Moral Foundations
There is a spirit in people—a light that continues to burn throughout their lives. In some it is brightly lit, but in others in glows but dimly. Even when the light is faintest, it signifies the innate values that define their humanity. We call these “moral values” because of their central place in our lives, and because they so correctly describe our character. But there is a question we need to raise with reference to our humanity: When we delineate the ethics (virtues/morality) that define who we are, must we at the same time posit their source/destination or can be escape what some call “nihilism” by merely recognizing their presence. After all, it is not their source that justifies; that is, if these values are pre-premises (or even premises) in our ethics. Of course, if they are not premises but conclusions, reached only after careful examination and reasoning, then they cannot be foundational, only our purpose (destination) is foundational—as Aristotle might say.
There is another possible conclusion that can be reached about the origin and importance of our moral values; they are sociological and perhaps psychological in nature and demand a metaphysics of “man” or “the human agent.” The logical drift, if we argue from a sociological point of view, is that of relativity which is indeed assumed by many in the social sciences. After all, if not innate, then learned (acquired) and this means that different cultures produce different values all of which have a right to their claim of being the highest and most moral.
But wait minute, cultures, societies, and people have drawn much closer since 1950. We know that murder, starvation, and genocide are evils everywhere, don’t we? Is there anyone who would agree that war is moral or that wiping out the environment for short-term profit will be, in the long run, the ethically correct thing to do? Are there not just some universal values that we can call “moral values” as distinguished from those other socio-cultural values that are relatively important in some but not other cultures?
Aristotle escaped nihilism by assuming that all humans and human activity aim toward “happiness” or the purposes of the community. But isn’t this secular humanism? What about God? The medievals reached for a more absolute foundation for ethics, but the circularity of their propositions—beginning with and ending with God—give us little hope of securing a rational and non-nihilistic version of ethics. Nihilism is a doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
That we indeed know and communicate, defeats the last part of this definition, but it’s the first part that bugs theologians—that values, especially moral values, have no foundation. Of course, the only foundation they recognize is Biblical truth (Koran truth, etc.), which posits God and heaven as both the source of our lives and the goal (purpose, meaning) to which we aim. For the religious in the Western world, ethics and salvation cannot be separated, but I’m not settling for this most circular account, although I do agree that logic is not the law of the universe, only a means of universal communication.
Where do we turn?
J. Hester
Sunday, January 4, 2009
My First Gym
Sports build skills
Because I lived one mile south of Newton Elementary School, I was unaware that between my 7th and 8th grade years the city built a gymnasium and new cafeteria onto the school. Up until that time we generally played on the playgrounds around the school or across the street from the school as one block of Ashe Avenue—the one in front of our school—was blocked off during the day.
To my surprise, coming back for my last year at that school, we had a new gym and our only male teacher, Ed Gomedela or“ Gomie” as we affectionately called him behind his back, had planned for and organized competitive sports for us. We had a 7th-8th-grade football team and played a few games with other schools, a basketball team, a baseball team, and organized gymnastics. This was my first contact with organized sports. Up until that time it was normally a group of guys who just got together and chose up sides and played until we got tired. We learned fast.
I think football was my best sport. I was okay at basketball, but having reached 5’10” by age 14 and not growing another inch the rest of my life, basketball was not in my future, although I did make the varsity team in high school my sophomore year. I was good at baseball, but this was my dad’s sport and the more he pushed me toward it, the more I went the other way. In high school I would join the track team and become a long distance runner. I continued this sport in college.
Football was great! I loved to hit and didn’t mind being hit. Technique and execution, learning plays, and learning how to play as a member of a team were important skills that would last me a lifetime. It all began on that old playground, across from Newton Elementary School, in the fall of 1953. I was neither the best or worse player on our team. Next year, my freshman year in high school, I would lose a front tooth in summer practice and he burdened with dental problems for the rest of my life.
I can remember a gathering at the old CP my junior year in high school waiting the announcement of the starting eleven on our varsity football team. It was broadcast over WNNC Newton. The announcer called out each player’s name and the coach made some comments about the person’s ability. When my name was called, the coach was asked if “Butch” Hester would be a starter. The coach replied that I would be playing a lot of football that fall, and, although I was small – remember in the 8th grade I was one of the largest guys in my class – I was quick and mean. I loved it!
Boy, there were some great guys on our teams. I can see Glenn Campbell with his natural swing just kill a baseball. Because of Glenn, Leonard McRee, Raymond Sharpe, Joe Ray Shook, and boys with such great ability and desire, our 8th grade baseball team gave our high school varsity team all they could handle in an exhibition game. I don’t remember who won that game, but I do remember playing in shorts – we had no uniforms – and sliding into home for a run. That slide left a deep strawberry in my right leg, which took months to heal. We couldn’t afford a doctor’s visit so Mom just kept pulling the quarter inch thick, four inch long scab back to pour Iodine into the wound.
Looking back, the building of that first gym, the encouragement of Ed Gomedela, and the friendship forged in the dust of a thousand practices are the stuff that builds character. Years later, under the pressures of graduate school and work, I was able to call on those experiences for courage, persistence, and tenacity. Whenever I enter a gym today, I like to pause, look around me for a little bit, take a deep breath and absorb the locker room smells, and remember that in places like this I was given a chance to excel, to give birth to my abilities, to try, extend and build my leadership skills. Here, I began giving birth to myself and gained the confidence needed achieve my lifetime goals.
Your friend and classmate, always,
Joe Hester (“The Reba”)
Dr. Hester is a retired educator and author of over 40 books and many professional articles who lives in Claremont, NC.
Because I lived one mile south of Newton Elementary School, I was unaware that between my 7th and 8th grade years the city built a gymnasium and new cafeteria onto the school. Up until that time we generally played on the playgrounds around the school or across the street from the school as one block of Ashe Avenue—the one in front of our school—was blocked off during the day.
To my surprise, coming back for my last year at that school, we had a new gym and our only male teacher, Ed Gomedela or“ Gomie” as we affectionately called him behind his back, had planned for and organized competitive sports for us. We had a 7th-8th-grade football team and played a few games with other schools, a basketball team, a baseball team, and organized gymnastics. This was my first contact with organized sports. Up until that time it was normally a group of guys who just got together and chose up sides and played until we got tired. We learned fast.
I think football was my best sport. I was okay at basketball, but having reached 5’10” by age 14 and not growing another inch the rest of my life, basketball was not in my future, although I did make the varsity team in high school my sophomore year. I was good at baseball, but this was my dad’s sport and the more he pushed me toward it, the more I went the other way. In high school I would join the track team and become a long distance runner. I continued this sport in college.
Football was great! I loved to hit and didn’t mind being hit. Technique and execution, learning plays, and learning how to play as a member of a team were important skills that would last me a lifetime. It all began on that old playground, across from Newton Elementary School, in the fall of 1953. I was neither the best or worse player on our team. Next year, my freshman year in high school, I would lose a front tooth in summer practice and he burdened with dental problems for the rest of my life.
I can remember a gathering at the old CP my junior year in high school waiting the announcement of the starting eleven on our varsity football team. It was broadcast over WNNC Newton. The announcer called out each player’s name and the coach made some comments about the person’s ability. When my name was called, the coach was asked if “Butch” Hester would be a starter. The coach replied that I would be playing a lot of football that fall, and, although I was small – remember in the 8th grade I was one of the largest guys in my class – I was quick and mean. I loved it!
Boy, there were some great guys on our teams. I can see Glenn Campbell with his natural swing just kill a baseball. Because of Glenn, Leonard McRee, Raymond Sharpe, Joe Ray Shook, and boys with such great ability and desire, our 8th grade baseball team gave our high school varsity team all they could handle in an exhibition game. I don’t remember who won that game, but I do remember playing in shorts – we had no uniforms – and sliding into home for a run. That slide left a deep strawberry in my right leg, which took months to heal. We couldn’t afford a doctor’s visit so Mom just kept pulling the quarter inch thick, four inch long scab back to pour Iodine into the wound.
