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Brenda Allen's Real Life Country Music Drama Took Her from Nebraska to Vietnam to Vegas
Brenda Allen is a good old broad. That's a compliment by the way. She just says it like it is, take it or leave it. She's funny, brash, the life-of-the-party and yet more than a little acquainted with tragedy. Her career as a country singer-guitarist took some unexpected turns, like taking her to Vietnam and Vegas. Her path and the forks in the road she came to along the way make her life story compelling. I tell that story in the following article for the New Horizons.
Brenda Allen
Brenda's Real Life Country Music Drama Took Her from Vietnam to Vegas
©by Leo Adam Biga
Now appearing in the New Horizons
NOTE: This Web version contains bonus material not found in the print version
Brenda Allen is not your typical crooner come open mic nights at the southwest Omaha bar, Lauter Tun. Unlike the amateurs and wannabes who struggle carrying a tune, she's a pro who can style a song to fit her voice and mood or any crowd and occasion. A real cut-up, she invariably does comedy bits as part of her act. Her brazen, earthy manner comes through loud and clear.
"I'm a straight shooter…full of piss and vinegar," she likes to say.
The singer-guitarist, who was born Brenda Allacher, has decades of paying gigs behind her. She's performed at major venues and appeared alongside bone fide legends, including the late Johnny Cash, who became a friend and champion.
Though long ago retired from her music career she simply can't give up taking the stage, putting an audience in the palm of her hand and lapping up the laughs and applause. That's why she often heads to the nearest night spot to present selections from her vast repertoire of country and rockabilly sounds.
A natural comedienne with a bold, often risque sense of humor, Allen is a no-holds-barred personality with plenty of stories to share from her eventful life. She sometimes catches audiences off guard with not only her humorous anecdotes but her unexpected true tales of love and loss, fear and regret, addiction and recovery.
She was in her early 30s when she had to leave the successful band she helped found, The Taylor Sisters, to address her alcoholism. She now has 39 years of sobriety that she maintains one day at a time.
The Taylor Sisters headlined at the famed Golden Nugget in Las Vegas when things came to a head for Allen, who upon getting herself clean and sober began a crusade against substance abuse.
"I left the show in '73 because I was an alcoholic. I needed help," she says. "I was told I had less than three months to live from cirrhosis of the liver. I had a good connection up there (she signals to heaven) because I'm the only one alive out of the original Taylor Sisters. He let me stay around because I talk about (the dangers) of alcohol and drugs. I started going into schools and doling shows like that. Then I went to nightclubs and said, 'All you drunks, if you want to meet me tomorrow morning I'll take you into detox.' I talked about it even in nightclubs."
Her use of alcohol to medicate feelings, she says, got worse after taking part in a three-and-a-half month tour of Vietnam the Taylor Sisters made during the height of the war in 1969. Servicemen called her "Crazy Legs" for the way she'd kick her legs up and fling her shoes into the crowd.
The members of the all-girl band were not really sisters but the things they experienced over there bonded them like blood siblings.
Allen is still haunted by all that happened. She survived a rocket attack that killed a U.A. Army nurse. Once, she got left behind by the convoy she was traveling in and had to catch up to it in the dead of night. After one show she talked her way out of a possible rape. Three U.S. army doctors died in an attack only hours after she met them. One time a mysterious U.S. Army colonel spirited her away, blindfolded, to a secret POW camp manned by a black-op Special Forces unit.
She can't shake the fact mere boys were put in harm's way for so dubious a cause. She fears their lives were lost in a conflict that had more to do with boosting the military industrial complex than defending freedom.
"To sacrifice a generation of young men for prosperity is sick," she says.
She'll never forget being around scared, lonely young men who saw in her and her fellow entertainers their girlfriends, sisters, mothers.
"They were looking at you, longing for you. We let them know America loved them and we were there to entertain them. We sat and drank with them just like we were one of the boys."
Back home, Allen felt compelled to share these experiences with the press but she says nobody showed any interest. Then The Taylor Sisters hit it big at the Golden Nugget and between her busy career and wanting to forget what she saw at war she suppressed the trauma. Her drinking got out of hand. Not long after she left the group the other original Sisters died – one of cancer, the other by suicide, Just like that two of her closest friends were gone. She's never married and has no children.
A man she dearly loved, Hollywood makeup artist Jerry P. Soucie, died in a 1989 motorcycle accident.
Life's thrown more challenges at Allen. She was in a bad auto accident that cost her part of a foot. She was an identity theft victim.
After going on the wagon for good Allen returned to performing, sometimes with bands led by Johnny Ray Gomez and Pat Hamilton.
Increasingly, the entertainer felt a need to educate the public about the overlooked military and civilian roles American women played in Vietnam. She performed for veterans groups. Vets who saw her perform in Nam would call out "Crazy Legs" at her shows and she'd hold mini-reunions with them afterwards. She made a point to tell each vet, "Welcome home, soldier." She advocated for a national memorial dedicated to the women who served. She was on a committee that pressed for the Congressional Medal of Freedom be given veteran USO entertainer Martha Raye.
A native of Lincoln, Neb., Allen grew up in nearby Martell, where her mother was the town switchboard operator. She sang at church and school from childhood. When her older brother went into the service he left his ukulele behind and she learned to play it. She soon switched to guitar. The advent of rock 'n' roll changed her life while a student at Lincoln High.
"That was the beginning of it all – The Memphis Five, Elvis, rock n roll. In 1958 we were rocking and rolling and the black sound was coming in and I loved it. I was the only one that played guitar in my school and the guys invited me to be in a rock 'n' roll band – The August Heat Wave. I was the only girl in the band. All the girls at school were mad at me."
Her parents were not thrilled with her new passion.
"You know all the young girls found their libido after watching Elvis. My parents didn't approve. My mother shut the TV off when Elvis was on. My dad said, 'Why don't you sing at church?' I said, 'They don't applaud."
She enjoyed every opportunity she could find to make music for people.
"I'd sit out on my front porch at night singing and playing and kids from the neighborhood would come. I loved doing that. I'd make money, too. I'd put a tin cup out there and say, 'If you want to hear a song it'll cost you a nickel.'"
The pretty, vivacious, saucy Allen attracted admirers. One was Charles Starkweather, just another neighborhood kid before he went on a killing spree that made him infamous. Allen was close friends with his sister Lavita.
"Charlie was nice looking but he had bright flaming red hair and he was bow legged and he spoke with a lisp, He was slow. Kids made fun of him," recalls Allen. "Lavita loved him dearly. Charlie called up one day and said, 'I'm Lavita's brother.' He'd been listening to me from his car. My father saw that and came out and said, 'I don't know who you are but I don't want you here.' I felt bad."
Charles Starkweather
Her last encounter with Starkweather gave her a chilling insight into what may have contributed to his homicidal rage.
"Lavita invited me to a slumber party and said to bring the guitar. There were about 10 of us girls. Her father came home and said hello and then here came Charlie. He sat down and listened to me playing guitar and asked if I would show him some stuff. I said sure. I gave him the guitar, showed him chords, and his father came in and said, 'What are you doing in here you little shit?' He was drunk. The dad took Charlie and threw him out the back door."
Allen says she later learned that Starkweather didn't returned home and the sister suspected her troubled brother was "with that girl" – meaning Caril Ann Fugate, his accomplice in the killing spree. Allen says she remembers asking Lavita, "What do you think of her?" and Lavita answering, "She's nothing but trouble. He acts different with her." Allen says, "The next few days they found the bodies. It was a very scary thing because Charlie was killing people he knew."
