All of the famous people that I can remember spotting on my trips were on airplanes or in airports. I probably saw others that I either did not recognize or have forgotten about. After all I spent a lot of … Continue reading →
All of the famous people that I can remember spotting on my trips were on airplanes or in airports. I probably saw others that I either did not recognize or have forgotten about. After all I spent a lot of time in New York City, and I went to Robinsons-May in North Hollywood at least half a dozen times.
Sports celebrities: Once in a while I would recognize a famous person in an airport or on a plane. I only talked to two of them, and both conversations were very brief. Most of the celebrities were from the world of sports, or at least “sports entertainment”. Three of them were from ESPN, which is based in Bristol, CT. ESPN’s announcers flew out of Bradley International, the airport in Windsor Locks that I always used.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee was a passenger on one of my flights back to Hartford. She sat in coach. A few people recognized her. She had won three gold, one silver, and two bronze medals at four separate Olympic Games. Her events were the heptathlon and the long jump. Sports Illustrated for Women magazine voted her the Greatest Female Athlete of All-Time.
She was also a star basketball player at UCLA. In 2001 she was voted the greatest female collegiate athlete of the previous twenty-five years.
My recollection is that JJK was in the Hartford area for a charity event. I read about it in the Hartford Courant the next day.
On one of my trips (I think that it might have been on a side trip to visit my parents in Kansas City), I rode on the same plane twice in a row with the same person. That is, my first flight was from BDL to an airline’s hub airport and then from there to my destination. The person who was also on both flights was Chris “Boomer” Berman, a long-time studio host on ESPN.
I had seen Boomer on television many times. My favorite bit was when he adopted his “Swami” persona to give his predictions for NFL games.
I only saw Boomer getting on and off of the airplane. On both legs of our common journey he sat in first class while I was relegated to coach.
My all-time greatest thrill in sports viewing was when Desmond made this spectacular catch against Notre Dame.
I never purchased first class tickets, but because I flew so much, I occasionally was was upgraded. I almost never recognized anyone else in the comfortable seats. Once, however, I sat in first class with a famous sports personality. In fact, I sat right next to Desmond Howard, who was working at ESPN at the time, on a flight that terminated at Bradley. I was in the window seat; he had the aisle seat.
It took me a couple of minutes to recognize him. He did not look like a football player at all. He was only 5’10” and weighed much less than 200 pounds. His most recognizable feature was his broad smile. He had a portable DVD player with him. I was engrossed in a crossword puzzle or a magazine article or something. I had a strong feeling that I was sitting beside someone whom I had seen on television somewhere, but it was not until Desmond smiled at the flight attendant that I recognized him as the 1991 Heisman Trophy winner from my alma mater, the University of Michigan.
When we landed, Desmond quickly rose to exit. I noticed that he had left his DVD player in the magazine storage area on the rear of the seat in front of him. I retrieved it and gave it to him as he was waiting for the exit door to open. He gave me a big smile and thanked me.
The other ESPN personality whom I recognized was Jim Donnan1, the former head football coach at the University of Georgia. I enjoyed his commentary on college football teams before the games were televised. He was always seated behind a desk.
Donnan was the only “personality” whom I approached in an airport. He was dressed in a suit, but he also wore white sneakers. I asked him if he changed his shoes when he went on camera. He said that he wore the sneakers because dress shoes made his feet hurt, and they never showed his feet on camera.
In my experience celebrities generally flew in first class. It was therefore extremely surprising for me to sit across the aisle from Vin Baker2 on a flight back to Hartford. It was not a shock that he was going to Hartford. After all, he was by far the most famous person who ever played basketball at the University of Hartford. What was surprising was that he and his entourage were seated in the coach section. I had trouble finding a place to put my legs, and Vin Baker was 6’11” tall!
I don’t recall whether Baker was still playing in the NBA when he made this trip. His last year was 2006. So, I suspect that he was still playing.
