structures. Hey, the land was valuable to the University and who was there to speak for the needs of the inarticulate poor? No one.

The Medical Center was a huge facility, almost but not quite reassuring in high-tech steel, smoked glass, concrete and a tasteful veneer of used brick that had most likely been recovered from neighborhood houses knocked down to make room for its brand of progress. See what happens when those in power get to define the situation? Those who triumph write history, not the vanquished.

Inside the Medical Center, the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit radiated a familiar aura of human frailty that smacked San and I in the face with the tangible nexus of life and death. This place, so strange yet too familiar, was where the struggle for life was joined and was often terminated short of the goal. Entering the Unit for the first time was a tense, stomach-churning experience. Neither San nor I could ever forget those dreadful hours and days we spent in the St. Joseph Hospital with Karin. This experience was so frighteningly similar it shook us both to our cores.

We boldly strode past the nurse on guard duty sitting at a desk under a large red sign prominently declaring: RELATIVES ONLY. Our logic was that if we acted as if we belonged no one was likely to challenge our right to be there. So we charged ahead with outward confidence, hoping to spot someone we knew before our charade was unmasked and we were routed for the intruders we were. Just then San saw Bob J, and his wife sitting in a small waiting room with two people I assumed to be Greg’s parents. Oh, sweet Jesus, I groaned inwardly. Jorgee looked as pale as death. San must have noticed it at the same time, squeezing my hand in a sudden vice-grip. We walked in, prepared for the worst. I kissed Mary Lou, put my arms around Jorgee’s large shoulders and gave him a hug. His lips were pursed tightly, as if keeping the bad news from becoming real by being silent.

He turned and introduced us to Greg’s parents, Penny and Tom Kennedy. They were as white as chalk and looked as brittle from the tension. As the women sat awkwardly, together, the three men walked to the coffee machine in the hall, feigning a desire to drink the hot but tasteless fluid.

“How is he?” I forced myself to look Tom in the eye, steeling myself for his response.

“Hanging in there.” Kennedy’s words choked in his throat as if they were the cause of all the emotion. “We’re praying a lot.” Tears welled up in eyes already red from unaccustomed weeping.

Without conscious volition my arms circled the burley shoulders of this stranger I felt I knew, hugging him in a clumsy attempt to give comfort. My heart bled for his suffering.

“The surgeon didn’t give us much hope,” he continued, wiping his eyes with a ravaged tissue. “He told us a little while ago that if Greg can stabilize for the next day or so he’s got a chance. A very slim chance. But if he stabilizes he might be able to pull through.”

Good God in Heaven. Might pull through? What an insubstantial thread to cling to amidst total strangers in an unfamiliar environment. How terrible for them. Their oldest child struck down and they didn’t even have the comfort of their own doctor to provide some small measure of reassurance. They were helpless to affect the outcome in ways we had never been with Karin. At least we had a network of friends to support us.

Now we all were spectators together watching, waiting. Only Greg and Dr. Karpinski, the anonymous surgeon were the actors.

“Does he know you’re here?” As soon as the words were out I wanted to bite my tongue for asking such an insensitive question.

“Yeah. He smiled at us when Penny and I went in to see him. He squeezed Penny’s hand and said, ‘Hi, Mom.’ I could read his lips through the oxygen mask.” He covered his eyes with his hand and breathed several short shallow gasps, sucking in the air sharply as if he were in pain. He sagged against the wall. Bob J. and I quickly put our arms around him for support, afraid he was about to collapse. But he was stronger than we thought.

It is difficult to remember distinctly the events of that bleak day. We walked the halls a great deal, sat in the dreadfully uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room until our backs screamed for mercy, stood around helplessly murmuring the same words of hope and assurance we had earlier, and talked about the World Series, pro football, the coming national elections. Or any topic that didn’t stick in our throats. Those first hours of vigil passed like days. Every turn when you reached the end of whatever hall you were walking down brought a view of yet another clock. The damned things were everywhere. You couldn’t avoid seeing them. And being reminded that barely five minutes had elapsed since the last time you checked.

