Then... and Now Episode 19

The host, John Schomo, congratulates his friend Mark Horner on becoming the new principal of Talmadge High School. He mentions that Mark encouraged him to start a podcast. John then shares historical facts and events from the week of July 4th, including the Battle of Gettysburg, Idaho becoming the 43rd state, and Tom Cruise's birthday. He also talks about the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on the 4th of July. John mentions other events and birthdays, such as the opening of the U.S. Military Academy, the deaths at a 4th of July parade in Illinois, and the birth of George Steinbrenner. He also discusses the first black player in the American League, the premiere of Seinfeld, and the founding of Amazon.com. John concludes by mentioning John Lennon and Paul McCartney's meeting, the release of the movie Forrest Gump, and birthdays of notable individuals like Nancy Reagan Good day, everybody, out there at Podcast Land, wherever you may be. This is your host, John Schomo, and I have Episode 19 with me here of the podcast Then and Now. Before we take our traditional start around the birthdays and anniversaries here, I do have a congrats, a shout-out here. Congratulations to my longtime history teaching companion and the new principal at Talmadge High School, Mr. Mark Horner. He was very helpful, by the way, in me doing this. He was very encouraging. I told him at one point in time, hey, you know, maybe I'd like to do a podcast. Mark has done a podcast for, I don't know, five or so years called Between Two Blue Devils, which is well worth a listen, by the way. Interviewed a lot of DHS luminaries, got me to do it a couple times. The last time I interviewed with him was my next-to-last day of my career, actually, in my emptying-out classroom there. But congratulations to Mark. He's going to do a great job. That's a great choice, and I'm happy for him. So way to go, Mark. Okay. Let's do it. Let's go to the historical facts, events, birthdays, et cetera, from this holiday week, the week of the 4th of July. We'll start with July 3rd. On July 3rd, 1863, the last of the three days of the Battle of Gettysburg, climaxed with the so-called Pickett's Charge, the ordering of about 15,000 Confederate troops across a mile-long open field into withering fire from the well-positioned Union forces on a ridge. You stand at one end of Pickett's Charge, and you look across that field, and you wonder how any human being could get themselves to do that. In fact, that's what I've wondered the numerous times I've been there. Just it's beyond me, but they did. And it's one of the most famous military moments in American history, obviously. On July 3rd, 1890, Idaho was admitted as our 43rd state. One birthday for July 3rd, Tom Cruise will turn 62. On July 3rd, happy birthday to Tom Cruise. Okay, we move to the 4th of July. Before we get to all of the other events here, I want to shout out my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, delegate to the Second Continental Congress from New Jersey, John Hart, and 55 of his colleagues who braved certain treason charges and execution, perhaps, and signed the Declaration of Independence. When Tammy and I were in Philadelphia a couple of years ago, we enjoyed it, by the way. It's a great walking city. We went to Betsy Ross's house. We went to Ben Franklin's grave. We had a cheesesteak at Reading Terminal Market. We did a lot of things, but the best thing we did was go to Independence Hall, get to go inside, and literally, I stood right behind the desk of one of the delegates in the room where it happened, if you will. Not just the Declaration, but 11 years later, the Constitutional Convention was in that room, which was one of those moments that sends shivers down your spine, really. I thought, wow, I had a direct relative that did this, and thinking of all the other luminaries in the room, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, et cetera, just a tremendous five or ten minutes there, just taking that all in. So thanks to John Hart and those 55 other men for getting us started. Okay. A lot of stuff on Fourth of July. The U.S. Military Academy opened at West Point in New York on July 4th, 1802. That's another good visit, by the way. If you can get a visit to West Point, it's awesome. Here's one of the great ironies of American history. On that date, July 4th, 1826, both the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, and his one-time very close friend, the second president, John Adams, passed away at their homes in Virginia and Massachusetts, respectively. One didn't know that the other had died, obviously, that day. They had been longtime friends, allies, obviously, in the founding of the nation. They had had a falling out over political stances in the late 1700s. And talked to each other or write to each other for a number of years. Then they kind of got back together as friends and had a great correspondence the last 15 or so years of their lives. Died on the same day, which was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which they both did and which Jefferson wrote most of. One of the great coincidences, if you will, of American history. On July 4th, 1960, the new 50-star flag became official, as Hawaii had been admitted to the Union as the 50th state. Nobody probably suspected in 1960 that by 2024 we won't have changed that flag. It's still a 50-star flag. The longest time in our history without adding a state. And we're still in it. Tragic event two years ago in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois. A madman with an automatic weapon killed seven people and wounded 47 others at their 4th of July parade. It's an unspeakable tragedy. Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, the only president to have been born on the 4th of July. Born July 4th, 1872. The founder of the Raiders franchise. The Oakland, Los Angeles, Oakland, Las Vegas Raiders. Al Davis coached them, too. The owner, founder, et cetera. Al Davis, born July 4th, 1929. His son runs the Raiders now. Chuck Tanner, born July 4th, 1929. The Pirates manager most noted for leading the Buccos to the 1979 World Series championship. Chuck Tanner, great guy, positive beyond belief. He's also a trivia answer. He's won a very few major leaguers to hit a grand slam home run in his first major league at bat as a player. George Steinbrenner, the longtime, very controversial, very bombastic, very successful owner of the New York Yankees. The Steinbrenner family still owns the team. George Steinbrenner, born the 4th of July, 1930. He was indeed a Yankee doodle dandy. And Post Malone will be 29 on the 4th of July. Moving to the 5th, Larry Doby became the first black player in the American League when he started playing for the Cleveland Indians. On July 5th, 1947, he went through many of the same degradations and problems that Jackie Robinson faced in the National League. Jackie had started his career on April 15th that same year. So it was only a couple of months later that Larry Doby joined the Indians. The first episode of Seinfeld on NBC premiered July 5th, 1989. Jeff Bezos founded his company, Amazon.com, 30 years ago, July 5th, 1994. Mark Zuckerberg launched the new social media app, Threads, one year ago, July 5th, 2023. Birthdays include Huey Lewis, lead singer of the very successful 1980s group, Huey Lewis and the News. Huey will be 74 on July 5th. Actress Edie Falco will be 61. And the captain of the U.S. World Cup and Olympic Championship women's soccer team, the now-retired Megan Rapinoe, is 39 on July 5th. Happy birthday to her. Okay. July 6th, the musical miracle of my lifetime, it really didn't even happen in my lifetime, it happened before I was born. July 6th, 1957, a young guy by the name of John Lennon, 16 years old, was playing at a church fete, church picnic, if you will, in Liverpool, England. A 14-year-old kid who lived in the town named Paul McCartney walked up to him and introduced himself and asked if he could play along with his group. That's the musical big bang moment, really, of all time. Don't know how that stuff happens, but it happened on July 6th, 1957, and we're all better off that it did. The movie Forrest Gump released 30 years ago on July 6th, 1994. Birthdays are including former First Lady, the late Nancy Reagan, born July 6th, 1921. The 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, will be 78 on July 6th, as will the actor and producer Sylvester Stallone. He'll be 78 on July 6th. 50 Cent will be 49, Kevin Hart will be 45, and Pelicans forward Zion Williamson out of Duke will be 24. Wonder if he'll ever play a full season in the NBA. I have my doubts. All right, July 7th, this one needs some splainin', as they used to say on TV. The Land-Grant Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln July 7th, 1862. What that law did was gave 100 acres of federal lands to each state for the construction and the founding of a state college in that state, a state-sponsored college. The one in Ohio was in Columbus, Ohio, and it's called the Ohio State University. There are others scattered around. Penn State is one of those. Michigan State is one of those. The Land-Grant Act was proposed in the U.S. Senate by a senator named Justin Morrill from Vermont. If you've ever been to Ohio State and been around campus, there are two prominent towers, the tallest structures on campus, just south of, southwest, if you will, of the stadium. One of them is named Lincoln Tower, and one of them is named Morrill Tower, so now you know why. Four people were executed for a conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln on July 7th, 1865. That's just three months or so after the assassination, so they were rounded up, tried, and executed in a hurry. The wheels of justice moved faster in 1865. Satchel Paige, one of the ten greatest baseball players of all time, the legendary pitcher who had to spend most of his career in the Negro Leagues, the stories about him are legendary. He was born on July 7th, 1906, and as a 42-year-old, on his 42nd birthday, July 7th, 1948, he was signed by the Major League's Cleveland Indians and pitched for