The Star, Moon & Planet Club

Space and the stuff out there, always fascinated my nephew and me. It was one reason, even as young adults, we took a winter break during college and went to the Manned Spacecraft Center instead of the beach in Florida.  As kids, our club for studying outer space was located, logically, in my parent's basement. Also in the basement were the books and magazines we collected about astronomy, and our feeble attempts to make a telescope. The best thing we did was write letters to planetariums and observatories and ask for free stuff. Amazingly, they sent us (free) glossy black and white, 8 x 10 inch photographs. We had dozens of such photos and taped them to the walls of the old fruit cellar we called our club house. But only three pictures have survived. They're below, unretouched. Honestly, I could tell the difference between a dust spot and a distant star. (All pictures: Courtesy of Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories, Pasadena, California.)

NGC 1275

NCG 4038 & 4039. (April, 1952)

On the back of the photo abaove, in the upper left corner, in feminine handwriting is the name of my first girl-friend in high school (N.K.) I have no idea why her name is there. Did I ask her name and she had to spell it for me, so I handed her my picture of the stars? I must have been star-struck. She was a tall, beautiful blonde — a sweet, naive, but not shy girl—a dear soul. I think we had one date. It lasted 10 minutes max. it consisted of walking along the North side of Lutheran West High School after school (before our parents showed up to pick us up). We were holding hands. It was probably the first time I held a girl's hand. She told me two things that I'll never forget, and then Miss Finzel showed up. N.K. told me, in this order: (a) "My Dad told me I shouldn't eat too many bananas because hair would grow on my chest."  (I tried to picture hair growing on this beautiful girl's chest. She had flawless skin. I didn't want to think about it...blocked it from my mind.) Then next came, (b) "I'm still out of breath from choir practice and my heart is still beating so hard. Here feel it." And with that she took my hand and placed it against her chest. And that's when (c) Miss Finzel, the stiff and strict speech teacher who was the self appointed enforcer against all displays of public affection, stuck her head through a classroom window and yelled at me, "MR. WILLIAMS! WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? DO YOU THINK SHE'S GOING TO RUN AWAY? STOP HOLDING HER HAND THIS MOMENT." And that was the end of my first date. 

Infrared image of the Sun from Mt. Wilson
where weeds but hair never grew.

If you've read the book, there was this uncanny relationship between our Star, Moon and Planet Club and women's chests. I have no idea why or what that was about.

Catholicism and Communism in America

Harvey H. Springer's 1960 attack on JFK, Catholicism and Communism. 

I keep losing this pamphlet in my files. If I find it again I'll scan a few of the pages inside. I want you to see what Harvey H. Springer (D.D. Th.D.) was saying about communism, JFK, and Catholicism.  But perhaps you can get the jest from the two dark clouds that are about to obscure the Jewish star, which I think he means to stand in for Jesus Christ. 

This illustration, and Springer's address to the tent revival crowd that night also indicated the on-going mixing of religion with politics and how easily ideologies can get confused.

Seashore Pool, Levagood Park

Photos in this section courtesy of City of Dearborn, Down River Sunday Times, and the Dearborn Free Press. 

Seashore Pool, Levagood Park, Dearborn, MI. (1954-1960). This was the place I spent most hot summer afternoons and nights. The center diving tower was in 15 feet of water. Swimming to the tower the first time was a test of manhood as you past one of four gate keeping lifeguards. The pool was open to 10 PM each night and the enter was  all aglow with underwater lights that made swimming mystical. There were also four very tall, stainless steel water lubricated slides in the shallows that shot you into the air 3 feet above the water like a skipping stone. A few summers I claimed to be the first swimmer to the tower for the season. 

When I was swimming to the tower I never saw this. Usually there were ugly guy lifeguards on duty giving kids like me the evil eye, "What are you doing out here, kid?" Had this been the case I'm sure to have made it to the tower years before my time. I think this was an editorial picture that sold the mostly male taxpayers not to complain too much about the tax increase.

This was taken before the tower was painted and before there was water in the pool. Notice the three levels of diving platforms. The tallest was ten-feet off the water. There were two of these multi-tier platforms, plus two spring boards. The challenge, aways was to "touch the bottom" which was a long way down—15 feet at the deepest. And yes, there were life guards everywhere, all the time. 