Periodically, a doctor, nurse, or priest entered our solemn little universe of whispered pain and visited with the Kennedys. We would then slip quietly away to give them what little privacy that could be afforded in the constrained circumstances. On one of those occasions, a young priest came to talk to the Kennedys. Before he had time to say more than a few words, Penny stood up and left the room, a look of pained irritation on her face. Only then did I remember Greg told me his mother was very critical of the Catholic Church and was resolutely anti-clerical while his father remained faithful to his religious roots. Inwardly, I mused on their reversal of the roles San and I played with respect to religion.

By mid-afternoon the men, dredging deep into the bottom of the conversational barrel, got down to discussing the paper business. Tom Kennedy fascinated us with a wealth of anecdotal gems about the follies of selling train cars, truck loads, and cargo containers of domestic and imported paper to the largest printers in Chicago, Detroit, and the East Coast. He had a great sense of humor and in few words was able to skewer the miserly and avaricious habits of paper buyers most of us knew, at least by reputation, and frequently disliked. The laughter was a much needed release for us all but particularly for the big, red-faced Irishman who, with his expensive tweed jacket, thinning gray hair, and hearty manner, looked the perfect advertisement for Air Lingus. Every time he gestured or smiled I saw the son mirrored in him. Those were poignant moments for me.

The small waiting room was so crowded and warm it was difficult for me to concentrate on his words so I took in the man. He impressed me as a very direct, open fellow, honest in expressing deep emotions even though surrounded by strangers who, in his mind, may by some terrible negligence be responsible for Greg’s accident. That monstrous thought was banished immediately though nonetheless it would return to haunt my days and nights.

In spite of my involvement in the painful situation, in that Greg worked directly for me and I was responsible for his actions at work, I was caught up in and intrigued by the depth of Tom’s involvement in the complex world of paper and printing. Tom and his firm represented an enormous market, millions and millions of pounds of paper purchased annually by some of the largest printers in the world. Paper that was printed for most of the national periodicals, like Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, etc., and for such huge end users as General Motors, K-Mart, Ford, General Electric, etc. It was obvious that he knew and loved his business with a passion I could never understand or even begin to appreciate. Yet, I was utterly fascinated by his in-depth knowledge of every major paper market and seemingly every sizeable piece of business ranging from the Mid-West to the East Coast. Just listening to him was an education.

With the passing hours our little coterie split first into one group and then another. Sometime in the mid-afternoon, Penny and I were together in the waiting room. Everyone else was pacing the halls, standing around the drinking fountain or having yet another coffee downstairs in the cafeteria. I was sitting across the room with San and took that opportunity to look at her closely. Despite the lines of tension and anxiety on her face, she was an attractive woman. I guessed her age at about forty-five or six. She was slimmer than many twenty-year-olds and much more elegant. Which is one thing having a lot of money can do for you. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. A ragged, formerly dainty handkerchief was clutched so tightly her knuckles were bloodless white. She stared vacantly ahead with unfocused eyes completely unaware of her surroundings. It was almost as if she were in shock as well.

As we sat there all San and I could think about was that terrible time in Ann Arbor with our daughter, Karin. About after her surgery when she developed hypertension and the doctors gave us almost no hope of her survival. I remembered how terrified I had been. How I had prayed to a God I didn’t think was there for a miracle I didn’t think would happen. But Karin surprised everyone, including her medical team. She had defied what had seemed insurmountable odds. So, maybe against all the doctors’ grim prognostications Greg would pull through. He was young, healthy, very strong, and above all a fighter. In addition, we were pulling for him, however much that counted.

I walked over to Penny and sat next to her, putting my arm around her shoulders. She felt so thin and frail that I was afraid my hug would crush her like an eggshell. But, like an eggshell, she would prove to have considerable strength.

“He’ll make it, Penny,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel. “He’s got everything working for him.”

“God, I don’t know. I’m so frightened. We don’t know any doctors here we could bring in for a second opinion. What if he’s not getting the right treatment? We wouldn’t even know.” She sobbed into the rumpled cloth. “We just don’t know what to do. It’s such an awful feeling of helplessness.”

