Open Mic Weekend
It’s Friday and already after 9 AM as I write this. I have some posts in progress, but none are finished so let’s have an Open Mic Weekend and see if anyone is listening.
It’s your turn to comment on any subject you want. Maybe it’s the verdict in the Enron case. What do you think about the Hayden confirmation as CIA Director? Maybe you have special plans for the Memorial Day Weekend.
Whatever. Let us know what’s on your mind.
May 26th, 2006 at 11:41 am
A Promising Presidency Squandered
From the title you might assume I’m just another Bush basher finding some new issue for attacking our president.
Not true. It’s about the president of a country with a northern border about 35 miles south of my home. It’s about Vicente Fox, president of Mexico.
In a way, Fox reminds me of Bill Clinton. He looks like a man who, face to face, would be almost impossible to not like. He’s handsome, has an impressive business background with Coke in Mexico, and was the first candidate for president of Mexico who beat the PRI ruling party in power for some 70 years.
So the poor of Mexico, the vast majority of its citizens, looked forward to a promising effort to ratchet up the economy to create more jobs, eliminate the death squads controlled from Mexico City, and clean up the rampant corruption and crime pervading the entire country.
There may be a perception that tourists, mostly Americans, are the major victims of Mexico’s crime and corruption.
That is not true. Sadly, the victims are Mexicans ranging from the rich to the poor. The rich are kidnapped and held for ransom. The poor are neglected and die in other ways.
Nobody except the elite has escaped this terrible system of national and local governments condoning violence and corruption among its people.
In spite of Fox’s big talk during his campaign, very little has changed and he will leave office with no notable contribution to putting Mexico on a progressive path.
In the Arizona Daily Star May 18, 2004, is a headline: “Fox is called lackluster on human rights.”
The lead of the story says:
“’Nearly six years after President Vicente Fox set in motion ambitious plans to end rampant human rights abuses, he has barely dented chronic problems such as police torture and impunity for once-powerful leaders, rights experts said Wednesday.’”
So said a 150-page assessment by Human Rights Watch.
For his presidential campaign, Fox hired a Texas image firm at a reported cost of $40 million. A few months ago, a little late, he hired the same firm for $40 million to polish up Mexico’s image.
Probably part of that new public relations program is a speaking tour Fox has been on the week of May 21 through the U.S. west.
Fox’s failure in creating a more vibrant economy providing jobs for Mexicans, who in most instances probably would prefer a job at home rather than in the States, has provoked such a crisis that President Bush was compelled to give a rare Oval Office speech on May 15, 2006 on the immigration problem.
The illegal migrants and drug cartel situation has come very close to my home.
Sitting at the top of residential areas on the western edge of Green Valley, my neighborhood in recent weeks has become very active with both migrants and drug runners from Mexico.
On May 12 when I stepped out of my house to get the newspaper at the far end of a long driveway, a police helicopter was hovering very low in a buffer area of state land separating our homes from the copper mines to the west.
The chopper went back and forth for two hours as I later played tennis on the court next to my home. Speculation among the tennis players was that the police were practicing.
As I left the court, neighbors who had been walking in the state land area greeted me with genuine excitement. Somewhere in the area where the chopper hovered, a SWAT team member with an automatic weapon came out from behind a bush to confront them.
Early that morning, they learned, a vehicle with three men had been stopped on Duval Mine Road two or three miles to the north. The men jumped out of the vehicle and headed south into the desert. Weapons were left in the abandoned car and eventually the SWAT team found two of the three who ran.
The migrants often come by our homes on their way to the Interstate one mile to the east. Systems for backpacking marijuana have been found within 100 yards to the west of where I live.
Migrants several times have been so desperate they have come into the yard of my neighbors, who have two dogs in their home. As members of the Good Samaritans, they take exceptional risks to provide food and water to the migrants south of us in the vast desert.
Twice in recent weeks my doorbell has rung around 2 a.m. Living alone, I do not answer. In my front yard are a water hydrant and hose that at least will provide water, the most critical need of someone hiking through the desert. People can do without food for days, but not water in this climate.
President Fox has jeopardized his relationship with his buddy-buddy George Bush over immigration problems, calling the proposed border fence a travesty or words to that effect. What Fox hopes is that no one with mention a similar situation Mexico employs on its own southern border.
So Fox will leave his six-year term office in a few months not visibly having changed anything in Mexico for the better.
