“Don’t give me this disillusioned, glossy effect of who we are. This is who we really are.” Transcript for Should Play Nicer Good neighbors. That’s an oxymoron, isn’t it? I think it is. All the counties in Northwest Indiana, especially Lake and Porter Counties, live in this tribal fiefdom. Is that the right word? […]
Hold the Line
“These were good people who honestly believed that there was a real problem in terms of the difference between the races.” Edited by Rebecca Werner. Transcript for Title of Story Well, at the time of Richard Hatcher’s election as Mayor of Gary, we didn’t know how that election was going to go, but we knew […]
Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
“The guy who was over the department…said that I might have some problems because they had never had anybody black in the office.” Transcript for Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained When I graduated from high school, I got a job working for a realtor in Gary on 19th and Broadway. And while I was working there, […]
The Strike at Froebel
“We were in school one day, the next day when we went back, the entire white population of students were gone.” Transcript for The Strike at Froebel I was totally shocked when I moved to Gary. For the simple reason, I had not encountered some of the prejudice in Detroit in school that I encountered […]
Competition Came In
“What happened with the steel industry is foreign steel.” Edited by Rebecca Werner. Transcript for Title of Story Bethlehem Steel supposedly came to the Midwest and moved into U.S. Steel’s territory, supposedly after U.S. Steel had moved into one of Bethlehem’s territories, I think, in the South. So the competition was there. There was a […]
Remember Where You Came From
“You can never forget who you are.” Transcript for Remember Where You Came From I say to my grandkids all the time, you can never forget who you are, but you have to remember where you come from. You know what the WPA is? It was a work program that Roosevelt set up for people […]
Back Then, It Mattered
“So these are things that I kind of learned that I didn’t realize I was learning.” Transcript for Back Then, It Mattered I’m Croatian. And when I was a kid, it mattered. My dad was Croatian, my grandfather, George Davich, he was a city worker for the city of Gary. Street Department. And he was […]
How I Tried to Leave
“My mother said, ‘Always leave a job to where maybe you could go back to it.’” Transcript for How I Tried to Leave My mother said, “Always leave a job to where maybe you could go back to it.” And that was how I tried to leave. Any job I left I tried to leave […]
Bigger Forces Swirling
“I realized that my little Wonder Bread existence in Miller was not quite what I thought it was.” Transcript for Bigger Forces Swirling I grew up in the Miller section of Gary in the late 1960s through the ‘70s, and it was a typical white, suburbia, middle-class upbringing, but it was changing. Everything was in […]