Tragic as it was, Allen would not be distracted from her goal of being a professional musician. Her first major public show happened by accident but whetted her appetite for more big stages.
"I went to the (Nebraska) state fair and Jimmy Wakely (a popular singing cowboy) was appearing in the open auditorium. I snuck backstage and got his autograph. I was sitting back there singing with a band I knew from high school who were backing Wakely. We did "The Bible Tells Me So' – a big Dale Evans song back then. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder and it was Wakely, and he said, 'I want to have you be my special guest."
Before she knew it she found herself being introduced before a crowd of a couple thousand folks. She was 15.
"I didn't have time to be scared. He screwed up on the ending of it and he said, 'Hey, you messed that up,' and I shot back, 'You're the pro.' Later, he took me aside to tell me, 'Take up country music.' Well, I loved Teresa Brewer, Patti Page, people like that. I said, 'What's country music?' and he said, 'Listen to Hank Williams.' And he said there was only one big female name in country then – Kitty Wells."
Jimmy Wakely
Allen followed his advice and transformed herself into a country artist.
She also got a taste of show biz's seamier side.
"He (Wakely) did make a play for me by the way and I downplayed it with, 'Mr. Wakely, you always rode off in the sunset by yourself.' A year later Channel 10 in Lincoln had a Multiple Sclerosis telethon I performed on and Mr. Wakely was there and he said, 'How old are you now?' I said, 'Mr. Wakey, I'm 16, I'm still jail bait, and he kind of laughed and said, 'Here's a dime, call me when you turn 21.'"
Allen began making a name for herself as a solo entertainer and as one half of the duet, The Country Misses. She decided to go to Springfield, Mo. to audition for the Ozark Jubilee made famous by Red Foley on his ABC-broadcast show. It was there that an elephant doing its business brought she and a country icon together.
"I did my audition and they said I could stay and see the rest of the show. This was about 45 minutes before show time. My girlfriend and I were looking at three guys sitting in front of us. They weren't regulars on the show."
One in particular caught Brenda's eye.
"I said, 'God, he's good looking,' and my girlfriend said, 'All three of them are good looking. Yeah, I wonder who that is?' In the meantime the Jubilee's version of a Hee Haw couple, Uncle Cyp and Aunt Sap Brasfield, were rehearsing."
A live elephant was part of the act. The animal did some tricks. Then the elephant decided to pee.
"It sprayed 20 rows out. All the performers were in their costumes already. Everybody got hit. We were soaked," Allen recalls with a hearty laugh. "I dived and my girlfriend dived under the seats and I saw these long legs go running over top and I said, 'Is he done yet?' And this male voice said, 'No, you better stay down there,' and he went on by me. Finally I peeked up and they were putting saw dust all over the place, wiping seats down and I heard that same voice say, 'Well, how high is the water, mama?' I said, 'It's two feet high and rising.' It was Johnny Cash.
"I popped up and said, 'Are you staying across the street?' 'Yeah," he said. 'We're staying there, too, you want me to bring you a shirt?' 'Hell, yes,' he said and he gave me the key to his room and I got him a clean shirt."
The old theater lacked dressing rooms and so anyone drenched had to make do with what they had on or what they'd brought.
Brenda posing
Brenda with Johnny Cash.
An for the Grand Ole Opry featuring the Taylor Sisters.
What Johnny Cash looked like around the time he befriended Brenda
That unlikely meeting was the beginning of an enduring friendship with The Man in Black. At the time Cash was married to his first wife Vivian and the woman he made his second wife, June Carter, was not yet in his life.
"That's what started it," Allen says of her long association with Cash. "We sat and played guitars that night and talked about country music. He was a perfect gentleman. I told him I was looking to join a band and he said, 'Why not get your own band together?' Back in Lincoln I wrote him a letter and I got a letter back. We had exchanged pictures. I gave him a picture of myself with my Fender Telecaster and I got his first song book. He wrote, 'Love & kisses.' Trust me, he wouldn't have written that after June (Carter).
"Without me even knowing it he sent my picture to Fender. That's the kind of guy he was. Fender offered me a contract to model."
She never signed the contract. Instead, she worked hard on her music and at 18 landed her next big break when she met Marty Martin, who gained fame as Boxcar Willie.
"I was his first girl singer. Because of my age I couldn't be in nightclubs. He and his wife looked after me. We toured the Midwest in a big car. I learned a lot from Marty. He was a honey. He was a very, very good teacher for me. But I got bored because they wanted me to be the prim Miss So-and-So. I'm not geared that way. I'm a ham."
Boxcar Willie
Fate intervened again when she got a call from an agent saying Cash was coming to Lincoln and needed an opening act. She promptly pitched The Marty Martin Show Featuring Brenda Allen. It was the early 1960s. They got the gig.
"We opened in Lincoln for him at Pershing Auditorium and in Omaha at the Civic Auditorium. I played the Omaha Music Hall with a lot country acts."
"Wonderful," is how she describes sharing the stage with Cash. She says he flattered her by saying, 'You've got a damn good voice.'" She says Cash and his lead guitar player Luther Perkins "sat me down and said, 'Brenda, stick with country music, you're going to make it.'" She did, too.
She says it was sometime in the early '60s that June Carter "started entering the picture and I started noticing things about John from when I first him." Cash battled drug addictions at various points in his life.
When Allen turned 21 she began playing Lincoln lounges-clubs, When not performing she modeled and worked the switchboard at Hovland-Swanson clothing store. She says s strict policy forbid employees from moonlighting. One night, she says, the owner showed up where she was performing. His guest was newly hired University of Nebraska football coach, Bob Devaney. She says the owner fired her on the spot, saying, "You sing better than you sound on the switchboard." She adds that the married Devaney took an immediate liking to her and pursued her through the years.
Now that she was on her own, she focused on perfecting her comedy and country act that was equal parts innocent and naughty.
"For instance, I'd start up and say, 'OK, fellas, hang on because I'm going to take you for a ride. Hey, hey good looking, what you got cooking…' And then I'd still be playing guitar and I'd say, 'Move that chair,' and I'd sit down on their laps and say, 'Oh my goodness. I think he's got a flashlight in his pocket.' "
With suggestive lyrics like, "I've been to Nagasaki, Hiroshima too, the things I did to them, sugar, I can do to you, I'm a Fujiyama Mama…" she made quite an impression.
How far she went depended on the crowd.
"Then I'd start doing my version of Johnny Cash."
Allen had an established solo career going when she met fellow musician Joann Paugh backstage at a show. Paugh wanted to start an all-girl band. Allen resisted. "But she kept bugging me and bugging me," recalls Allen, The dye was cast after Paugh introduced her to Helen Taylor, a formidable guitarist herself. "We drew straws to see who would play bass and rhythm guitar," says Allen. Helen got bass and Brenda rhythm.
Things moved fast for the group. They began performing as the Taylor Sisters before Helen's husband took over as manager and changed the name to Helen Taylor and the Taylor Sisters. "It pissed me off," says Allen.
The band played with Cash a few times, even opening a 1964 Wichita, Kansas show with June Carter, Minnie Pearl, the Statler Brothers and Lefty Frizzell.
"I'd say we were in damn good company."
Then the call came that changed their lives.
The Taylor Sisters had toured with Sheb Wooley and the entertainer called Brenda to say, "They need you in Vietnam,' to which she responded, "What's Vietnam?" He thought the Taylor Sisters would go over well with the boys. She says the decision to go was easy "once we heard what was going on over there and how bad it was."