Looking back, the building of that first gym, the encouragement of Ed Gomedela, and the friendship forged in the dust of a thousand practices are the stuff that builds character. Years later, under the pressures of graduate school and work, I was able to call on those experiences for courage, persistence, and tenacity. Whenever I enter a gym today, I like to pause, look around me for a little bit, take a deep breath and absorb the locker room smells, and remember that in places like this I was given a chance to excel, to give birth to my abilities, to try, extend and build my leadership skills. Here, I began giving birth to myself and gained the confidence needed achieve my lifetime goals.
Your friend and classmate, always,
Joe Hester (“The Reba”)
Dr. Hester is a retired educator and author of over 40 books and many professional articles who lives in Claremont, NC.
Spirituality and Religion #2
Spirituality & Religion
Lecture #2
In 1938, the poet philosopher William Irwin Thompson said, “Religion is not identical with spirituality; rather religion is the form spirituality takes in civilization.” Religion is therefore not a negative, but spirituality supersedes religion as a more fundamentally human experience rather than a community and institutional one. The fabric of our spirituality is woven with the ethical threads of living with others in community. This is where our faith meets its greatest challenges, but its truth is profound. A theme which I have stressed in my on ethical writing is that life is a process of giving birth to our spiritual natures as we mature in our human relationships.
It was the Jewish philosopher/theologian Martin Buber who stressed that God meets us in the “between” – between ourselves and others, and it is in this between that we learn that all life, especially human life, is created in the image of the divine. Within human connections our spirituality is excited and comes to life—here is where we meet God and open a pathway to God for others. It was in John’s first epistle, the 3rd and 4th chapters that we read about God’s love and our responsibility to love one another. John writes, “God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love has been brought to full expression through us. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. This is the message we have heard from the beginning: We should love one another.”
Our lives, I believe, are commonly shared gifts from God. Our spirituality does not close us to the world; rather, it is alive and open, growing and groomed by faith, animated by hope, and transcended by our ethical concern for others. Spiritual meaning is able to complete us and fulfill our undertakings because it seeks life beyond the boundaries of our present circumstances and traditions, and is deeply personal.
Aristotle defined the virtues that lead to happiness. Buddha taught the way to happiness through an end of suffering. Jesus preached that happiness springs from faith in the goodness of God, and Paul gave us the formula of “faith, hope, and love” for our fellow humans. In the last decade, the academic movement for Positive Psychology created an empirical science of happiness.
Poet W.B. Yeats, at the close of World War I, said that things fall apart when the center does not hold, and the center to which Yeats was referring can metaphorically be described as the center knot in a braided rug, the nuclei of an atom, or the human soul that is spiritually connected to others and to its source.
Our center is our moral compass and if we listen, it can provide a positive direction for our lives. Immanuel Kant sought this center in the logic of practical reason; Professor Kurt Baier at the University of Pittsburg found it in his commitment to the dignity of creation, including human beings. This was the source of his ethics. Recently, in studies of “loneliness,” doctors are saying that we humans have either developed or have been provided with a genetic predisposition to connect with others. Human meaning is positively integrated with human connection and with a faith that implores us to become partners with God in the healing and repair of the world.
Some maintain that in the last few generations, the “modernist” consensus of rationality, democracy, and enlightened self-interest has broken down. They claim, “The relentless modernist attack on religion and the reality of consciousness itself has diminished the moral heart of civilization, unleashing a reign of scientific reductionism that tells us that we are nothing but biochemistry and neuron impulses. Therefore, they continue, “Lacking a moral center, today’s anarchic reign of materialistic economic globalization has contributed to war, environmental destruction, and inequality.” (Mention Marlette’s cartoon, “The Decent of Man”)
This may or may not be true, for when I read and study science, I have a great sense of awe concerning the greatness of creation and I have never believed or felt that scientific knowledge threatened my faith. On the contrary, philosophy and science, mathematics and formal reasoning have only strengthened by faith as all of these systems require a cultural and metaphysical foundation.
Permit me to end this discussion with a few words about “choices.” French philosopher and Nobel laureate Henri Bergson (1859—1941) combined spirituality, mysticism, and science in a unique and controversial way. His Roman Catholic faith (converted from Judaism) would seem to be in direct conflict with the philosophy he followed for much of his life. The following quote is from his 1907 work "L'Evolution Creatrice" ("Creative Evolution"): “…as each of us can live but one life, a choice must perforce be made. We choose in reality without ceasing; without ceasing, also, we abandon many things. The route we pursue in time is strewn with the remains of all that we began to be, of all that we might have become. But nature, which has at command an incalculable number of lives, is in no wise bound to make such sacrifices."
Choice lies at the center of our lives.
The Old Testament writer added: "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain therof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her." [PROVERBS 3: 13-15 *King James Bible]
And spirituality requires wisdom. In Hinduism we read, “Discipline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline, but merely the meaningless following of custom, which is only a disguise for stupidity." [Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1941] And I have told students for over 40 years that “education can cure their ignorance, but is no help for their stupidity.”
Why do I contemplate spirituality, truth, and wisdom? I think that it is because they are so illusive. They are the forgotten parts of our religious path. We would rather be entertained than disturbed by a sermon. We would rather listen to the choir than worship through singing. We would rather demonstrate our faith through the showiness of organized religion (flags, robes, processions, candles, and professional performances) than from the deep ecology of our personal spirituality.
As we fill the cavities of our minds with the junk food of modern society and by our church—making sure that our beliefs and doctrines are checked off by theologians and church officials—our spiritual natures exhaust and even shake off their essence and their inner validity. We are civilized, rational, and committed to competitive capitalism and our religious commitments bear the imprint of this commitment. In a world where what counts is getting things done, where bigger is better, where appearance supersedes essence, where in our schools where what gets tested gets taught, character and values are the losers, and where, in organized religion, “right” belief is more important than rational spirituality, is it any wonder that church attendance and commitment to the purposes of organized religion are falling behind the spiritual or essentialness of our lives.
Viktor Frankl has said, “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
Lecture #2
In 1938, the poet philosopher William Irwin Thompson said, “Religion is not identical with spirituality; rather religion is the form spirituality takes in civilization.” Religion is therefore not a negative, but spirituality supersedes religion as a more fundamentally human experience rather than a community and institutional one. The fabric of our spirituality is woven with the ethical threads of living with others in community. This is where our faith meets its greatest challenges, but its truth is profound. A theme which I have stressed in my on ethical writing is that life is a process of giving birth to our spiritual natures as we mature in our human relationships.
It was the Jewish philosopher/theologian Martin Buber who stressed that God meets us in the “between” – between ourselves and others, and it is in this between that we learn that all life, especially human life, is created in the image of the divine. Within human connections our spirituality is excited and comes to life—here is where we meet God and open a pathway to God for others. It was in John’s first epistle, the 3rd and 4th chapters that we read about God’s love and our responsibility to love one another. John writes, “God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love has been brought to full expression through us. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. This is the message we have heard from the beginning: We should love one another.”
Our lives, I believe, are commonly shared gifts from God. Our spirituality does not close us to the world; rather, it is alive and open, growing and groomed by faith, animated by hope, and transcended by our ethical concern for others. Spiritual meaning is able to complete us and fulfill our undertakings because it seeks life beyond the boundaries of our present circumstances and traditions, and is deeply personal.
Aristotle defined the virtues that lead to happiness. Buddha taught the way to happiness through an end of suffering. Jesus preached that happiness springs from faith in the goodness of God, and Paul gave us the formula of “faith, hope, and love” for our fellow humans. In the last decade, the academic movement for Positive Psychology created an empirical science of happiness.
Poet W.B. Yeats, at the close of World War I, said that things fall apart when the center does not hold, and the center to which Yeats was referring can metaphorically be described as the center knot in a braided rug, the nuclei of an atom, or the human soul that is spiritually connected to others and to its source.
Our center is our moral compass and if we listen, it can provide a positive direction for our lives. Immanuel Kant sought this center in the logic of practical reason; Professor Kurt Baier at the University of Pittsburg found it in his commitment to the dignity of creation, including human beings. This was the source of his ethics. Recently, in studies of “loneliness,” doctors are saying that we humans have either developed or have been provided with a genetic predisposition to connect with others. Human meaning is positively integrated with human connection and with a faith that implores us to become partners with God in the healing and repair of the world.
