Wretched excess and college football myths

By Jeff Orvis

The Ford Motor Company seems to like the letter “E.” Its line of SUVs include the Escape, the Explorer and the Expedition. All seem like fine vehicles. I sometimes wondered if they could make something even bigger. Maybe they could call it the Wretched Excess. It would take premium gas, get about a dozen miles to the gallon and have a base price of over $50,000.

The Excess came to mind in recent weeks as I watched the thousands of folks all across this country (and some other places as well) occupying downtown locations. The Occupy Wall Street group, which was recently washed out of its campground, was protesting what they claimed to be the excessive salaries paid to some bankers and other Wall Street folks. In an era where many of us have been forced out of our profession, they are wondering why the corporate leaders keep on cashing those seven-figure annual paychecks.

I've written before on how corporate America is giving us less for our money, especially in the grocery store. Even more evident are the companies that continue to move manufacturing jobs to other countries and other practices in an effort to increase the almighty bottom line and look good for the stockholders.

Many folks questioned why banks tried to increase various fees while the CEOs of the national banks made obscene salaries and bonuses. But I've had a more basic question when it comes to banks: Why is the bank building the most prominent, massive and architecturally significant building in virtually every town in America?

Think about it. Travel to any town across the country, whether it is a major city or a small town with a two-block Main Street. If the city has a bank, it won't be hard to pick out of the other businesses in town. Soaring two or three story entries, heavy front doors coated in bronze or brass and hundreds of square feet of marble are often the norm, rather than the exception. When was the last time a plush bank lobby helped you get better interest on your savings account or helped you get a home or business loan?

I realize that this building design trend is nothing new. I suspect that many banks in the Old West were the only buildings in town with brass accents on the teller cages and inlaid tile floors. I suppose the idea of fancy buildings for banks came from the notion that customers would trust their money to someone who could afford a fancy place to house it. It probably was supposed to promote customer confidence.

But in an era where banks are trying to hit us with higher ATM fees or service charges for accounts that fall below a certain level, do they really need to continue to choose splendor over function? Just wondering...

It was just about this time of the year. Our second grade class was eating lunch one day at Riverdale School. We were starting to get excited about Christmas and the accompanying school vacation. Our teacher, Miss Good, sensed our excitement and realized that many of us had younger siblings. In a matter-of-fact tone, she told us that while she realized that we knew that Santa would not be coming down our chimneys, we should keep the “truth” to ourselves so we wouldn't ruin it for our younger brothers and sisters.

I remember chills ran down my spine that day. I knew this day was coming, when I would have to admit to myself that the legend of the Jolly Old Soul was probably impossible. But my fear was if I admitted it out loud, I wouldn't get any presents! I did a good job of keeping this quiet in my family until the sixth grade, when my sister and I admitted to our parents we realized who was responsible for nice Christmas presents.

Fast forward about 50 years and I had that same chill when news came out of State College, PA, about the scandal involving the Penn State football coaching staff members. I was never a real fan of Penn State football, especially when the Nittany Lions joined the Big Ten. But I certainly admired what they stood for – a tough-as-nails team that gave everything they had on every play. They played tough, but by the rules. Their coach, Joe Paterno, virtually owned the program, having been associated with it for over 60 years. He and his wife recognized that while football was vital to his career, Penn State was more than its football program. To that end, they have returned over $4 million in personal donations to the university over the years.

All that was instantly forgotten with the news of a 40-count indictment of a former longtime assistant coach on the staff. Sixty-one years of devotion to a program was destroyed with one document.

In my mind's eye, I see a sorry parade of Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy marching down the road, fading into the distance, suddenly joined by the most veteran of college football coaches. Myths one and all.

Remembering a special small town cop

By Jeff Orvis

One of the best parts of my job in small town community journalism over the years was the opportunity to develop a good relationship with local law enforcement. When I first landed in Independence, I'll admit that I may not have had a high opinion of local law enforcement. Growing up in a larger metropolitan area, I had little actual contact with small town cops.

It didn't take long to realize that local law officers were our neighbors. If you called a sheriff's deputy for help in Scott County, chances are all you saw was the gun and uniform. You would probably never see the officer again. That was different in Independence. The police chief and his assistant both had children who grew up in the local schools. One of the officers was married to a woman who worked in our news room. A few years after I began working in town, we joined a church where the police chief, Buchanan County sheriff, his chief deputy and nearly half of the ambulance crew all were members. It was sort of like attending church with the president!

