Oscar Wilde…. “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
The Roots and Legacy of a Credit Union Leader
Recently I was contacted through this blog for information about Ed Callahan’s career as a high school coach, educator and administrator.
The writer was Kevin Patrowsky who is a Wisconsin high school football historian living in Milwaukee. He wanted to add information about Ed Callahan’s tenure as a teacher and coach at Don Bosco High School. His blog is Wi Hi Football | History of Wisconsin High School Football.
This week he posted his account of Don Bosco’s success as the Milwaukee Catholic Conference mid-1960’s powerhouse. The following is his excerpt describing Ed’s tenure at Don Bosco and move to a new program at Boylan Catholic High School in Rockford, Illinois.
Callahan’s Career as a Coach, Teacher and School Administrator
“Coach DanFleming’s replacement at Don Bosco was Edgar “Ed” Callahan who spent five seasons as the head coach, 1955-59 going 28-12-1. Don Bosco had a 7-1-1 season in his initial season of 1955 and then a 7-1-0 year in 1957. They finished second in the Catholic those two years and in the middle of the pack the other three going 4-4-0 in 1956 and 5-3-0 in each of the 1958 and 1959 seasons.
“For coach Ed Callahan, his story is much more widely known than his predecessor. Born in 1929 in Youngstown, Ohio he attended Ursuline High School where he was a very good tackle. Standing 6’1, weighing 225, Callahan graduated in 1946. He was offered many scholarships, but he chose Marquette because he wanted to go to a Catholic Jesuit University.
“Graduating in 1951 with a B.A. in mathematics, Ed stayed on to get a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration in 1952. He then went to Don Bosco as a math teacher and an assistant coach for football and basketball, before replacing Dan Fleming as the top football man. A very principled man with high integrity he was, to say the least, a man that others thought highly of.
“In 1960 he was recruited by a new school in Rockford Illinois to start the football and basketball program at Boylan Catholic High School which opened that year. In 1966 Don Bosco played Rockford Boylan and the Don’s beat the Titan’s 26-25. Ed stayed as the football and basketball coach plus the head of the math department until 1970 when he became the school’s principal.
“In 1971 he took the job as superintendent of the Rockford Area Catholic Schools and stayed until 1975. Because Ed had a reputation as a very trustful and effective administrator, he was asked by the State of Illinois to become the Assistant Secretary of State. Shortly thereafter in 1987, the Governor appointed him Director of Financial Institutions for the state of Illinois.
“Ed and several of his assistants inherited a floundering department and set the ship right to serve the state’s financial institutions including credit unions. A life-long Democrat, Ed caught the attention of Republican President Ronald Reagan who, in 1981, asked him to serve as Chairman of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).
“This Washington DC-based federal government organization had been recently reorganized as an independent regulatory agency during the Carter administration. In 1981 when Ed assumed this position, the the country was in the midst great economic uncertainty and deregulation was affecting all financial institutions. The new agency was transitioning from its prior function as a bureau within HEW.
“Ed left in 1985 and started his own company, Callahan and Associates, Inc. which became the leading provider of financial data to credit unions in the United States. He served in several other positions before retiring in 2002 and then passing in 2009.”
The Rest of the Story
A blog devoted to high school football would not spend many words on Ed’s next career and multiple contributions to the credit union system.
In February 2003 when receiving the National Credit Union Foundation’s Herb Wegner Lifetime Achievement Award, an introductory film summarized this period of Ed’s professional accomplishments.
To understand Ed’s leadership, I believe one must be aware of his initial career as an educator and coach. In these multiple roles in high school education, Ed formed his multiple skills of vision, innovation, communication and effective management.
Here is how the Foundation described his legacy for the credit union system in this Lifetime Achievement award.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEIymlc8OQ8&t=12s)
Cooperation on the 4th of July
Washington’s National Cathedral is the site of a free 4th of July concert. There is always a full house. This year’s program featured an organ duet. Two players on one organ console.
Four hands for three manual keyboards, four feet for one pedalboard, and a single music sheet. The Cathedral has video screens on the pillars throughout the sanctuary to provide up close views of the action.
This 1:35 minute video shows the pair playing in the concert finale, Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever. Note the four feet working the pedals and which player turns the pages.
Cooperation and collaboration in a musical celebration. The audience rises to participate at the end.
(https://youtu.be/zZNGBf2ZSdM)
A “Carmina” Vacation In Blacksburg, VA
No posts last week. Joan and I took a week-long singing vacation with the Berkshire Chorus International.
We rehearsed for a week at Virginia Tech before giving a full orchestra concert of Orff’s Carmina Burana, and a shorter contrasting work by Brahms, Schicksalslied-Song of Destiny.