Some maintain that in the last few generations, the “modernist” consensus of rationality, democracy, and enlightened self-interest has broken down. They claim, “The relentless modernist attack on religion and the reality of consciousness itself has diminished the moral heart of civilization, unleashing a reign of scientific reductionism that tells us that we are nothing but biochemistry and neuron impulses. Therefore, they continue, “Lacking a moral center, today’s anarchic reign of materialistic economic globalization has contributed to war, environmental destruction, and inequality.” (Mention Marlette’s cartoon, “The Decent of Man”)
This may or may not be true, for when I read and study science, I have a great sense of awe concerning the greatness of creation and I have never believed or felt that scientific knowledge threatened my faith. On the contrary, philosophy and science, mathematics and formal reasoning have only strengthened by faith as all of these systems require a cultural and metaphysical foundation.
Permit me to end this discussion with a few words about “choices.” French philosopher and Nobel laureate Henri Bergson (1859—1941) combined spirituality, mysticism, and science in a unique and controversial way. His Roman Catholic faith (converted from Judaism) would seem to be in direct conflict with the philosophy he followed for much of his life. The following quote is from his 1907 work "L'Evolution Creatrice" ("Creative Evolution"): “…as each of us can live but one life, a choice must perforce be made. We choose in reality without ceasing; without ceasing, also, we abandon many things. The route we pursue in time is strewn with the remains of all that we began to be, of all that we might have become. But nature, which has at command an incalculable number of lives, is in no wise bound to make such sacrifices."
Choice lies at the center of our lives.
The Old Testament writer added: "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain therof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her." [PROVERBS 3: 13-15 *King James Bible]
And spirituality requires wisdom. In Hinduism we read, “Discipline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline, but merely the meaningless following of custom, which is only a disguise for stupidity." [Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1941] And I have told students for over 40 years that “education can cure their ignorance, but is no help for their stupidity.”
Why do I contemplate spirituality, truth, and wisdom? I think that it is because they are so illusive. They are the forgotten parts of our religious path. We would rather be entertained than disturbed by a sermon. We would rather listen to the choir than worship through singing. We would rather demonstrate our faith through the showiness of organized religion (flags, robes, processions, candles, and professional performances) than from the deep ecology of our personal spirituality.
As we fill the cavities of our minds with the junk food of modern society and by our church—making sure that our beliefs and doctrines are checked off by theologians and church officials—our spiritual natures exhaust and even shake off their essence and their inner validity. We are civilized, rational, and committed to competitive capitalism and our religious commitments bear the imprint of this commitment. In a world where what counts is getting things done, where bigger is better, where appearance supersedes essence, where in our schools where what gets tested gets taught, character and values are the losers, and where, in organized religion, “right” belief is more important than rational spirituality, is it any wonder that church attendance and commitment to the purposes of organized religion are falling behind the spiritual or essentialness of our lives.
Viktor Frankl has said, “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
Spirituality and Religion #1
Spirituality & Religion
Lecture #1
As Catholic monk and author Thomas Merton observed, the reflective life has fallen out of fashion. We may give lip service to the idea of stillness, but we do little to cultivate it. In today’s hurried world, a person who refuses to make efficient use of time, who is not practical, who does not actively pursue some concrete goal is somehow disturbing to others.
I’m afraid we’re addicted to activity and more activity as we move through life at “interstate speed,” in a hurry to get from one place to another, while, at the same time, talking on our cell phone, drinking coffee, shaving, studying notes for a class or meeting, or even putting on make-up. Back in 1990, I was involved with a school system who had just hired a new superintendent. Because of the new emphasis on state testing, he vowed that our system would move into the top one-third of the state’s school systems. His theme became “Reaching for the Top.” That is when our teachers and other school staffs began moving at interstate speed, and education became test-focused rather than student-focused. It’s all reminiscent of a 1980s TV show, The Jefferson’s. Their theme was “moving on up in order to reach the top,” but George Jefferson was never satisfied with life and was in constant turmoil.
In 1893, North Carolina adopted as its state motto the phrase, “To Be, Rather Than to Seem.” The focus then was on authenticity, of giving ones all to the purposes of democracy and community. But what has happened to the “being” part of our motto: being responsible to a calling higher than ourselves, being true to our values, being the best student I can be? Today, “seeming” is in vogue as posing for the camera after a great play is more important than the play itself, as what we wear and with whom we associate are more important than the inner-self that is crying out for attention and enhancement.
All organizations partake of this malady; so does the church. As we focus on our “stuff,” our spiritual sensibilities are diminished and our spirituality is reduced to a few scripture verses, a Sunday morning service, a couple of concrete beliefs, the condemnation of those who are different or just disagree, and our spiritual natures are subsequently lost in the quagmire of dogma, doctrine, and inauthentic practice.
Spirituality or spiritual reflection is not just a matter of distancing oneself from people, buildings and professional obligations or from organizations such as church, temple, and synagogue. We must make room in the region of our minds and the domains of our spirits and there soak up the teachings of our faith and the values that are able to transform us from spiritual nomads to people with a purpose.
Horace Williams, the first philosopher in the south and who taught at the University of North Carolina at the turn of the 20th century and through World War I, was asked by his nurse as he lay on his deathbed, “Dr. Williams, do you ever pray?” His response was, “No, madam, my life is a prayer.” This was a spiritual life lived in relationship to God and man. Indeed, our lives are commonly shared gifts from God and if we believe that in Christ, God became man, then we are compelled to acknowledge our shared humanity and our shared moral sense. This is the foundation of our spirituality.
Spirituality is not a struggle between faith and reason; rather, it’s a struggle in our minds about what matters most—about ultimate values. When we open our lives beyond our mental clutter, we discover the company of a deeper silence within. It is letting God come alive in us.
In 1951, Edgar S. Brightman provided insight about this predisposition. He stated, “As the second half of the 20th century opens, freedom, reason, the rights of man, the worship of God, the love of truth, beauty, and goodness—all of man’s highest values—are threatened by ‘military necessity,’ the totalitarian state, materialistic theories and practices, and ruthless competition. A conflict of ideals is raging in the world. It is not merely a conflict between East and West, or between science and tradition, or between communism and capitalism, or between political and economic democracy, or even between totalitarianism and freedom. It is a struggle ‘in the minds of men’ about ultimate values.”
In 1953, Jacob Bronowski – a distinguished professional scientist and an inspiring humanist – delivered a series of lectures at MIT entitled Science and Human Values. These lectures were later published in 1956. In them he emphasizes the values of tenderness, of kindliness, of human intimacy, and love. He observes that values are not rules, “but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and unjustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.” He also says that “the exactness of science can give a context for our judgments” and “the gravest indictment that can be made of our generalized culture is, in fact, that it erodes our sense of the context in which judgments must be made.”
Bronowski provides the following example to illustrate his view of ethical responsibility: “When I returned from the physical shock of Nagasaki, which I have described in the first page of this book, I tried to persuade my colleagues in governments and in the United Nations that Nagasaki should be preserved exactly as it was then. I wanted all future conferences on disarmament, and on other issues, which weigh the fates of nations, to be held in that ashy, clinical sea of rubble. I still think as I did then, that only in this forbidding context could statesmen make realistic judgments of the problems, which they handle on our behalf. Alas, my official colleagues thought nothing of my scheme; on the contrary, they pointed out to me that delegates would be uncomfortable in Nagasaki.”
He tells the following story: “On a fine November day in 1945, late in the afternoon, I was landed on an airstrip in southern Japan. From there a jeep was to take me over the mountains to join a ship, which lay in Nagasaki Harbor. I knew nothing of the country or the distance before us. We drove off; dusk fell; the road rose and fell away, the pine woods came down to the road, straggled on and opened again. I did not know that we had left the open country until unexpectedly I heard the ship’s loudspeakers broadcasting dance music. Then suddenly I was aware that we were already at the center of damage in Nagasaki. The shadows behind me were the skeletons of the Mitsubishi factory buildings, pushed backwards and sideways as if by a giant hand. What I thought to be broken rocks was a concrete powerhouse with its roof punched in. I could now make out the outline of two crumpled gasometers; there was a cold furnace festooned with service pipes; otherwise nothing but cockeyed telegraph poles and loops of wire in a bare waste of ashes. I had blundered into this desolate landscape as instantly as one might wake among the craters of the moon. The moment of recognition when I realized that I was already in Nagasaki is present to me as I write, as vividly as when I lived it. I see the warm night and the meaningless shapes; I can even remember the tune that was coming from the ship. It was a dance tune, which had been popular in 1945, and it was called ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby’?”