These memories came flooding back earlier this week when I learned of the death of the former assistant chief of the Independence department, Jim Hayward. By the time I arrived in town, he and his boss, Chief Dan Schremser, had many years of experience keeping the peace in town between them. As a part of my beat, I would collect the police news each week and sometimes, when there were ongoing investigations, I stopped by Jim's office to try to get more details not included on the news release. Usually when I stopped by, I knew he wouldn't be able to elaborate on what I already had learned, but it was worth a try. He always dressed in a tie and had a pipe handy – sort of like a modern day Sherlock Holmes. He also usually had a twinkle in his eye and you never quite knew if he was being truthful or handing you a line.

My experience with Jim actually included the only time I have been questioned in connection with a crime. I lived in a four-plex in town and a woman in another unit had reported a sexual assault. Jim stopped by my place and quickly told me that I wasn't a suspect, but he was just wondering if I had heard anything during the time of the alleged assault. I don't recall being able to offer any help, but he conducted the interview with his professional style, with just a hint of good humor.

Knowing all the officers on the local department was a luxury reporters in larger cities seldom share. Another time I heard a call on the police scanner of shots fired at a home in Independence. By the time I arrived, another veteran officer of the department had roped off the front of the home and was guarding it until state investigators arrived. He and I were the only ones there. Apparently a troubled young man had come home from school, gone to the basement and ended his life with a shotgun. I had known the officer for several years by this point and while he wouldn't have allowed me to go into the basement, he described in general terms what had apparently happened. His description left little doubt in my mind that I was glad he wouldn't allow me to enter.

Another time, I arrived at the scene of a murder in town. TV crews were already set up and were getting little or no information from the officer guarding the scene. I left the scene and drove to the law center where I found the county's chief deputy (one of my fellow church members). He confirmed that a murder had taken place, who had been killed and other details the TV folks were scrambling to find.

Because of the mutual trust I developed with many officers I met over the years, I heard about the time our sheriff spent two days laying in the weeds at a rural site on a stakeout. I was able to joke with a state trooper who lived in our town because it seemed that each time there was a traffic accident out in the country on the coldest, windiest day, he would be the one dispatched to the scene.

On my weekly visits to the law centers in Independence and later in Belle Plaine, most of my reports were about ambulance assists, traffic accidents, domestic disputes, etc. I once told a police chief that they could have simplified the code by making most infractions degrees of stupidity. Someone who was suspected of first offense drunk driving would be charged with “stupidity in the third degree.” I once told the Belle Plaine chief that his officers should change their uniforms to referee's shirts, since so many of their calls involved settling disputes between husbands and wives, neighbors, etc.

While there were lighter moments in my visits to the police stations, I realized that there could have come a time when I would have to report on an officer involved shooting or other dangerous, tragic incident. Small towns are not immune to bad people doing bad things or good people having bad things happening to them.

It takes a special individual, like Jim Hayward, to go to work each day for more than 25 years, knowing that the next time the phone rings, it could be news of something bad happening to someone he might have grown up with. He had to be prepared to quickly shed his personal feelings and assume the role of law enforcement professional.

You gain respect for small town cops when you get to know them, especially the men and women I've met over more than 30 years in this crazy business.

Rest in peace, Jim and thanks for your service and all you taught me about police work.

Free entertainment on the other side of the porch screen

By Jeff Orvis

It's been a year since I packed up the van, said my good-byes to my friends in Belle Plaine and began the next chapter in this interesting life. While the past year has been less than a success from the standpoint of finding employment, it's been very rewarding in the fact that I've been able to reconnect with family and some of the friends I grew up with.

I wondered how I would adapt to giving up a three-bedroom, two-story house for a bedroom and a storage unit. What kind of adjustment would I have to make going from a quiet, friendly town of just under 3,000 to a metropolitan area of more than 350,000, where everybody seems to be in a hurry?

In the first place, Mom's condo is incredibly well insulated. We live within two miles of perhaps 40 restaurants, four supermarkets, more than a half-dozen big box stores and one of the busiest streets in the area. But with the windows closed, every night is as quiet as a snowy winter night in Belle Plaine when the wind is blowing from the north. The last time I heard a train was this summer when I went down to the Davenport levee to hear a concert during the Bix Beiderbecke Fest.