On another occasion I sat next to another large man. This guy I did not immediately recognize, but I could tell from the papers that he was reading and annotating that he was on a recruiting trip as a coach for the University of Oklahoma football team. When I got home I used google to retrieve a list of the Sooners’ coaches. I quickly recognized Kevin Sumlin as the person whom I had sat beside. At the time he was the tight ends coach for Bob Stoops at OU.
In 2008 Sumlin was named the head coach at the University of Houston. He led the team to a 12-1 record and an appearance in a bowl game in 2011. Before that game he accepted the top job at Texas A&M.
In his first year at A&M the Aggies, with Johnny Manziel at quarterback, went 11-2 and beat Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl. After that his teams, first at A&M and then at Arizona, seemed to get worse every year. His last game as a head coach was an ignominious 70-7 loss to Arizona State in 2020.
The other sports figure whom I recognized on an airplane was more famous than any of the others so far listed. I saved him for last because I only saw him for a few seconds. Also, he was only a “sports entertainment” star.
Many people know of two characters named Steve Austin—the Six Million Dollar Man and Stone Cold. I saw the second one on a flight from Birmingham, AL, to Atlanta. He was sitting in seat 1B, and he had a very large bandage on one of his knees. He apparently boarded early, which meant that absolutely everyone on the plane walked by him. I recognized him immediately, but I didn’t say anything. I assumed that he had received medical attention at one of the sports medicine centers in Birmingham.
I was quite familiar with a third Steve Austin, Stunning Steve Austin, a lithe young wrestler whom I had seen many times on televised WCW performances from Texas. At the time Stunning Steve had long blonde hair, was skinny for a wrestler, and was usually cast as a good guy. His finishing move was called the stunner. Unlike Stone Cold, he was well known for his speed and agility. Also, he never wore armor on his knees or crushed beer cans.
It was hard to fathom, but he was the same guy who later grew into the legendary Stone Cold Steve Austin.
Other celebrities: I saw two fairly famous political figures on airplanes. The first was my congresswoman, Nancy Johnson. One evening we were on the same flight from Washington National to Bradley. I was somewhat surprised by how short she was.
I don’t remember the other person’s name or even what his position was. My recollection was that he was head of the EPA, but I cannot find him on the list of administrators. I can picture him very clearly in my mind and even hear his voice.
Isn’t Joey’s cap dreamy?
On another trip to Hartford in 1999 or 2000 the first class section was largely populated by vivacious young men who were obviously neither salesmen nor investment bankers. They were, in fact, the boy band NSYNC, and at the time they were extremely popular with the teeny bopper set.
Halfway through the flight one of them, Joey Fatone, came back to the coach section and got down on one knee to talk with an elderly couple that was seated right behind me. They were evidently his grandparents.
My recollection is that NSYNC was going to some venue in the Hartford area to give a surprise performance. I don’t think that this gig was part of one of their tours. It might have even been a private gathering. There were no screaming girls waiting for them at the airport.
I did not see many people in wheelchairs in airports, and of that small number only one (to the best of my recollection) was traveling alone. I recognized him immediately as John Hockenberry. He has been on many shows on public TV. I saw him shopping at one of the stores at the Kansas City airport (KCI).
Seeing him made me wonder what he would do if he got hungry. The food concessions at KCI are on the second floor above the stores. Maybe there was an elevator he could use, but I don’t remember seeing one.
The other person of note whom I saw in my travels was not famous in her own right. The woman sitting next to me on a flight told me that her husband, Bill Haast, had held the record for being bit by a poisonous snake the most times. He was often flown to donate blood to bite victims because he had developed immunity to many varieties of snakes.
I had never heard of Bill Haast. When I looked him up I discovered that he was even more amazing than his wife’s depiction of him. His Wikipedia page is here.
He died in 2011 at the age of 100.
1. Jim Donnan seemed to disappear from ESPN early in the teens. I recently learned that in 2011 a Ponzi scheme in which he was a partner collapsed. His partner pleaded guilty, but Donnan was acquitted on all 41 counts in 2014. The government apparently could not prove that he knew about the fraud. Donnan took a job at the American Sports Network in 2014.
