Discovering Beloit: Stories Too Good to Be True?

By Tom Warren

About Tom Warren

Tom Warren likes to write about places where he has lived for a long time. The setting for his book An Old Caddie Looks Back: Reflections from a Town that Loves Golf . . . is Rockford, Illinois, Warrens birthplace and home growing up. Another book, Discovering Lake Superior and the Western Upper Peninsula of Michigan, draws from decades of journal entries and experiences around the family cabin near Ontonagon, Michigan. And now comes Discovering Beloit: Stories Too Good to be True? a novel about investigative journalism in the southern Wisconsin community where he has lived since the Seventies.

Warren is Emeritus Professor of Education at Beloit College. He lives with his wife Anna Marie (Mim) in Beloit with frequent trips to their Upper Peninsula cabin and to Wheaton, Illinois, where they visit their daughter Rachel, son-in-law David, and grandchildren Jack and Will.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491752876

Tom Warren

About Tom Warren Tom Warren likes to write about places where he has lived for a long time. The setting for his book An Old Caddie Looks Back: Reflections from a Town that Loves Golf . . . is Rockford, Illinois, Warren’s birthplace and home growing up. Another book, Discovering Lake Superior and the Western Upper Peninsula of Michigan, draws from decades of journal entries and experiences around the family cabin near Ontonagon, Michigan. And now comes Discovering Beloit: Stories Too Good to be True? – a novel about investigative journalism in the southern Wisconsin community where he has lived since the Seventies. Warren is Emeritus Professor of Education at Beloit College. He lives with his wife Anna Marie (“Mim”) in Beloit with frequent trips to their Upper Peninsula cabin and to Wheaton, Illinois, where they visit their daughter Rachel, son-in-law David, and grandchildren Jack and Will.

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Copyright © 2014 Thomas Franklin Warren.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Contents

Introduction

A message to young journalists

Beloit (Buh LOIT)

Map of Belwah

Prologue

Part I: Teaching School

Chapter 1:   John Marshall Bridlington: Gov’s class (Friday afternoon: September 8)

Chapter 2:   Chain gangs at Beloit College (Still Friday, September 8)

Chapter 3:   What is this Beloit, Wisconsin? (Friday, September 22)

Chapter 4:   Alta Jo Fortino: A celebrity chef from the Stateline area (Friday, September 29)

Chapter 5:   The Cubs and other mysteries (Friday, October 6)

Chapter 6:   Claire Bridlington’s Project: Reading Books Up North (Still Friday, October 6)

Chapter 7:   Roald Amundsen: A farm boy discovering religion… and Roy Chapman Andrews (Monday, October 9)

Chapter 8:   The Buffaloes (Thursday, October 12)

Chapter 9:  Gov (Friday, the 13th of October)

Part II: Plots Thickening

Chapter 10: Stu Brandish’s Project (Class time: Friday, October 20)

Chapter 11: Brooksley Bourne (Monday, October 23 and Tuesday, October 24)

Chapter 12: AJ at BULL (Friday, October 27

Chapter 13: Stu Brandish’s Project: The Beloit Cubs (Saturday morning, October 28

Chapter 14: Claire Bridlington: I’m a student in my father’s class (Sunday evening, October 29

Chapter 15: Frank Peterson’s Project: Spying on a Buffalo… and a Spy? (Monday, October 30)

Chapter 16: The Buffaloes (Still Monday October 30)

Chapter 17: Gov and Questions in South Africa (Class time: Friday, November 3)

Chapter 18: Brooksley Bourne: Eye to eye with the enemy (Saturday, November 4)

Chapter 19: Roald Amundsen’s Project: A Beloit church comes to life (Sunday, November 5)

Chapter 20: Kurt Aarhus: The path to prison (November 10, 15, & 16)

Part III: Undercover Characters

Chapter 21: Catching Up (Questions only) (Friday, November 17)

Chapter 22: Undercover teachers: Prisons and Classrooms (Friday, December 1)

Chapter 23: Gov skips class (Friday, December 8)

Chapter 24: Choosing Words: I didn’t have time to send you a short message, so I’m sending this long one.8:50 a.m. Saturday, December 9 800 Wisconsin Avenue

Chapter 25: The Late Lonesome George: New life emerging (9:15 a.m., Saturday, December 9)

