1. Today, Debbie called me while on her way to pick up Jack from an appointment. Jack was done with the meeting early and hopped in the Corolla while Debbie and I were talking about this and that.
Jack had his first football game as member of the Nyack High Junior Varsity team. Jack told me he plays right guard, but might be moved to center. From his perspective, Nyack lost their opener, 14-0, in part because of breakdowns on the offensive line -- which helps explain why the coaches might reshuffle it. When Jack told me he was on the O-line, I asked him how much he weighs. He thinks he is nearing 170 pounds.
Jack told me he enjoys playing football and that "it's a lot of work", especially when he gets home from a Thursday evening game around 8:30 and still has homework to finish for Friday.
He's a very busy and active high schooler.
2. Upon arriving back home, Deborah wrote me an email and, among other things, told me that on Monday she'd unexpectedly run into a longtime friend named Kyle and they had a solid half an hour chat.
Deborah's mention of Kyle sent my mind off in an odd direction. I never took any psychology courses at Whitworth, but I suddenly had the thought, "The psychology department was a very interesting group at Whitworth."
I based this on a visit three of the faculty members made to our 20th Century U. S. History theme dorm in the spring of 1976.
I clearly remembered that Prof. Pat McDonald and Prof. Bill Johnson were two of the guest professors and I remembered that the third prof was new to Whitworth that year and I couldn't remember her name.
Suddenly, I remembered she was married. Her husband would later become a golf professional at the Sundance Golf Course in Spokane. I read more about him online -- he was (maybe still is) a part owner of the Canyon Lakes Golf Course in Kennewick.
Knowing that this professor's last name had been Graff, I did a quick online search and up popped a PDF file from the Whitworth archives of the Whitworthian's (the school newspaper) issues for the school year of 1975-76.
Sure enough, the paper ran a short article announcing the names of new faculty and now I know the third psychology professor was Mary Ann Graff.
That discovery diminished greatly in importance however as I began to look at articles published my senior year and was most happy to find Sally Mueller's terrific piece, "Whatever Happened to Malo Chavez" on a scammer who called himself Malo Chavez, presented himself as affiliated with Niki Cruz, a Puerto Rican evangelist who himself was affiliated with David Wilkerson, author of The Cross and the Switchblade. Malo was at Whitworth for a short time, ripped off several people of money and wrote a bunch of bad checks around Spokane.
Then he disappeared.
I don't think the question Sally raised in her title was ever answered.
It's a huge file -- one I'm happy to share -- and I enjoyed reading about Forum speakers, the campus radio station on the verge of getting started, Mark Cutshall's movie reviews, a feature on Deborah's fellow Chaplain's Assistant, Joe Novenson, theme dorms in the Village, and more.
I'll keep going back and reading more and let myself be stirred by memories and events in my last year of undergraduate studies fifty years ago.
3. Before I began my time travel back to Whitworth College in 1975-76, I cracked open Lonesome Dove again after a much too long hiatus. I had read the book's Part 1 and the opening of Part 2 startled and excited me. Suddenly, Larry McMurtry transports his readers to the small town where Jake Spoon killed a man (on purpose? an accident?) and the victim's brother is the town sheriff.
We meet the sheriff. His wife knew Jake Spoon years ago. The sheriff doesn't know that. I sense fascinating conflict, confrontation, and turmoil beginning to develop.
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