2. In 2021 Vin Baker is an assistant coach with the Milwaukee Bucks. His path has been a rocky one. A Los Angeles Times article with the details has been posted here.
The resolution for 1979-1980 was: “Resolved: That the federal government should significantly strengthen the regulation of mass media communication in the United States.” Once again the resolution was much more limiting than the ones of the middle 1970’s. In the fifteen elimination rounds at the NDT the affirmative teams won eight debates, and the negatives won seven.
The coaching staff was quite different. Vince Follert left for Western Illinois. The Benoits also moved on. Jack Kay earned his PhD and accepted a job at the University of Nebraska. I don’t remember if Sheri Brimm was still around. Tuna Snider, Ron Lee, and Gerry Cox joined the staff.
As in the other years, it was all hands on deck for the first couple of months. We spent a great deal of time working with the inexperienced novices in order to find compatible partners and to get them reasonably well prepared for the novice tournament sponsored by the Michigan Intercollegiate Speech League.
I think that Gerry Cox mostly worked with the novices. The only one with significant high school experience was Dennis Corder.
We also reprised the trip to Ann Arbor to research in U-M’s libraries. I don’t remember who came, but the productivity matched the standard set in the previous year.
Varsity: Kent Martini and Chris Varjabedian graduated. Kevin Buchanan returned to the team, and George paired him with Scott Harris. I don’t know why George skipped over Mike Craig, who had had an excellent year in 1978-79 and had also displayed a great attitude. Maybe it was because neither he nor Scott had been a second negative at Wayne State. At any rate, Mike debated with Dave Debold all year.
Someone entered the ZSR library to study and left with a new (to him) cowboy hat.
I do not remember many specifics from this year. I remember only one tournament that I definitely attended, Wake Forest. I do not remember how we did. What I do remember is that I left my cowboy hat in the Z. Smith Reynolds library there.
I don’t remember what specific cases the Wayne State debaters defended during the year. I do, however, remember the one run by the Sutherland twins who debated for Louisville. Their case was about free speech and the cable television industry that was still in its infancy. I judged them on their affirmative several times. and I always voted for them. So did a lot of other judges; no one was surprised that they received a first round bid to the NDT.
I noticed that the second affirmative for Louisville always gave heavy emphasis in the 2AC to a piece of evidence that had seemed innocuous when it was read in the opening speech. Someone on the Wayne State team found the original source for this quote, and I worked with them to develop a sophisticated block of arguments about it. This foiled their strategy. We never lost to Louisville again.
The other popular case that I remember was one that banned billboards. They supposedly caused “blight” and traffic accidents. I thought back on how much I loved Burma Shave billboards and the countless roadside signs for Wall Drug. Also, we would never have made that pleasurable stop at Reptile Land in the previous year if those ads were banned.
These advantages certainly seemed as real to me as the alleged problems, but I could think of no persuasive way to turn them into debate arguments.
Scott and Kevin had a great year, from start to finish. They earned the distinction of being the first Wayne State team to receive a first round bid1 to the National Debate Tournament, which was held at the University of Arizona. Going into the tournament they were the ninth-ranked team in the country.
Mike and Dave also had a good year. They became the fourth consecutive team from Wayne State to qualify for the NDT at the District 5 tournament. So, in my six years of coaching at U-M and Wayne State, seven of my teams qualified for the NDT, and five teams made it through districts. The one team that did not qualify barely missed after going 0-8 the year before. I was definitely a better coach than I was a debater.
I got to attend the tournament, too. I had seniority, but I had been in the doghouse academically for several months. I knew that George would go, but if he brought anyone else, I thought that it would be Tuna or Ron. At this nationals I spent a lot of time judging.
The adventure of flying to Tucson is described here.
This photo is from 1970 at UA.
We had a great time in Tucson. The weather was fantastic, and the atmosphere at the university was invigorating after nine months in the cold in Detroit. Young men and women were playing Frisbee in shorts and tee shirts on the lawn of one of the buildings. One morning I went on a jog with Scott and Dave. We even persuaded George to take us to an authentic Mexican restaurant for supper one evening.