Instead of going with the USO (United Service Organizations), the group went independently though the Johnny Robinson talent agency, who hooked them up with an agency in Saigon, who signed them over to the Korean Entertainment Corporation.
Brenda and Co. arrived in Saigon the first week in April. The humidity, heat and stench are what first struck her.
Until they returned home in July they were kept busy.
"We did three-four shows in a day within a 150-mile radius every four or five days," says Allen.
They traveled by jeep, truck, boat and helicopter. A military escort was assigned but she says those they were often drunk or stoned by the end of the show. Drinking and drugging were prevalent wherever they went. Brenda imbibed a lot herself.
The women were given strict orders to not venture out at night alone but that didn't always prevent them from going off on their own, especially with an enlisted man they liked. "We always made sure the others knew where we were," Allen says. Not every GI could be trusted, she discovered.
"One night we were tear gassed. We came off the stage and we were separated
The guy who grabbed me ended taking me out to a hangar and I said, 'What are we doing here?' 'This is where you're going to meet the rest of the group," he said. 'No it isn't, I'm supposed to go to the major's tent.' The guy said, 'We can wait a little bit.' 'No we can't.' Then he admitted, 'I'm so lonesome.' 'That's too bad,' I said, 'then you need to get a break. If you have the idea of what I think you're thinking and you rape me here now the girls are going to miss me and the Army's going to find you and throw the book at you, and I don't want to see that happen. Look, I came here to get paid a little bit of money. I didn't have to be here to make you feel better. Americans do care about you. And you want to rape me?' He started to cry.
"I said, 'I'm sorry but you've got problems, you need to go to your commanding officer. He took me to hs CO. I explained what happened and the major said, 'You're going to lose a stripe over this soldier.' I was a little bit more careful from then on."
Her suspicions were aroused another time but her instincts told her she'd be safe and she was. The experience sounds like something out of a movie.
"After an outdoor show in Da Nang a snap-to colonel wearing a green beret came up to me and said, 'I want to ask you a question.' 'What's that?' 'I am in charge of one of our POW camps and we have a North Vietmanese soldier starving himself. He doesn't want to talk, he's afraid we're going to poison him. We want to get some information out of him. Would you be willing to help?' I said, 'I don't know, where is it?' 'You can't see where it is. but it's about an hour's drive from here. We're Special Forces. Please do it.'"
Whether out of curiosity or patriotism, she says, "I agreed to go. I told the girls if I'm not back by six o'clock this is who I went with and I want you to report it. He loaded me up with my guitar in a jeep. We drove for awhile and then he said, 'I have to blindfold you.' 'I'll have a drink of scotch first,' I said. He never laid a hand on me." At the camp she found herself in an officers club, where the colonel barked, '"Attention. This young lady was going to help us with our North Vietmanese prisoner but he's already been put down for the night. She has her guitar here and she's going to entertain you." She recalls, "The place went bonkers. They grabbed me and sat me on the bar. I cracked jokes and sang to them for about 45 minutes."
When it was time for her to leave, she says the soldiers "separated into two lines and saluted her. At the end of the line was the colonel and as he walked her out he removed his green beret and placed it on her head. "He took me back and I never heard a word from him since," she says. She tried tracking him down but her inquiries with the Army always got the same response: we don't have anybody by that name. She assumes he was part of some black op, covert unit. She still has his green beret and sometimes dons it for pictures and performances. She also has a vest pinned with medals and decorations given to her by military personnel.
Brenda wearing the green beret and insignia
In Chu Lai Nebraska National Guard troops had just come back from the bush, she says, when the CO, "Big Daddy" Richardson, asked her, "Brenda, can you and the girls do one more show for the guys from Nebraska?" "Are you kidding?" she replied. Once on stage inside a quonset hut, she recalls, "I said, 'Hit it girls,' and we did 'There is no place like Nebraska.' The roof went off – the place exploded."
She says that Chu Lai, a central coastal area manned by the Americal Division,"was one of our favorite places because we had privacy taking a shower. I remember 'Big Daddy' Richardson saying, 'I'm going to work your butts off, but when you come back at night your favorite food and drink will be sitting in front of you.' And it was, too. Lobster and blackberry brandy and Cutty Sark scotch. We'd do five and six shows a day for that man. The men, they just wouldn't let us quit and we weren't about to leave those boys. The guys were just absolutely beautiful. They called me 'Crazy Legs'…I'd do wild dancing and kick my legs up. They just went bonkers. We'd come back exhausted."
An incident in Chu Lai scarred her forever.
"One night, we'd come back from a show and a few of us were in the officers club drinking when there was a loud CLAP and the building just shook. " It was the start of a prolonged mortar attack. A GI grabbed her and threw her down under the bar. "Aren't we supposed to go to a bunker?" she asked, "Too late now," she was told. "We took 16 rounds over a period of four or five hours. We just laid there on the floor and got drunk. I was so scared. Around daylight a young man came running in, shouting, 'They got a nurse at the 312 Surg-Evac,' which was like a block away."
The victim, 1st Lt. army nurse Sharon Ann Lane of Canton, Ohio, was the first Army nurse to die under hostile fire in Southeast Asia and one of 68 American women in all — military and civilian — to die in the conflict. "She was decapitated by shrapnel," says Allen. The incident shook the singer to her core. "She was 26 and I was 21. What really gets me is – why her and not me? – because she was saving lives. I held her mother in my arms at the dedication of the statue in 1993."
The Taylor Sisters pushed off to their next stop. The war ground on as usual.
"We just forgot about it, we had to put it behind us…The next day it was a whole new ballgame, a whole new area to perform in."
It was a sober reminder of what men in combat faced. She couldn't fathom "seeing their best friends blown apart" and having to keep on fighting. "Holy crap, I still have post traumatic stress. I can't stand the Fourth of July."
She says she learned Western performers had a price on their heads. The bigger the star, the higher the bounty. Bob Hope was the biggest target of all though he reduced his exposure to danger by being flown to safety every night.
Another brutal reminder of war's vagaries came when Brenda and Helen got their picture taken with three U.S. Army docs on the deck of a boat headed for Cua Viet, a base in the demilitarized zone near North and South Vietnam border.
"It was sand and tents and water. It was R & R for the troops."
The Taylor Sisters did a show on a small stage with a sheet as a backdrop. The all-male audience sat on a sandy beach on the South China Sea.
"Cua Viet was getting hit almost every night. That's why they got us back down the river right away. We did an afternoon show, they loaded us up, and away we went."
After the band left the base came under attack that night and suffered major casualties. She was informed the men she got her picture taken with were among those killed.
"They died the day we played for them."
The Taylor Sisters landed the Golden Nugget slot soon after returning from Nam.
"We had a damn good thing – an all-girl country western show band. We had the comedy, all the girls sang, we all played different instruments. We made history as the only headline act at the Golden Nugget without a recording."
Years of loss and love, making people happy and getting healthy again followed. Then she found the cause that was so close to her heart. Getting the Vietnam Women's Memorial approved by Congress and erected on the Washington Mall took years of persistence. "We fought and we fought," Allen says of the sisterhood that took up the fight. The bronze statue by sculptor Glenna Goodacre depicts women in fatigues caring for a wounded soldier.
The Vietnam Women's Memorial
Brenda was there for the statue's dedication. She was there for the 10th anniversary in 2003 and she's due to be there again for the 20th anniversary in November. She always says a few words and sings a few lyrics at the memorial.