The condo complex adjoins the Crow Valley Country Club. While we don't have a big course view, the golf course provides a small slice of solitude.

As I've grown older, I am discovering that I inherited some of my dad's traits. He could be quite eloquent on the rare occasions he sat down to write a letter in longhand. I've spent the better part of 35 years trying to put words together in a coherent way. His best expression came in his photography, where he could capture Minnesota nature at its finest. While working in the news business, I would take pictures when necessary, but not nearly as well as he did.

He grew up in small towns in south central Illinois, moving to the Quad-City area for work. I spent more than 30 years living in towns of similar size to his hometown and discovered an easy-going lifestyle where rush hour usually lasted about 10 minutes and involved a couple dozen cars.

So what does this have to do with my current living arrangement? Many summer nights when I was growing up, Dad would take a cup of coffee after supper and go out and sit on our front porch, which was across the road from a park. My sister and I might scramble to finish eating so we could go out and play or watch a favorite TV show. Dad would be content to spent an hour or two just sitting on the porch, enjoying the quiet.

Well, it too more than 40 years, but I finally found some of that contentment. Make no mistake, I admit I am a TV addict. Nobody is as well-versed in the operation of the remote than I am. But some of the best time I have spent since coming to live here has been spent on Mom's screened porch. The view is not really impressive – the next condo building is only about 40 yards away. But there's enough room for a few mature trees and a small patio where Mom has put up a couple of bird feeders.

I never saw a hummingbird before this spring. We had a couple who would regularly battle for the best spot to suck up the sugar water put in the feeder for them. I remember only seeing one or two gold finches over the years. We had a small flock who would constantly remind me that I should keep that feeder filled. Sometimes we see a hawk soaring overhead. One of his favorite perches this summer was on the roof of the adjoining building.

We also had a few non-winged visitors. Several squirrels seemed to find new and innovative ways to climb up on that hanging bird feeder. It really amazed me how far they could fly when I scared them off the feeder. Make a sudden noise and watch them fly off the five-foot high feeder and land on their feet.

A couple of chipmunks also were local residents. Mom had some potted plants on the patio and the chipmunks liked to forage in the dirt, trying to eat the flower bulbs. Mom heard somewhere that if you sprinkled chili powder on the base of the plants, the chipmunks would leave them alone. A couple of days later, I told Mom that I saw a few chipmunks wearing tiny sombreros, playing mariachi music and having a fiesta. She didn't see the humor in that one.

The point is, we spend about 40 years of our lives raising families, looking after our investments, perhaps trying to own the best car or biggest home. How many of us spend the afternoon or evening simply sitting on a porch, away from the TV or computer, enjoying the best entertainment in the world?

Would I like to find the perfect job to finish my work career? Of course. But even more important is waking up to many more days when I can take at least a few minutes to the kind of free entertainment on the other side of that porch screen. I hope that would show a potential employer that I pay attention to detail and know how to prioritize my life.

And even more importantly, know how to occasionally stop and smell the roses – and maybe feed a chipmunk or two.

Occupying this space with word on the 'Occupy' movement

By Jeff Orvis

Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Atlanta. Occupy Chicago. Occupy Quad-Cities. Thousands of people all over this country are gathering with only one apparent common purpose. They are all saying “We're mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore,” to borrow a phrase from a movie.

The majority of the talk radio folks who have been busy dispensing the audio Kool-Aid to the Tea Party crowd have been quick to condemn the “Occupy” folks as a bunch of left-wing kooks and other less-than-kind descriptions. It didn't help the cause in its early stages by the fact that there were few stated goals of the protests. We are all creatures of instant gratification and instant news and when the organizers had a difficult time forming specific goals for the demonstrations, it made it easier for those on the right to condemn the exercise.

Early news reports of those who were flocking to Wall Street and other venues around the country showed many of them who looked like descendants of the brave folks who assembled in Grant Park in Mayor Daley's 1968 Chicago. Remember “The Whole World is Watching?”

