The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reported in November, 1986, that the USA had been selling weapons to Iran in secret, to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon. The Iran–Contra affair was a political scandal in the USA that centered on arms trafficking to Iran between 1981 and 1986, facilitated by senior officials of the Reagan administration. As Iran was subject to an arms embargo at the time of the scandal, the sale of arms was deemed illegal. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua. Further funding of the Contras by legislative appropriations was prohibited by Congress, but the Reagan administration continued funding them secretively using these non-appropriated funds. The administration’s justification for the arms shipments was that they were part of an attempt to free seven USA hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah. The idea to exchange arms for hostages was proposed by an expatriate Iranian arms dealer. Some within the Reagan administration hoped the sales would influence Iran to get Hezbollah to release the American hostages. The investigation of this affair was impeded when large volumes of documents relating to the affair were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials. In March, 1987, President Reagan finally made a nationally televised address, saying that he was taking full responsibility for the affair, stating that what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated in its implementation into trading arms for hostages. The affair was investigated by Congress and by the three-person, Reagan-appointed Tower Commission. Neither investigation found evidence that President Reagan himself knew of the extent of the multiple programs. Additionally, USA Deputy Attorney General Lawrence Walsh was appointed an independent counsel in December, 1986, to investigate possible criminal actions by officials involved in the scheme. In the end, several dozen administration officials were indicted, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal. The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush, who had been vice president at the time of the affair. In Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981–1987, journalist Bob Woodward chronicled the role of the CIA in facilitating the transfer of funds from the Iran arms sales to the Nicaraguan Contras spearheaded by Oliver North. According to Woodward, then-Director of the CIA, William J. Casey, admitted to him in February, 1987, that he was aware of the diversion of funds to the Contras. Domestically, the affair precipitated a drop in President Reagan’s popularity. His approval ratings suffered the largest single drop for any USA president in history, from 67% to 46% in November, 1986. Do you remember the Iran-Contra scandal?
Joy went to a Marian High School math class in 1986
Meanwhile, Joy, my daughter, was getting ready for eighth grade in 1986. She was going to graduate from St. Lawrence O’Toole grade school in June, 1987. Where would she go to High School? She could go to the local public high school, Rich South, in Richton Park, but Margaret and I decided that she would be better off at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights. However, all the Catholic High Schools in the Chicago Archdiocese all had standardized tests that students had to take before they could enter a Catholic High School. Since Margaret, my wife, taught at St. Lawrence O’Toole, I felt that she had a better understanding of what was going on. She strongly recommended Marian Catholic as a high school. She also knew that they had a special program for eighth grade students from the various local Catholic grade schools in math. They had a special first period class for these eighth graders in algebra. Obviously, students would have to take a test to see if they qualified. I knew that Joy was a good student, but because of her December birthday, she was nearly a year younger than most of her classmates. Anyway, she was chosen as one of the five girls from O’Toole to take this class. The other girls were Katie Fote, Cindi Bianchi, Megan Siegert, and Bridget Neu. They were all good students. They had to get to Marian HS for first class at 8:00 AM and get transportation back to O’Toole for the rest of their classes. Margaret brought Joy on Monday and Tuesday, and then because of my schedule, I brought her over on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning. On Thursday, I picked up all five to get them back to O’Toole for the rest of their classes. It turned out good, because the first freshman class standings after one semester at Marian Catholic HS had Cindi Bianchi first, Joy Finnegan second, and Katie Fotie third. Megan Siegert and Bridget Neu did not go to Marian HS. That is when I knew that I would never have to worry about Joy and school. She was doing fine. She had good abilities, but she also applied herself extremely well. She also turned out well with math, as she became a successful CPA after college. Did you take any special classes when you were in eighth grade?
The movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
In the summer of 1986, the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was released. I really liked this American teen comedy, written, co-produced, and directed by John Hughes (1950-2009). The film stared Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller, a charismatic high school slacker who lived in a north Chicago suburb. He skipped school for a day with his best friend Cameron and his girlfriend Sloane. Hughes wrote the screenplay in less than a week that featured many Chicago landmarks, including the Sears Tower, Wrigley Field, and the Art Institute of Chicago. This movie grossed $70 million, based on a $5 million budget, with generally positive reviews from critics and audiences alike, who praised Broderick’s performance, the film’s humor, and tone. In 2014, this movie was selected for preservation in the USA National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, being deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. This movie was all about high school senior Ferris Bueller, who faked an illness to stay home from school, two months before his graduation, on a spring day in a north Chicago suburb. Ferris hacked into the school’s new computer system and reduced his absence count to two, making it appear that he attended school regularly. Ferris borrowed the prized possession of Cameron’s father, a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder. The three senior high schoolers ate lunch at an upscale restaurant, visited the Art Institute of Chicago, went to a Chicago Cubs baseball game at Wrigley Field, and attended the Von Steuben Day Parade, where Ferris jumped on a float and lip synced “Danke Schoen” by Wayne Newton and “Twist and Shout” by The Beatles. John Hughes intended to focus more on the characters rather than the plot. I loved the Chicago scenes and the stupidity of these young kids. Hughes said, “Chicago is what I am. A lot of Ferris is sort of my love letter to the city. Let the people in Chicago enjoy Ferris Bueller.” John Hughes got the chance to take a more expansive look at the city where he spent his teenage years. He really wanted to capture as much of Chicago as he could, not just the architecture and the landscape, but the spirit. The high school scenes were filmed at Glenbrook North High School, where Hughes went to high school, with the modernist house of Cameron Frye in Highland Park, Illinois. According to Hughes, the scene at the Art Institute of Chicago was his self-indulgent scene, a place of refuge for him, as he was born and spent his childhood in Grose Point, Michigan, before he moved to the north Chicago suburb of Northbrook, when he was thirteen. Ben Stein’s famous monotonous lecture about the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act was not originally in Hughes’s script. However, Stein, by happenstance, was lecturing off-camera to the amusement of the student cast. When he gave the lecture about supply-side economics, he thought they were applauding him. However, they were applauding because they thought he was boring. The parade scene took multiple days of filming. Wrigley Field was featured in two interwoven and consecutive scenes. Several scenes were cut from the final film. Broderick was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in 1987 for Best Actor. Many scholars have discussed the film’s depiction of academia and youth culture. Did you ever see Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?
Going to Dell Rapids, South Dakota, on I-90
We were going to stay in Dell Rapids, SD, with Margaret’s parents and Joy’s grandparents. We drove through the desert like area of western South Dakota, until we hit Mitchell, SD, where we had dinner. Then, we spent Sunday night and Monday night in Dell Rapids. Dell Rapids’ downtown on Main Street was built from 1889-1910, with most of the buildings still standing, built from the quarry granite in town. We visited Margaret’s father who was in the hospital getting a knee replacement on Monday. He had a little bit of trouble waking up. Thus, we spent most of Monday, June 23, 1986, at the hospital. Then early on Tuesday morning, June 24, 1986, we headed back to Matteson, IL, through Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. We made it home on I-80 to end our wild west tour of Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota. We had seen many friends and relatives along the way, visited presidential libraries, national parks, the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, and Mount Rushmore. We had a taste of the great plains and the Rocky Mountains. Have you ever gone west, young man?
