Jim Dey: Remembering the hometown boy who made good

Mar. 4—It's time once again to dive in to another round of quick takes on the people, places and events that were being talked about over the past week:

RIP 'Vaulting Vicar'

That's what people called Bob Richards, the Olympics Gold Medal winner who was the first in a long line of athletes to appear on a Wheaties box.

Folks around C-U called him something else, the hometown boy who made good.

Richards died Feb. 26 at his home in Waco, Texas, at age 97.

Born in 1926 in Champaign, he became a high school superstar, excelling in baseball, track (he was a star pole vaulter) and football (the team quarterback.) He graduated from Champaign High School in 1943.

That came after he ran with a bad crowd. The New York Times reported that Richards, "the son of a broken home," had "run with a gang of thieves and brawlers" and "five of his friends went to prison for robbery."

Religion and sports changed Richards' life. An ordained minister dubbed the "vaulting vicar" and "pole-vaulting pastor," he earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the UI.

Richards won Olympic gold in pole vaulting in 1952 and 1956, achievements that led to the Wheaties box and a career as, among other things, a motivational speaker and high-profile minister. Richards was, for decades, among the most celebrated athletes in the nation.

So much time has passed since then that his star faded. Nonetheless, he remained available to the news media, speaking to The News-Gazette's Bob Asmussen for a 2014 article.

Richards spoke glowingly of his time in C-U and the UI.

"In 1947, I got a scholarship to Illinois. We had a whole bunch of great people, and we won the NCAA. Illinois has been a great supporter of the Olympics," he said.

He recalled the glory of the Olympics — and athletics generally — is "not in winning, but it's in striving."

Richards said he last pole-vaulted "when I was 65 years old, and I jumped in New Orleans and set a Masters record of 12 feet." He still touted Wheaties because "you add milk and fruits, and it's a great breakfast."

Even in his dotage, Richards said he was "playing golf every day."

"In our backyard, we've got a pole-vaulting barn. The greatest vaulters in Texas right now are coming out of that barn," Richards said.

Flashing again

Professor J. Fred Giertz reports economic consternation in his most recent University of Illinois Flash Index.

Will the economy boom? Is a nasty recession dead ahead? He's examined the latest economic numbers and concluded that "the Illinois and national economies still provide no clear signals of whether a soft landing or modest recession is in store later this year."

He said a third possibility exists — one of "no landing with continued modest (economic) growth."

On the plus side, he said, are low unemployment, slackening inflation, strong consumer spending and the easing of supply bottlenecks.

On the negative side, he said, are rising interest rates, a slowing housing market and "layoffs and retrenchments in the tech sector."

Giertz's February report found that the state's economy is "still growing moderately after the surge of the recovery from the COVID recession."

Giertz makes his index determination through a "weighted average in corporate earnings, consumed spending and personal income."

Loyalty oath out

The diversity/equity/inclusion mandate remains in place at the University of Illinois. But it's been repealed at the University of North Carolina system.

This week, the UNC system board removed the compelled speech requirement because it was advised that requiring salutes to the DEI ideology as a condition of hiring and admissions is at odds with free speech.

The board took action after UNC lawyers pointed out the obvious.

"Requiring a statement from an employee or applicant for academic admission or employment to demonstrate an ideological commitments cuts against the constitutional rights afforded within the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution," said Andrew Tripp, general counsel for UNC system.

Tripp noted that DEI statements "could further function as litmus tests for adherence to prevailing socio-political views on various matters of contemporary political speech.'

Of course they can. That is the whole point behind them.

Colleges and universities across the country, including the UI, have embraced the DEI loyalty tests as a means of ensuring either complete political conformity or silence on controversial issues inside and outside the university.

UNC has been in the news. It not only repealed its DEI mandate but announced plans to establish a "School of Civic Life and Leadership" as a means of reviving "the academic ideal of a campus as a haven for free inquiry and debate."

Some members of the UNC faculty went into spasms of grief and rage when they learned of plans for the new school. One accrediting organization, appalled by the idea of fee thinking and free inquiry on campus, threatened to strip UNC-Chapel Hill, one of the nation's outstanding public universities, of its accreditation.

Can you believe it?

The answer is a definite yes. People will believe anything if they really want to believe it.

Case in point — the scam Illinois legislators pulled on incredibly gullible supporters of the long-defunct Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In 2018, Illinois legislators voted to approve adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment, supposedly putting the amendment one state away from ratification.

When Nevada followed suit, there were hosannas galore from those who bought the Brooklyn Bridge that was being sold.

There was only one problem. The time for passing the ERA expired more than 30 years ago. The ERA was a real issue in the 1970s; it's a political confidence game now.

That point was driven home this week by a federal appeals court decision dismissing a case brought by two Democratic states (yes, one was Illinois) that sought to certify the Equal Rights Amendment as part of the Constitution.

News reports said "the decision deals another blow to advocates' legal efforts to get the amendment ... recognized as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution."

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who's cynically collected plenty of votes by touting his support for the ERA, immediately announced that "we will continue to fight" legal adoption of the amendment.

Translated, that means Raoul will continue to publicize his endless quest for a judge/judges who are dumb enough or intellectually dishonest enough to rule that a proposed amendment that died decades ago is now fit as a fiddle and ready to become part of the constitution.

No one should believe that bilge. But no one should have believed it in 2018, and many, to their future despair, did.

No-shows

Despite the pre-election hype, voters were a massive no-show for the Feb. 28 municipal election in Chicago. While in keeping with past low turnouts, Tuesday's election totals were even worse.

Democratic voters in the Democratic city apparently were not excited about the all-Democrat roster of candidates.

In a display of failing democratic heath, just 32 percent of eligible voters bothered to cast ballots in the high-profile race for mayor Chicago.

Chicago resident Jeffrey Blehar, writing for National Review, noted the deeper decline in voter participation and bragged, tongue firmly in cheek, that "we Chicagoans have discovered the magic secret to complete civic disengagement."

He described the "depressing lack of interest in voting" by Chicagoans as "a veiled sigh of civic resignation, the collective shrug of a city whose voters almost all, for their various (and often wildly opposed) reasons, have become terminally cynical about the 'choices' on offer from a local Democratic Party that runs every aspect of the city from top to bottom."

Despite the disinterest, Blehar argued the April 4 general election between candidates Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson is important because "the future of the city is at stake."

Vallas, a traditional liberal Democrat, and Johnson, a hard-core leftist who's called for "defunding the police" in that crime-ridden city, provide a stark choice.

Or, as Blehard put it, it's a choice between "just 'muddling through' (with Vallas — and I'll take it), and actual wrack and ruin with Brandon Johnson."