Dr. Louis A Picard

Dr. Louis A. Picard

Academic ~ Researcher ~ Consultant ~ Historian

Dr. Louis A. Picard

Academic ~ Researcher
Consultant ~ Historian
 

Academic Life in Theory and in Practice

Growing Up and Moving on- Toward a University Life

1943-1965

(These pages cover the years from 1943 to 1965 and include images and comments from Louis A. Picard on his experiences and observations on and in the academic business which filled his lunch bucket for many years.). These scribbles reflect no attempt at artistic merit nor do they claim to represent any historical significance. They may be of interest to those who might want to reflect on life in the last half of the 20th century).

On Growing up a War Baby

I’m a war baby. There were not very many of us since most men were on the in the fox hole, on the ships or in the air. And of course there are fewer of us now at the beginning of he third decade of the twenty first century.

My father was a late parent. He was 39 when I was born (May 18, 1943) and working in the gun plant. I was two years old when the war ended but though I do not remember any specific events, the war was a contemporary reality to me. The images (and prejudices) remain entrenched in my memory.

My sister Mary Margaret arrived on January 4, 1947 My late brother Jim (James Vincent) was born on December 30, 1952. He always said of himself that he was an accident. Not a good way to view the world.

From June 30 to July 16, 1945 the New York City Newspaper drivers went on strike.  It lasted 16 days. For three Sundays there were no newspapers delivered and this effected access to syndicated material around the country.  I was a little over two years old at the time of the strike which is one of my earliest memories.

Why?  There were no “funny papers.”  At that point I was already addicted to the comics.  What I remember, was listening to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia read the comics to the kids on Sunday morning during the strike.  He really sounded as though he were enjoying it.  I remember being sad when he died two years later. The funny papers were an early family ritual. for as long as I can remember, my father took the kids to Adams Drugs to buy the Sunday papers (The dailies were delivered). After he had his ritual Bromo Seltzer, he would buy the Detroit Times and the Detroit Free Press. Both of course we had funny papers in those days.

One of my earliest memories was collecting newspapers with my father. They had saved newspapers during the war and they could be turned in for cash, 5 cents a pound I think. We continued it after the war perhaps as late as 1947 or 1948. As I got older, my job was to try to collect the papers from our neighbors, tie them up in bundles and load the bundles in the car for delivery to the junk yard.

In 1949, the corner pump was still in use. It was replaced by city water in March of that year. We still had an ice box, with ice blocks delivered by a man with a horse driven wagon. The milk was also delivered by the milk man by horse drawn transport.

On May 5, 1952, I sat on the front porch of our house, 1801 Brenner in Saginaw Michigan. It was a bright spring day; the images of that day, the sun, the sounds of spring, the images of flowers, remain among the strongest of my life.

In September 1960, Kennedy and Nixon both campaigned in Saginaw. Nixon and his wife Pat were both hosted by Congressman Jim Harvey. Kennedy visited Saginaw in October hosted by Senator Pat MacNamara and Eugene D. Mossner. My father pulled us onto the runway and we were introduced to Kennedy as he came off the plane.

The Book Problem

I have always loved an old book. Early reading patterns? I would have started reading by 1948. I don’t remember having read to me children’s books other than the old reliable Christmas books. I tended towards “adult” books fairly early I think.

I was not very social as a kid. I could not see very well but I could keep my nose stuck in a book for a long time. That has never changed. My thanks to Patty S. for sending me a Christmas card in 1952. I wish I could remember you. Thanks for the sleigh ride John Olk. Cheers, Joey L., where ever you are. Sorry Eric Wieneke; I never did buy a car from you but Merry Christmas to you anyway.