She became a big supporter of the Shirley Lauro play, A Piece of My Heart, that dramatizes the true-life stories of American women in Nam. When the Blue Barn Theater in Omaha produced the play the woman who led the effort for the Vietnam Women's Memorial, Diane Carlson Evans, attended opening night and ended up inviting the production to be performed in D.C. for the 10-year anniversary.
Brenda's Vietnam story has been told in newspaper articles, the book Potpourri of War and in a Nebraska Educational Television documentary Not on the Front Line.
For a time she drowned her feelings about what happened in Vietnam in booze. But once she confronted those bittersweet memories the healing began. Of that intense time over there, she says, "I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything."
Related articles
- Vietnam veteran keeps solemn vow to his lost brother in arms (stripes.com)
- A lifelong passion for fiddle, country music (mysanantonio.com)
- Making a Country Music Bucket List (countrymusic.answers.com)
Remembering Omaha Old Market Original, Fruit and Vegetable Peddler Joe Vitale
The Old Market. Make that Omaha's Old Market. Sure, it's a place, in this case a historic warehouse district that's been gentrified into an arts-cultural hub and destination stop for locals and tourists alike. But like any place worth it's salt, it's the people that make it. One of the real holdover characters there from when the Old Market was still a wholesale produce center was Joe Vitale. As the area transformed from industrial to retail consumer mecca he stayed on with his fruit and vegetable stand , still doing his thing amidst head shops, galleries, restaurants, bars, and live music spots. When Joe passed away a couple years ago a little piece of the Old Market passed with him. The following story for Omaha Magazine is a kind of homage to Joe and the slice of Old World commerce he kept alive.
Remembering Omaha Old Market Original, Fruit and Vegetable Peddler Joe Vitale
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally appeared in Omaha Magazine
The late Joe Vitale was the last of the old-time produce vendors plying his trade in the Old Market. Long after the Omaha City Market closed, Joe stayed on.
The World War II combat veteran made a good living back in the day, first working for his parents Angelo and Lucia, and then with his business partner, Sam Monaco. By the time the Old Market took off, Vitale was set for life and well past retirement age, but he hung on there, wintering in Las Vegas.
Why keep at it, even into his 80s?
"He did it because of the love of doing business, being self employed, selling to new customers and former customers who wanted to buy something from the historic Old Market," says George Eisenberg, a former wholesaler who did business with Joe.
"He was not only a throwback but he was the only one of the original market vendors that lasted that long."
"I guess he enjoyed being down there with the people and doing his work," says Tootsie Bonofede, who grew up with Joe. "You know, when you enjoy something you don't want to give it up."
Joe stayed through the area's transformation from a wholesale-retail produce center to its rebirth as a cultural district. Manning the corner of 11th and Howard, he and his stand were fixtures before the modern Omaha Farmers Market started up.
Vitale, who died March 29 at age 92, was a popular figure among tourists, business owners and residents, who viewed him as a vital, living remnant of what used to be.
"He brightened up that corner," says Mary Thompson, whose mother, Lucile Schaaf, was an Old Market entrepreneur and favorite of Joe's. "He was a super guy. He was an energetic, happy person, and he always had a good word to everybody. He had been there for so many years, you could say he was almost the last of the originals."
More than a merchant dealing in fruits and vegetables, Vitale was an engaging presence. "He had a lot of personality," says Bonofede.
Douglas Country Commissioner and former Omaha mayor Mike Boyle, a longtime Old Market resident, recalls helping Joe out with an insurance claim once and being repaid with a basket of plums.
"That was about the lowest fee I've ever collected," says Boyle. "Joe was really one of life's great characters. He had a wonderful sense of humor and added a lot of color to that corner."
Samuel Troia recalls he and his brothers going to Joe for business advice, not expecting much, but getting more than they bargained for.
"It was a great meeting and he helped us out tremendously, and with nothing to gain, other than to help these young kids, because we were in our 20s. He sat us down and said, 'OK, this is who to talk to, and I'll make a phone call for you.' He told us about delivering what you promise. Joe talked to us just like he was our father."
From that time on, says Troia, "every time he saw me he'd holler, 'Troia,' and my wife and I would walk over and buy fruit, and he'd wash it for us. It was so nice and refreshing to see him. It was just like having a family member down there in the Old Market."
Joe treated everyone like a family member or friend.
"He was one of the most down to earth guys you'd ever want to meet," says Troia.
"Everybody knew him and everybody loved him," says Bonofede. "They can't say anything bad about Joe. He was so kind to everybody."
Related articles
- George Eisenberg's Love for Omaha's Old Market Never Grows Old (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
One Helluva Broad: Mary Galligan Cornett
I never met the late Mary Galligan Cornett during her long, legendary tenure as Omaha City Clerk, only when she'd been retired some years, but her reputation as a cantankerous, bigger-than-life personality preceded her and I was not disappointed when I finally did catch up with her. Sheds lost none of her bite or her blunt, blue-streak manner of speaking. She's gone now but she's definitely one of my most unforgettable characters. My profile of her appeared in the New Horizons in 2002.
One Helluva Broad: Mary Galligan Cornett
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally appeared in the New Horizons
For more than half-a-century, Mary Galligan Cornett gave as good as she got with the boys at City Hall.
In her colorful 53-year civil service career she saw hundreds of elected officials come and go. In a 1961 to 1997 reign as Omaha City Clerk she served 13 mayors (counting acting and interim chiefs) and dozens of council members. She saw Omaha transition from the commission form of government to the city charter home rule system to the present structure featuring district council elections. She was a stabilizing presence as Omaha endured scandals, bitter fights over equal rights and public works and abrupt changes in leadership. She helped Omaha retain its Triple AAA credit rating by selling bonds in New York's financial district.
Along the way, she earned a reputation as a tough woman valued for the knowledge and history she brought to city business and as one not to be trifled with in the political wrangling game. This blunt, unadorned woman, who says of the wrinkles in her face — "I've earned every one" — is one helluva broad.
Unafraid to speak her mind and uncowed by the rough-and-tumble maneuvers of smoke-filled, back-room deliberating, Cornett was a trailblazer in the male fraternity called politics. For years, she was among only a handful of women city clerks in major U.S. metropolises. So, how did she survive under so many different regimes and surrounded by so many powerful men of often clashing politics and personalities? "Very simple, I became one of the good old boys. I made friends with their wives, their secretaries and their mistresses, and I got along just fine," she said from her terraced antique and bric-a-brac-filled home on the busy Northwest Radial Highway. As former City Councilman Subby Anzaldo said, "Having Mary in a group of men was not uncomfortable. If a cross word flew out of someone's mouth it wasn't a situation where you had to worry about it. Mary understood and she could throw a few out herself if she had to. She was one of a kind. They don't make 'em like that anymore."
At her home, family photographs are prominently displayed in the living room, where the pet dog and cat roam freely. Most pictures are of Cornett's only child, Irene A. Cornett (Stranglin), now a 10-year veteran with the Omaha police force and the new mother of twin girls. Cornett raised Irene alone after the death of her husband, surety executive Bob Cornett, in 1976. Slowed by a broken hip suffered last March, she has a nurse tech, Raissa Franklin, help at home. About her patient, Franklin said jokingly, "She's ornery. She's worse than the agitator in the washing machine." Ever the politician, the chain-smoking Cornett recently had pictures of herself taken sans cigarettes. After the photo session Cornett called out, "Raissa, honey, could you hand me a pack of cigarettes now that the photographer is gone?"