Lutheranism

After Lutheran High West (and college) my connection with Lutheranism lasted for a few more years.

 

"Mom" Schroeder (circa 1970) next to the Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church relief of her late husband, Rev. Theodore Schroeder, Annette Schroeder's Mom and Dad. 

Rev. Leo Symmank and wife Rose Merle (circa 2014). Our pastor in 1970-1973 at Missouri Synod Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Nassau Bay, Texas outside the gates of the Manned Spacecraft Center. Today, in partial retirement, the Symmanks have retired near Nassau Bay and go to church at the much larger Gloria Dei. 

Trudy (Jander) Laird, my first cover photo (on the left as it appeared in publication), with the original on the right. Never let your magazine editor crop your pictures.  We named out first child after Trudy because of Trudy's enthusiasm for Jesus. Below is a picture of the two Trudys when the older one came to visit us in Michigan five years later.

Turdy (Jander) Laird and Trudy Williams (Aug 1977)

The NASA "Rocket Theologians" and their wonderfully tolerant wives (circa 1982) (see the chapter on Versificaiton) (L-R) John & Susan Ritland, Stan & Pam Williams, Bill & Beth Roeh. Taken in St. Louis during a Christmas reunion of our families.  As discussed in the book, it was our Bible "study" on infant baptism that caused all of us to leave the Lutheran Church. 

High School at Detroit Lutheran West

Dennis Toumi - a Great Coach

Dennis Toumi, the best sports coach I ever had...and many others thought the same. The man spent his entire career teaching physical education and coaching at Detroit Lutheran High Schools although he was offered college coaching positions. His small teams regularly beat much larger teams. Coach Toumi is in the Michigan High School Coaches Hall of Fame. 

Getting an Award for Being Wrong

In the book I tell of the time Rev. Dequin fired me as an acolyte because I wasn't Lutheran. Imagine my surprise during the awards assembly at the end of the year when I got this Award Certificate. Irony is the best medicine. 

High School Drama Rehearsal for The Cinderella Complex (circa 1964). Stuck up Cinderella and arrogant Prince Charming (Carol Molnar and Yours Truly). Directed by Annette Schroeder. Evidently, during this rehearsal I was supposed to pick up Jack Fish (a classmate) and toss him off the set. Jack was smallish, and a good sport and wit. He was one of three classmates who became Lutheran pastors. I saw Jack at our 50th Reunion (Sept 2015) and he says his still has a sore back from that day. But with Jack, one never knows. (Sorry, Jack.)

King of the Golden Shovel Award

My State of Michigan Science Fair award. I got in the habit of winning awards for last place. My peers called met he King of the Golden Shovel for winning this. It was more about how I wrote up the project than what the project really was.  I keep these things around to remind me that even losers can be winners (so to speak). This falls in the category of the acolyte certificate and the National Music Camp Poster Boy image (below)

Looks are Deceiving Honor

Irony strikes again. Another example of my knack of looking looking good even through I was in last place. As I explain in the book, my summer at Interlochen was perhaps the best 8-weeks of my teenage years. Of the seven bassoonists at the camp I was the worst. I sat last chair of the second string orchestra and band. But the wonderfulness of it all was no one ever challenged me, and I only had to practice enough to know when NOT to try to play during a concert, so as not to embarrass the bassoon section. So, imagine my surprise when the next year at school this poster ends up on the band room wall (actually this is a composite to make me look more important than I was, my image was actually kind of moderate in size near the bottom). My band instructor didn't particularly like me even through I was the student conductor of the band. So the poster was only up for a day or two before it disappeared.  I had to write the camp to get my own copy. : )

PICTURES FROM MY LHW YEARBOOKS

Rev. Edward Williams, our chalk-tossing math teacher and class sponsor who helped me write our class hymn.  He was the only person to sign my year book with a Scripture reference...a true Evangelical. Phil 4:13: "I can do all this through him who gives me strength."