Scott and Kevin qualified for the elimination rounds with a 6-2 record. Scott was the #8 speaker in the tournament. Unfortunately, the guys were upset in a 3-2 decision by two ladies from Southern Cal even though Wayne State was on the affirmative. I don’t remember Mike and Dave’s record, but I think that they finished near the middle of the field.
I don’t know how George finagled it, but Scott (partnering with Dave Debold) also won a first-round bid to the 1981 tournament. He and Dave were again 6-2, and Scott was the #2 speaker. Wayne State won its octafinal round, but fell to Pittsburgh, the eventual champions, in the quarterfinals.
I was very happy to read in the NDT book for 1981 that Kim Garvin and Nancy Legge also debated at the NDT that year. I wonder what happened to Mike and Kevin. Kim and Nancy also attended the 1982 edition of the tournament.
1. In two consecutive years, 1967 and 1968, Wayne State was exempted from qualifying for the NDT because its team had debated in the final round of the previous year’s tournament. First round bids were first implemented in 1973.
Any treatment of any aspect of debate at Wayne State University in the second half of the twentieth century must begin with George Ziegelmueller1. During the course of my seven years of debate I had formed two opinions of him: 1) He was a mediocre debate coach; 2) He was a horrible judge. I certainly underrated him as a coach (at least on the affirmative), but not as a judge. Of course, I was (and still am) prejudiced. After my last tournament (districts in 1970, which is described here) I hated him as much as I have ever hated anyone in my life.
Nevertheless, I can usually compartmentalize. George and I had a good working relationship from the start. I did whatever he told me to do. I had great respect for his ability to deal with the bureaucracy, and I have no doubt whatever that the welfare and success of his debaters meant the world to him.
Welcome to Phoenix!
My favorite George story took place in the Detroit Metro Airport in 1980. Six of us were preparing to attend the National Debate Tournament at the University of Arizona. George and I were the coaches. The debaters were senior Scott Harris, juniors Kevin Buchanan and Mike Craig, and Dave Debold, who was only a sophomore.
We were all very excited. For three of the four guys it was the very first time that they had flown to a tournament. For me it was also very special. I had never been to the state of Arizona. Also, I knew that this might well be my last debate tournament ever.
George handed out the tickets to each of us. He informed us of the gate from which the plane would depart. Before we went through security, however, Dave noticed something amiss. “These tickets are for Phoenix,” he said. “Isn’t the University of Arizona in Tucson?”
Our tickets were indeed non-stop tickets to Phoenix on Frontier Airlines. Incredibly, George was able to exchange the tickets for ones to and from Tucson. We only had to wait in the terminal for an hour or so, and all of our luggage was also transferred to our new flight.
George did not really believe in tipping. Having been to Europe several times, I agree with him in principle. However, this is not Europe; most American restaurants paid (and still pay) their employees scandalously low wages.
The way George expressed his philosophy about tipping was this: “I pay for the meal out of the back-pocket of my pants; the tip comes from the front pocket.” That is, he paid for the bill with folding money and the tip with change.
I only accompanied George on a few trips. When I did, I would covertly pass the hat among the debaters. I would add my donation and give the total collection to one of the debaters. On our way to the car he/she would remember something left behind in the restaurant, return to the table, and supplement the tip with what we had collected.
The tournament in Denver was held at Metropolitan State College, now known as Metropolitan State University. It was an excellent venue.
I worked very hard during my first year at Wayne. I went to whatever tournaments George selected for me, and I did not step on anyone’s toes. Even before districts I asked George if I could go to the National Debate Tournament in Denver in the spring. George was taken aback by this request.
Jack Kay, after all, was his right-hand man. George said that I could accompany the team to districts, but he and Jack would judge. I replied that the team (Debbie McCully and Scott Harris) did not need me at districts. However, they had very little experience on the national circuit, and I had a lot. I knew many of the debaters on the national scene and almost all of the coaches. I even volunteered to pay my own way to Denver if and when our team qualified. George eventually agreed, and he found the money.