As far as being a woman in a man's world, Cornett had only to look at the domineering women in her own life for role models.
Both of her grandmothers worked outside the home in addition to raising families. Her maternal grandma came from sturdy ranch stock and went on to become a music teacher in towns across Nebraska. Her paternal matriarch was a railroad brakeman as well as a seamstress. Her mother was a political operative and helped run the family produce business.
"I grew up with the idea a woman could be anything she wanted to be," said Cornett. That's why when she started working at City Hall as a building clerk in 1945 she chafed at the resistance she met from the all-male contractors who had to go through her to obtain permits. "Well, the men contractors had a hard time with that because they didn't think a woman could look at a set of blueprints and figure out anything. It was a whole new thing for them. They had a hard time accepting it and I had a hard time accepting their chauvinism. My attitude was, 'The hell with it. I'm here. I'm the one that issues the permits. Show me your (expletive) blueprints. Take me or leave me.' I think I've always felt that way."
Armed with her sharp tongue, astute mind and vast experience, she had the ear of mayors and council members. According to her successor, current City Clerk Buster Brown, whom she trained, "If she had something to say, people listened. Yes, she influenced decisions behind-the-scenes. She was an institution. She knew the ins-and-outs." Rather than challenge her "strong personality," he said, officials would "back away." Former City Councilman Robert Cunningham said, "She handled things with authority. She was respected." In her capacity as clerk and confidante, Cornett was the keeper of city records and secrets. She recalls how attorney Eddie Shaston, an associate of former Mayor A.V. Sorensen, "always said 'I was the woman that knew and never talked.'"
Retired since 1997, Cornett is not telling tales out-of-school now, at least not on the record. If she did tell her story, the 77-year-old said she'd borrow the title from the Frank Sinatra anthem, "I Did It My Way." The only trouble with that, she asked rhetorically, is "which of my lives would I be talking about? My private life? My political life? My life as a bondswoman?" To which Pat Wright, a friend and former assistant who popped over during a recent interview quipped, "Where does one stop and the other end? Sometimes you don't even know," which prompted Cornett to reply, "I know that." Wright added, "Cornetts real. She tells it like it is."
No doubt, Cornett thrived in the political arena because public service was, in a sense, a birthright by virtue of her family's longtime involvement in the field. Her Irish-Scottish immigrant family's political legacy extends back to the town's wild-and-whooly beginnings to a pair of paternal grand uncles: former fire chief Jack J. Galligan and former police chief Michael Dempsey. Then there was her mother, Fairrie Irene Cameron Galligan, a wheel in the state and Midwest Democratic central committees. Mary often accompanied her to conventions, even meeting future president Harry S. Truman in Kansas City when he was still a ward leader for the Tom Pendergast machine. There was also a familial tie to the politically active Warners of Nebraska. "Everyone in my family, on both sides, was in politics," Cornett said. "That's been my whole life."
Public service has been a passionate thing for the Cornett clan. "It was and it still is with me" she said. "My family at one time were all immigrants and this was the country that welcomed them. They felt they owed it something because of the freedom and the education and the employment they found here. And for all of that, there's gotta be some payback. And, so, I think the whole family felt a personal responsibility to be part of government and to devote a lot of their lives to it. I devoted my entire life to it." Politics also suited Cornett's gregariousness. She said her capacity for getting along with people and putting aside personal differences for the public good is "an ability you have to have" to succeed in politics. Her skill at mixing with people from all walks of life and her hunger for being right in the thick of the action is why it all came naturally to her.
"I guess I'm a people person. I guess that's why I picked this as my retirement house," she said, referring to her residence. "It's right on the street. Life goes on. There isn't a time the rescue squad isn't going that-a-way or a fire truck isn't going this-a-way or a police car isn't going another way. I can lay in bed and tell from the traffic what time it is."
Cornett likes the neighborhood and its mix of young families and retirees. "I lived for many years in a big home at 61st and Decatur and I hated it. Everybody went to bed at like 8:30 or 9, and being a night owl, I'd be up till 1 or 2 in the morning. Also, I cannot imagine living in one of these retirement places where everybody's old, where there's no children, where there's no dogs or cats. Why would you want to shut yourself off from the world? You've got to have some life going on around you," she said above the din of rushing traffic and barking dogs outside.
For her, city government was where the action was. How apt then that this lifelong devotee of Italian grand opera found herself immersed in the drama and machinations of big city politics, with all its brokering, backstabbing and symbolic bloodletting. Because politics truly is in her blood, she still keeps close tabs on City Hall. Asked if leaders still come to her for counsel, she answered, "Let's put it this way, I get a lot of telephone calls. I still have an excellent grapevine together. Remember, it's been 53 years or so building it. I can tell you what's going on in every (expletive) department down there. I keep track of things."
After years directing the clerk's office, which besides keeping records supports the functions and enforces the rules of the City Council, she has a rather proprietary feeling about that august body. The last council she worked with had a contentious relationship with former Mayor Hal Daub, whom she felt was not well served by some members, which makes her glad the present council, with its five new faces, is working so well with Mayor Mike Fahey. "I'm very proud of the new council. I think they're doing a very good job. This council and the mayor are communicating. I think that's a necessary part of good government. You can disagree, but you need to communicate at least your disagreements."
In Cornett's view the previous council "made life miserable for Mayor Daub," adding: "I always felt very sorry for Daub. Did he make mistakes? Yes. Could he have maybe communicated with two or three of them better? Yes. But there were four of 'em on that council that no matter what he would have done they would never have moved off what they wanted. And it wasn't a matter of what was best for the city or what was good for the taxpayer. It was a matter of their own personal egos and their desire to stay in power. Well, you know what happened to most of 'em? They were beaten out in the last election."
In past administrations Cornett became a liaison or conduit between mayors and councils locked in stalemates. "When some mayors were not talking to certain council members they used me as a go-between," she said. "They about wore my voice out, too." She also frequently sat in on cabinet meetings.
One of Cornett's closest cronies in city government was the late Herb Fitle, the longtime city attorney with whom she enjoyed a salty relationship that sometimes found them feuding. As years passed, Cornett and Fitle, along with officials George Ireland and S.P. Benson, became the wise old sages in city government. Cornett and Fitle were "the staunchest supporters and absolute protectors" of the city charter that came into effect in the late-1950s.
"We had a long, long tenure together," she said. "If we stood together, all hell and high heaven could not have moved us — I don't care if it was mayors, councils, outside influences, whatever. But our disagreements also were legend. He'd write his opinions and although I wasn't an attorney I sometimes wouldn't agree with his opinion and I wasn't very amiss to tell him so.
"Once, we disagreed over some political or legal issue and we stopped talking to each other. I'd send my assistants up to his office for answers and he'd send his attorneys down to my office for answers. Well, the help got tired of that and came to me and said, 'Look, you guys have got to stop this. We can't take it anymore.' I said, 'OK, fine.' It was near Christmas and we used to have this event called The Christmas Sing where we all gathered in the council chambers with an orchestra to sing carols, and so I asked someone to get peace doves. While this program was going on I said to Herb, 'I think we should make up,' and I let the birds go. They were scared as hell and flew all over the place. Well, it turned out they were pigeons and, you know, they pooped on everybody and everything…the musicians, the councilmen, the chairs, the desks. I think it took the night help two or three hours to clean up."
Despite the mess, her goodwill gesture was accepted and The Great Cornett-Fitle feud ceased.
