A Wrestling Remembrance

It’s hard to believe that they’re both gone. When they wandered the Penn campus 40 years or so ago, when Smokey Joe’s was in the middle of campus and binge drinking was politically correct, Bruce Jacobsohn C ‘65 and Richie Sofman W’65 made their marks in ways that laid the foundation for the modern era in Penn wrestling. They were bookends, the lightest weight and the heaviest weight wrestlers on some of the worst of legendary coach Don Frey’s teams. But, their marks both were large.

Jacobsohn, or “Big Jake” as he was known, was BIG. He was ugly, too. Even in clothes, let alone in a wrestling singlet, one look at Bruce was more than enough to make someone want to turn and walk away. No one would confuse Jake with anything Grecian which, one day, might be displayed in some museum. But, he was a pretty good wrestler, being stopped in the Eastern Championships, which in those days include powerhouses Penn State, Syracuse and Pitt, by some behemoth named Nance (as in Jim “Bo” Nance), who twice was an NCAA champion and is a member of the New England Patriots Hall of Fame. Jake was good enough to earn a place on the 1965 U.S. Maccabiah Games team and win two gold medals in Israel.

Bruce was much more than a wrestler. He was a bona fide character. His wrestling warm-ups were legendary, including head first runs into the basketball goal posts and growls which could be heard throughout whatever venue was hosting the matches on a given day. He would delight in rubbing his two day chin growth into the back of whatever opponent was unlucky enough to assume the down position. Jake was a master of stalling.

But, Jake was more than just another dumb jock, even though he played football, too. Jake was an intellect and he was not shy about telling you about it. His lecture to the Philomathean Society, which came during the period that honorable group terms its “renaissance” and which Jake claimed was “the best thing that ever happened to those guys,” headlined the Daily Pennsylvanian.

He graduated from Penn’s Law School. Jake loved to tell how he was the toughest litigator ever to enter the courtroom, which he did often during a career in which he worked for the National Labor Relations Board and the Postal Service.

Over the years, Big Jake kept getting bigger and bigger. His passion in life was breeding Bouvier de Flanders dogs.

Sofman, in many ways, was the opposite of Big Jake. Diminutive in size, he entered Penn with no thoughts of wrestling. Instead, he sat in the back of a shell and called instructions to one of Joe Burke’s freshman crews. How he got into a shell and from there to the wrestling room are stories lost in the mists of time. But, under Frey’s tutelage he was good enough to make it to the NCAA national championship meet. He graduated from Penn in 1965 with a degree in accounting. A year later he was the AAU National Wrestling champion at 125.5 pounds. But, his star kept rising: he went on to win two more AAU National Championships; won championships at the Maccabiah Games, the World University Games, and the Pan American Games; and, was named the New Jersey Amateur Athlete of the Year.

Richie and Big Jake were fast friends in college and a bit of Big Jake’s “character” rubbed off on him. For example, after winning the prestigious Wilkes Open wrestling championships numerous times, Rich was denied entry because he refused to shave off his beard. In 1973, prior to departing for Israel where he was to win a Maccabiah Games title, Richie was quoted in the New York Times: “I’ve been disliked and mistreated because of my thinking and habits, but I feel in sports everybody is an individual. No one has to live a puritan life style just to please coaches. A lot of coaches look down at me and they let their views interfere with what’s fair. And it irks me that there are people who use athletics for their own personal hang-up.”

Throughout his life, Sofman never gave into convention. He did things his way, sometimes engaging in activities which others might have characterized as self-destructive. But, through all of his battles with all runners come; they are townsmen of a stiller town.personal demons, Richie tried to give back to the sport which gave him so much success. He coached whenever he could, at Montclair State and the New York Athletic Club.

Now these two, pals who laughed together, wrestled together, won and lost together and probably didn’t see much of each other in the last quarter century of their lives, are gone. They have run the road all runners come and are townsmen of a stiller town.