But as the new movement continues to grow, we see more and more of the participants who are like you and your neighbors. They may have advanced college degrees with 10 or more years of experience in a job who were suddenly thrown out of work. Their superiors can only shrug their shoulders and blame the cuts on the economy. But those of us who have been sidelined have been quick to notice that the decision to cut down on staff at many corporations are made by company CEOs who continue to happily cash their seven-figure annual paychecks.

I've mentioned before that it seems that many of our products, especially those in the grocery stores, aren't what they used to be. Corporate America has been busy finding ways to increase its bottom line by putting more water in canned products and giving consumers 11 ounces of coffee in cans that used to hold 16 ounces.

In our fast-paced world where few of us take time to read labels on the products we buy, it's natural to assume that we won't notice we are getting less for our dollar. But when those dollars are suddenly not there, not only are more of us unemployed, we also have more time to spend in the store reading labels and noticing the changes in our products.

Lack of jobs and obscene upper management wages are only part of the story. Many of us are realizing that there is an unhealthy shift from the philosophy in this country. It seems that an honest dollar for an honest day's work or a fair price for a good product has been replaced with “what can we do for less and still make a big profit?”

The radio talking heads would have you believe that the only thing the protestors are looking for is a free ride. But if you listen closely to the nightly interviews from the streets you will learn that all many of us want is a fair shake. Many blame the federal government, specifically Congress, for the nation's ills. Money talks and it didn't help the situation when the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations were free to contribute to political campaigns.

The elections are a year away. As more well educated people are suddenly unemployed and are finding they have time to pay attention to presidential and congressional campaigns, just maybe they can see past the well-financed half-truths in broadcast ads and begin to ask serious questions of the candidates.

Last time I checked, we still elect folks with votes by the public and not by direct purchase by those with the fattest campaign bank accounts. Just maybe we will elect some leaders who care about the rest of us and not just who can contribute the most to a campaign.

The “Occupy” movement may not be the answer. But at least it has the country paying attention.

Illinois government. - you can't make this stuff up

By Jeff Orvis

I've lived almost my entire life in Iowa. For much of my adult life, I've tried to follow the actions, and at time in-actions, of state government. I've had the privilege to speak with our last three governors and all three are nice guys. Each had their own way of governing, some more successful than others. I've gotten to know a few state legislators and each seemed enthused and honored to represent their respective sections of the state.

As a whole, there have been times when I've wondered just what the heck the legislature is trying to do. During the last session, legislators faced the tough task of balancing the budget. But suddenly, they switched gears and gave us a hunting season on mourning doves. It was as if they were saying we can't handle the tough stuff, maybe you will be happy if you can shoot doves.

So there have definitely been times when you hear some things coming out of Des Moines and you just have to roll your eyes and shake your head in disbelief. But after living once again on the east edge of our great state for almost a year now, I have only one thing to say: Be glad you don't live in Illinois!

Make no mistake, there are many good things about Illinois and many good people living there. Some of them are my relatives and I hope I will still be welcome when I go to visit them. But the state and county government in the state of Illinois is so strange you can't make something like this up.

I had heard all of the old jokes about the alleged corrupt nature of Chicago politics, with dead people voting, etc. But did you know that four of the last eight governors of the state have been convicted of crimes, including corruption? The last governor was accused of attempting to sell his appointment for a senator to fill the seat vacated with the election of President Barack Obama, among other charges. He is currently awaiting sentencing.

The current governor, Pat Quinn, came into office knowing he had to try to clean up the image of the office while attempting to balance a budget that some reports indicated carried a $13 billion deficit. He has attempted to close several state institutions, much to the protests of many citizens. He simply refused to pay the state's area school superintendents, claiming that the legislature didn't give him enough money. Never mind they had signed contracts. And the governor found a judge who agreed with him!

Meanwhile, in a further attempt to balance the budget, he enacted a 66 percent increase in personal income taxes and a 46 percent increase in corporate taxes. Almost immediately, state development groups from other Midwestern states began luring businesses from Illinois with promises of healthier business climates.

One positive action that the current governor has taken was abolishing the barbaric practice of capital punishment. That was inspired by the release of an inmate who was 50 hours from being executed after 15 years on death row when DNA evidence proved his innocence.