My heart was torn for her. It was bad enough that her son lay critically injured just a few feet away but compounding the whole tragedy was the total absence of comforting relatives and friends, or even a familiar environment where they knew the reputation of the hospital and medical staff.

“One of my good friends is an OB-GYN. He has privileges at the Hospital even though most of his practice is in West County. When I get home I can call him and find out about the surgeon and the Intensive Care Unit. Would you like me to do that?” It wasn’t much but it was all I could offer except the small solace of my physical presence.

“Yes. We need to know everything about the doctor and the Hospital. If there’s anything we can do to help Greg we’ll do it. Even if that means flying in another specialist.”

Before I could say another word we heard a commotion in the hall. Penny leaned forward to see what was happening. Suddenly she cried out loud, jumped up from the chair and ran into the arms of a woman who had just arrived. It was obvious that the women were close friends or relatives. In a few minutes, after everyone had stopped crying and hugging each other, Tom and Penny introduced us to their closest friends, Duke and Barbara B. They had just flown in from Detroit to be with the Kennedys.

Several minutes later I caught Jorgee’s eye. We agreed it was time to leave so the Kennedys and their friends could talk freely, without our unintentionally prying eyes on them. As the four of us exited through the lobby, J. suggested we go downtown to check the elevator and see if we could find any evidence of what had happened last night. Mary Lou and San decided to go home in our car and Jorgee and I left in his. Neither of the women wanted to have anything to do with the elevator and I couldn’t blame them. To tell the truth, I didn’t either.

New Careers in St. Louis

When I joined B. Associates in 1977, the company was a 150-person, multidisciplinary consulting firm, top-heavy with engineers, especially civils. I joined the Urban Planning Department as a senior planner and assistant department manager. I was immediately thrown into the deep end of the pool and knew it was swim or drown. So swim I did, pretending I knew a lot more about planning than was the case. My experience working for the St. Louis County Planning Department after I graduated with the BS put my feet on the right track but it was the four years as a Planning and Zoning Commissioner in Pittsfield that was my ace in the hole. Sure, the seven years I spent teaching grad and undergrad courses in planning had given me a solid theoretical background. But it was the nitty-gritty, everyday details I learned in Pittsfield that gave me the knowledge I needed to be an effective practicing planner.

My boss, John, was a decent planner and a nice guy. But the majority owner of the company and president, James M., was an Olympic-class prick and one of the most despicable human beings I have ever had the misfortune to know. All the department managers and assistants had to attend a weekly staff meeting that was largely marketing oriented. James M. lorded over those meetings like Attila the Hun, eager to gut someone and rip his entrails out of the gaping wound for all to admire. I came to dread those meetings, not because I was ever one of the victims but because I hated what that fucking asshole did to his employees. To say that he humiliated and degraded them is to under-exaggerate by a factor of ten. He reviled in finding victims and hounding and brow-beating them into groveling submission. James M. strictly managed by fear, not intelligent leadership. For me, working at B. Associates was an utterly degrading experience. I hated even being in the same room with James M. and couldn’t wait to leave.

However, in the two years I was at B. Associates I acquired considerable and varied planning experience, ranging across the spectrum from working with small cities like Sikeston, Missouri, to many assignments with the City of St. Louis, to being project manager for an EIS for Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority. In that sense it was a good job. But because James M. was trying his best to entice me to stick the knife in the back of my direct boss so he could fire him and move me into the vacated position, I decided to look elsewhere.

That experience at B. Associates helped me get a job in 1979 with ____ CRC as Vice-President and head of the St. Louis planning office, which grew to about five or six people. I worked for a guy in Kansas City named Jerry O., an architect who thought he was a terrific planner but who was a terrible boss and jerk of the first rank. Few, if any, of the people who worked for him in Kansas City or St. Louis liked or respected him. He regularly undercut his staff and made all our lives miserable by trying to micro-manage our jobs. But when Ronald Reagan was elected U.S. President in 1980 it didn’t take long for him to cut all the federal programs that keep us planners alive, like the Urban Development Action Grants. In 1981, work slowed down so much I had to let three of the planners working for me in St. Louis go and I could read the handwriting on the wall. By the end of the year I too was history and joined the swelling ranks of the unemployed.