The week in pictures.
BCI’s Music Director since 1992 and on site producer, Frank Nemhauser.
Our dorm and rehearsals were on the Virginia Tech campus.
Hokie mascot outside the dining hall.
Our conductor for the week, Dr. Jenny Wong, who grew up in Hong Kong and now is Associate Conductor of the Los Angeles Master Choral. She earned MA and PhD degrees from USC.
The major work for the evening.
Rehearsal in the Moss Center for the performing arts on campus.
Some Blacksburg city arts and activities. The former National Bank of Blacksburg is now an ice cream parlor. Sculptures and a scene from the farmer’s market.
Preconcert pep talk by Jenny. Note all of the “luggage.” She has a seven month old child at home.
Glass Hokie statue.
A Person Who Lived the Credit Union Mission
Yesterday A Celebration of Life was held for Betina Buscemi. Two notes from her obituary capture the essence of her special purpose devoted to others.
“Tina was a passionate advocate for equality and human rights. She devoted her time to serving the underserved.
“She has volunteered for countless organizations in the community including Kettering Volunteer Advisory Council, Kettering Cities of Service Committee, Montgomery County Reentry Collaborative, CANE/Collaboration Against Abuse Neglect and Exploitation (Seniors), Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce and several other local Chambers of Commerce. Tina was a mother to two wonderful children.”
Her professional home was as Business Development Manager with Day Air Credit Union where she worked for the past 17 years.
The following is CEO Bill Burke’s tribute sent to all the credit union’s employees. (used with permission)
Bettina
As you know, Bettina Buscemi passed away very late Tuesday afternoon. Bettina was a remarkable person. Huge heart. Irrepressible spirit. Limitless passion for Day Air Credit Union. Always a positive, energizing presence.
We are a very tight-knit group here at Day Air. Losing someone who is an integral part of the team hurts. Hurts a lot. Our culture is one of putting people first and we’re all now coming together to support each other.
For now, let’s just think of Bettina and her family (significant other Don Crosthwaite, son John in Columbus, and daughter Annie in New Zealand). When I spoke with Don, he passed on a statement that Bettina made to him many times – “you have a job but I have a lifestyle.” He described how much Bettina loved Day Air, its people, its culture and how her position at the Credit Union allowed her to do what she loved most – to contribute to the well-being of the people of our community – to help people.
Face of the Credit Union
Bettina was an integral part of the Day Air team for over 17 years. As our Business Development Manager, she was the face of the Credit Union to so many in our community (including key member groups, the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce, at least four other smaller Chambers in the area, city and township administrations where our branches are located, so many non-profits and civic organizations, etc.).
She led the Credit Union’s efforts to support the Montgomery County re-entry program. I’ll never forget her pitching that idea to me. At first I thought it was crazy but she had so much conviction about it … turns out we helped a lot of people get back on their feet after serving time.
She was on countless boards including one (the Oasis House, a non-profit that supports women victims of sexual exploitation and trauma), that literally sent her notice of her appointment to that board on Wednesday.
She was laser-like focused on the community in which we live, work and play. Not only did she serve on so many boards and committees, she constantly promoted Day Air to anyone who would listen to her. As if she would ever let anyone not listen to her (let that sink in and smile….). I can’t remember how many times she referenced her days at 5/3 and Huntington with that smile of hers while shaking her head, then compared that to her time here at Day Air while beaming.
I’m sorry to be conveying such sad news. The team at Day Air is very tight – and Bettina was an extraordinary teammate (it’s hard to be using the past tense here….) who lived the Day Air mission. Her irrepressible spirit was contagious and I, for one, commit to press forward with that very same irrepressible spirit.
Thank you Bill and the Day Air team for sharing her exceptional life for others with the credit union community. Her mission continues with each remembrance.
Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman
Yesterday I described Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man as a staple of patriotic concerts. Yesterday it was the opening number of the National Cathedral’s Independence Day program.
I then learned that composer Joan Tower had written a series of six short Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman as “parts” of one 25-minute composition.
She describes the work as a tribute to “women who take risks and are adventurous”, with each dedicated to an inspiring woman in music.
The first of the Fanfares was commissioned by the Houston Symphony as part of the orchestra’s Fanfare Project and was composed in 1986. It was originally inspired by Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and employs the same instrumentation while adding the glockenspiel, marimba, chimes, and drums. The piece is about 2 minutes and 41 seconds long and is dedicated to the conductor Marin Alsop. (source: Wikipedia)
Equal Time
Here is the St. Louis Symphony’s recording of the first of the six fanfares.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa7yiLOp4DA&list=RDaa7yiLOp4DA&start_radio=1&t=42)
Fanfares for the Common Man on July 4
One of the most frequently played musical tributes in July 4th concerts is Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.