Cleveland for a couple of years. He was part of the Cleveland World Championship team that year in 1948. Later on, Satchel Paige pitched three innings of scoreless baseball for the Kansas City Athletics in September of 1965 as a 59-year-old, struck out four guys in three scoreless innings at the age of 59. The legends are true about that guy. Author David McCullough, one of my favorite historians to read, now deceased. David McCullough, born July 7th, 1933. His biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams, among many others, are just awesome. Lawrence O'Brien, Lawrence F. O'Brien, you may have heard the name recently. His name is on the NBA World Championship trophy that now resides once again in its home at Boston. Larry O'Brien, Boston guy, born July 7th, 1917. Not only was he NBA commissioner for a while, he was the campaign manager of the 1960 Kennedy for President campaign. He served in President Kennedy's administration. And he was the head of the Democratic National Committee at the time of the Watergate break-in in June of 1972. His name was on the door that the Watergate burglars busted into when they tried to bug and steal things from the Democratic National Headquarters. So that's an interesting life there. Last birthday on July 7th, peace and love. Sir Richard Starkey, will be 84 on July 7th. You'd know him better as Ringo, Ringo Starr, born in the Dingle section of Liverpool on July 7th. What year would that have been? Gosh, 1940. Happy birthday, Ringo. Peace and love. Okay, July 8th. John D. Rockefeller, the industrialist, spent a lot of time and gave kids a lot of dimes in the city of Cleveland, Ohio. John D. Rockefeller, born July 8th, 1839, founder of Standard Oil. Relative of his, the former governor of New York, the one-time vice president of the United States, Nelson Rockefeller, born July 8th, 1908. Kevin Bacon, the actor, will be 66 on July 8th. There's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm not going to go into degrees of separation. And Jack Lambert, the Steelers Hall of Fame linebacker, will be 72 on July 8th. Jack Lambert played his high school football, not too far from here, at Crestwood High School in Portage County, and played for the Kent State Golden Flashes the last time they won the MAC championship, which was 1972. All right, July 9th, wrapping up our look at events for this week. Most important event on the list, on July 9th, 1983, a guy named John Shomo married his sweetheart Tamara Hardgrove, and they've been together ever since. Happy anniversary. The movie Barbie premiered in theaters one year ago, July 9th, 2023. Three very different birthdays for July 9th. To wrap this up, Tom Hanks, first of all, star of, you know, megastar. Tom Hanks is 68 on July 9th. Orenthal James Simpson, born July 9th, 1947, the Pro Football Hall of Famer, whose life and career really took a drastic turn in 1994. O.J. Simpson just died a couple of months ago. Wow, what a complicated legacy there. And an uncomplicated but tragic one, Nile Kinnick, born July 9th, 1918. He was an all-American football player at Iowa, captain of the team, the guy everybody who held up as an idol on campus, not just for his football, for his speaking ability, for the kind of guy he was, he was a gem. He won the Heisman Trophy his senior year in 1939, went into the Navy when World War, when we got involved in World War II, and while training Navy flyers off the coast of South America, his plane crashed into the ocean and he died. What a tragedy that is. The Big Ten for a long time, and they may still be doing it, I'm not sure, every Big Ten conference game, they toss a coin before the game, the heads was the profile of Nile Kinnick. And that was true just a few years ago. I don't know if they're still doing it or not. But that, what a tribute and what a person, what a tragedy that he was lost like that. Okay, there's our events and birthdays for this week. Moving on now to, boy, current events. Okay. Do I have to? Yeah, I guess I have to. All right. Let's tackle the debate first. Last Thursday night, there was a debate between President Biden and former President Donald Trump. Really doesn't seem to have shaken up very much in terms of polling in the race. I'm not big on the polling this year, by the way. I think there's been a lot of evidence that the last three or four years have seen a lot of mistakes in polling. But it seems to have not shaken it up one way or the other. The only thing it shook up seemingly is millions of squeamish Democrats who didn't, you know, President Biden didn't have his best stuff on Thursday night. That's for sure. But, gosh, neither did President Trump, if you take lying into effect. We need real-time fact checkers at these things. CNN didn't deliver that. None of the networks that televised it delivered that. The debate seemingly didn't serve anybody well, either candidate or the TV networks or the voting public. I'm not sure anybody got much out of it. The race appears to be stagnant at this point. One thing I found out today, CNN is just hemorrhaging viewers. It really doesn't have much to do with the debate, but they have, as of last week, less than 80,000 viewers on an average weeknight between the ages of 25 and 54 in primetime television. That is woefully bad. I've sat in a football stadium with more than 80,000 people a few times. My gosh. Anyway, my other take on the debate is if President Biden responds like he did Friday afternoon in Raleigh kind of fighting Joe was back, he'll be fine. He was also good Monday evening in response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity. His response was brief to the point. He did a very good job there. If he can respond like that, he'll be okay. As to the immunity decision, there's an easy fix to that. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that presidents have different levels of immunity for different acts while in office. Official acts, like by the book, official acts like vetoing bills and signing bills, they have absolute immunity for those sorts of things. Their immunity for other presidential acts is kind of murky. What the court did is really sent that back to the district court in Washington for further examination, if you will. And presidents have no immunity for unofficial acts like, you know, they can't hurt somebody or whatever. So, it's kind of a murky decision. It's not a very popular one in a lot of circles. There's an easy fix to it. Why don't we just have an executive order that a convicted felon is ineligible to hold any federal office? That would work. That would be an official duty of a president, right? I think that could work. Okay. Let's move on to Brawny. You may know that the Los Angeles Lakers, LeBron James team, drafted his son, LeBron James Jr., Brawny, with the 55th pick in last week's NBA draft, one of the last picks of the second round. There are only two rounds in the draft now. And the Lakers took LeBron's son. First off, I'm happy that the kid is healthy. He had, you may know, he suffered cardiac arrest in a pickup game late last summer. Very scary, obviously. He responded. He got healthy again. He played some for Southern Cal last year as a freshman. I'm overjoyed that he's healthy again. And I have a lot of admiration for his father and what LeBron has done for the Akron area and for the children of the city of Akron and for the city itself. He's been a gem for our community and deserves a lot of credit for that. That being said, I think the Lakers wasted a pick. I wanted, I was sitting here wanting the Boston Celtics, who drafted right before the Lakers number 54, to take Brawny and ask the Lakers, all right, what do you want for him? I know a guy would have done that without any hesitation. His name was Red Auerbach, the patriarch of the Boston Celtics. Red would have drafted him for sure and said, all right, Lakers, what do you want? I was pining for that. Didn't happen. It's a different league now. People aren't going to do that to each other, but that would have been great. Brawny averaged less than 20 minutes a game last year as a freshman at USC. Scored 4.8 points per game. No way he gets drafted if he's not LeBron's son. That's fine. You know, there's favoritism, if you will, in life. But think of what the Lakers have done here. The Lakers fired their head coach, lost in the first round of the playoffs, had to play in in the play-in games. They hired a coach whose only coaching experience was some fourth-grade travel team many years ago, J.J. Redick, and their second-round draft choice probably wouldn't play for any other NBA team. The Laker franchise right now is a joke and the Boston Celtics are the champions and doggone it, that's the way it should be. I love it. Okay. One more thing just before we move on to the three good questions aspect. Requiem for the Pac-12, the Pacific 12 Conference, ceased to exist at midnight on June 30th. It's no more. That's unbelievable. They were the Conference of Champions. More NCAA national championships were won by Pac-12 schools than any other conference. Bill Walton, the late great Bill Walton, called it the Conference of Champions. It stuck. He played there for UCLA. It's just unbelievable that there's no Pac-12 anymore. There's a Pac-2, Oregon State and Washington State. They still have the rights to the name, etc. Will they try to reconstitute a Pacific You Pick a Number conference in the future? That remains to be seen. But it's just kind of sad to think that there's no more Pac-12. A lot of us grew up watching the Big Ten champ play the Pac-12 champ, Pac-10 champ, whatever it was, in the Rose Bowl on July 1st every year, on January 1st every year, not July 1st. It's sad that it's no more. Okay. Moving forward here with our three good questions. Our three good questions were sent in by Eduardo in Chicago. Thanks, Edo, for the questions. There's some good ones here. If you have a question you'd like to see answered or pondered here on Then and Now, send it to our email address, which is threegoodquestions, three spelled out, T-H-R-E-E, at gmail.com. That's threegoodquestions at gmail.com. Question number one from Edo was this one. What