(L-R) Choir director, Rev. Lavern Franzen who interrupted the Carousel movie to tell us that JFK had been shot, and then again that he had died. Terrible day. / Rev. Henry Dequin, our chain-smoking chaplain who cared a great deal for us in his German ways / Lloyd McLaughlin, who taught Trigonometry and Analytic Geometry. He drove one of two small Plymouth Valients that were identical (his or his wife's). For two years I walked 1/4-mile to the corner of Ford Rd. and Gulley Rd. in Dearborn Hts, where he would pick me up on his way to school (15 miles away), and then get behind a slow moving semi-truck and stay there all the way to our turn off for school. His reasoning was simple: "No one will cut in front of me." I find my self following his example today.

The Art at Guardian Lutheran

While writing the book, in 2014, I went back to Guardian Lutheran Church in Dearborn, MI to revisit what I recalled from my Lutheran High School days in the early 1960s. I was pleased that the art which inspired me then, was still as magnificent, and was as I remembered it.

The explanations were provided to me by Kathy Sillanpaa, the Business Manager at Guardian, who found descriptions in a church dedication booklet. (which is below in italics). I am most grateful.

This large limited edition print, beautifully framed, hangs on a wall of a passageway that gives access to the back of the nave. Notice that the art speaks for itself. No Scripture needs to be posted across or under it.

Around the corner from the above crucifixion painting is this elegant crucifix. The juxtaposition of the two tells us much about how the mind's imagination fills in the gaps and gasps at the verisimilitude. Upon entering the church, one comes to this simple foreshadowing, of the more explicit image waiting for the worshiper just around the corner. 

Walking up the stairway in the south side of the church, we shall see on the landing a mosaic that was used for a convention at the Michigan District a long time ago and put together by Guardian members.  It depicts the Christ of Revelation who holds the Seven Stars of the Seven Churches in His right hand. A detail is below. The large 15-foot high mosaic was designed by Guardian's founding Pastor, Rev. T.H. Voss and fashioned under the guidance of  Miss Lorraine Sass.

Imagine the patience and even painful cutting and chipping of the ceramic pieces to get the many feathers just right.

The Sanctuary, Altar and Focus of the Congregation During Divine Services.

The eye is immediately drawn, as it should be, to the chancel area, where the beautiful faceted glass windows designed by the Jacobi Studio of St. Louis, the sculpture by George Zambrzycki, the altar and other furnishings designed by Michael Trautman, the aluminum castings by artist Oscar Graves should send the spirit soaring to the heavens in the worship of the Living Christ.  

The altar of white and black marble stands away from the reredos wall in order that the officiant can stand both before and behind, and the altar becomes once more what it was meant to be in the earliest practice of the Christian church: no longer only the symbol of an altar upon which innocent lambs in the Old Testament were slain, not only the empty coffin of the Risen Christ, but simply also a table from which the family can be served the Holy Meal and be strengthened for its Body ministry in Jesus Christ, the Resurrected Lord.

The windows also depict not scene or person, but the movement of the spirit of man and his prayers ascending as incense to the Throne on high, and the Holy Spirit's decent.  

The Zambrzycki Reredos Sculpture is also an abstraction.  It is basically a cruciform, but intends to convey the work of the Descending Spirit poured on the Christian heart, the spreading wings of the Presence of the Angel of the Lord --- and the bright shafts of both our spirit's ascending into the heavens and the force of God's new creation coming down in the Holy Spirit upon us and all His creation.  "Truly"  the artist is saying to us as he interprets this insight of Scripture, "we are in two worlds at once, and our worship acknowledges the Presence of the Living God in the finished work of Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen King, with us in and through the annointment of his Spirit.

Dr. Stan Walters

After almost 50 years, Pam and I have lunch with perhaps our favorite college professor, Dr. Stan Walters. I devote a chapter to him and his course on Basic Christianity we were required to take at Greenville College in the mid-1960s.  We met at a Holiday Inn Restaurant called The French Quarter near Toledo, Ohio.

Pam Williams, Dr. Stan Walters, Stan Williams meet after 47 years.

Walter's virtue was (and still is) his ability to make Christianity rational. At heart and by training a Biblical scholar expert in cuneiform languages (i.e. formed with "wedges" in the wet clay. Cruciform is a good word, meaning "in the form of a cross.") Walters was ordained a Free Methodist minister but became a Presbyterian in order to accept a teaching position in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. He candidly admitted that one of the reasons he left Greenville was its rejection of his rational approach to Christianity. As I argue in the book it's impossible to separate Christian Faith and Reason. Thank you, Dr. Walters.