The radio was a window to the world for me. I had an old pre-world war II desk radio which was able to tune in short wave. But I mostly listened to the radio programs, westerns, comedies, and late at night music from all over the U.S. on national projection radio stations. The family got its first TV in 1953 about the time of my tenth birthday,

Fred Allen, Jack Benny, the Lone Ranger came from the radio. The politics of the day, from TV. There were live broadcasts of the release of American prisoners of war, the Army McCarthy hearings and the soft news of Dave Garroway all got my attention. In the morning before school, I would get up and read while watching the Today show. The only time in my life I was an early riser.

Books

Reading has always played too much of a role in my life. It is as much an addiction and and escape as alcohol or drugs. Fortunately, I managed to get a job that paid me to read.

Early in my reading habits I got stuck on series; not necessarily a good thing.

I have always loved old books. My father would buy them for 25 cents in the used book store and read them to me. I still have a few of them. Perhaps not the classic but good enough to get me started.

My first three books were Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island. I believe all three were read to me by my father in the late 1940s. I was seven years old, and had the measles when he bought “Robin Hood” and “Robinson Crusoe.” They were pretty battered up even then, on January 10, 1949; even more so now. He paid 25 cents for the George Cockburn Harvey edition published in 1923. I remember the measles, and getting the books, which were supposed to cheer me up. They did and do. “Treasure Island” followed on September 10, 1950.

The Island Always has had an appeal to me.

My father also gave me several Horatio Alger books which were important to him. He bought into the myths of exceptionalism and self-development though it did not always work for him. I suppose that I bought into exceptionalism as well. Swiss Family Robinson followed. There was something about being captured on an island and the idea of an assistant that stood out.

Stealing from the Rich to Feed the Poor? Not So Much.

Early book series also included Laura Lee Hope’s Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue, and the Bobbsey Twins series. Later focus was on Tom Swift and the Hardy Boys. I never read Nancy Drew, but the series were less masculine than I would think normal for the late 1940s. Series with a more masculine flavor included Tom Swift, the Motor Boys, the Motor Cycle Boys, the Rover Boys and similar titles. Many of them were openly racist.

I would get hooked on a series and kept with it. The books were old since they were based on my father’s memory, and the fact that he browsed through used book-stores, usually during the day. Most of the books cost a quarter which was good since read very fast

Christmas meant toys, trains but mostly books.

Fantasy pulled me away from the drones of the children’s series. I gravitated to animals who behaved like people. “Wind in the Willow” both in print, and in the Disney film were favorites. They fed a sort of a wanderlust that I had that I suppose has stayed with me all my life. For some reason I did not read Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” until I was in college where I found it very much an adult fantasy.

I had a “Child’s Vision of Empires” as a kid. I don’t know what happened it. Both books and the images of films established images and created stereotypes. The phrase from the Wizard of Oz, “Lions, and Tigers and Bears” resonates to this day.

I am told that I started looking at pictures in adult magazines (Life Magazine was a favorite) when I was about two years old.

Random thoughts of and on international images growing up

While in high school I wrote an essay on Empire I have been fixated on colonials and colonialism since that paper on Imperialism I wrote in 1959. I still have it and the issue still fascinates me.

By the time I was about ten years old, I started reading books about exotic places with strange sounding names. H. Rider Haggard was one of my fathers favorites and I inherited both “She” and “King Solomon’s Mines.” Both were set in Southern Africa where Haggard lived for several years. The cover of the book, says it all.

There are a number of images from books that stay in my head. The image of the open window in Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. A second image is that of the links between young and old and past connections in one of the stories in the same book “The Swan.” Other images from books complement my experiences with the circus, the side show and show business- the exotic and the racism. H. Ridder Haggard and Baden Powell were all there. Lost on an Island: This was an image that intrigued me for many years. “The Tribe that Lost Its Head” by Nicholas Monsarrat presaged my work in Botswana. His novel, “The Cruel Sea” reinforced my images of World War II.