This helped diminish, but not erase, the memory of the round against Ohio U. at districts in 1970.
Pam and Billy Benoit2 (beh NOYT) were my office-mates in Manoogian Hall. They had both attended Ball State University in Muncie, IN, and Central Michigan in Mount Pleasant. In 1979 Billy presented a paper on philosophy at a conference in Amsterdam. Pam went with him. I don’t remember how they got away with this. They both taught several classes.
Maybe in 2021.
Sue Comparetto somehow persuaded them to allow her to join them on this trip. She enjoyed the city immensely, and has wanted to return3 for the last forty-two years.
The Benoits once invited Sue and me over for supper in their apartment, which was near the campus. The repast itself was a little skimpy by my standards until they pulled out their fondue pot and the dipping snacks.
Billy and Pam were among the first players of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) after I had purchased the original boxed set on August 17, 1978, as a present for myself on my thirtieth birthday. In the first few adventures we took turns as Dungeon Master. These were “Monte Haul” dungeons. The player characters soon reached level 5 or 6.Outlandishly rich orcs were slain by the thousand.
When the Player’s Handbook appeared a year or so later, I constructed a dungeon with a style that was more verismo. Deep in that dungeon was the lair of the fiercest monster they had yet to encounter, Frix the White Dragon. Non-player characters had warned everyone that he was very powerful because of his super-cold breath. One day Pam, Billy, and Vince Follert decided to go after him.
After a few minor skirmishes they found Frix’s cave, but, alas, Frix struck first and turned the entire party all to icicles. All three players were very angry at me for not providing them with a way to resurrect their highly prized characters.
The denouement of this story is in Vince’s section of this blog.
In 2021 I unearthed my slightly warped copy the graduate student’s bible.
By the time that Billy and Pam were ready to submit their dissertations in the spring of 1980 Sue and I had an IBM 5120 computer in our house. Sue used it for her fledgling programming business. I also tinkered with it. I had written a word processing program that printed documents in the format approved by the American Psychological Association. The only printer that it could use was a dot-matrix, but that was not yet considered gauche. I called my program “Amanuensis”.
The 5120 supported this printer and no other.
The university allowed graduate students a fixed number of minutes of computer time per semester. Pam and Billy traded me their minutes for one or two semesters in exchange for my printing of their dissertations using Amanuensis. Needless to say, I had to enter the text and footnotes through the keyboard. Producing a long paper with footnotes perfectly on a manual typewriter was a daunting task.
I ran into a few problems because, of course, no one checked my work. They became very jittery as the deadline day approached, but I was able to hand the final copies over to them with a few hours to spare.
In the winter of 1978-1979 Pam and Billy invited Sue, me, Vince, and, I think, John Pfeiffer to a weekend at a family cabin near Pokagon (poh-KAY-gun) State Park4. My recollection is that we drove there on Friday evening and returned on Sunday afternoon. Two thing stand out in my mind from this event. The first was mundane. Evidently there was a shortage of water in the plumbing system. The bathroom bore a sign that read: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” Five of us shared that toilet.
A long line to the top.
The other memory of that trip is epic. The toboggan run in the park is long and fast. The channels for the toboggans were not particularly narrow, but Billy was a big guy, and, to put it in nautical terms, he was broad in the beam. I think that we only participated in one run. We split into two groups of three. I went with Vince and John. Sue was in the Benoit’s group. The safety precautions for the ride were minimal. A guy at the top yelled “Keep your legs in!” before he gave the toboggan a shove.
Speed up to 43 mph coming down.
Our toboggan ride was somewhat thrilling because the pace was fast, and the riders had absolutely no control. I was in front. I just made myself as small as I could. The guy behind me had his legs on both sides of me. The guy behind him likewise put a leglock on the middle man. By the time that we reached the bottom, which was a quarter mile from the launching tower, one of Vince’s legs had rubbed against the side of the track a few times. He was sore but not injured. John and I were unscathed.