Chapter 26: Frank: Voyeur on a bike: (Late morning, Saturday, December 9)

Chapter 27: Investigative journalism: They buried it deep, but wait. The earth is moving. (Sunday evening, December 10)

Chapter 28: Frank hits Brooksley (Monday morning, December 11)

Chapter 29: The Penultimate Class (Friday, December 15)

Part IV The Last Class and Beyond

Chapter 30: Frank’s Tale: Oakwood Cemetery (Friday, December 22 in the classroom

Chapter 31: Roald’s Tale: Death Knell (Friday, December 22 in the classroom

Chapter 32: Stu’s Tale (with help from his friends) (Friday, December 22 in the classroom)

Chapter 33: Claire’s Tale: Composing a Gastronomic Aria (Saturday morning, December 23)

Chapter 34: Brooksley’s Tale: Une année dans Beloit (Saturday morning, December 23)

Chapter 35: Prof. Aarhus on chain gangs (Saturday morning, December 23)

Chapter 36: Telling on Beloit: From the website govsclass.com (December 23)

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Reflections from a Paper Boy

Front cover

• Buffaloes:

Cover image of Academic Bison used with permission of Beloit College and the Wright Museum of Art:

Franklin Boggs (1914 - 2009) American

Academic Bison, 1995

Oil on Canvas

WMA1995.14.1

• Belwah on Roof of Chapin Hall. Permission given by Beloit College

• Park Scene. Saturday in the Park with Friends - July 1,2006 - Location: Riverside Park, Beloit, WI. Permission granted by Friends of River Front and photographer Mark Preuschl.

• Oakwood Cemetery: Photograph by and permission given from Tom Warren

Page xvii

• Belwah on Roof Permission granted by Beloit College.

Page xviii

• Map: Created by and with permission given from Tom Warren

Page 21

• Apron. Created by and with permission given from Anna Marie Warren

Page 33

• Canoeists. Replacing three readers: Created by and with permission given from Anna Marie Warren

Page 100

• Trains: Photograph by and with permission given from Tom Warren

Page 178

• Tortoises: Photograph by and with permission given from Tom Warren

Page 184

• [A new bicycle image] Photograph by and with permission given from Tom Warren

Page 203

• Oakwood cemetery Photograph by and with permission given from Tom Warren

Back cover

• Professors Doug Nicoll, Emil Kreider, and Menno Froese. Photo used with permission of the Beloit College Archives.

Dedicated to

Journalists:

Those professionals and amateurs who tell

stories that otherwise

would not be told.

This book is for readers who are fascinated by what’s happening around them – and what could be happening around them.

Introduction

This novel takes place a few years into the future. It features a Beloit, Wisconsin, high school journalism teacher and his class. He is frustrated by the disappearance of investigative journalism that has accompanied the decline of traditional newspapers. They call this teacher Gov, like in Governor. Gov says,

All around us are untold stories. Some must be allowed to rest in private. Others need to be told, and some must be told!

Gov’s students dig up stuff that at first glance seems unbelievable. Certainly, many readers will think these things couldn’t happen in Beloit . . . Could they?

Ex-convicts teaching at Beloit College?

Major league baseball here, in little ol’ Belwah?

Vibrant main-line churches?

Violence and love in Oakwood Cemetery?

A goofy new industry?

Motivated matrons?

A herd of old Buffaloes?

A world famous chef?

A death-defying turtle?

Love after death?

Spies snooping around?

They could and they do. Happen. And they need to be told.

Is this the Beloit of our future, or our present? Well, things change and things that stay the same become better known. In the meantime, endangered species try to hang on.

Buffaloes on the Beloit College campus

fighting extinction

Tortoises in the Galapagos archipelago

The Chicago Cubs

Churches

Hand-held newspapers

Investigative journalism

A message to young journalists

Any meaningful information can be communicated in a headline, in a page, in a series of articles, in a book, or in a lifetime of work. No matter what, the story will be incomplete. There will always be more. That’s the good news.

The bad? Too few stories are being told. They are hidden.

So, start to tell them. Some will be goofy and seem unbelievable at first glance. Others will be pure and simple, waiting to be uncovered. Some will need to be uncovered. Some must be allowed to rest in private, forever.

J.M. Bridlington

Beloit (Buh LOIT)

A small town in southern Wisconsin. The name is sometimes mispronounced by those who run across it for the first time. They say it the French way: Bell WAH.