The strange nature of government doesn't end at the state level. A real head-turner for me came this summer when I learned that Rock Island County, right across the river from Davenport, has 25 county supervisors! To put that in perspective, there are five state senates with fewer members. The Chicago City Council has 50 members, but they represent more than 3.7 million residents.

Rock Island County has approximately 150,000 citizens. Scott County, which includes Davenport and Bettendorf, has a population of 165,224 and is governed by a five member board of supervisors.

This summer, there was a move to reduce the size of the Rock Island County Board. But board members had to agree to cut their own body. Few wanted to give up their princely $3,000 annual salaries. One of the arguments in favor of keeping the board as is was that cutting the number might mean the county would have to hire a county administrator. That was also a shock for me. This is the 21^st century. Doesn't a county of 150,000 deserve a professional running the day-to-day operations of the county?

Like many other municipalities, the county is wrestling with a tight budget. But it was recently revealed that only two of its 25 sheriff department squad cars are equipped with dash video cameras. Much of the county is rural and many of the patrol miles are driven by solo deputies who must make traffic stops and arrests. It would seem that functional video cameras, mounted so that the officer's actions and those of the people who are stopped could be recorded.

This is specially true as we have experience several officer-involved shootings in recent months in this area. Much of the actions of two of those events were captured on video. They both occurred in the city of Davenport. But a traffic stop in rural Rock Island County where a deputy was forced to shoot a suspect was not recorded.

One of the most recent chapters of Illinois' Believe it or Not came recently when a new assistant warden was appointed for an East Moline state prison. The young man had no previous corrections experience, other than a brief stint as a drug and alcohol abuse counselor. There is even no evidence that he has ever been inside of a prison. This son of a recently defeated congressional candidate does have a Master's degree...in theater.

Like I've said, some of this stuff you just can't make up.

Perhaps the Iowa tourism folks should focus some advertising on the state of Illinois. They could try to lure Illini visitors with a slogan like, “Come to Iowa where our governors and former governors stay out of jail and only the living can vote!”

He was much more than a football coach

By Jeff Orvis

It's hard to believe that we already have five games in the book for the 2011 high school football season. But just in time for the rest of the season comes a book that should be required reading for every current prep football player across this great country.

“The Sacred Acre” by Mark Tabb is now available at local book stores. I picked up my copy at the local Wal-Mart. After just finishing it, I am really glad the big box store has this on its shelves. The book tells the story of Ed Thomas, veteran high school coach at Aplington-Parkersburg in northeast Iowa who was gunned down in the weight room at his school on a bright June morning in 2009.

Thomas was a legend in high school football circles. He had been named National Coach of the year earlier in the decade and four of his former players went on to play in the NFL. It came as no surprise to the folks who knew and respected him in the community that he spearheaded the rebuilding of the A-P football field, which others had called “The Sacred Acre” after an EF-5 tornado tore through Parkersburg in 2008.

This book chronicles the work done by Thomas and the A-P community to rebuild the city of just under 2,500 residents. It also recounts in painful detail the events that led up to and followed that fateful morning in 2009. Tabb had the full cooperation of the Thomas family in writing this book. It contains a forward by former NFL Coach Tony Dungy.

Thomas was a deeply religious man. His family attended the same church in town as the family of his murderer. In fact, Mark Becker, who was convicted of the crime, had been a player on the A-P team a few years before.

The book contains some of the favorite quotes of Coach Thomas. The first one may best describe how he tried to live his life:

“I want my legacy to be that I wasn't just a football coach, but a man who tried to live a Christian life and impact others.”

Anyone who has ever played the grand game of high school football, or who has had a son or daughter who has played or can't imagine a Friday night in the Fall without seeing stadium lights shining in the middle of a small town or big city will gain a lot from this book. It is much more than a football book. It is a good portrayal of life in a small town and how folks will pull together in times of adversity. It makes me homesick for Belle Plaine or Independence...

Ten years later - we're down, but not out

By Jeff Orvis

“I just wanted you to know that I'm okay, but I'm heading home.” That was the message from my sister 10 years ago this week. I was in the middle of putting the finishing touches on our newspaper at our Marengo office. Melissa worked in an office in Bossier City, LA. Her call came in the early afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001.

A group of my co-workers and I had left our Belle Plaine office that Tuesday morning for our weekly trip to the printing plant 15 miles away. As we were leaving, I glanced at the TV in our office in time to see a plane hitting the first tower.