The three in the other toboggan did not fare as well. All three suffered scrapes. Billy was by far the worst. He stuck out on both sides of the toboggan and suffered rather ugly burns. We did not take him to the hospital, but he could hardly walk for a day or two, and he was sore for weeks.
Sheri Brimm joined the program in the fall semester of 1978. She had just graduated from Wright State University in Dayton, OH. She knew very little about debate. If Wright State had a debate team, I never heard of it, and they were in our district.
Sheri lived in an apartment near campus with her husband David. I seem to remember that he was going to Law School at Wayne State.
I was in one class with Sheri. I think that it was with the rhetoric professor, Dr. Jim Measell. For one of our assigned papers he provided very explicit instructions for what he wanted. I knew this guy and warned Sheri that she should do it exactly the way that he prescribed. She said that she thought that what he really was looking for was creativity. She may have been kidding, but she got a bad grade on the paper.
This is hydroplaning.
I also took one trip with Sheri. We were in charge of a van full of debaters headed for a nearby tournament. Akron University comes to mind, but I may be wrong. I let her drive because I wanted to work with some of the debaters. While we were still in Detroit it began to snow or sleet, and there was a little ice on the road. Basically, it was a normal winter day in Michigan in the seventies. The van started to skid. I yelled to her from the back of the van, “Slow down.”
“The car is hydroplaning,” she explained, but she did not drive noticeably slower.
“Hydroplaning is on water. This is ice. SLOW DOWN!” I countered.
I did not have many dealings with Sheri even though she returned for 1979-80. George may have let her work with some of the novice debaters, and she kept a chair warm during practice rounds.
Gerry Cox5 was my age. George was eighteen years older than I was. Everyone else in the FU was younger than I. Gerry joined the staff in 1979 after finally earning his bachelor’s degree the previous spring. I coached Gerry in my first two years. We became good friends, even though we had almost nothing in common. I also kept in touch with Gerry after I left Wayne St. He came to visit Sue and me twice while we lived in Rockville, CT. More memories of him can be read here.
I have three vivid recollections of Gerry from that last year. For years Gerry had been associated with the department off and on. I remember well the way that he treated the departmental secretary, whose name was, I think, Janet. On one occasion Gerry approached her desk and greeted her with the following: “Why don’t we rent a room at a hotel, rub Crisco all over both of our bodies, and see what happens?”
This approach was quite a bit different from my short conversations with her.
The second strong memory is of the only time that I ever saw Gerry nervous. He was for some reason chosen to give a speech on traffic safety to members of the Detroit Police Department. It may have been a contest. I drove him there for moral support.
Gerry had seen these up close a few times.
Gerry was reluctant even to enter the room. Apparently he feared that one of Detroit’s finest would recognize him from years gone for encounters in markedly less formal encounters, probably bars. At last we entered and took a seat. Gerry kept his eyes lowered while we were so seated.
Eventually Gerry gave his speech, which argued that requiring helmets for riders of motorcycles was a bad idea. It was a terrible speech. He claimed that requiring helmets would not reduce injuries much and that in some cases it would be counterproductive. I was shocked that a former Wayne State debater would make such a claim without a whiff of evidence.
Helmets are obviously counterproductive.
The close of his speech was greeted with tepid applause. As he approached me, he said softly, “Let’s get out of here.”
In the car I asked him why he made those claims without any evidence. He was stunned. He asked me, “Are you saying that I forgot to read the evidence?”
When I confirmed it he laughed and laughed and buried his head in his hands.
Steve D’Agostino coached some of the Individual Events (IE) people in 1977-78. I hardly knew him. I think that he had academic problems and left after one year.
Vince Follert6 was a pretty good debater at Loyola in Chicago, a Jesuit university. I judged him a few times before he graduated in 1977. His partner was weak, and the coaching at Loyola was not great. Even so, they did pretty well. I was favorably impressed.