Bronowski then paused and said, “These essays, which I have called Science and Human Values, were born at that moment. For the moment I have recalled was a universal moment; what I met was, almost as abruptly, the experience of mankind. On an evening like that evening, some time in 1945, each of us in his own way learned that his imagination had been dwarfed. We looked up and saw the power of which we had been proud to loom over us like the ruins of Nagasaki. … The implications are both the industrial slum, which Nagasaki was before it was bombed, and the ashy desolation, which the bomb made of the slum. And civilization asks of both ruins, ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby’?”
And what is the foundation for moral life that we have created since Bronowski wrote these words? Now in the 21st century wake of the postmodern transformation and its propensity to question that which we once thought absolute, both philosopher and theologian have scrambled to articulate a foundation for morals that supports and sustains the ethical life, and avoids what some have called “a return to nihilism.” Bronowski’s central ethical motif bears repeating, “The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.”
In its truest sense, spirituality is transformational because it motivates us to change our lives. Spirituality is religious and partakes of religious experience in the broadest possible sense. In a more narrow sense, religion is more connected to belief, doctrine and dogma whereas spirituality understands that there is one God, while there are many paths to this God. My personal faith is, however, only one path. I’ve often wondered why we try to limit the omnipotence of God to our own experiences and shallow beliefs. My mom would whip me good for saying this, but I believe that for many of us, our God is too small; that is, our understanding and conceptualization of “God” is too small. Chris Butler has observed, “What’s really needed is to recognize the need for spiritual as well as material happiness. A society that has great material prosperity but lacks spiritual purpose is really a poor society. A body without the soul is a dead body—even if it is nicely decorated with fancy ornaments.”
Lecture #1
As Catholic monk and author Thomas Merton observed, the reflective life has fallen out of fashion. We may give lip service to the idea of stillness, but we do little to cultivate it. In today’s hurried world, a person who refuses to make efficient use of time, who is not practical, who does not actively pursue some concrete goal is somehow disturbing to others.
I’m afraid we’re addicted to activity and more activity as we move through life at “interstate speed,” in a hurry to get from one place to another, while, at the same time, talking on our cell phone, drinking coffee, shaving, studying notes for a class or meeting, or even putting on make-up. Back in 1990, I was involved with a school system who had just hired a new superintendent. Because of the new emphasis on state testing, he vowed that our system would move into the top one-third of the state’s school systems. His theme became “Reaching for the Top.” That is when our teachers and other school staffs began moving at interstate speed, and education became test-focused rather than student-focused. It’s all reminiscent of a 1980s TV show, The Jefferson’s. Their theme was “moving on up in order to reach the top,” but George Jefferson was never satisfied with life and was in constant turmoil.
In 1893, North Carolina adopted as its state motto the phrase, “To Be, Rather Than to Seem.” The focus then was on authenticity, of giving ones all to the purposes of democracy and community. But what has happened to the “being” part of our motto: being responsible to a calling higher than ourselves, being true to our values, being the best student I can be? Today, “seeming” is in vogue as posing for the camera after a great play is more important than the play itself, as what we wear and with whom we associate are more important than the inner-self that is crying out for attention and enhancement.
All organizations partake of this malady; so does the church. As we focus on our “stuff,” our spiritual sensibilities are diminished and our spirituality is reduced to a few scripture verses, a Sunday morning service, a couple of concrete beliefs, the condemnation of those who are different or just disagree, and our spiritual natures are subsequently lost in the quagmire of dogma, doctrine, and inauthentic practice.
Spirituality or spiritual reflection is not just a matter of distancing oneself from people, buildings and professional obligations or from organizations such as church, temple, and synagogue. We must make room in the region of our minds and the domains of our spirits and there soak up the teachings of our faith and the values that are able to transform us from spiritual nomads to people with a purpose.
Horace Williams, the first philosopher in the south and who taught at the University of North Carolina at the turn of the 20th century and through World War I, was asked by his nurse as he lay on his deathbed, “Dr. Williams, do you ever pray?” His response was, “No, madam, my life is a prayer.” This was a spiritual life lived in relationship to God and man. Indeed, our lives are commonly shared gifts from God and if we believe that in Christ, God became man, then we are compelled to acknowledge our shared humanity and our shared moral sense. This is the foundation of our spirituality.
Spirituality is not a struggle between faith and reason; rather, it’s a struggle in our minds about what matters most—about ultimate values. When we open our lives beyond our mental clutter, we discover the company of a deeper silence within. It is letting God come alive in us.
In 1951, Edgar S. Brightman provided insight about this predisposition. He stated, “As the second half of the 20th century opens, freedom, reason, the rights of man, the worship of God, the love of truth, beauty, and goodness—all of man’s highest values—are threatened by ‘military necessity,’ the totalitarian state, materialistic theories and practices, and ruthless competition. A conflict of ideals is raging in the world. It is not merely a conflict between East and West, or between science and tradition, or between communism and capitalism, or between political and economic democracy, or even between totalitarianism and freedom. It is a struggle ‘in the minds of men’ about ultimate values.”
In 1953, Jacob Bronowski – a distinguished professional scientist and an inspiring humanist – delivered a series of lectures at MIT entitled Science and Human Values. These lectures were later published in 1956. In them he emphasizes the values of tenderness, of kindliness, of human intimacy, and love. He observes that values are not rules, “but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and unjustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.” He also says that “the exactness of science can give a context for our judgments” and “the gravest indictment that can be made of our generalized culture is, in fact, that it erodes our sense of the context in which judgments must be made.”
Bronowski provides the following example to illustrate his view of ethical responsibility: “When I returned from the physical shock of Nagasaki, which I have described in the first page of this book, I tried to persuade my colleagues in governments and in the United Nations that Nagasaki should be preserved exactly as it was then. I wanted all future conferences on disarmament, and on other issues, which weigh the fates of nations, to be held in that ashy, clinical sea of rubble. I still think as I did then, that only in this forbidding context could statesmen make realistic judgments of the problems, which they handle on our behalf. Alas, my official colleagues thought nothing of my scheme; on the contrary, they pointed out to me that delegates would be uncomfortable in Nagasaki.”
He tells the following story: “On a fine November day in 1945, late in the afternoon, I was landed on an airstrip in southern Japan. From there a jeep was to take me over the mountains to join a ship, which lay in Nagasaki Harbor. I knew nothing of the country or the distance before us. We drove off; dusk fell; the road rose and fell away, the pine woods came down to the road, straggled on and opened again. I did not know that we had left the open country until unexpectedly I heard the ship’s loudspeakers broadcasting dance music. Then suddenly I was aware that we were already at the center of damage in Nagasaki. The shadows behind me were the skeletons of the Mitsubishi factory buildings, pushed backwards and sideways as if by a giant hand. What I thought to be broken rocks was a concrete powerhouse with its roof punched in. I could now make out the outline of two crumpled gasometers; there was a cold furnace festooned with service pipes; otherwise nothing but cockeyed telegraph poles and loops of wire in a bare waste of ashes. I had blundered into this desolate landscape as instantly as one might wake among the craters of the moon. The moment of recognition when I realized that I was already in Nagasaki is present to me as I write, as vividly as when I lived it. I see the warm night and the meaningless shapes; I can even remember the tune that was coming from the ship. It was a dance tune, which had been popular in 1945, and it was called ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby’?”
Bronowski then paused and said, “These essays, which I have called Science and Human Values, were born at that moment. For the moment I have recalled was a universal moment; what I met was, almost as abruptly, the experience of mankind. On an evening like that evening, some time in 1945, each of us in his own way learned that his imagination had been dwarfed. We looked up and saw the power of which we had been proud to loom over us like the ruins of Nagasaki. … The implications are both the industrial slum, which Nagasaki was before it was bombed, and the ashy desolation, which the bomb made of the slum. And civilization asks of both ruins, ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby’?”