musical artist or band from the 60s or 70s, my time, would thrive and potentially do even better in the 2020s than they did in their era, and why? With the current tour that's going on and actually stopped in Edo's town of Chicago over the weekend for two sold-out shows at Soldier Field, I'm tempted to say the Rolling Stones. They're still thriving. I just can't believe we're talking about Rolling Stones sold-out concerts in 2024. No one would have believed that in 1975, probably. But my answer really, after pondering it a bit, talking it over with Tammy, I think the Jackson 5 would, if you could project them into the 2020s. They were lively. They were innovative. Songs were catchy, well-written. They could sing and dance, which is seemingly a prerequisite for megastardom these days. I think they would really thrive in the 2020s. So that's my answer to that one. Okay. Number two, what was the longest time a territory, a U.S. territory, spent before it either became a state or was let go? Did some research on that. The answer I came up with, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, anybody, was Alaska. Alaska became a U.S. territory with the purchase by Secretary of State Seward in 1867. Alaska became a state in 1959. So it was 92 years becoming a territory and statehood for Alaska. Puerto Rico, near and dear to Edo's heart, still is in limbo. I kind of frown on how it's been treated. Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., I've always said should get statehood, both of them. People who live there are American citizens. They're paying taxes. They can get drafted into the military. Let's grant them full statehood. I've been for that for a long time. But it hasn't happened yet. And unless the Congress changes, it won't happen anytime soon. Okay. So that's my, I think Alaska is the answer to the question. Number three is one of those almost imponderable questions that we as sports fans kind of like every once in a while. Edo knows that my favorite player was Roberto Clemente. And he asked me what I thought Clemente's career arc would have been had he lived past New Year's Eve 1972. Hard to say, really hard to say. He had just played as a 38-year-old. He turned 38 on August 18th of 1972. And Bill Verdon, who was the new Pirate Manager in 1972, gave him a lot of days off, was very, treated him very carefully. Bill Verdon had played outfield with Clemente alongside him in the 1960s. They were center fielder and right fielder for the 1960 World Champions. And he took great care of Clemente. I think Clemente only played about 110 games out of the 154 or so they played. That was a strike year. So they lost the first week of the season to a player strike. But he played great down the stretch. He played great in the playoffs against the Cincinnati Reds. He was still that guy. He still had all five tools. He hit over 300, occasional home run power, hit 240 home runs in his career. I think he had a couple more years left in him if Bill Verdon, which he probably would have done, if Bill Verdon would have played him, you know, sparingly and picked his spots. If they were obviously in a tight pennant race, he'd have played him more. The Pirates had run away with the Eastern Division title in 1972. So he didn't really have to play him a lot in August and September. I think he could have, my guess is he could have played two more years. And I don't know if he would have wanted to go on after 40. I'm not sure about that. But I think he had a couple more left in him. And what a tragedy that was that we didn't get to see that happen. Okay, before we sign off here, we have the answer to last week's question, which was from Jeff Cole. We didn't get any correct responses. So I'll read the question and then read the answer. The question was, in the last 40 years, only four professional golfers, PGA Tour pros, have won six tournaments in a season. How many can you name? Well, here they are. Vijay Singh did it once. Tiger Woods did it six times. Vic Price did it once. And this year, Scotty Scheffler has joined that list. Scotty Scheffler had six wins before the end of June, which is crazy. Tiger was the last guy to do that, and it was back in 2007 or 2008 or something like that. So that's the answer to that question. Thanks for the question, Jeff. That'll do it, I think, for this week, for this holiday week edition of Then and Now. As always, I appreciate you tuning us in and choosing us and listening. I'm getting great feedback from people. A lot of folks say they're listening to it on their commute to work or something like that. And gosh, that's very gratifying. I'm very happy that we're getting to people there. That's super. Keep tuning us in. We'll be back next week for episode number 19 of Then and Now. Oh, this is episode 19. We'll be back for episode 20 of Then and Now next week. You can find us on Spotify very easily. Just put ShowMo Podcast or Then and Now and ShowMo, and you'll get it. So we appreciate it. Thank you very much for choosing us. Have a wonderful week, everybody. We'll talk to you next week. So long.