After being out of work for three months my next door neighbor hired me to work at Beacon Paper Company, where I soon migrated into what was called specification sales and sales promotions, calling on large ad agencies, graphic design firms, and large paper users, like Monsanto and Anheuser-Busch. That’s what I did until 1986, though every year I worked on urban planning jobs as an independent consultant. And for five years, from 1980 through 1985, I also taught urban planning courses part-time as an adjunct professor in Washington University’s Department of Civil Engineering. So, that kept me immersed in planning as well.

In 1986 I was hired as director of business development for LEMCO Consulting Engineers, an electrical engineering firm that specialized in transmission and distribution projects. The following posts present several vignettes from those less than fulfilling times.

South Florida's Gloomy Present, Gloomier Future Part 3 — EATING THE EVERGLADES

          If we fail to care or learn from what is happening in Homestead, Miami-Dade, Immokalee, or Palm Beach County then we freely consent to the conversion of fragile wetlands and sensitive environments throughout the State to agricultural uses and then to urban development. As a critical aside, the growth dynamic we’re talking about does not affect only south Florida. For example, in early 2006, planning officials in St. Lucie County in central coastal Florida revealed that recently proposed development in and adjacent to the City of Port St. Lucie would add nearly 43,000 houses and almost 19 million square feet of business space.

          What those places tell us is that the greed-intoxicated powerbrokers and their fat political buds have ruled the roost for many decades and have so controlled Florida’s history that buckets of money have wound up in their pockets. What is occurring on the ground today is what is in store for Florida in the future unless people take the bit between their teeth and initiate actions that ensure change. Thinking vague, romantic thoughts about how important the environment is to America’s future simply won’t cut it. Neither will visiting the Everglades once every five or ten years and then telling everyone how much you enjoyed it. Directed, targeted action is the only solution.

          Let me ask my Readers a question. Do you think that the opinions expressed in this blog about out-of-control Florida growth are only held by me? Not bloody likely. St. Petersburg Times columnist Bill Maxwell wrote in 2003: “The Sunshine State, one of the nation’s great treasures, is fast becoming the Asphalt State. What we are doing to our paradise is criminal and, well, stupid.” In a similar vein, Joe Newman of the Orlando Sentinel reported in 2003: “When it comes down to it, no matter how much lip service state and local planners offer against sprawl, they rarely do anything to stop it.” Or as Carl Hiaasen wrote in the Miami Herald on 2-27-05: “It will take a few years before all those projects [converting vast tracts of farmland in southwest Miami-Dade to residential use] are finished and sold out, but the greedheads want more. So they’ve targeted the last green ribbon of privately owned mainland.” Only the money and influence of the powerbrokers explains why Florida’s shameless politicians have not stopped the growth blitzkrieg.

          Just in case you might think that I’ve ignored the disastrous financial collapse in 2008 and 2009, here’s information on continued growth in the 2011 Miami Market: “The Beacon Lakes Business Park, a joint venture of Flagler [Development Company] and AMB Property Corporation (now known as Prologis), reached 100 percent occupancy on all of its leasable space at the end of 2010 and is part of an Airport West submarket that is driving Miami's already-strong industrial market.”[1] Do you Readers remember Beacon Lakes from Part 2? The one developed by Armando Codina, none other than Jeb Bush’s former business partner? Well, it’s doing very nicely as a commercial property developer, thank you, despite the financial downturn.