Belwah (Bell WAH)

An affectionate nickname for Beloit.

Image1BelwahonRoofcopy.jpgImage2Mapcopy.jpg

Prologue

Spring of the previous year

W ell into the second decade of the new century Beloit’s revival slowed.

Things had been moving in the right direction for several years. Just the word Beloit prompted thumbs up signals throughout Wisconsin. Crime and unemployment were down, and families from surrounding townships were choosing Beloit schools. Executives and scientists who took jobs in the expanding bio-industrial park lived within the city limits because of its ambience. And baseball was, well, successful beyond any Cub fan’s wildest imagination. These accomplishments along with progressive, cost-effective government brought positive national attention to a city that for years had been scorned. Beloit was hot.

And then came a glitch that wasn’t handled well. Not a big deal in the arc of local history, but news; something to excite those who like to poke at the little city. Print and blog headlines called out, What’s happening? Say it isn’t so, oh Gateway to Wisconsin. Where are you going, Belwah?

A respected New York Times columnist had written about Beloit’s steady ascent a few months earlier. He followed up with this comment in the wake of the glitch.

. . . Had local investigative journalism been alive and well in Beloit, what happened in Oakwood Cemetery would have been reported differently. The truth would have been discovered and shared. That didn’t happen. The vacuum filled with speculation, gossip, and then silence.

The piece continued.

Here are some facts that bother me: Beloit Memorial High School’s newspaper The Increscent no longer exists. It was founded in 1894. The Beloit College Round Table, founded in 1853, is no more, and the venerable Beloit Daily News serving the Stateline since 1848, now comes out only twice a week in hard copy under a new name. Some say websites and social media adequately replace these institutions, but the beating heart of print journalism – investigation – is fading away in Beloit. The same is true in countless American communities . . .

This warning moved an anonymous Beloit angel to fund an investigative journalism course at Turtle Creek High School. In describing her gift she said, Cover-ups that seem useful at the time hurt in the long run, and this one has given me pain. The story should have been investigated and told.

As the governing board of the school began their search for a teacher, one of them said, Why not talk to Bridlington, that guy who used to do journalism at the College? He might like a part-time gig.

And it happened. That Bridlington guy was hired. He designed a class called Issues in Newswriting and started teaching it in the fall, but truth telling about the glitch and its principal player stayed covered up.

Part I

Teaching School

Chapter 1: John Marshall Bridlington:

Gov’s class

(Friday afternoon: September 8)

They surf Internets.

I dive deeply into print

Which do you prefer?

… Gov

J ohn Marshall Bridlington felt nervous as he faced his class for the first time. It had been years since he taught high school. After quick introductions – Feel free to call me ‘Gov’, everybody does, – he looked out at the students, took a deep breath, and forged ahead describing what he called the fragile state of traditional journalism as represented by subscriber-based daily newspapers. He rattled off statistics on declining subscribership, diminishing advertising revenue, and sobering numbers about job openings in the craft. He contrasted this malaise with the vigor of the competition: free newspapers and electronic media. He was starting to outline what he thought were some hopeful responses to these challenges when one of the students interrupted.

It was Frank.

Then what hope is there? It looks like there are no jobs having anything to do with newspapers. I took this class because I thought it might help me become a reporter one day, or at least get a non-paying internship, Frank said sarcastically.

Stu chimed in. "You are so right, and I suspect that this class – that sounded so fascinating when we signed up in the spring – has no connection to the twenty-first century. Who’s interested in reading a newspaper? Our family is the only one on the block with a subscription to the Beloit Weekly Journal. Those guys stopped hiring two years ago, and their reporters hang onto their jobs like snapping turtles latched onto a bare ass."

Nicely visualized, said Gov, energized by the bite in his own voice. Why don’t you all keep that picture in your heads and turn it into a political cartoon. We can have a contest for the best caption.

We don’t need a contest, Frank said. Let’s just draw a snapper chomping on an old guy. Call them ‘United States Dailies’ and ‘The Future.’

Others joined in.

Wouldn’t you want a more active protagonist, like a wolf or a pit bull or a cheetah?

A tortoise would be perfect. They win in the long run, and this town loves turtles or terrapins or tortoises or whatever they are. Creatures like that. Reptiles, actually.

Hey, we can write obituaries for newspapers. That’s looking truth in the eye, and it could be reality therapy.