Happy? Valley

Happy Valley ain’t such a happy place these days. The NCAA has punished Penn State University severely for some pretty horrendous conduct. The situation is likely to get worse for the University, both on the gridiron, as games are lost and “student-athletes” defect, and elsewhere, as additional civil and criminal trials occur. The message is clear – athletics cannot dictate how a University is run.

The Journal, in its July 25 editorial, correctly observed that “…long ago many schools sacrificed their core mission – educating students – for the glory of winning programs and loyal fan bases.” Yet, the NCAA missed a great opportunity to send the same message to all of its member institutions.

Here are four things the NCAA should consider doing in an attempt to reestablish some sort of balance in the “student=athlete” equation.

First, limit coaching salaries. It doesn’t take much brainpower to discern who is more important on a college campus when some coaches receive many multiples in remuneration than the highest academic officials. Members of the athletic department should receive, from all sources (alumni groups, boosters, car dealers, apparel, shoe and equipment companies etc.) no more than the average of, say, the five highest compensated non-athletic officials.

Second, there should be no separate athletic slush funds to which members of the public might make contributions. All gifts to academic institutions should go to the general fund of the institution. Perhaps there should be exception for funds specifically designated for the construction of facilities which might be used by athletes as well as the general campus population.

All revenues generated by the athletic department, including for tickets and the right to buy tickets to events and for special seating and food and drink accommodations, should go to the same general fund, not to the athletic department.

Third, scholarships should be granted on the basis of need, not athletic ability and should, once granted, be renewed annually on the basis of continued good academic standing, not because an athlete continues to play a sport.

Fourth, all revenues from “rights” to NCAA sanctioned events, like the rights to televise the “Big Dance,” should be divided equally amount the member institutions, perhaps with some weighting according to the “division” in which the institution is categorized.

Since the mid 1960’s, when the NCAA first injected itself into the internal academic affairs of its members, and bludgeoned a member from post-season tournament competition when its League refused to comply, it has shown a willingness to regulate far beyond the need to level the competitive playing field. It should do so in a grand way now.

Animal Farm - 2012

“All animals are equal,

but some animals are more equal than others.”

George Orwell, Animal Farm

Orwell got it right. Certainly, with regard to political matters, some animals are more equal than others. I know. Because I am more equal than you. How, you ask. Because I get to vote multiple times in federal elections and you don’t. And, I don’t have to steal anyone’s identity or raise the dead in order to do so. Here’s how.

When I turned 18 in 1972, Congress just had amended the Voting Rights Act to extend the privilege of the ballot to 18 year olds. Not having graduated high school yet, I trotted down to Election Board in my home town of Oceania, where I registered to vote, appropriately using my parents’ address as mine. I was proud and still have the framed certificate my Board gave me, signed by its chairman, Winston Smith. I voted for President later that year and was excited to do so.

A couple of years later, there was a voter registration drive conducted by the Young Somethings on my college campus. I was attending a school in another state and living with my brother Napoleon, who, together with his wife Mollie, were kind enough to let me use their address to register to vote there. The girl who was behind the table at the voter registration site was pretty cute and registering seemed like a good way to get to meet her. She never asked whether I was registered anywhere else.

Two years later, I asked for and received an absentee ballot from the officials where my parents still lived (after all, I was going to be away in November) and I voted in the town where my school was located. I got two votes in that Presidential election; I felt pretty special.

Indeed, I felt so special that, when I moved to Winston-Salem (with that girl from the voter registration drive), I decided to register again. Why not “double down” on my special voting status. This year, I’m going to vote three times. My parents will send me the absentee ballot from Oceania; my brother will send me the one from my college town; and, I’ll show up in person here in Winston-Salem. It’s an important election and, maybe, with three votes in three swing states, I really can make a difference.

Pretty easy, huh? Sure, I violated a couple of laws along the way, but who really cares about the integrity of our voting system? If anyone did, the dead couldn’t vote in Chicago. Does anyone ever get prosecuted for voting twice? Does anyone ever check to see whether a person is registered in more than one place? How could they?