In her watchdog role with the council Cornett provided oversight to ensure proceedings followed protocol. She served as sergeant of arms, called roll, recorded results and supplied information requested by councilmen on resolutions, ordinances, liquor licenses, etc.. The job also involved training new council members in how municipal government operates. Not everyone comes prepared to govern. "You get newly elected officials that never saw a charter before," she said. Former councilman Subby Anzaldo said her influence was felt. "She had input. We came to her for answers. She told it like it was. She was like the eighth council member."
She provided continuity when, in 1981, the move from at-large to district elections brought seven new council members and a new mayor into office and then, in the late 1980s-early 1990s, when Omaha went through six mayors due to recall, death, defeat, election, resignation. At times like those, City Clerk Buster Brown said, "She was very vital to making sure city government ran smoothly." The way she sees it, she helped by "just being there."
Then there's the delicate matter of sorting out potential conflicts of interest. As Cornett explained, "Everybody comes to government bringing their own baggage in terms of outside influences. There may be something in the charter that can favor an official in getting a contract" or a business advantage. "Will officials try to use their influence? Of course they will. In my downstairs office at home I have reams of settled rulings on certain sections of the charter where somebody tried to do something they couldn't (legally) do."
At the countless council meetings she oversaw, she heard everything from dissident voices to impassioned pleas to whimpers to cheers. Among those she had removed from the premises was a deputy sheriff who arrived with a warrant during a council session. When she informed the deputy it was not permissible to serve a sitting body but that he would instead have to wait until the meeting ended, he persisted, whereupon she called security, ordering police to "remove this man," which they did, much to the deputy's chagrin. Cornett said she was so upset that someone was "obstructing or interrupting MY council meeting" she never even "bothered to find out" who or what the warrant specified.
Another time, during the racially tense 1960s, Cornett recalls how marching civil rights demonstrators descending upon City Hall sent most officials scurrying for cover. Typical of Cornett, she stood her ground. As it turned out, the group included a large contingent of church-based elders whose intent was conciliatory. "With all the public officials having taken to the hills, I was the only one left, so the marchers came to my office. I called the switchboard and told them I didn't want any calls and I told my staff to give these elderly ladies the cushions off their chairs to kneel on. That's how I came to have a pray-in in my office."
For the most part, however, Cornett plied her political savvy not in public view but behind-the-scenes. Of the many mayors she worked with, she said, "Almost every one of 'em really cared about this city. I loved every one of 'em, whether I fought with 'em or not and whether they disliked me or not. Different mayors at different times had difficult personalities. I wouldn't say who were my favorites, but I would say who taught me the most — A.V. Sorensen (1965-69). He made it a point to teach me…government, finances, investments, organization, management. He expected everything to be organized. He hated a messy desk."
She said Sorensen was a model of efficiency who demanded subordinates follow suit. "If you couldn't give him an answer in 5 minutes…forget it." She recalls how when she and former City Council President Art Bradley questioned why he gave "both of us directives" to hunt up the same data, his honor replied — "'Because you come back with different answers, and half way between the two of them is the truth.' That was A.V."
Sorensen restored faith in Omaha's elected leadership in the wake of corruption at City Hall. His predecessor, the dashing young Jim Dworak (1961-65) was indicted but later acquitted on bribery and conspiracy charges involving rigged real estate zoning laws. Other city officials were convicted. While Cornett is convinced Dworak did not accept any bribes, she believes he was a victim of his own fast-living ways. "Wine, women and song were his problems. He just had too much too soon."
Where Dworak was a free-wheeling playboy, Sorensen was a circumspect elder statesman. Tough facade aside, Cornett maintained a soft spot for old A.V. "I felt so close to him. He was one of the few people who hurt my feelings. He had been out of office a few months when he came to visit me. My office, for some reason, was all cluttered up. He didn't say Hello or How are you? — no, he said, 'I thought I taught you better than that,' and walked out. Well, I sat there and cried."
Another mayor whom Cornett says "taught me a great deal" was brash Hal Daub (1993-2001). She feels his greatest strength — a facile mind — often proved his undoing when combined with his impatience. "Hal is an extremely brilliant man," she said. "He has almost a complete retentive memory for facts and figures. But he thinks so fast that he's always jumping the gun on people." The two respected each other enough that mere weeks after retiring from the clerk' s office she accepted his request to assume an eight-month job researching issues related to city-county government merger, a subject she calls "near and dear to my heart."
Over the years Cornett said she rejected notions of running for public office and spurned opportunities to enter the private sector. Life as an elected official held no interest, she said, because she "didn't want to play the game" and disliked the idea of being beholden to "outside influences." Besides, she added, elected officials don't have the real control — civil service administrators do. The prospect of leaving City Hall altogether was equally unimaginable.
"I was offered two or three very good jobs paying twice what I made in city government, but I decided, no, that's where I belonged." It's why she looked forward going to work every day and thought nothing of putting in overtime even though her post didn't qualify her for extra pay.
"This sounds kind of corny, but I always felt the Lord put me in the right spot at the right time in my life," she said. "Every day there were new problems. Every day there was something else. You never knew when you got there in the morning what was going to transpire. And, so, if you wanted an interesting life you couldn't have had a better job. I loved every minute and I kept going as long as I could."
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Going to Extremes: Professional Cyclist Todd Herriott
George Herriott, a writer friend of mine who was once a client, pitched me the idea of doing a story on his pro bike racing son, Todd Herriott, and the following profile is the result. I like when stories come out of left field like this because it's unlikely I would have ever come to telling Todd's story otherwise. Todd has since retired from the pro circuit to own and operate his own cyclist training and fitness gym, but he was full in it when I interviewed and profiled him. The story of how he came to the sport, then left it, only to take it up again at a rather advanced age, whereupon he enjoyed his greatest success, is a compelling one.
Going to Extremes: Professional Cyclist Todd Herriott
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally published in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
"I have an all or nothing personality."
The telling self-assessment belongs to Omaha native Todd Herriott, a pro bicycle racer who made a dramatic return to the sport three years ago after a long hiatus to sate his insatiable curiosity. An uptown New York City resident with the cocksure attitude of a Big Apple denizen, Herriott competed as a premier amateur racer from the late 1980s until 1995, when his sense of wanderlust got the better of him and he opted out, at only 26, to try other things.
Changing gears is nothing new for Herriott, a 1987 Elkhorn Mount Michael graduate. About the same time he got into bike racing as an Omaha teen, he latched onto a dream of being a professional dancer, even studying the art form at Emerson College in Boston, where he supported himself as a bike messenger, before his "hyper-competitive" drive made racing his focus again. When he left the sport, he worked, in quick succession, as a Hollywood film production assistant, a Boston bike messenger again and a Manhattan personal fitness guru. Wherever adventure called, this searcher went, once driving cross-country on a motorcycle because "it sounded like a really bad idea, so it must be good." Reinventing himself is a habit.
Even when racing "back in the day," his eclectic interests kept him from ever giving himself fully over to the single-minded dedication and discipline demanded by cycling. It's why he didn't graduate then past the elite amateur level. "I wasn't ready to be a professional bike racer when I quit the sport," says Herriott, who radiates the high-energy vibe and rebel cool of the extreme athlete. "There were too many other things I wanted to try and, it's like, there weren't enough minutes in the day. Unless you're really committed to doing the sport, you can't make it. It's too much. It's too hard. It takes too much time and too much energy."