And what is the foundation for moral life that we have created since Bronowski wrote these words? Now in the 21st century wake of the postmodern transformation and its propensity to question that which we once thought absolute, both philosopher and theologian have scrambled to articulate a foundation for morals that supports and sustains the ethical life, and avoids what some have called “a return to nihilism.” Bronowski’s central ethical motif bears repeating, “The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.”
In its truest sense, spirituality is transformational because it motivates us to change our lives. Spirituality is religious and partakes of religious experience in the broadest possible sense. In a more narrow sense, religion is more connected to belief, doctrine and dogma whereas spirituality understands that there is one God, while there are many paths to this God. My personal faith is, however, only one path. I’ve often wondered why we try to limit the omnipotence of God to our own experiences and shallow beliefs. My mom would whip me good for saying this, but I believe that for many of us, our God is too small; that is, our understanding and conceptualization of “God” is too small. Chris Butler has observed, “What’s really needed is to recognize the need for spiritual as well as material happiness. A society that has great material prosperity but lacks spiritual purpose is really a poor society. A body without the soul is a dead body—even if it is nicely decorated with fancy ornaments.”
I Remember:
The Newton-Conover Twins
The dates are fuzzy, but many of the memories of The Newton-Conover Twins are as clear as a November morning. We – Joseph Lee Hester, my father, Thelma Hester, my mother, and my sister and brother, Iona and Tom – returned from Wilmington in the fall of 1945 at the end of World War II. Dad and two of my uncles had volunteered to work in the shipyards during the big war. We lived on Carolina Beach for two years and near the shipyards, in Maffitt Village, for about two more years.
I don’t know how my dad got caught up with the Twins. There may have been a connection before the war, I just don’t know. You see, I was born in 1939 and was almost six years old when we came back from the war effort in Wilmington.
Baseball was exciting. Dad helped with the high school team in a volunteer capacity and loved the position of catcher. He bought me my first catcher’s mitt when I was about 12 years old – I was supposed to play the position of catcher in high school. It never happened! He then bought me a regulation first-baseman’s mitt. I used it and loaned it out to high school players when I was in the 7th or 8th grade.
The Twins and Newton-Conover High School played in what we called “the old ball park” just off ‘D’ Street in South Newton. It’s full of apartments now, but I would like to know the history of that old field. It had a grandstand and a cement-block concession stand with dressing rooms and restrooms attached. By the time I was eleven or twelve and playing for the Newton Recreation Center, those dressing rooms smelled like an open sewer. When I was in high school and playing football, we didn’t use them. We just huddled at the end of the field at halftime. The air was much fresher.
The Twins, as I remember them in the late forties, played at night. We lived on South Cline Avenue, and the Fred McRee house and our house began at the grandstand behind the old wooden fence and ran down the first-base and right-field line. We ate our suppers as quickly as we could on game nights and twelve or fifteen of us would gather on the McRee and Hester chicken houses that were in the back of our yards and higher than the fence.
From our chicken houses we watch Eddie Yount and Don Stafford, Ray Lindsey, and all the rest. Dad and Earl Holder were positioned up on the clay bank behind home plate where they called the game – dad was the public address announcer and Earl did the radio broadcast. Dad had a great voice and I remember a picture of him holding a microphone. The picture dated back to at least the thirties, so I believe he had become involved in radio (maybe baseball too) before World War II.
Those chicken house evenings were a lot of fun. We listen to the older fellows and their exploits with girls, but mostly talked about the game. Each of us was required to bring some kind of food from home as a fee to get on to the chicken house – a cold biscuit, chicken wing, ham biscuit, etc., which really tasted good during the cool of the evenings. Of course there were fights, not over girls or food, but over foul balls that usually ended up in our backyards. By the time I was in high school, I had an amazing collection of baseballs, old gloves, and broken bats. If the bats were just cracked a little, I nailed them with finishing nails and wrapped them in electrical tape. They usually lasted a few games in the recreation league.
Most of the time I got up real early the morning after a game. I crawled through a hole in the fence and usually walked under every bench and through the grandstand before other kids could get there. I found old baseballs and gloves thrown away by players. On a good morning I would come away with two or three dollars in change and maybe a dollar bill. One time I found a five dollar bill and worried over it for a week. Five dollars was a lot of money in 1948 and 1949.
My favorite games were with the House of David and the Donkey games where the players had to ride unwilling donkeys about the base-pads. They housed those donkeys in the park two or three days before those games and we sneaked in and tried to ride them ourselves. We usually got kicked a lot and thrown to the ground. The smell was like a farm yard, and maybe that's why the memory of those stubborn mules have lasted until this day.
The summer of 1949 was the last summer the Twins played behind my house. I would play football there for the Red Devils, but chose track over baseball when I got in high school. That choice really disappointed my dad. One reason was because our eighth grade team was so good. Down at the “new” ball park on Western Boulevard, our eighth grade team had beaten the high school team in an exhibition game. We had Jo Ray Shook pitching and Glenn Wayne Campbell at first base, both excellent players. Raymond Sharpe and Leonard McRee were on that team, as well as myself and Tim Craig. It was supposed to be a fun game, but to us it was serious. A slide into home for a run messed my leg up so badly that I almost missed football my freshmen year. Football became my sport and I loved to mix it up and hit people. I played basketball for Doc Lemmon, but was too short to really make a difference. Bill Inscoe got me involved in track and I became a long-distance runner in high school and in college.
When the 1950 Twins opened in the new ball park, it was an exciting time for me. Dad announced the games and Earl Holder handled the radio. Before school was out and after track practice, I usually headed to the park. I got in free because of dad and usually sat up on the top of the grandstand somewhere. The foul balls that came up there I threw back down to the field. Before the game, Dad would warn up the fans with his records like the “Saber Dance” or Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First.”
In the old (new) wooden park, the runway under the stands ran from third base to first base and housed restrooms, player dressing rooms, and the concessions area. With my mind’s eye I can see the boxes along third and first full of eager fans and young people. I can hear the vendors screaming “pop corn, get your hot pop corn,” and I can see Barney Fry yelling for Eddie Yount to hit one out of the park. I can see and laugh again at Ray Lindsey’s blooper pitch that fooled spectators and players alike. I can almost see again Don Stafford’s long neck and Adam’s apple as he held the runner on first base.
Memories, accurate or muddled, take us back to a “slice of time” that meant something to us. In Newton during the late forties and early fifties, baseball was king and the entire town came out to see and enjoy the many friendships in the stands. In 2003, at my 45th high school reunion, I wrote about those times and gave my essay to my classmates. It was entitled “Red Dirt, Old Friends, and Cherry Pepsis.” In that essay I recollected, “Back then, in the small towns of Newton and Conover, friends gathered, more often than not, at such watering holes as the City Pharmacy, Shady Grove, the H&W Drug Store, the Dairy Center, and the Blue Mirror Café. Before we reached driving and drinking age, no matter where we landed after a ball game or on a date, one thing were certain, we were going to have a cherry Pepsi. These were the golden years before Sundrop and Mountain Dew. There were no pizza parlors, no Chinese restaurants, and no steak houses save Mackie’s Motel Restaurant in Conover. The meal of choice was a burger, fries, and a cherry Pepsi.
At school dances, in our homes, and during 6th period at Newton-Conover High School, the common theme was “Let’s go get a cherry Pepsi and see what’s going on.” We walked to the Square and later borrowed our dad’s care to get there. We listen to the car radio and to the 45’s playing at the Rec Center. John Tate, the Rec manager was always there and seemed to know what we needed. Wherever we landed, there were old friends and cherry Pepsis, and if you looked closely enough, you’d see some of that red dirt on their jeans or sneakers.”
The sad thing about those memories was that the Twins were gone. They did not return until the sixties and most of my group had moved on to college and new towns and jobs. When I was in college the Twins did return and Dad became their “official voice.” I saw some of the games, but was working at Bowman’s Drug Store in Conover from noon until 10 every evening and did not have the opportunity to attend many of the games. Several things stand out in my mind from those days. I moved into my grandmother’s apartment, my brother was in the Marine Corp, and dad rented our bedroom out to young ballplayers. I don’t remember but one name and that was Jim Burnett who later married a Newton girl and became a meat cutter for Harris Teeter. Sometime on weekends, when the Twins were not playing, I pulled out my old catcher’s mitt and caught balls for one of the young pitchers staying in my old bedroom. I knew then why I never played baseball in high school – those pitchers threw too hard and fast and it was much, much safer running track. Even our practice runs from the high school to St. Paul’s Church, to Startown, and back in town were safer.