The exotic led me close to who I was as I grew up with images and stories of the circus. My father’s circus friends were regular visitors during the summer and winter (the winter visits were adults only at the Shrine Circus in Detroit. In the summer Clyde Beatty and the other circus friends would available to play with the neighborhood kids (bragger’s rights of course). I could “see” the exotic in the “lion trainer” on the radio, in the movies (with Abbott and Costello no less)

Other books including “Kim” by Rudyard Kipling, and the mysteries of John Buchan, one of the literary members of Lord Milner’s “kindergarten, the young assistants of Milner who. established the British administration in South Africa between 1901 and 1905. These books gave the reader an image of settler forces and their role in the imperial regime in both Africa and Europe. It gave me as a reader a sense of legitimacy for the colonial system. G.A. Hunty and Horatio Alger projected the ideology of strength and youth while “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriett Beecher Stowe scared me.

Is there life outside of Books?

From the the “exotic” I shifted to a fixation on science fiction that lasted at least a decade of my teen years. I devoured many of these these series. Looking back, I now think that these series stunted my ability to digest ideas and images. The familiarity of the series was a comfort. I did not like having to enter a new realm of the existential.

Sarnia, Ontario, Canada 1947

My earliest memories of people were adult members of the family and my parents’ friends. I spent time with cousins on both sides of the family. Of school friends I am almost a complete blank at least until I was in my early teens. It always seemed more interesting to read a book than go out and play basketball with the neighborhood gang.

My artistic side has always been underdeveloped. I could not draw, hated to do hands-crafts. Even pasting two pieces of paper together was a challenge. In high school Miss Bacon almost walloped me because I could not draw a point without leaving a tail on it. That was the end of my biology career.

Collecting the pictures of a calendar was a big deal. In 1952, I became a Cub Scout. Boy Scouts, camping, baseball and hockey were to follow. All done in mediocre fashion and without enthusiasm. My father, ever the athlete, was the cub-master, the coach, the cheerleader and all around enthusiast. For several years he would create an ice rink in a field in back of the house so I could play hockey with the guys. Despite all of this I was never much for sports. Basketball was boring and football was dangerous. I did like to play baseball, catcher or right fielder. I was not any good at it. My view of the sports world today.

Mixed Messages from School

According to Mrs. Watson, my kindergarten year (1948-1949) was wasted. I should have been doing first grade work. She said I was shy. They gave “S” for satisfactory, “U” for unsatisfactory, and “I” for incomplete. I mostly received “S” for all activities in Kindergarten. However I received unsatisfactory and incomplete in singing. I believe my siinging was terrible’; I was only allowed to mouth the words throughout school but I am not sure how I received the incomplete in music. I do not sing, ever. I do remember, with some fondness sleeping on rugs on the floor. Its good to have a nap.

I apparently had an excellent memory then and I was a good observer (As Alfred Hitchcock once put it, “I liked to watch”). Mrs. Watson was right; I was shy. And manipulated it as much as possible. I weighed 47 pounds. First grade was better; Miss Winkler even lied about my singing. I was “cooperative and serious about my work.”

I apparently hit a bump in the road in second grade. (I was late for school, seemed to be careless and worked very slowly). All true today. My work was sloppy and I apparently had some difficulty adjusting to other kids in the class. Mabel Fisher apparently did not like the way I wrote. I didn’t express myself freely; nor did I write with ease. I would think I am not alone in either of those challenges. They remain with me today.

My show business career was brief. I played the lead in a ninth grade drama class, “That’s Our Boy.” I remember nothing about the play except that I had to memorize a lot of lines. Never tried it again. Look at the name of the kids in the play and don’t remember a one of them. I do remember my teachers discovering that I was short sited. I could not see distances. It did take a while to discover that. Thanks to my Algebra teacher I acquired glasses in 1957. Despite the disruption of a shift back to the public schools I performed very well that year. My report shows all “A’s” in the Fall of 1957.