Vince had a studio apartment near the campus. I am not sure that I ever entered it. He came to supper at our house on Chelsea a few times. We became pretty close friends. We usually ate lunch together at one of a few favorite restaurants on Woodward. Woodward Coney Island is still there in 2021! Their loose hamburger sandwiches were very tasty. I don’t remember the name of the other restaurant. Vince was enchanted by one of the waitresses who never wore a bra.
Vince stayed at Wayne for two years. I taught his classes whenever he was at a tournament, and he returned the favor when I was out of town. In the fall of 1978 he made the mistake of asking me to take his very first class. Here is how I began: “My name is Mike Wavada. Don’t write it down; I am not your teacher. Your real teacher is named Vince Follert. He is away at a debate tournament today. You won’t like him. He is fat, he smokes like a chimney, and he talks too fast.”
I did not mention it, but he also went through several six packs of Diet Pepsi every day.
Vince was as fond as I was of Dungeons and Dragons. He played every chance that he got. He was even more angry than the Benoits were at the instantaneous demise of his beloved characters when they stormed into Frix’s lair. I think that Vince’s main character was named Guelph the Elf.
Several months later he confronted me about the incident. “Resist Cold is a first level clerical spell, isn’t it? We were just idiots. We deserved to die.” He was right. They probably could have absconded with Frix’s fabulous treasure horde if they had bothered to prepare for cold weather with spells that any rookie cleric would know.
Vince and I attended a convention of the Central States Speech Association7 in the spring of 1979. We both presented papers there.
I don’t remember why we did not take Greenie. Instead, we rented a car from Budget. We got a good deal. There was a modest daily charge, but there was no mileage limit. My recollection is that we drove to St. Louis, went to the convention, and then drove back within twenty-four hours. That seems almost incredible. Maybe the trip took two days. In any case the man at Budget was astounded when he looked at the odometer.
I did not witness Vince’s presentation. His panel occurred at the same time as mine. Walter Ulrich, a very fine coach at the University of Houston, presented the first paper in our room. He argued that the value of the proposition should always be from the perspective of the collective interest of the people of the United States. There was time for questions after the evaluations. I asked Walter what he thought of propositions that were stated at a different level. For example, one of them that I debated in high school said that nuclear weapons should be controlled by an unspecified international organization. He opined that those resolutions were illegitimate.
The approach I called unfair is based on Archbishop Whately’s view of presumption.
My paper, which was the last one in our session, was on causality. I posited was not a useful construct in argumentation. Debates should focus on necessary conditions and sufficient conditions. I also argued that the negative teams had the responsibility to defend something in every debate. It was perfectly OK to defend what currently existed or what the government might do, but arguing that a case should be rejected because Congress could just pass a law to solve the problem or provide the benefit was an unfair reliance on the concept of presumption.
The two reviewers hated my paper. Dave Ling, the coach from Central Michigan (and a Wayne State alum), was at least nice about it. The other reviewer was from Washington University of St. Louis, a guy who was renowned as the worst judge on the circuit. He made fun of me. The time allotted was exhausted by the time that they finished. I did not get a chance to rebut what they said.
Most top coaches would have agreed with every word that I said, but they did not often attend conventions like this one.
One last memory of Vince popped into my head. One day in 1979 he came into Manoogian with a hickey on his neck. He made no attempt to hide it, but he would not talk about it.
Vince received his masters degree in the spring of 1979. He coached debate for Dale Hample at Western Illinois in 1979-1980.
Ken Haught might have been on the staff in my last year, 1979-1980. I remember him, but only vaguely
Jack Kay was George’s right-hand man when I arrived. He was still a graduate student, but he had an office of his own. I came to learn that Jack had been a member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in his younger years. Reportedly he had actually met Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.
Jack married Ruth Colwander, who was just a sophomore in my first year at Wayne State. Jack had been the coach of Ruth and the other novices in the previous year. They had done very well.
I don’t know why, but I interacted very little with Jack. I remember only two fairly innocuous incidents. The first occurred at a staff meeting. George told us that some financial assistance had become available for one debater. I don’t remember the amount. George asked for suggestions as to who should get it. I immediately recommended that Ruth, who was the only serious debater who had a job, should be considered. Jack, who was involved with but not married to Ruth, was astonished at my suggestion. I guess that he thought of me as a foe. If so, it was not mutual.
