As a transplanted Pacific Northwesterner, my father taught journalism at ISU. My family actively opposed the Vietnam War. My mother was a nurse and a union organizer who along with others tried to establish collective bargaining at Mary Greeley. When the hospital administration wouldn’t budge, she led a walkout of nurses. The hospital effectively broke the union. My mom ended up teaching nursing at DMACC.
As a child, I was very simpatico with the Ames “counterculture.” Clyde Brown was a role model, and he let me and a couple of friends use the “Brief Candle” office and equipment to put out a one-off underground broadside at my junior high. When the Memorial Union director kicked us out for being punk kids–not college students–Clyde relocated us to the Frisbie (sp?) House.
I wish I had known about the reunion sooner. I know many of the people on the site. For example, Zora Zimmerman was one of my profs at ISU. Bill Diggens was the coolest student teacher at Ames High. And Bill Wickersham was my dad’s colleague.
Keith Wessel was at AHS when I was in junior high, and he, too, was a bad (good) influence. I remember “Dog’s Breath,” which was something of an inspiration for us wannabe radical younguns. Because my dad was a professor of journalism, he (and some other dads) went to bat for us on First Amendment grounds when the principal at Welch Junior High tried to put the screws to us for handing out our subversive little rag. I wish I could find a copy now! I also used to have several SDS pamphlets, since lost, from that era–I got into some trouble for convincing the paperboy to stuff ‘em in with the “Ames Tribune.” I remember poring over the “Berkeley Barb” in the JLMC reading room, getting my troubled little adolescent mind blown with big ideas.
After a long, strange trip, I am settled back in Seattle, my hometown. I can’t say I miss Ames much– “I used to get mad at my school/The teachers that taught me weren’t cool/holding me down/Turning me ’round/Filling me up with their rules”–but y’all were the best thing about it! You inhabit my fondest memories of Ames.
–Eric Nelson