Like a Fish Out of Water

High School was a bummer. I went from all “As” in 9th grade (junior High) to Cs and Ds in tenth grade. I believe I did not like high school. As I think back about it, school overall was mostly a bother. I would read the books that interested me quickly at the beginning of the semester and then brought my own book with me to class so that I could read under the desk. That scheme lasted all the way through High School. Cleveland Amory’s “Who Killed Society” took me through Seymour Murphy’s “The Art of Living.” They tried to teach us how to cut our finger nails. I didn’t quite get that one. My final exams were terrible.

For one thing I never met Theodore Roethke. A Saginaw native, he was an honored alum while I was in high school. Worse, I didn’t want to meet him; I had no idea what poetry was and really never learned, There was a shame in poetry that remains at the heart of the anti-intellectualism of the midwest.

Memories of a1960 high school fishing trip to Canada resonate. It was led by David Gainey, the swimming coach. We caught lots of Walleye and Northern Pike in Northern Ontario. Since I like to fish it was a wonderful time. “The Canadian Wilderness Adventure Series.” That memory mixes with the sudden departure of the swimming coach a few years later. He apparently had an appetite for high school boys. (who swam in the nude). No charges just a quiet transfer out of town.

June 7, 1961. Graduation a bore but a relief. Never went to graduation again until the mid-1990s when it became necessary to do so at the University of Pittsburgh. The car was great.

Overall, the eighteen years between 1943 and 1961 were passive, a characteristic which has remained a part of my life. The Alfred Hitchcock comment,” I like to watch” says a lot. There was a lot to watch in the years to come.

Delta College (1961-1963).

The College of Letters was an experimental program developed at least in part the stealth within the community college that was created in 1961. . Only a few hundred students were admitted to it. Most admitted were well qualified for admission. The program was pan-disciplinary, open class room and for many who taught in it, Socratic in its method.

I entered the first class enrolled in the school in September and took courses there until August of 1963 when I transferred to the University of Michigan. I probably learned more at Delta College but I was in my element in Ann Arbor. In the summer of 1994, I decided I wanted to hang around Universities for the rest of my life. I Did.

Lou Picard, above, still at Home, 1963

As an experimental school, Delta college recruited many academics who could and later did move to research universities. Others moved out of academia into other areas of achievement. It was a two year experiment which could not work in a mid-size midwest urban area (Midland, Bay City and Saginaw). It is only after 2016 that I realized why but also began to sympathize with the town over gown .

The college community was radical by any standards in 1961. A local character was Jimmy Lederer, a civil rights activist who marched with Martin Luther King and is memorialized in the King museum in Atlanta. Frank Walsh who was fired as librarian at Delta before it opened stayed around and ran a book store. It was a hang out for lefties, both faculty and students. “The Old Town Book Store” modeled itself on the book stores that sheltered beat poets in San Fransisco and New York.

Student activism was stimulated by an activist faculty which pushed and was pushed by a conservative community and college board. Two of the more radical, Don Woodworth and Marshall Hier did to get their contracts renewed by the Board of Trustees. They were politically left of center, and in these early days of protests, Woodworth grew a stringy beard which came to resemble that of Fidel Castro.

Students, also influenced by faculty, started a movement to link the college up with the University of Michigan. The teaching staff were originally recruited because they were told that Delta would be a four year college.

The Stuff, and the Puffed up, of the Academy.

There is a book for everything. For me, thanks to Charles Hooks, the book for the academy is Randall Jarrall’s Pictures from an Institution. This book satirizes the puffed up academic who rises him/herself above the academic clouds. Jarrell is best known for his world war II poem:

“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell.

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

John Kirk

Among those who influenced me were:

John Kirk, Philosopher taught for many years at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He had more than a bit of puffery in him as he roamed the halls of Delta trying to impress female students. Am not sure what, if any thing he published but he impressed me since he had his name in a book by Abraham Kaplan The Conduct of Inquiry He apparently had been Kaplan’s research assistant on the book.

Kirk led me to the Seventh Discourse of Joshua Reynolds. The message to me was that the key to knowledge was the reasoning process. In turn reasoning brought together judgements on art, taste and truth. Literacy, numeracy and visual reproduction all could contribute to the reasoning process. Ultimately taste will triumph and experience will confirm.