I have often wonder, “Could my life have been any richer or fuller than it was growing up in Newton in the late forties and fifties?” I don’t think anyone could have had a happier or complete life – it was the lure of the Twins and the ball park, the smell of popcorn and soft drinks, Barney Fry and all those yelling fans; united by the spirit of the game we came together as a community of friends and a life time of memories.
Joe Hester
The Newton-Conover Twins
The dates are fuzzy, but many of the memories of The Newton-Conover Twins are as clear as a November morning. We – Joseph Lee Hester, my father, Thelma Hester, my mother, and my sister and brother, Iona and Tom – returned from Wilmington in the fall of 1945 at the end of World War II. Dad and two of my uncles had volunteered to work in the shipyards during the big war. We lived on Carolina Beach for two years and near the shipyards, in Maffitt Village, for about two more years.
I don’t know how my dad got caught up with the Twins. There may have been a connection before the war, I just don’t know. You see, I was born in 1939 and was almost six years old when we came back from the war effort in Wilmington.
Baseball was exciting. Dad helped with the high school team in a volunteer capacity and loved the position of catcher. He bought me my first catcher’s mitt when I was about 12 years old – I was supposed to play the position of catcher in high school. It never happened! He then bought me a regulation first-baseman’s mitt. I used it and loaned it out to high school players when I was in the 7th or 8th grade.
The Twins and Newton-Conover High School played in what we called “the old ball park” just off ‘D’ Street in South Newton. It’s full of apartments now, but I would like to know the history of that old field. It had a grandstand and a cement-block concession stand with dressing rooms and restrooms attached. By the time I was eleven or twelve and playing for the Newton Recreation Center, those dressing rooms smelled like an open sewer. When I was in high school and playing football, we didn’t use them. We just huddled at the end of the field at halftime. The air was much fresher.
The Twins, as I remember them in the late forties, played at night. We lived on South Cline Avenue, and the Fred McRee house and our house began at the grandstand behind the old wooden fence and ran down the first-base and right-field line. We ate our suppers as quickly as we could on game nights and twelve or fifteen of us would gather on the McRee and Hester chicken houses that were in the back of our yards and higher than the fence.
From our chicken houses we watch Eddie Yount and Don Stafford, Ray Lindsey, and all the rest. Dad and Earl Holder were positioned up on the clay bank behind home plate where they called the game – dad was the public address announcer and Earl did the radio broadcast. Dad had a great voice and I remember a picture of him holding a microphone. The picture dated back to at least the thirties, so I believe he had become involved in radio (maybe baseball too) before World War II.
Those chicken house evenings were a lot of fun. We listen to the older fellows and their exploits with girls, but mostly talked about the game. Each of us was required to bring some kind of food from home as a fee to get on to the chicken house – a cold biscuit, chicken wing, ham biscuit, etc., which really tasted good during the cool of the evenings. Of course there were fights, not over girls or food, but over foul balls that usually ended up in our backyards. By the time I was in high school, I had an amazing collection of baseballs, old gloves, and broken bats. If the bats were just cracked a little, I nailed them with finishing nails and wrapped them in electrical tape. They usually lasted a few games in the recreation league.
Most of the time I got up real early the morning after a game. I crawled through a hole in the fence and usually walked under every bench and through the grandstand before other kids could get there. I found old baseballs and gloves thrown away by players. On a good morning I would come away with two or three dollars in change and maybe a dollar bill. One time I found a five dollar bill and worried over it for a week. Five dollars was a lot of money in 1948 and 1949.
My favorite games were with the House of David and the Donkey games where the players had to ride unwilling donkeys about the base-pads. They housed those donkeys in the park two or three days before those games and we sneaked in and tried to ride them ourselves. We usually got kicked a lot and thrown to the ground. The smell was like a farm yard, and maybe that's why the memory of those stubborn mules have lasted until this day.
The summer of 1949 was the last summer the Twins played behind my house. I would play football there for the Red Devils, but chose track over baseball when I got in high school. That choice really disappointed my dad. One reason was because our eighth grade team was so good. Down at the “new” ball park on Western Boulevard, our eighth grade team had beaten the high school team in an exhibition game. We had Jo Ray Shook pitching and Glenn Wayne Campbell at first base, both excellent players. Raymond Sharpe and Leonard McRee were on that team, as well as myself and Tim Craig. It was supposed to be a fun game, but to us it was serious. A slide into home for a run messed my leg up so badly that I almost missed football my freshmen year. Football became my sport and I loved to mix it up and hit people. I played basketball for Doc Lemmon, but was too short to really make a difference. Bill Inscoe got me involved in track and I became a long-distance runner in high school and in college.
When the 1950 Twins opened in the new ball park, it was an exciting time for me. Dad announced the games and Earl Holder handled the radio. Before school was out and after track practice, I usually headed to the park. I got in free because of dad and usually sat up on the top of the grandstand somewhere. The foul balls that came up there I threw back down to the field. Before the game, Dad would warn up the fans with his records like the “Saber Dance” or Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First.”
In the old (new) wooden park, the runway under the stands ran from third base to first base and housed restrooms, player dressing rooms, and the concessions area. With my mind’s eye I can see the boxes along third and first full of eager fans and young people. I can hear the vendors screaming “pop corn, get your hot pop corn,” and I can see Barney Fry yelling for Eddie Yount to hit one out of the park. I can see and laugh again at Ray Lindsey’s blooper pitch that fooled spectators and players alike. I can almost see again Don Stafford’s long neck and Adam’s apple as he held the runner on first base.
Memories, accurate or muddled, take us back to a “slice of time” that meant something to us. In Newton during the late forties and early fifties, baseball was king and the entire town came out to see and enjoy the many friendships in the stands. In 2003, at my 45th high school reunion, I wrote about those times and gave my essay to my classmates. It was entitled “Red Dirt, Old Friends, and Cherry Pepsis.” In that essay I recollected, “Back then, in the small towns of Newton and Conover, friends gathered, more often than not, at such watering holes as the City Pharmacy, Shady Grove, the H&W Drug Store, the Dairy Center, and the Blue Mirror Café. Before we reached driving and drinking age, no matter where we landed after a ball game or on a date, one thing were certain, we were going to have a cherry Pepsi. These were the golden years before Sundrop and Mountain Dew. There were no pizza parlors, no Chinese restaurants, and no steak houses save Mackie’s Motel Restaurant in Conover. The meal of choice was a burger, fries, and a cherry Pepsi.
At school dances, in our homes, and during 6th period at Newton-Conover High School, the common theme was “Let’s go get a cherry Pepsi and see what’s going on.” We walked to the Square and later borrowed our dad’s care to get there. We listen to the car radio and to the 45’s playing at the Rec Center. John Tate, the Rec manager was always there and seemed to know what we needed. Wherever we landed, there were old friends and cherry Pepsis, and if you looked closely enough, you’d see some of that red dirt on their jeans or sneakers.”
The sad thing about those memories was that the Twins were gone. They did not return until the sixties and most of my group had moved on to college and new towns and jobs. When I was in college the Twins did return and Dad became their “official voice.” I saw some of the games, but was working at Bowman’s Drug Store in Conover from noon until 10 every evening and did not have the opportunity to attend many of the games. Several things stand out in my mind from those days. I moved into my grandmother’s apartment, my brother was in the Marine Corp, and dad rented our bedroom out to young ballplayers. I don’t remember but one name and that was Jim Burnett who later married a Newton girl and became a meat cutter for Harris Teeter. Sometime on weekends, when the Twins were not playing, I pulled out my old catcher’s mitt and caught balls for one of the young pitchers staying in my old bedroom. I knew then why I never played baseball in high school – those pitchers threw too hard and fast and it was much, much safer running track. Even our practice runs from the high school to St. Paul’s Church, to Startown, and back in town were safer.