This is the text of a Letter which appeared in the Winston-Salem Journal on April 28, 2012

The state and marriage

I'm not gay; I'm not married; and I'm not Christian. I don't know what Jesus or Moses or Muhammad or Confucius, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zoroaster or others whose religious philosophies guide the spirituality of members of our citizenry thought or said about the institution of marriage. Thus, I may be qualified to speak about the proposed amendment to the N.C. constitution regarding gay marriage.

This divisive issue, like so many others, seems to be one in which winning is more important to each side than reaching an inclusive accommodation. All should stop and ask a basic question: What business is it of the state (as opposed to religious institutions) who gets married? Marriage fundamentally is a religious matter. If one religion, or one church within a faith, prohibits gays or lesbians or others from marrying, so be it. Those who are prohibited in one place may find another place, acceptable to them, in which they may marry.

The state should be, and is, interested in legal matters, such as who may inherit, who is responsible for maintaining whom, who may adopt, who may visit in hospitals, who should get tax deductions or be able to file jointly. I have not heard one persuasive argument that gays should not be able to participate equally in these civil matters, and our state and federal laws should accommodate gays in these regards.

The proposed amendment should be defeated, and the state's relationship to marriage should be severed.

Fiction: Truer than Non-

I like to read fiction. A habit I picked up during my working years when there were lots of periods of forced confinement...in airplanes. Fiction, especially "thrillers," helped pass the time. Two or three books on a trip. Somketimes, the fiction proved to be truer than the non-.

For example, here is a quote from a memo which appeared in a book I read:

"...The ideal outcome [of a successful assassination of Saddam Hussein] would, of course, be for any successor regime...to take the form of a humane and democratic government.
"We believe such a hope to be illusory.
"In the first place, Iraq is not nor ever was a united country. It is barely a generation away from being a patchwork quilt of rival, often warring tribes. It contains in almost equal parts two potentially hostile sects of Islam...plus three Christian minorities. To these...add the Kurdish nation...
"In the second place, there has never been a shred of democratic experience in Iraq...
"In the event, therefore, of the sudden end of the present dictatorship by assassination, there are only two realistic scenarios.
"The first would be an attempt to impose from outside a consensus government embracing all the principal factions along the lines of a broadly based coalition.
"In the view of this group, such a structure would survive in power for an extremely limited period. Traditional and age-old rivalries would need little time literally to pull it apart.
"The Kurds would certainly use the opportunity...to opt for secession and the establishment of their own republic...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"To the southeast, The Shi'a majority around Basra and the Shatt-al-Arab would certainly find good reason to make overtures to Tehran. Iran would be sorely temped to avenge the slaughter of its young people in the ...Iraq-Iran war by entertaining those overtures in the hope of annexing southeastern Iraq in the face of the helpless Baghdad.
"The pro-Western Gulf States and Saudi Arabia would be precipitated into something approaching panic at the thought of an Iran reaching to the very border of Kuwait.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"In the rump of Iraq we would almost certainly see an outbreak of intertribal fighting to settle old scores and establish supremacy over what was left.
"We have all observed with distress the civil war ... in the former Yugoslavia...
"Nonetheless, this group believes that the misery of Yugoslavia will pale into insignificance compared with the scenario now painted for an Iraq in full disintegration..."

How come Frederick Forsyth knew what our political leaders did not when he wrote "The Fist of God' IN 1994? (The memo from which I quoted appeared on pages 429-432 of the paperback I read.)




Here's another passage I love:

"'All Americans like to think they are different,' the man said sourly. "One of the many, many ways in which they are all the same.
"That's a very Hungarian observation," Janson said. [He was at a bar in Hungary.]
* * * * *
"'...You Americans complain about drug traffickers in Asia, and meanwhile you flood the world with the elctronic equivalent. Our children know the names of your rappers and movie stars, and nothing about the heroes of their own people. Maybe they know who Stephen King
is, but they don't know who our King Stephen was -- the founder of our nation!' A petulant head shake: 'It's an invisible conquest with satellites and broadcast transmitters instead of artillery.'"