I suspect that he introduced Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” to the syllabus of the jointly taught seminar in Humanities. The images created by the proposal come to me often when reading the New York Times.

Hugh Charles Hooks taught at Delta College from 1961 to 1968. He was a Poet, literary critic and most important a musician. We became life long friends. Charles was one time student of Jarrell. He was badly effected by Jarrell’s apparent suicide in October of 1965. He never finished his Doctorate but had a second career as a Jazz musician in Ann Arbor and Chicago.

Lou Picard, Pauline Greenlick and Hugh Charles Hooks c. 2004.

Click here to see Charles perform on clarinet with the Jim Beebe Band.

Patricia Drury, Historian.

Pat Drury lived her whole life in Auburn Michigan. I am not sure why she never left or got a Phd. Like so many she was caught in her time and space. Pat was and remains a bright, thoughtful and a clear thinker. I was very impressed. We were still in contact in 201. She is now (2014) 84.

July 28, 1962- Mary Anne Gouin, a fellow student and axcuaintence writes an eloquent letter to the Peoples Forum of the Saginaw News defending the separation of Church and State in the U.S. That made an impression on me.

Robert B. Pettingill, Economist. After a few years at Delta, Pettengill went on to have a distinguished career at the State University of New York at Albany. He was a friend of Fione but taught me a few things about the hard knocks of the academic business.

1963-1965

My memories of Ann Arbor have dimmed over the years. I’ve forgotten the dark cold days and nights in the trailer park in Saline but remember the images of early summer on campus, bright sunny weather, small airplanes flying over head (the sound still takes me back there).

The Universiy of Michigan, August, 1963 though 1965. Not a spectacular academic record. PHI KAPPA PHI not PHI BETA KAPPA. Perhaps a forecast of my Academic career. I could blame grade inflation but that was not the problem.

In August of 1965, Fione and I joined the Peace Corps and spent three years in Uganda. We knew two things when we left. We would miss the city and the university. We would be back in a few years to finish our Phd and teach and do research. We never returned to Ann Arbor.

Ann Arbor- Up Tight and not personal

There were a number of academics at UM who had an impact on me. Most represented the 1950s liberalism, pluralistic and moderate progressive thinking of the post-war world.

Francis L. Loewenheim- 20thcentury European History. Rice University. He just happened to teach at the University of Michigan in the Summer of 1965. He impressed me by reading the trendy New York Herald Tribune which he always had under his arm.

Others included:

James K. Pollock- German History, Constitutional Law and Government. Pollack had helped to write the West German Constitution after World War II. In the late 1950s, he was a principal advisor to the writing of the Michigan state constitution. His politics were conservative and he was a supporter of the Republican Party, at the time sometimes referred to as the Eisenhower GOP.

Lionel H. Laing- British and European Politics; Karl H.. Reichenbach- World War I and Inter-war European History; William Zimmerman- Soviet and Eastern European History; Bradford Perkins- British and American History and John Higham, nineteenth century immigration history and John Higham, nineteenth century immigration and historiography.

Friends in Ann Arbor included Terry Roth and his wife, Marge van Ocktan;\Frank Birmingham ( MA’67, PhD’72, was assistant Professor of philosophy at New England College, Hennicker New Hampshire in 1976). I did not know what to make of Frank, he was a PhD student. Terry and Marge were acquaintances from Delta.

It turns out that voluntary service was a good thing. in the late 1960s. In 1967 as a volunteer I made $1746.68 a year with free accommodation and allowances. Working for the Danish Volunteer Service in 1969 I made $2700 a month. My starting salary as an academic in 1976 was $11,000 a year. The service also functioned as a “union card” giving the former volunteer access to jobs and consultancies. In that sense, it was the gift that kept on giving.

My favorite beer but it put on the Calories

Continued in “An African Safari: Uganda: 1965-1969.”