          The addition of more and more people to south Florida translates directly into greater negative effects on increasingly scarce land-water resources. That’s non-debatable by all except the most closed-minded, non-rational anti-environmentalists and the powerbrokers who are determined not to let the truth be known. The maintenance of the present trend of ever increasing population pressure on south Florida ensures the continued alteration of landscapes that run the gamut from resilient to incredibly fragile, from commonplace to World Heritage uniqueness. As Joni Mitchell wrote and sang so well in the hit 1970 song, Big Yellow Taxi:

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

          The big question concerning land-water use that has been posed for many decades is straightforward. In the near future, how will Floridians protect their fragile environments at the same time as the State is actively working 24-7 to attract enormous growth? As far as any honest person is concerned, those goals can never be accomplished simultaneously. If doable solutions are to be found they remain hidden in the fog of uncertainty and in the quicksand of the political decision-making process. But hey, here’s a solid clue. We’re talking about Florida. A State that historically has given no indication of willingly changing its spots in terms of how it treats the environment, which is as a banquet for getting fatter and fatter. Burrrrp.

          I’ve posed a few rhetorical questions below and have been thoughtful enough to answer for my patient Readers.

Question: Can the five or six million people who now live on or near south Florida’s Atlantic Coastal Ridge do so in balance with the environment?

Response: Absolutely not. Controls are needed in the form of critical compromises between human occupance and the environment. Or the result will be unsustainable socioeconomic and environmental conditions. And that is precisely the nature of the shotgun barrels south Florida is staring into at present. And, unless you a right-wing idiot incapable of ratiocination, you must know which side has compromised the most and which the least.

Question: Will near- and mid-term future population growth in Florida cause even more severe environmental stress?

Response: Absolutely. Just look at what is happening today in the western Miami metropolitan area, southwest Florida, Orlando and the adjacent Green Swamp counties, Palm Beach County, and in the coastal areas of the Panhandle and multiply that by more than several hundred percent. Then imagine a couple million more people lining the east coast from Homestead to Palm Beach forty years from now. That vision requires the Everglades to get smaller even as a marginally functioning, Disneyesque ecosystem.

Question: Does Florida have the legal-organizational mechanisms in place to manage existing population growth and resource usage?

Response: Not at this time and don’t bother wondering what the future holds because it’s right in front of us after the Florida’s State Republican representatives eviscerated the 1985 Growth Management Law.

Question: Are Florida politicians likely to address these critical problems by passing effective statewide land use/growth management restrictions?

Response: No chance in Hell unless the current political campaign contribution trends change. Fat chance of that happening in my lifetime. However, there’s one serious caveat to that response: If all the models and projections demonstrate that growth management must become a necessity to achieve a minimal level of sustainability then my guess is that even the politicians and developers will eventually jump on the bandwagon so they can sharply limit the ability of whatever regulations are proposed to control growth in a meaningful way. Because that’s the only way to keep growing fatter and fatter. But always at the expense of wetlands. Burrrrp.

          If the past is prologue to the future, natural or partially natural environments in Florida are in deep, deep trouble with problems looming on the horizon that are much more serious than anything we have today. With no way to address them effectively. Remember the coming tidal wave. Once that hits reality will have changed permanently. But one critical lesson we must avoid is poor Hamilton Disston contemplating the end of his Florida misadventures staring into the muzzle of his pistol in his rapidly cooling bath water. Shades of Richard Cory.

          The consequences of human use of the land detailed above are not figments of the imaginations of deranged environmentalists. They have been carefully documented by such well respected agencies and organizations as the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Science Coordination Team, U.S. Geological Survey, the National Academy of Sciences, and by many dozens of independent university institutes and by individual researchers. The critical issue is not what happened to the south Florida environment in the past but what we will allow to happen to the land in the future. Land, remember? It’s the land that counts. And how we use it.

          The truth is, all is not necessarily lost. Hope for the future of Florida’s few remaining natural places may be a viable strategy if people are willing to act now to save what’s left. But what’s the reality of that happening? My answer: Slim to none and Slim rode out of town a couple months ago.

          So, my honest advice is to saddle up the car and the kids for a road trip to the Everglades or the Fakahatchee in the winter (the mosquitoes will drive you mad in the summer) to view what’s left. Because it’s not going to get a hell of a lot better than the severely human-altered and damaged landscape you see today.

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[1] Alexander Britell, February 01, 2011 08:00 A.M.; Beacon Lakes drives Miami industrial market; see http://therealdeal.com/miami/articles/beacon-lakes-drives-up-miami-industrial-market