Sunday at Wall Drug Store and the Badlands
On Sunday morning, June 22, 1986, we headed east on I-90 towards Dell Rapids, SD. We went to Wall Drug, where we had breakfast in the town of Wall, SD, adjacent to the Badlands National Park. Thus, we stopped there before we hit the Badlands. Unlike a traditional shopping mall, all the stores at Wall Drug operate under a single entity rather than being run individually. The New York Times has described Wall Drug as “a sprawling tourist attraction of international renown that draws some two million annual visitors to a remote town.” In 1981, Wall Drug was featured in Time magazine as one of the largest tourist attractions. This small-town drugstore made its first step towards fame when it was purchased by Ted Hustead in 1931, who died in 1999. He bought Wall Drug, located in a 231-person town in what he referred to as “the middle of nowhere,” and strove to make a living. His wife, Dorothy, thought of advertising free ice water to thirsty travelers heading to the newly opened Mount Rushmore monument 60 miles to the west, right off I-90. From that time on, business was brisk. Wall Drug earns much of its fame from its self-promotion. Billboards advertising the establishment can be seen for hundreds of miles throughout South Dakota and the neighboring states, offering free drinking water. By 1981, Wall Drug was claiming it was giving away 20,000 cups of water per day during the peak tourist season, lasting from Memorial Day to Labor Day, during the hottest days of the summer. Our next stop was in Badlands National Park, about 250,000 acres of sharply eroded buttes and pinnacles, along with the largest undisturbed mixed grass prairie in the United States. I have six postcards from there. Authorized as Badlands National Monument on March 4, 1929 by Calvin Coolidge on his last day in office, it was not established until January 25, 1939, but was redesignated a national park on November 10, 1978. This was part of a comprehensive federal drive to develop western South Dakota for tourism. The colors of the rocks seemed special to me. They appeared like a rust color, brown, bronze, and brownish in odd shapes, not just hills. In 1929, the South Dakota Department of Agriculture published an advertisement to lure settlers to the state. On this map they called the Badlands, “The Wonderlands.” promising marvelous scenic and recreational advantages. As part of the World War II effort, the USA Army Air Force took possession of acres on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home of the Oglala Sioux people, for a gunnery range. Included in this range was 337 acres from the Badlands National Monument. Around a million visitors a year come to Badlands National Park to view its distinctive rock formations, teeming wildlife and wide-open skies. The Badlands is divided into two main regions, the North Unit, which is just south of Interstate 90 near Rapid City, and the South Unit, which is entirely within the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation. Many visitors only experience the park by driving the Badlands Loop Road in the North Unit, like we did. The Badlands National Monument was established to preserve the natural scenery and educational resources within its boundaries. Have you ever been to a bad land?
Mount Rushmore Cave
On Saturday morning, June 21, 1986, we went to Mount Rushmore Cave, the closest cave to Mount Rushmore National Memorial, with a wide variety of natural formations, the ninth longest cave in South Dakota, 3,600 feet. It was discovered in 1876 when a log flume that supplied water to mining operations in town of Hayward broke and spilled onto the side of the hill. The local miners who went to fix the flume noticed this abnormality and became suspicious of where this water was going. After fixing the flume, the men decided to go inside and explore. After about 30 feet, the men came to a large drop off which went down about 15 feet. The miners then noticed that most of the cave was made from limestone. Knowing that limestone did not contain any gold deposits, they abandoned the cave as a mining opportunity, and left it alone. Some of the local townspeople heard news of this discovery, and became very curious as to what they might find inside the cave. This cave was created by a very long process stretching over a 360-million-year period. This cave has a cornucopia of rooms including the Entrance Room, Post Office, Image Room, Big Room, Fairyland, Rope Room, Geode Room, The Rouge Room, Arrowhead Room, and the Floral Room. The cave also includes boxwork and many dripstone formations including stalactites, stalagmites, columns, helictites and flowstone. I have three postcards and a brochure from this cave. Unfortunately, we did not spend much time there. My wallet was either stolen or lost there, since I was wearing shorts. I spent all my time that afternoon calling my credit card companies to put a stop on them. This was before cell phones. Thus, it was a hard process, since I had to find the numbers. I also lost my driver’s license, so that Margaret had to do all the driving. This trip went downhill from here. I was lucky that we were near the end of our trip. Margaret had some money and credit cards also. Now I just wanted to go home. That Saturday night, we went to the 6 PM Mass at Our Lady of the Black Hills Church at 123656 Sturgis Road, in Piedmont, SD, that is still going today. Then we went to Taco Johns for supper. Have you ever had your wallet stolen?