I have often wonder, “Could my life have been any richer or fuller than it was growing up in Newton in the late forties and fifties?” I don’t think anyone could have had a happier or complete life – it was the lure of the Twins and the ball park, the smell of popcorn and soft drinks, Barney Fry and all those yelling fans; united by the spirit of the game we came together as a community of friends and a life time of memories.
Joe Hester
Old Friends, Red Dirt, and Cherry Pepsi
Memories of Growing Up in Newton, North Carolina
By
Joe Hester
Joe Hester is a retired educator and freelance writer living in Claremont, NC. He has authored over 40 professional and children’s books and many professional articles. Joe graduated from Newton-Conover High School in 1958, Lenoir-Rhyne College in 1961, and Southeastern Seminary in 1964 and 1967; and earned the Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1973. Since retiring in 2001, He has authored five books and co-authored two more. His work in gifted education, especially his 15 volume curriculum entitled Philosophy for Young Thinkers, was honored in 1995, by the Torrance Center at the University of Georgia. The Torrance Center is an international research center which focuses on Gifted Education and Creative Behavior. The Center selected Hester for their Creative Scholar of the Year Award. In 2006, Hester was notified that his publication on public school safety is being translated in to Chinese and will be republished by the China Industrial Press, and that his book on the Ten Commandments was being reissued in paperback. His newest book, Religious Issues and Controversies in Contemporary America will be published in 2007 by M. E. Sharpe, Inc., publishers in New York City.
PART ONE: A SPECIAL TIME
We are of course from the old school having been born in the 1930s and inheriting the values of depression era parents. We are perhaps the last of a dying breed. Ours was a special time, especially reaching our teenage years in the Fifties. So, we put brackets around our small fragment of space and time. We call it “home” or “home town” and go on to identify ourselves to the younger folk as “depression babies,” “World War II Kids,” or “the fifties bunch.” In a way, they all fit, for we were born in the middle or near the end of the Great Depression and at the beginning of World War II. We grew to adulthood during the fifties and our values are anchored back there somewhere, even before our births, for they were hammered into us by family, community, and a religious belief system as rigid as grandma’s corset.
Memories of Growing Up in Newton, North Carolina
By
Joe Hester
Joe Hester is a retired educator and freelance writer living in Claremont, NC. He has authored over 40 professional and children’s books and many professional articles. Joe graduated from Newton-Conover High School in 1958, Lenoir-Rhyne College in 1961, and Southeastern Seminary in 1964 and 1967; and earned the Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1973. Since retiring in 2001, He has authored five books and co-authored two more. His work in gifted education, especially his 15 volume curriculum entitled Philosophy for Young Thinkers, was honored in 1995, by the Torrance Center at the University of Georgia. The Torrance Center is an international research center which focuses on Gifted Education and Creative Behavior. The Center selected Hester for their Creative Scholar of the Year Award. In 2006, Hester was notified that his publication on public school safety is being translated in to Chinese and will be republished by the China Industrial Press, and that his book on the Ten Commandments was being reissued in paperback. His newest book, Religious Issues and Controversies in Contemporary America will be published in 2007 by M. E. Sharpe, Inc., publishers in New York City.
PART ONE: A SPECIAL TIME
We are of course from the old school having been born in the 1930s and inheriting the values of depression era parents. We are perhaps the last of a dying breed. Ours was a special time, especially reaching our teenage years in the Fifties. So, we put brackets around our small fragment of space and time. We call it “home” or “home town” and go on to identify ourselves to the younger folk as “depression babies,” “World War II Kids,” or “the fifties bunch.” In a way, they all fit, for we were born in the middle or near the end of the Great Depression and at the beginning of World War II. We grew to adulthood during the fifties and our values are anchored back there somewhere, even before our births, for they were hammered into us by family, community, and a religious belief system as rigid as grandma’s corset.
Then, along came Elvis in 1956 and changed the world in which we lived. Rock’n Roll, the “Devil’s music” as my grandmother called it, was an unsolicited intrusion in the lives of many families and provided the fodder for numerous Sunday morning sermons in area churches. There was also Myrtle Beach—not the one of golf courses, expensive shops, and restaurants—but the one of sand, water, beer, and the Shag. The Shag was a dance which had its roots in the 1920s and the music of rhythm and blues. We thought we invented it; actually we only gave it a Catawba County twist and fine-tuned it in the Newton-High School gym (that we called the “cracker-box”) during those long hot school dances.
Our values would later be struck by the racial tensions that began in the fifties (and probably long before) and bubbled over into social upheaval in the sixties. In Newton, we were for the most part unaffected by these problems as our lives were sheltered by segregation – the “whiteness” of both church and school. In fact, integration was preached against in our churches on Sunday mornings. I remember those conflicting values that plagued me during my high school years and that would later be worked out as I reached adulthood.
Ball was on the mind of most boys like me. The rich red clay on which we played colored my jeans and sneakers, and seemed to anchor me in place and time. Red dirt has provided a foundation for the experiences that have enriched my life and etched in memory a past that has highlighted all that came after it. In the red soil that tainted all that it touched, we learned games like hopscotch, kick-the-can, and marbles, and later, baseball and football. If there is one thing I remember about my youth, it’s the color of its dirt. At the old ballpark, down off “D” Street and over at Clyde Fabrics field, and on the playgrounds at Ridgeview and Conover, dirt is one thing we all had in common.
But there is much richer soil than just the red dirt we played in—there are classmates and friends and the memories we collectively share. Although we remember our past differently, the lessons learned from growing up together in the same small place bonds each of us forever. As we now have entered the final third of our lives, nothing gives me more pleasure than to talk with old friends, mourn the passing of a few, and remember those youthful days around Newton. Ours was not an uncommon group of kids. Out of the dust of the fifties has emerged many wonderful and contributing people, people who have reared families and enriched the soil of Catawba County as they set in motion a new history—as did their fathers and mothers—with their own ideas, hard work, and moral values.
PART TWO: UNIQUE VALUES
Ours was not a consumer generation like the X’ers, Bobos, and the Boomers. Rather, family, friends, church, work, and good times have identified our values much more than collecting more “stuff.” I’m still amazed at those who continue to identify themselves by the “stuff” they have accumulated rather than by their values and friends. Moving back to the Newton area in 1975 rehabilitated this sense of friendship for me. As my wife Pat and our two boys, Mike and Chris, moved from place to place from 1961 to 1975, only a few real friends were cultivated and kept for a lifetime. Coming home I found my old friends and renewed my sense of time and place once again. It’s always great to walk into the H&W Drug Store and see the big smile on Ed Haupt’s face, or stop by and clear the smoke in order to find Larry Joe at his Little Gem and Rock Shop. Larry’s passing was s a great loss to all who knew him. When I see Concordia Lutheran Church, I remember singing at its opening in 1957, and when I drive through Newton, I remember those hot summer nights just sitting around the Square and talking with friends. Just recently, Bowman’s Drug store in Conover celebrated its 65 anniversary. I worked there while in college at Lenoir-Rhyne from 1959 until 1961 when I left for seminary. Doc Bowman was a true friend and his son-in law, Ken Lawing, who became a pharmacist there in 1959, has remained a cherished friend.
Some years ago I was reminded by K. Wayne Smith that we were the last generation of young folks to reach adulthood without being saturated with television. Color TV didn’t hit Newton until 1957—at least that’s my first memory of it—and we were just beginning our senior year in high school. Slide rules were in—calculators had yet to be invented! Hair cuts cost a quarter and movies, a dime. We discovered that there was much more to learn and do than to sit and watch a screen. Even today, we don’t find our values in the media, but in the little things that happen to us each day—in our families and with our friends. I really don’t think life gets any better than what we’re doing right now.