He wrote Fanfare in response to a 1942 request from the conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as the US became became fully involved in World War II.
As a musical form, a fanfare is usually a brief, musical introduction to some noteworthy person, ceremony or event. Fanfares announce the appearance of Royalty in Europe, open the Olympic games, precede important national or military occasions and celebrate events such as the dedication of a memorial or new public space.
By this time Copland had composed a wide variety of scores for orchestra, dance, film and drama that portrayed uniquely American sounds. Compositions such as Rodeo, Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring evoke scenes of our country from the expansive West to the modern city.
Here is an example of Copland conducting Hoedown from the ballet Rodeo. Get ready to dance along with him on the podium!
Copland considered multiple names for his new composition including “Fanfare for the Day of Victory,” “Fanfare for Our Heroes,” “Fanfare for the Spirit of Democracy,” “Fanfare for the Paratroops” before Fanfare for the Common Man. The phrase had been used by Vice President Henry Wallace who called the 20th century the Century for the Common Man.
The music is martial, dramatic, easy to follow and heroic in feeling. He wanted to honor the ordinary people who were doing the fighting and dying in the war. It is still the most popular piece in patriotic concerts.
One person upon hearing the music wrote: I would love this as the anthem of humanity, the song of farmers, cobblers, men who were raised from the land, staring into the night sky at the fat moon and saying, “I am going there,” and never once doubting his words.
The version which follows is the one that you will hear across the country today.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_V-rqckzFg&t=10s)
Another Salute to the Common Man
Few of us will compose music to communicate a vision. Most will use the spoken or written word. What follows is from a life dedicated to Copland’s Common Man:
“My life has been centered around my family, my wife Jean, and credit unions. Why credit unions? Because I could never accept that in America those who had the least and knew the least should always pay the most for financial services.
“I believe that credit unions were created to correct that injustice. In the words of Thomas Paine – a true revolutionary in all respects –“I have always objected to wealth achieved through the misery and misfortune of others”.
“That economic injustice continues to thrive in our financial system today. Credit unions remain the alternative, the best hope, the answer.
“We all confront an uncertain future, and many folks would like to rewrite the past. You and I know we cannot change the past. But if we have credit union leaders with integrity, courage and character; we most certainly can reshape the future…but changing the future is very hard work.
“Arthur Ashe, the great American tennis player, described the credit union leaders we need. Ashe said: “ True leadership is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, true leadership is the urge to serve all others at whatever cost.”. . .
(The words by Jim Blaine, former CEO of State Employees NC, to the African American Credit Union Coalition upon his induction to its Hall of Fame)
Two tributes on July 4th to celebrate liberty for all and especially the contributions of the Common Man.
Two Beauties Arrive for Summer
The Autumn Beauty sunflower is a blend of red, orange, and yellow with a black center. The plant grows up to 7 feet tall. It can produce as many as 20 flowers per stem. The blooms may reach 10 inches in diameter.
I grew these from seeds and have a dozen more just sprouting that need to be added to the bed. Here is the summer’s first bloom of an Autumn Beauty. Big, bold, and brassy.
Along with a lily nearing the peak of its color.
A three year effort to grow a vine on my fence finally resulted in flowers this summer. I don’t remember the name-can you identify? Small, delicate, and filigree.
“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.”
A Perspective on Juneteenth
This past week Joan and I shared varied experiences tied together by our new National Holiday, just two years old.
The events were not coordinated. Rather they showed some of the many gifts of black Americans in our country’s ever evolving quest for democratic freedom.
A New Cantata
On Tuesday we participated in a summer sing of Adolphus Hailstork’s cantata I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes. The third movement is based on the 23rd psalm.
A New Book
We attended a Thursday evening interview at the National Cathedral of author Jonathan Eig’s book King: A Life.
The author believes that we have made King’s basic message too sanguine. A gentle, romanticized vision of “I have dream.” Rather King sought a restructuring of America’s political and economic system.
He described King’s insights: we can’t do everything, but we can all do something. . .we don’t have to be perfect to make a difference. . . Progress will create a backlash . . . America does not have a deficit of resources, but of imagination. .. human progress is not inevitable; it requires the discipline of hope over cynicism. . .
Eig believes we have hallowed King and thus hollowed his message of the fundamental change he sought. To rediscover his vision we must read his words, especially the last sermon he preached before his death: Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.
The failure to achieve his goals in his lifetime, does not diminish King’s heroism in America’s long line of citizens fighting for human freedom.