The making of the Mount Rushmore sculpture
This huge carving on the side of a mountain was the idea of Doane Robinson (1856-1946), a historian for the state of South Dakota. Robinson originally wanted the sculpture to feature American West heroes, such as Lewis and Clark, their expedition guide Sacagawea, Oglala Lakota chief Red Cloud, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse. However, Charles Edward Rushmore (1857-1931) was born in New York City, like myself. He was an American businessman and attorney. In 1885, he went to the Black Hills to check the titles to properties for an eastern mining company. He also did some hunting. How Mount Rushmore came to be named after Charles Rushmore is subject to some contradictory stories. However, the United States Board of Geographic Names officially recognized his name in June 1930, five years after Rushmore donated $5,000 towards Gutzon Borglum’s sculpture. Doane Robinson met sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941) in 1924. A year later, Borglum chose the Mount Rushmore land because it faced southeast for maximum sun exposure. He wanted to do this sculpture of the four presidents that he called the Shrine of Democracy. He oversaw this project from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum (1912-1986). Construction began in 1927. The presidents’ faces were completed between 1934 and 1939. After Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941, his son Lincoln took over as leader of the construction project. Each president was originally to be depicted from head to waist, but lack of funding forced construction to end on October 31, 1941. Only Washington’s sculpture includes any detail below chin level. The memorial was dedicated and funded by President Calvin Coolidge on August 10, 1927. Doane Robinson got to see the completion of his dream of a mountain sculpture, before he died. Today, Mount Rushmore attracts more than two million visitors annually. Have you ever been to Mount Rushmore?
Mount Rushmore
That Friday evening of June 20,1986, we finally arrived at Mount Rushmore. It was quite a sight to see, the heads of the four presidents, George Washington (1732-1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), and Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a national memorial centered on a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills near Keystone, South Dakota. They had a lighting ceremony. I liked it even more at night when they had a presentation with the lights shining on the four heads high above, as they sang, “God Bless America” and the National Anthem. You really did feel like you were an American, recalling the heroes of American nineteenth century democracy. Washington was the first President and the leader of the rebellious Continental Army against Great Britain. He was the father of the new country and laid the foundations of American democracy. He represented the birth of the USA. Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States. He also purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 which doubled the size of America, adding all or parts of fifteen present-day states. Jefferson represented the growth of the USA. Lincoln led the country and held it together through the Civil War of 1860-1865, during its greatest trial. Lincoln, as the sixteenth President of the United States, believed his most sacred duty was the preservation of the union, so that he abolished slavery. Teddy Roosevelt was the conservationist reformer of the early twentieth century. He provided leadership when America experienced rapid economic growth as it entered the 20th Century. He was instrumental in negotiating the construction of the Panama Canal, linking the east and the west. He was known as the “trust buster” for his work to end large corporate monopolies and ensure the rights of the common working man. Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth President represented the economic development of the USA. These four presidents represented the most important events in the history of the United States, the nation’s birth, growth, development, and preservation from the perspective of democracy. I have twelve postcards from this experience. What do you think of these four presidents?