The next few hours were spent finishing the paper. I don't think any of the people I was working with really understood just how devastating this was. Living in rural Iowa, where the tallest structure is a grain bin, you don't have daily reminders of just how massive a big city office building can be. Of course, later on, we witnessed horrors we thought we might only see in computer-generated scenes of fictional movies. But this was real. People were falling to their deaths right before our eyes.

When my sister called, I had no idea where President George Bush was. He had been visiting a school in Florida when he got the news that first one, then two aircraft had barreled into the World Trade Center in New York. After a brief statement to the nation at the school, the Secret Service hustled him back to Air Force One, We later learned that while the president wanted to immediately return to the White House, his security detail said it was uncertain whether the attack threat was over and they refused to send him into what may have been harm's way.

It was decided to land the plane at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, LA. Some of my sister's co-workers, outside for a cigarette break, noticed that a large Boeing 747 was landing at the base. They quickly guessed that it was the president's plane. Not knowing if he was being hunted by an enemy, my sister decided she wanted to be home with her family and she called just before she left her office.

The rest of that day, as well as for several days ahead, there was plenty of speculation on who mounted the attack and what effect it might have on this country and the world. Some predicted that there might be an immediate gasoline shortage in this country. Deciding to get away from the wall-to-wall TV coverage for a few minutes, I drove down to our local convenience store that evening and saw a string of cars all the way out to the street. My neighbors were topping off their tanks just in case.

None of us really had a clue on how to act in the succeeding days. We had no experience with an attack on our shores that claimed over 3,000 lives. Should we go to work the next day? Would school be canceled for the week? Three days later, our high school football team was scheduled to travel out of town for a game. Should that game go on?

By Friday, we had a few more details about what happened. But many of us still had a tough time wrapping our brains around the events of the week. The trip to the football game was just the tonic for many of us to help soothe the pain and shock. It also sent a signal to the beasts who planned the attack that Americans might be down, but not out. There was a moment of silence before the game to show respect for the memory of the victims and support for their loved ones.

In those days following the attack, none of us would imagine that in the coming months and years that air travel would become a lot tougher because of increased security measures. We didn't know that our country would become involved in the longest war in its history or that a huge federal agency, the Department of Homeland Security, would become yet another necessary drain on our tax dollars.

Before we had the luxury of hindsight later on, we had no choice than to trust that the president would handle the threat. When I saw tapes of Bush's reaction when Andy Card whispered in his ear that the second plane had hit the towers and this country was under attack, Bush looked like a deer in the headlights. Some of the kids in the classroom thought he would become physically ill. But very soon the Texas stubborn streak kicked in and he went to work. He has written and spoken about his reactions and actions of that day. I would have hoped that one of his first phone calls would have been to his father, George H.W. Bush, who had been president less than 10 years before. I would have also hoped he would have called Bill Clinton, who held that office less than a year before.

Regardless of what we might think about the job George Bush did as our president, none of us can truly imagine the thoughts and fears that must have been pulsing through his brain as he turned to the TV in the plane and saw people jumping to their deaths from the burning towers and knowing there was absolutely nothing he could do to help them.

It's been 10 years since that terrible day. But we still haven't fully recovered. The emergency crews who responded to the scene are still feeling the physical effects of inhaling toxic dust and fumes from the crash site. Families of those who died that day are still coping with the emotional trauma. Our armed forces are still huntin terrorists in far away lands.

And those of us who live more than 1,000 miles away from New York, Washington or Pennsylvania know that despite the measures taken by our government over the years, terrorists could still attack us in any number of ways. This is a new era in warfare. It was the worst attack on U.S. Citizens since that December day in 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

We might not be able to completely eliminate terrorist threats, but we can send a strong message to those who would vow to bring us down as a nation that we will never be defeated. We can do that by serving in the military, holding our elected officials accountable so that active duty personnel, veterans and their families are treated as heroes, whether they were involved in a firefight in Afghanistan or worked as a clerk at the Rock Island Arsenal. We can also volunteer through our churches or community organizations to help make life better for our neighbors, regardless of where they might live in this world.

Any of these actions will tell potential terrorists that while you might have us up against the ropes, the final bell hasn't rung and we will bounce back, again and again.