This reminds me of an earlier Mexican president, Luis Echeverria, who took office in 1971 and also was going to be Mexico’s savior. Near the end of his term he tried to position himself as a serious candidate for Secretary General of the United Nations.
In July, 2004, Echeverria was charged by the Mexican government with genocide for ordering the 1971 massacre of student protestors, the first former president of Mexico to be indicted.
Looking at Fox’s squandered term, I am reminded of a conversation with a friend years ago talking about a mutual acquaintance.
“He’s a phony,” she said, “but he’s a real phony.”
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present President Vicente Fox.
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June 14th, 2006 at 12:18 am
Almost 50 years ago when I was working at the Jaycee National Headquarters in Tulsa, one of my fellow staff members went off to Rome for the 1960 Olympics and won a gold medal in wrestling.
A few days before the opening of the Summer Games in Sydney, I flew over to Dana Point, CA just south of Laguana Beach and interviewed my friend, Terry McCann, for a story that ran on the front page of the Tulsa World the day the Olympics began.
Wednesday morning, June 7, Terry died at his home of the incurable lung disease caused by asbestos from the time he worked for a Tulsa oil refinery before he joined the Jaycee staff.
Terry was from Chicago and coached the Mayor Daley wrestling team there to five national championships.
A few weeks ago, I was able to get the Chicago City Council and Mayor Rich Daley to pass a resolution honoring Terry and his wife, Lu. He said more than once calls from his friends such as mine every few days was prolonging his life until his son, in Navy intelligence in Kuwait, could get home. The son made it back about a week before Terry went into a coma and died.
This is the story I wrote about Terry, which is included in my latest book, “I Might Just Be Right.”
One Olympic Gold Medal, Many Miracles:
The untold story of how Tulsan Terry McCann outwrestled
an ‘unbeatable’ Russian and his own self-doubts.
By John Martin Meek
DANA POINT, CA (Special to The Tulsa World) — It was the summer of 1960. He was a small young man, dressed in a warm-up suit, standing in the predawn darkness on a bridge over the Tiber River running through Rome. As he leaned over the rail and looked into the dark waters below, he saw in his mirrored reflection a face full of guilt and self-doubt.
Hours earlier, after being defeated in an Olympic wrestling match with an unheralded Finn, Terry McCann had walked away from his wife, the U.S. Olympic team wrestling coach and his teammates. Demoralized by this early defeat in his quest for Olympic gold, McCann had decided he would not return the next day to face Michail Shakhov, a Russian considered unbeatable in the freestyle event. All through the night hours he aimlessly wandered alone (he thought) through the streets of Rome.
The match scheduled for the next day with the wily Russian was just the latest of many obstacles McCann had faced on the road to Rome, all of which he had somehow miraculously overcome.
Working as production manager for the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce national headquarters on Boulder Park in Tulsa, McCann had injured a knee and was awaiting surgery just as the U.S. wrestling trials for the 1960 Olympics were being held.
McCann was heartbroken but helpless. But, a U.S. Olympic Committee under pressure to make a decent showing in 1960 against the awesome Soviet athletes, came to his rescue with the first “miracle.” For the first time in history, the USOC made an exception for McCann and let him move on to tryouts for the American team. They were being held at the University of Oklahoma under its wrestling coach, Port Robertson, who had been named coach for the U.S. Olympic wrestlers.
McCann drove to Norman from Tulsa and beat three opponents. Then, another disaster struck. He was hospitalized and in a coma due to dehydration. When he regained consciousness, Coach Robertson was there to tell him that under Olympic rules he must wrestle Dave Auble, a three-time national champion in the 125.5-pound weight class, the very next day.
The news stunned McCann. He told Robertson he could not possibly compete again without at least three days of rest. Discharged from the hospital and deeply depressed, he drove back to Tulsa.
“It was miserably hot,” says Robertson. “We had no air-conditioning in the dorms and the athletes couldn’t sleep. The wrestling rooms were even worse. And Terry was not the only one who quit and went home.”
Terry’s wife, Lu, had made as many sacrifices as her husband in his quest for Olympic gold. She had worked four years in a factory in Chicago, where they both were reared, to help put him through the University of Iowa. There, McCann had won national championships and been an All-American three of his four years.
But at Iowa McCann’s overwhelming dislike for losing also caused him to quit school three times and go back to Chicago, once after a practice loss to a teammate.
Lu McCann tried to persuade her husband to go back to Norman for the final match, but with no success. As a last desperate effort, she called Ben Swanson, executive vice president of the national Jaycees and McCann’s boss.