Infatuated with an actress-model during this transitional period of his life, he acted impulsively and married the woman, he says. "for all the wrong reasons." After sampling the west coast's "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" scene, his obsession with salvaging his failed marriage sent him on a downward spiral back east, where he bummed lodging from friends between infrequent paying gigs. "The problem is, you take all the problems you had on one coast to the other coast," he says. "I'm one of those people who sort of lives for drama. If I don't have drama in my life, it's very hard for me to get motivated, so I'm very good at creating drama for myself. Life would have been a little easier if I had done some things a little bit differently."
Salvation for Herriott finally came in the form of a light, sleek, carbon-fiber racing bike, something he swore off ever riding again.
"I was in a down period of my life and I needed something to distract me and I thought, Well, cycling has always been a good diversion. It's challenging, it's difficult, it's fast, it's free-flowing, it's a little dangerous," says the hard-bodied Herriott, who since reentering the sport in a Central Park club race a few years ago has found his love for competitive cycling intact. "I'm still very much in awe of the sport. I still get excited to get up and go ride. I get real giddy about it. It's almost embarrassing to talk about. It's very much the way it was when I was 17 in that respect. I'm still overwhelmed by the guys I race against..,I'm like, Wow, they're really good. Am, I that good?"
He made his amateur racing comeback at 32, an age when most top-flight athletes are slowing up or breaking down, by promptly winning two of the sport's biggest international events, the 2002 Univest Grand Prix in Souderton, Pa. and the 2003 Tour of Cuba. Despite competing as an amateur for only part of the season, he was named the best amateur male road racer for North America in 2003 by Velo-News Magazine, the top cycling magazine in the world. Things clicked just right. He was in top form. In the zone. In sync.
"You don't have those days very often, but, boy, it sure is nice when you feel it. You're like Superman. I felt like that in Cuba. I felt that way in the Univest Grand Prix. I didn't think anybody could beat me. At the end of the race, with like two laps to go on the circuit, I just rode away. I didn't attack, I didn't make some big move…nothing. I just put my head down and thought, 'I'm out of here.' I looked over my shoulder and saw 'em hesitate and I said, 'I just won the race.' You just know. That was a really extraordinary feeling. It's like the heavens opened up and someone shot a beam of light down and said, You are on! I think those moments are few and far between and I think that's what everybody's trying to capture."
In a sport traditionally dominated by Europeans, Herriott became the first American to win the Univest and the Tour of Cuba. Along the way, he dispelled any doubts about the wisdom or the ability of a thirtysomething trying to keep pace, much less outdistance, competitors nearly half his age.
"I knew people would have problems with it," he says, referring to his "old man" status. "I got a lot of, 'Oh, you're pretty old to be doing that.' My mother was definitely not excited about me riding my bike. She was like, 'You're going to do it again? Nothing happened last time. You're not driving a flashy sports car and you don't own a home. There must be something wrong with you.' But there just comes a time when you have to decide what you're going to do and do it, whether or not anybody agrees with you."
Herriott never second-guessed himself. "That's the thing. I didn't have any doubts," he says. "That's probably why I was able to pull it off. It probably would have been more of an issue if I sat down and really thought about it."
He was recovering from an illness contracted in Chile, where he'd traveled for a big event, when he accepted an offer to join the elite pro team, Health Net, with whom he rode the second half of the 2003 U.S. Pro Road Race season. As a Team Health Net member, he rode with one of his idol's and one of the sport's icons, Gord Fraser, whom he trained with at the living legend's Tucson, Arizona home.
Now with Team Colavilta Bolla, Herriott sees this as his moment to shine. That he's defied time by not only recapturing but improving upon his performances as a youth, Herriott's validated his own passion for cycling and his decision to rededicate his life to it. All the while he was out of the sport, living that fast, freaky lifestyle, he says his long-suppressed desire to ride "ate at me." When he finally heeded the hunger, he felt the timing was right.
"The way I thought of it was, it's such a brutal sport, that by taking years off from riding at the intense level it's made me years fresher than I would have been. Early 30s is when you really hit it hard. Your body's really matured. You really know what you're doing. So, I have no question my best rides are ahead of me. My training gets better every year. I pay more attention to detail. I continue to get stronger and lighter at the same time. Strength to weight ratio is a big thing in cycling. So, I'm smarter and stronger and more motivated than ever. I really believe I'm going to uncork something pretty big," he says.
He wouldn't be where he is today if he weren't so passionate about cycling. "It's just too hard of a sport to do to not really enjoy it at that level," he says. Being good helps make it fun. Defining good from mediocre is a mix of endurance, discipline, strategy, gamesmanship and technique. It all starts with conditioning. Herriott, who still trains clients in fitness programs of his own design, follows a rigorous workout regimen. "I'm something of a psycho when it comes to training. Training is fun for me. I'm training all the time. I love it." In what can be "a selfish sport," he's often off alone doing his thing. An understanding girlfriend helps.
He works on different things on different days, sometimes emphasizing aerobic-cardiovascular training and other times resistance-strength exercises. For example, Tuesdays, one of his resistance days, finds him tackling a wide-ranging cross-training schedule that is equal parts pleasure and pain and an expression of both his attention to business and his personal cycling mantra.
"I'll get up at 6. I'll train a client at 7. Make a little money. Then, I'll do like a two-hour ride, usually indoors, where I can monitor the intensity more easily. I'll be doing base intensity, but on the higher end of my aerobic capacity. I'll ride a special crank set that forces me to use one leg at a time. You have to coordinate the strokes, which forces you to use your hip flexors and your hamstrings. I do that indoors so I don't have any distractions.
"Then, I'll take the train downtown. I'll change my gear around. I'll run in the gym. I'll do 30-40 minutes on a climbing machine or some weird different exercises I've created on the gym floor. Medicine balls, stair climbers, jumping rope, hitting the heavy bag. Then, I'll teach a spinning class for an hour. Then, I'll go back out on the gym floor for 30-40 minutes. I'll run back to the apartment and do another 90 minutes or two hours on the bike. Usually, I have another client or two late in the afternoon. I'll come home and eat. I have five floors to walk-up to my apartment to drop off my bike every night. It's that last, little extra push at the end of my workout. After dinner I take a hot soak before stretching.
"So, some of those days can be working out for four or five hours."
Other days, riding takes precedence. "Wednesdays, I do a long ride, anywhere from five to six hours. Sometimes, I do a double session…riding indoors, working form on the pedal stroke." Gearing up in the winter for the spring-summer racing season, he progressively ratchets up his outdoor mileage until he's riding 30 to 35 hours a week. During a December swing through his hometown to visit family, he noted, "I've already started doing six-and-a-half hour rides in 40-degree weather. You have to do it. It's all about preparation."
In preparaing for the rigors of the season, when he travels from event to event, competing in races ranging over a few days to a few weeks and covering anywhere from 100 to 155 miles over widely varying terrain, altitudes and weather conditions, Herriott goes to extremes. In December, he put in a grueling 30-hour week up and down the 11-mile El Diablo Climb outside San Francisco. As he often does, he wore a power meter that gave "a real time wattage output of how much power" he generated, one of many measures he uses in gauging his finely calibrated fitness. Besides giving him a steep vertical challenge to hone his climbing skills on, the El Diablo offers a chance to work on the equally vital art of descent.
"Descending is a serious technique. Going down a mountain and taking turns at mach 10, if you don't practice that…CRASH."