Now Gov was sitting on a table with his long legs dangling down and his hands folded in his lap, listening.

Frank said, You have confirmed my fears, Mr. Bridlington . . . Gov. We got conned into taking this class and, pardon me, but they dragged you out of retirement because no younger teachers want to hammer this newspaper stuff into our heads.

"Or can do it, said Roald in what for him was an uncharacteristic show of negative thinking. I’m going to drop this class."

Claire Bridlington sat there nervous as she encountered her classmates for the first time. She was at the far end of the room gazing at the floor. Finally, she looked up and said. May I go ahead, Dad? Is this the time? Her voice was breaking. Her dad’s thoughts were drifting back to other times.

John Bridlington’s newspaper career had spanned thirty years, first at the Chicago Daily News and then the Sun-Times. As a reporter on the Springfield beat his instincts were so solid and his contacts so practical that colleagues dubbed him The Governor, and it stuck. Gov for short. I guess that could describe me, he conceded. I’ve been in prison, like most governors of this state.

Bridlington retired from all that in his late fifties and took a job as Adjunct Professor of Journalism at Beloit College, a position that let him interact with what he called a new generation of bloodhounds. His nickname crossed the state line into Wisconsin along with him, and everyone in Beloit called him Gov from the start. Not even the provost remembered his full name.

After six years he retired from the college with plans to sharpen his photographic skills and do a little writing, but then he was approached as the perfect candidate for this new high school job. He couldn’t say no. The fact that Claire would be one of his students added a twist to the challenge, some of it positive.

And he liked that part of the school’s website that said:

Gov signed on for the job. Then he shared his teaching ideas with Claire, and asked for her input. He hoped that this would buoy their relationship. He wanted to be a good father and friend – and would it be too much to ask – colleague? Hell, she could be more than just a teacher’s kid in the class. Why not a teaching assistant of sorts?

Gov hadn’t answered Claire’s earlier question. So now, looking right at him, she repeated, Is it okay, Dad? To clue them in? Her heart was thumping.

With his head down as in prayer, and nervous again, Mr. Bridlington sat statue-like for an excruciatingly long moment. Finally, in a whisper he said, Why not?

Chapter 2: Chain gangs at Beloit College

(Still Friday, September 8)

L et me dive in, Claire said with a deep breath. What I am about to tell you is confidential. If you breathe a word of it to anyone outside of this class, Dad – I mean Gov – will very likely lose his job and we’ll all be in trouble, especially me.

The class snickered half-heartedly. Claire relaxed a little and smiled. Here’s some truth-telling. Criminals are working at Beloit College, and I don’t mean petty thieves. Ex-cons. Big time felons.

Everyone was quiet. Gov looked right at his daughter.

She said, They are members of the Chain Gang.

The students burst out laughing for a long time. Claire waited patiently. She knew what they were thinking and why they took her charge so lightly.

Of course you know and I know that there is a [she made quotation marks in the air] ‘chain gang’ that works the football games at Beloit College. They are professors who do the home games, keeping track of the ball’s location up and down the field. It’s a group – a gang – of four. They’ve been written up in magazines, and there are brass busts of the original guys down at the stadium. She jerked her head toward the east.

"That chain gang has worked its way into local lore, but what I am saying is that right now there are real chain gang alums – ex cons – working at the college, and, pardon me for putting it this prissy way, but they may be corrupting this town and the college."

Nobody reacted. She continued in charge.

"I know this stuff for reasons that will become clear eventually, but now just let me say this. Connecting with that gang may lead to doing real journalism in this class."

The students looked at each other with upturned palms.

Reading from a book now, Claire said, "‘Journalism is about newswriters who uncover the truth, not just report surface facts. It’s about having the vision, and the patience, to study a foggy picture until the view comes into focus.’ This is from Muckrakers and it’s written by someone from Beloit, Ann Bausum. Enough about that and her for now."

Frank whispered to nobody in particular, It’s so quiet in here you could hear a mouse get an erection. Stu shushed him. Brooksley rolled her eyes.

Claire said, Dad, please get me the file. Gov dug into his wrinkled leather briefcase and passed her some papers. She read in her best debater’s voice. The written version looked like this.

Claire paused for a moment as if to ask whether the class was following. Their eyes were all over the place, not on hers. She continued reading.