Swanson immediately summoned the production manager to his office and, in a typically blunt manner, gave McCann an ultimatum. Either go back to Norman and wrestle Dave Auble or go somewhere else to work.
“I wasn’t afraid of Dave Auble or anyone else,” says McCann. “I was so weak I thought I would lose, and I just couldn’t face it.”
But, McCann got in his car and drove straight to Norman where the second “miracle” happened. Still tired and wrestling in the sweltering rooms under OU’s Owen Stadium in 105-degree heat, McCann defeated Auble and earned his coveted trip to Rome as a member of the U.S. Olympic team.
But in Rome, McCann’s major opponent continued to be his own self-doubts — and with good reason.
“The year before a U.S. wrestling team met the best of the Russian wrestlers for 100 matches both here and in the Soviet Union,” McCann recalls. “In 100 matches, we won seven and had one tie and all the wins and the tie were mine.
“The tie was with Shakhov. But under Olympic rules, I had to pin him to win. The Russians had never, ever been pinned. And with five points against me after losing to the Finn, a loss to Shakhov and another point would have finished me in Rome.”
McCann also attributes his demoralization and the loss to the Finn to a freaky screwup by Olympic officials.
The morning of the match, all events were canceled due to rain. Later in the day, they were rescheduled but no one bothered to wake up McCann before the U.S. team bus left for the wrestling venue. When he awoke, he grabbed his gear and took a taxi to the match. But, not being with the team, security officials would not admit him. When he finally talked his way inside, there was no time for a warm-up.
“Terry had a bit of a temper,” says Robertson. “No athlete ever trained harder and no one hated to lose more than Terry. He was very competitive. But I never knew until today that he did not plan to wrestle Shakhov.”
As McCann stood in deep despair on the bridge near dawn, he felt someone put an arm around his shoulders. It was Doug Blubaugh, another wrestler who had been so concerned over McCann’s walking out on the team that he had followed him in the shadows throughout the night.
In that moment with his teammate he faced the crux of his young life. Despite his deep hatred for losing, he knew in his heart he could not disappoint his wife, Coach Robertson, his teammates and the many friends, neighbors, and others who believed he would bring home the gold.
Together, the two athletes went back to the Olympic village to get some sleep. When the time came later that day for the showdown with Shakhov, McCann was there to walk out onto the mat for the most important match of his career.
“When we got to Rome,” says McCann, “the Russians already knew about my knee operation. They had me targeted as a sure loser.”
But, there was yet another “miracle,” and as it often happens in life fame can be quickly won or lost. Only 18 seconds after the McCann-Shakhov match began, the “unbeatable” Russian had been pinned.
Three other successful matches followed the Shakhov victory. When they were over, it was Terry McCann who stood on the highest level of the presentation stage. While The Star Spangled Banner was played and more than 5,000 people cheered, an official draped an Olympic gold medal around the Tulsan’s neck.
After the Olympics the McCanns flew back to Tulsa, where they lived at 6738 E. 9th St. Swanson and a few friends were at the airport to meet them. The next day he went back to work at the Jaycee national headquarters.
Terry and Lu McCann established a major beachhead in Oklahoma during their 10 years in Tulsa. Five of their children were born there.
A younger brother, Jimmy McCann, came to OU on a wrestling scholarship but left to join the Marines. He was sent to Vietnam and his name is now etched on the black granite wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.
Another brother, Fran, wrestled at Oklahoma State and later was an assistant wrestling coach there on his way to becoming head coach at Notre Dame.
McCann, 66, now serves as executive director of Toastmasters International at its headquarters in Mission Viejo, CA. He will retire next year.
Through the years he rose in the Olympic hierarchy to serve on the board of directors and executive committee of the U.S. Olympic Committee, as head of the U.S. wrestling federation and as a vice president of the international wrestling federation.
The McCanns live comfortably a few miles from the Toastmasters’ headquarters in the oceanfront community of Dana Point.
They fondly remember their days in Tulsa when Terry went off to win one of he few gold medals the U.S. Olympic team, which included Rafer Johnson and Wilma Rudolph, brought back from Rome in 1960. The other two golds won in wrestling were by Blubaugh and Shelby Wilson, former high school teammates at Ponca City.
But Terry McCann still remembers the night he outwrestled a life of self-doubt while standing in the darkness on a bridge over the Tiber River. And that victory, he says, was in the end the final “miracle” in his long journey to earn Olympic gold in Rome.
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