The Crazy Horse Statue
On Friday afternoon, we went to Mount Rushmore to see the statue of Crazy House (1840-1877), a Native American leader. The Crazy Horse Memorial is in Custer County, South Dakota, between Custer and Hill City, roughly 17 miles from Mount Rushmore. This mountain memorial depicts the Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, riding a horse, and pointing to his tribal land. Henry Standing Bear (1874-1953), a Lakota elder, commissioned Korczak Ziolkowski (1908-1982) to sculpt this monument, under the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization. I have six postcards from there. The face of Crazy Horse was finally completed in 1998, at 87 feet 6 inches high, taller than the heads of the four USA Presidents at Mount Rushmore, since they are each 60 feet high. Crazy Horse’s most famous action against the USA military was the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 in Montana, but he surrendered to USA troops in May 1877. He ranks among the most notable and iconic of Native American tribal members, honored by the USA Postal Service in 1982. In October 1931, Luther Standing Bear wrote to sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941), who was carving the heads of four American presidents at Mount Rushmore. Luther suggested that it would be most fitting to have the face of Crazy Horse sculpted there, since he was a real patriot of the Sioux tribe and the only one worthy to be placed by the side of Washington and Lincoln. Borglum never replied, so that his brother, Henry began a campaign to have Borglum carve an image of Crazy Horse on Mount Rushmore. In 1939, Henry Standing Bear wrote to the Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who worked on Mount Rushmore under Gutzon Borglum. He informed the sculptor, “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too.” The government responded positively, and the USA Forest Service, responsible for the land, agreed to grant a permit for the use of the land, with a commission to oversee the project. Standing Bear chose not to seek government funds and relied instead upon influential Americans interested in the welfare of the American Indian to privately fund the project. In the spring of 1940, Ziolkowski spent three weeks with Standing Bear at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, discussing land ownership issues and learning about Crazy Horse and the Lakota way of life. It takes a long time to build a sculpture. What do you know about Crazy Horse?
The Black Hills of South Dakota
On Friday, June 20, 1986, we set out from out hotel in Rapid City, the Prime Rate Motel, to tour the Black Hills of South Dakota. The Black Hills National Forest are called black, because of their dark appearance from a distance, since they are covered with evergreen trees. Native Americans have a long history in the Black Hills as it is considered a sacred site for them. The Lakota or Sioux native Americans in the 18th century drove out the other tribes, who moved west. They claimed the land, which they called the Black Mountains or Black Hills. The USA government proposed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 to secure safe passage of settlers on the Oregon Trail, and to end intertribal warfare. This famous Fort Laramie Treaty exempted the Black Hills from all white settlement forever. However, when settlers discovered gold there in 1874, miners swept into the area in a gold rush. The USA government took the Black Hills following the Great Sioux War of 1876. Thus, the Great Sioux Reservation was set up west of the Missouri River that acknowledged the indigenous control of the Black Hills. The Black Hills would be protected “forever” from European-American settlement. Both the Sioux and the Cheyenne also claimed rights to the land, saying that their cultures considered it the sacred center of the world. Unlike most of South Dakota, the Black Hills were settled by European Americans primarily from population centers to the west and south of the region, as miners flocked there from earlier gold boom locations in Colorado and Montana. The major city in the Black Hills is Rapid City, with an incorporated population of roughly 75,000 and a metropolitan population of 145,000. It serves a market area covering much of five states, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana. In addition to tourism and mining, the Black Hills economy includes ranching, and some manufacturing, including Black Hills gold jewelry. In many ways, the Black Hills functions as a very spread-out urban area with a population of 250,000. The Black Hills has two areas, the “Southern Hills” and the “The Northern Hills.” The “Southern Hills” is home to Mount Rushmore, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, Black Elk Peak, Custer State Park, the Crazy Horse Memorial, and The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, the world’s largest mammoth research facility. In the “Northern Hills” there is Spearfish Canyon, historic Deadwood, and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, held each August. The first Rally was held on August 14, 1938, while the 75th Rally in 2015 saw more than one million bikers visit the Black Hills. We stayed in the “Southern Hills” area, but toured the central Black Hills area, the Homestead Gold Mine and Lead, SD in Deadwood. I have five postcards from there. We had a pizza lunch in the wild west town of Deadwood, SD, where Wild Bill Hickok was killed while playing cards. What do you know about the Black Hills?
Gene Finnegan Remembers Living Eighty Wonderful Years 