The Legacy of Birmingham
A CSPAN recorded talk by Paul Kix reading from his book: You have to Be Prepared to Die before You Can Begin to Live: Ten weeks in Birmingham, That Changed America. It is a detailed account of the SCLC’s Project Confrontation. He provides a five point summary of this incredible story of the courage required to break, once and for all, the city’s segregation in 1963. The story is both frightening in its cruelty and uplifting in the young people’s commitment to make historical change
Excerpts: Birmingham, in those days, wasn’t so much a city as a site of domestic terror. The Klan castrated Black men. The cops raped Black women. The city’s public safety commissioner, Bull Connor, gleefully and often publicly referred to Birmingham as Bombimgham, for all the Black businesses and residences that were dynamited. CBS’s Edward R Murrow reported from Birmingham prior to King’s arrival and told his producer he hadn’t seen anything like this place since Nazi Germany. . .
In early May 1963, Bevel (SCLC’s operations head) led a campaign within the Birmingham Campaign which he called, D-Day. It was thousands of children skipping school on May 2nd and 3rd and descending on Kelly Ingram Park, across from the 16th Street Baptist Church. The objective was to get to the white-owned and white-run downtown and stage massive protests for civil rights there.
But on May 2nd and 3rd, Bull Connor and the Birmingham Police Department stood with guns and German Shepherds and fire-hoses that could tear mortar from bricks or dislodge bark from trees at a distance of 100 feet. Bevel had children march right into those guns and dogs and firehoses anyway.
The result was savage, apocalyptic, the worst thing war photographers present that day had ever seen. Children were mauled by dogs, as if the dogs were feasting on them. Children backflipped in the air from the firehoses, their clothes just disintegrating on their bodies, their hair scalped as the firehoses hissed across their skulls.
The children knew this might happen. Bevel had prepared them for it. And because they had known they would likely suffer, they did not turn their suffering into victimhood. They did not stop marching. By the dozens and then hundreds and ultimately thousands the children continued to march in early May.
A Play of America’s Conflicting Ideals
The play is August Wilson’s, Radio Golf. The two protagonists are both successful black leaders. One is running for mayor of Pittsburg and the other, his partner in a redevelopment in which the goal is to revitalize a worn down section of the city. And in doing so lift himself up to a spectacular level of financial success.
Both men have a vision for their community and lives. The drama comes is the conflict of these competing views. This is a story of every American trying to balance economic success and social equity in their lives.
A Sunday Sermon
Senator Raphael Warnock’s sermon at the National Cathedral drew upon the familiar words from Isiah Chapter 40.4 we all know from Handel’s Messiah:
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.
He used this familiar promise to describe what he called the moral topography for America.
Equity—the leveling of the hills and valleys to have the same playing field for all. Equity built on integrity- the crooked shall be made straight. Warnock said: We cannot have a criminal justice system with the rich and guilty alongside the poor and innocent.
Democracy is the necessary check and balance on the human capacity for injustice. His vision is one where we will be a country where “all people shall see it together.”
The meaning of this June Day is that freedom is a blessing for all. . . no matter a person’s faith, gender, race, economic status, or lived heritage. This gift can happen when all can see it together.
A Sunday Prayer
Lest we get too narrow on the history of emancipation, the prayer of confession reminds that evil corrupts in other forms of personal bondage. (See Radio Golf’s message of conflicting ambitions)
A Prayer for Juneteenth from the National Cathedral:
God of freedom, you have made your faithfulness known from generation to generation. We celebrate Juneteenth which commemorates the announcement in Texas on June 19, 1865, of the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Let us reflect on the jubilation that filled the hearts of women and men of African descent as they learned of their deliverance from the bondage of slavery, even as we mourn that the true promise of freedom has yet to be fulfilled. We pray now for all whose lives have been traumatized and remained threatened by the legacy of slavery and institutional racism in our country.
As people of hope, we know that the arc of history is long and that it bends towards justice. Help us to commit to the work and ending racism by building he beloved community where all are judged not the color of their skin but by the content of their character, in Christ’s name.
Amen
An American Spiritual Sung in the Current Quest for Freedom
From the Kiev National symphony and Chorus-Down by the Riverside.
U.S. Treasury’s Payday Loan Rate
“The Treasury Department auctioned $15 billion in one-day cash management bills on Friday as its cash balance remains under pressure.
The bills, which carry a 5.145% investment rate, will be issued Monday (June 6) and mature on Tuesday, according to the Treasury. Bids totaling $61.6 billion were tendered.
This is the first time since 2007 that one-day bills were auctioned, according to CNN.”
Moral of the story: When liquidity is tight, everybody has to pay up. even Uncle Sam.