Think about it. Perhaps, this is what drives those who violently oppose the U.S.. And, does it motivate our own fundamentalists at home. How do they insulate their children from the worst of what is on the net or tv or in music videos. They can't, unless they destroy those who send these materials out for consumption.

The quote was taken from Robert Ludlum's, "The Janson Diretive," which was published in 2002 (page 445)


Here's another thought, taken from Michael Crichton's "State of 'Fear" (p500): "...social control...the equirement of every sovereign state to exert control over the behavior of its citizens, to keep them orderly and reasonably docile. To keep them driving on the rigtht side of the road --or the left, as the case may be. To keep them paying taxes. And of course we know that social control is best managed through fear."

eugenics

Eugenics – “the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding” – has a bad name. Perverted, first and last by “do-gooders” and racists in the United States, including, especially, in North Carolina, and, most atrociously, by the Nazi thugs of the 1930’s and 40’s, eugenics need not be the evil that it has been made to be. Geneticists speak of eugenics as being both “positive” and “negative.” Positive eugenics refers to the attempt to enhance desirable characteristics in offspring by judicious mate selection. We all do this to some degree in choosing those with whom we breed. Attributes like physical characteristics, intelligence, or others all influence our choice. There is nothing wrong in this so as it is voluntary. Negative eugenics refers to the attempt to eliminate undesirable characteristics through judicious mate selection or refraining from mating altogether. Negative eugenics has resulted in the near total elimination of Tay Sachs disease. Carriers of the Tay Sachs gene voluntarily refrained from breeding with other carriers. Thus, eugenics, like all science, is neither good nor bad. But, it was used sinfully, either by bad people who knew exactly what they were doing, or good people whose moral and ethical compass got lost. Today we are faced with the challenge of doing the right thing. Unfortunately, the work of the Governor's Eugenics Compensation Task Force was to "recommend possible methods or forms of compensation" to those forcibly sterilized. Its result, therefore, was preordained. While justice, compassion, and a plain sense of wanting to do what's right would seem to demand compensation, it is not clear that taxes and fees paid today by the populous, most of whom neither were responsible for nor beneficiaries of the Eugenics Program, ought to be used for this purpose, especially if such monies might be redirected from more broadly targeted social welfare initiatives. The Force concludes that compensation serves two purposes: (i) providing meaning assistance to survivors; and, (ii) sending a clear message that "we..pay for our mistakes and...do not tolerate bureaucracies that trample on basic human rights." It is not clear how the $50000 lump sum payment does either. A lump sum used to buy non-essentials in no way compensates. It is a windfall. This should be contrasted with the Force's additional recommendations of medical care and mental health services. More can and should be debated of providing a cash lump sum. Not much consideration has been given to the obligations of those who directly benefited both financially and in other ways from this horrific program. For example, doctors and medical institutions undoubtedly received money and other compensation. Locally, procedures were performed by the County Health Department; but, one private institution acknowledges that its participation constituted a "breach of ethics and moral principle." Available evidence indicates that, in 1943, as "few" as 30 sterilizations were performed locally with genetic work-ups and medical affidavits supplied by the institution and all expense borne by the County. A doctor claimed that he had performed as many as six sterilizations in one week. And, the County supplied funds for an institution to hire a Department head. In return, the doctor performed sterilizations. What is the responsibility of this and other like-situated institutions to cleanse themselves of the stench of what they did? This question challenges members of the legislature, academics and all members of the public. Most of all, it should challenge the Management of those institutions (and the individuals) who participated in ruining the lives. These institutions could, with very little incremental cost,unlimited medical and mental health services to victims. Limited numbers still are alive; other social welfare programs already pay. The incremental financial exposure would represent only a "rounding error." In North Carolina, there is no statute of limitations barring the prosecution of felonies, like the eugenic assaults and batteries. Why has some ambitious prosecutor not considered charges,with the resulting restitution going to victims.