Do you remember your teachers? When I ask this question, our high school teachers usually come to mind, but it was elementary school and its dedicated staffs that set the tone of our lives and work. Down at Newton Elementary there was Principal Fred Barkley who busted my butt with his razor strap more often than I wish to remember. There were Mrs. Coley, Mrs. Bowman, and Ms. Hipp who first cranked by engine and encouraged by learning. Mary White, who could swing a mean ruler against the palm of your hand and who taught my dad and aunts and uncles was my seventh grade teacher. She never married and was tough as nails. I learned under her out of fear. But that year must have been good because I won the Audubon art contest that year and still have their large Birds of America book in my den. In the eighth grade there were Mrs. Long and Ed Gomedela. I had “Gomee” as we called him behind his back. He was a teacher, friend, and my first coach. When he built his dream home in Dogwood Hills, he hired Tim Craig and me to clean off his lot with axes, shovels, and rakes. It took nearly all one summer, but it was worth the effort. Gomee and I remained close friends until his death a few years ago. Discipline, hard work, honesty, and responsibility are what we learned from people like these. Those values build families and nations; it’s what America is all about.
PART THREE: CHERRY PEPSI
In the 1950s, in the small towns of Newton and Conover, friends gathered, more often than not, at such watering holes as the City Pharmacy, Shady Grove, the H&W Drug Store, the Dairy Center, and the Blue Mirror Café. Before we reached driving and drinking age, no matter where we landed after a ball game or on a date, one thing were certain, we were going to have a cherry Pepsi. By 1958, Wayne Dellinger’s father was hosting after-ball game parties in his basement recreation room. Many gathered there as the food and drink were free. These were the golden years before Sundrop and Mountain Dew. There were no pizza parlors, Chinese restaurants, or steak houses save Mackie’s Motel Restaurant in Conover. The meal of choice was a burger, fries, and a cherry Pepsi.
At Newton-Conover High School in the 1950s the common theme was “Let’s go to the CP and get a cherry Pepsi and see what’s going on.” I didn’t get to the CP as regularly as most kids in my class because of my involvement in sports, but between seasons and during the summer months I found my way to the CP as often as I could. The CP was the hangout of choice for most kids my age. The drug store was on the ground floor of the old Shipp Hotel and we found it amazing what went up and down those steps leading to the hotel lobby. I usually walked to the Square and later borrowed my dad’s care to get there. Music could be heard coming from cars as they made their way around the square. Music was played on a small record player at the Rec Center where kids gathered to play ping bong, talk, or dance. John Tate, the Rec manager, was always there and seemed to know what we needed. Wherever we landed, there were old friends and cherry Pepsis, and if you looked closely enough, you’d see some of that red dirt on their jeans or sneakers.
Cruising was the in-thing during the Fifties, but if you didn’t have a car, sitting in the drug store window at the CP was next best thing. There was always a crowd of boys on that corner. Their hair was either slicked up with the latest in hair oils, combed in a ducktail, or, if they were jocks, butch hair wax was the common choice to make a crew cut stand up perfectly. Polyester had yet to be invented, but Orlon sweaters were definitely in for boys and girls. They were hot items, especially the pastel colors of light blues, greens, yellows, and (some) pinks.
From about 1954 through 1956, peg-leg pants were the vogue for boys. We learned to roll and tuck our jeans or putter pants to make them fit tight at the bottom. We had our dress pants altered to fit the same way. We looped key chains from out pant loops to our right front pockets—I don’t know why—but it was the thing to do at the time. That fad had died out before I graduated from high school. By then it was just jeans and a t-shirt; simple, nothing special.
Life in Newton and Conover was probably no different than anywhere else in the Southeast. By the time I reached college and graduate school, students my age seemed to have shared the same experiences, only the places had changed. Folks outside the South say we have been slow to change; they’re right, we have been slow to change. Our values have remained fairly stable through the years and I think it a shame that the South today, like the rest of America, has been homogenized into a kind of non-ethnic, non-regional, sameness. The southern accent is dying out among our kids, and I have to listen carefully to understand some of the weather and news reports coming out of Charlotte.
PART FOUR: SHAGGING WITHOUT LESSONS
With your permission I would like to focus on creativity or what I call “shagging without lessons,” or the creative dimension of life. Special attention is given to the men and women who are able to withstand the pressures to conform and maintain their creativity and creative instincts throughout their lives. This usually brings undue stress and anxiety, but, with time, it becomes a normal way of life.
I never envisioned myself as creative—only a persistent hard worker. I am continually surprised by the creativity of others. At our 45th high school class reunion committee meeting, Leonard McRee talked about how he makes woven white oak baskets as a hobby. I never would have guessed! But why should I be astonished? There lies within all of us an emerging creative impulse—an impulse to grow. I want to believe that creativity is merely “task-committed persistence,” but it’s probably more, I just don’t know. But I do know a creative person when I run into one. Most of the time they are excited about something and have or are willing to take a risk to see it through.
I don’t know about each of you, but much of my life was played out quite by happenstance. Time went by so fast that when I look back, I know I couldn’t have planned such a career. When I think back about that elevated play ground and practice field down on Ash Avenue just up from our old high school and the thousands of creative and successful kids who learned there, I’m just amazed. I go by there quite often and just stop and look at it. I can see Glenn Campbell hitting a softball higher and longer than any one could imagine; and I can smell the sweat and dirt of a thousand football practices—trying to tackle Tim Craig who outweighed me by 50 pounds or block a defensive end closing in on Leonard as he dropped back to pass, or just doing lap after lap trying to get our legs and lungs in shape for the long, grueling season that lay in front of us. There is where I loss my front tooth, an injury that has plagued me all my life, and there is where I learned to be a man. Boy, those were great times!
Things don’t always work out the way they we plan them. I so wanted to be a college professor, and I was for about ten years. But my father’s bad health and the emerging of different goals in my life led me to work with younger kids and write new curriculum materials to enhance their development. By the end of the 1980s I had worked fifteen years in the public schools and during that time had had the further opportunity to be adjunct at three different universities, all of which kept me extremely busy. Do I have regrets? Sure I do, but doesn’t everyone? You can’t use “Whiteout” to erase the past. Looking back, creativity for me was the ability to adapt, survive, and make a difference. It was a little more than this, but not much.
I was never good at shagging by the numbers. My wife has encouraged me to take dance lessons, but I have always felt that it was our generation who molded the “shag” into its 1950s model, and modern lessons in what is called “shag” today would just interfere with my creativity—you see, every time I dance the shag, I invent just a little bit more. This is the adventure of it all, but it drives my wife crazy. I can always tell those who have had lessons as they “count” off their steps and forget freelance their bodies and their minds. You just can’t stereotype the shag and you can pigeonhole a mind in motion.
PART FIVE: JOEY'S PASTURE
Like a little boy walking in a warm, shallow creek in the summertime, I just have to pick up that next rock to see what’s under it. Down in Joey’s pasture (Joey Finger) just off South Cline Avenue, the creek is still there but houses are all around it now taking away from its mystery and destroying a young boy’s sense of adventure. I drove by it the other day and said to myself: “There is where my life was started; playing, running, and having fun in those woods, that pasture, and in that creek. What a childhood!” Some successful people grew up around that pasture: the Craig family, Bill Britain, Gerald Whisenhunt, Leon Harkens, Philip Moose, Marshall McRee, Patsy James Hester, Denelta Coley Self, Dr. Tom Harrill, Leonard McRee, Betty Drum Griffin, and many, many more.
Now in my late sixties, I still wonder about that creek and those rocks. A lifetime is not enough to turn all of them over and explore their mysteries. So, now I turn inward—to my thoughts and my experiences—trying to figure things out: What and why things happen as they do? What’s next? Do I have enough left in the tank to think wisely about tomorrow and share my wisdom with the next generation? All of this is a concern for me.
The creative life has been a challenging life. Shagging by the numbers is not an option. So many times I wanted to make a big splash, a contribution that would draw attention to me—it never happened, thank goodness! What did happen was that I learned to listen to the small voices around me—the children, the teachers, my closest friends, and my own inner voice. Here is where our reality lies and here is where we are able to contribute the most. It’s just like shagging—creating your life as you go alone.
The experiences that we have and share with each other are how we give meaning to our lives. Sharing authenticates who we are and what we are doing. Relationships are the way we think; they connect life to life and are the foundations of community. When important relationships breakdown, it is normal to feel that something is missing from our lives. There is emptiness. Therefore, each day we must behave as if people matter. Looking back to my days at Newton-Conover High School in the second half of the 1950s, I today understand the importance of the small things we shared, the good times and the bad times.
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