The second event occurred at the National Debate Tournament in 1978 in Denver. Wayne State sent one team (Debbie McCully and Scott Harris) and three coaches to this tournament.
Wayne State’s team met (I think) one of the teams from Redlands in the eighth round. The whole tournament knew that both teams from Redlands were running a case that had something to do with infanticide. I had never heard it, and I no idea of the substance of Redlands’ plan.
Jack ran into the library. I don’t know if he found anything. I kept out of his way.
Jack had, however, heard the case in a previous round. When he saw that our team was facing Redlands, he rushed to the library to try to photocopy something. He then spent the little remaining time lecturing Debbie and Scott on how to attack the cse.
I wished that he had shared his ideas with us earlier—there were fairly long breaks for power-matching after every round. I said absolutely nothing at the time; he might have had an inspired argument.
Scott and Debbie lost 3-0. If Jack had not taken over, I would have advised them to relax and avoid the temptation to twist any of their prepared arguments to fit this case. Instead, they should just try to challenge everything, make reasonable claims of their own, and watch for mistakes. They should then concentrate on finding one decisive argument that they could win and sell it dramatically in the last rebuttal.
Of course, they still probably would have lost to a team with more high-level experience.
Jack was a big guy. He was also, unless I am mistaken, the only Jewish member of the staff. He was, I guess because of his size, recruited to play Santa Claus at the FU Christmas party. However, his “ho-ho-ho” was worse than pathetic. So, I made the big laugh from off-stage while he was entering.
Ron Lee joined the staff in 1979-80 wife his wife Karen. She was my age and debated at either Southern Illinois or Illinois State. She might have done something with the team at Wayne, too.
Ron debated at Wayne State, at times with Jack Kay. The only thing that I remember about his coaching technique was that he insisted that the team eat at restaurants that had waiters and/or waitresses. He hated going to counters for his food.
It was probably better on skates.
John Pfeiffer came from Florida He was at Wayne State for my first two years. In the second year he was the IE director.
John had an interesting background. He had worked at Disneyland as a strolling bear character. He said that it was the worst job in the world. He had also appeared as a character on roller skates in Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Donaldson’s Covenant books were my favorites.
Tuna Snider10 came to Wayne State in 1979-80, my last year, and was installed in Jack’s old office. I had known him a little when he was the coach at Boston College. I never heard anyone call him anything but Tuna.
I don’t think that I went to any tournaments with Tuna. In fact, the only interaction with him that I remembered was when he noticed that I was often sitting around the debate lounge reading a paperback book. One day he asked what kind of fiction I liked, and I answered, “Swords and sorcery”. He made a positive noise and returned to his office. In truth I read most of these fantasy books just to get ideas for D&D dungeons.
For some reason Tuna did not attend the NDT with us in Arizona in 1980, and my memories of his involvement with the program seemed to be minimal. Perhaps he had a falling out with George.
1. George died in 2019. A press release from the university can be read here.
2. In 2021 the Benoits are on the faculty of the communications department of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Billy’s Wikipedia page is here. His boss’s career is described on this webpage. Click on her photo or the blue text.
3. Sue and I have a river cruise scheduled for October of 2021. It departs from Amsterdam, and we have also scheduled one extra day there.
4. The toboggan run at Pokagon State Park remained open through the pandemic winter of 2020-2021. Its website is here.
5. Gerry died in an automobile accident in, I think, the eighties. At the time he owned a company that produced machined parts for auto dealers. It was located in his family’s home town in Kentucky.
6. Vince died of colon cancer in the early eighties.
7. In the twenty-first century it is called the Central States Communications Association.
8. In 2021 Ken is the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Dickinson State University in North Dakota.
9. Jack died in 2015. A tribute to him can be read here.
10. Tuna Snider got his PhD from Kansas, not Wayne State. He died in 2015 after spending more than thirty years at the University of Vermont. His Wikipedia page is here.