An edge. Every competitor seeks one. It can be a steely attitude or a superior bike or a high pain tolerance. Some resort to performance enhancing drugs. Herriott, who says he doesn't "take anything funny," feels his advantage resides in something basic. "Yeah, I'm always looking for an edge and I think my big edge this year is stretching a lot more. I hate stretching. It's painful. But I still sit down and do it for 45 minutes to an hour a day because I know it's going to help my recovery." He's also careful to rest and eat right. Seemingly little things separate winning from losing. Aside from physical aspects, a competition turns on wills and tactics. "Yeah, there's a lot of races within the race," he says, referring to the jostling and sizing-up that go on. It's all about knowing your and your opponents' capabilities and, when opportunity arises, seizing the moment. "When it's on, it's on," he adds.
"If you're being lazy sitting on the back during a breakaway move, people are going to think you're useless. Well, that's great because that's what you want 'em to think. It doesn't matter how strong or hard you ride in the first 105 miles of a 110-mile road race. What matters is that last kilometer or last 500 meters," he explains. "Will you be able to respond to the attacks that will certainly come? If you're not a sprinter and you know there's three sprinters in this group of 10 guys…you've got to jump off now and play your card. If you don't play your card, you'll never know. If you wait for the sprint, and you're not a sprinter, you're going to lose."
From aching muscles to burning lungs, a cyclist's physical threshold gets tested. "When you're hurting, it's safe to assume everybody's hurting," he says. "Some people can suffer more than other people. Period. That can be the difference." The real race begins once the field's trimmed. "The race is now a different race altogether," he explains. "Your odds have already greatly improved. Your chances of crashing have decreased. So, you have to take some inventory. 'Who's fresh? Who's not.? Over here's a guy who won two weeks ago. He's got good form. I don't know this other guy in from Argentina. He's supposed to be a good sprinter, but he looks like he's suffering. Is he gonna be worth a crap after a couple of attacks?'"
In service of his team's star racer, he often plays the rabbit by strategically drawing out the competition to "get my guy to the finish line. If I hear in my radio ear piece a teammate is coming up, I might attack off the front like a lunatic, and get a couple guys to come with me. And maybe when I take off, I am the strongest guy, and I'm gone. For any major race there's probably 10 guys who could possibly win. And I'll have days where I might be one of those 10 guys."
Whatever comes of his cycling career, Herriott feels it's steeled him for the future. "If I can do this, there isn't anything I can't do," he says. For now, he's "full on" for this cycling season, having completed his first Redlands Classic in Redlands, Calif. and earlier this year and now gearing up for the Wachovia USPRO Championship on June 6 in Philadelphia. The Phillie event is the longest running and richest single day cycling race in the U.S. A 35-year old champion?
"Who knows? Stranger things have happened in my life."
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From the Archives: Hadley Heavin Sees No Incongruity in Being a Rodeo Cowboy, Classical Guitartist, Educator and Vietnam Combat Vet
When I saw Hadely Heavin perform classical guitar at the Joslyn Art Museum in the late 1980s I knew I had to write about him one day, and in 1990 I sought him out as one of my first freelance profile subjects. I've culled that resuling story from my archives for you to read below. What I didn't know when I interviewed him that first time is what a remarkable story he has. I mean, how many world-class classical guitarists are there that also compete in rodeo? How many are combat war veterans? What are the chances that an inexperienced American player (Heavin) would be selected by a Spanish master (Segundo Pastor) to become the maestro's only student in Spain? I always knew I wanted to revisit Heavin's story and nearly two decades later I did. That more recent and expansive portrait of Heavin can also be found on this blog, entitled, "Hadley Heavin's Idiosyncratic Journey as a Real Rootin-Tootin, Classical Guitar Playing Cowboy." When I wrote the original article posted here Heavin's mentor, Segundo Pastor, was still alive. Pastor has since passed away but his influence will never leave the protege. Heavin was still doing some rodeoing as of three or four years ago, when I did the follow-up story, but even if he has completely given up the sport he'll always do something with horses because his love for horses is just that deep in him. The same as music is. I hope you enjoy these pieces on this consumate artist and athlete.
Hadley Heavin
From the Archives: UNO Instructor Hadley Heavin Sees No Incongruity in Being a Rodeo Cowboy, Concert Classical Guitartist, Music Educator and Vietnam Combat Vet
©by Leo Adam Biga
Orignally published in the Omaha Metro Update
Hadley Heavin defies pigeonholing, The 41-year-old Omaha resident is an internationally renowned classical guitarist, but to ranchers in rural Nebraska he's better known as a good rodeo hand. The University of Nebraska at Omaha instructor's life has been full of such seeming incongruities from the very start.
Back in his native Kansas Heavin is as likely to be remembered for being a precocious child musician as an expert bareback bronc rider, star high school athlete and Vietnam War veteran. Today, despite lofty success as a touring performer, Heavin is perhaps proudest of being a husband and new father. He and his wife, Melanie, became first-time parents last year when their girl, Kaitlin, was born.
Music, though, has been the one unifying force in his life. His earliest memories of the Ozarks are filled with gospel harmonies and jazz, ragtime and country rhythms. Home for the Heavin clan was Baxter Springs, Kan., five miles froom the Oklahoma and Missouri borders.
"Basically I grew up with music and I've been playing it since I was 5. My father was a jazz guitarist and always had bands," said Heavin. adding that his late father played a spell with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.
Heavin hit the road with his old man at age 7, playing drums, trumpet and occasional guitar at dances and socials.
"I was a little freak because I could play really well. I loved it, but it got to be a chore. I remember about midnight I'd start falling asleep. My dad would start to feel the time dragging and see me nodding, then he'd flick me ont he head with his fingertip and wake me up, and I'd speed up again.
"Most of my fellow students at school didn't know I was doing this. I didn't think I was doing anything special because everyone in my family were musicians. I grew up in that environment thinking everybody was like this. I couldn't believe it when a kid couldn't sing or carry a tune or do something with music."
When Heavin was all of 11 he started playing rock 'n' roll, an experience, he said, that left him burned out on music, especially rock.
"I'm glad I got burned out on that when I did because I've still got students in their 20s trying to study classical guitar and wanting to play rock 'n' roll. They want to have fun," he said disparagingly. "They just don't realize rock is not an art form in the same sense. Classical guitar requires a lot of work and soul searching."
Heavin doesn't mince words when it comes to music. Since he studied in Spain with maestro Segundo Pastor, he performs and teaches the traditional romantic repertorie that originated there. He feels the music is a deep. direct reflection of the Spanish people, with whom he feels a kinship.
"Spanish people are much warmer than Americans. We're not brought up with the passion those people are brought up with. That's why I prefer listening to European artists."
He said classical guitar "demands" a passionate, expressive quality he finds lacking in most American guitarists with the exception of Christopher Parkening.
"Who a student studies with makes a big difference. I don't think I ever would have played the way I do if I had never studied with Segundo."
Heavin feels Pastor selected him as a student because he saw a hungry young musician with a burning passion.
"He wouldn't have been interested if he didn't see things in my playing that were like his. Frankly, he doesn't like very many American guitarists. He thinks they're very shallow performers."
Segundo Pastor
The acolyte largely agrees, suggesting that part of the problem is most American musicians don't face as many obstacles or endure as many sacrifices for their art as foreign musicians.
"My students are spoiled. How are they going to suffer for their art?" he asked rhetorically.
He said that when he turned to the classical guitar in the early '70s, after seeing combat duty in Vietnam and having his father pass away, he knew what hard times were. "I suffered because by then my father was gone and my mother couldn't support me. Somehow I played guitar and kept myself fed, but I didn't have a penny, really, until I was 32. But I loved the guitar and I didn't worry about those things. People are kind of unwilling to do that anymore."
He dismissed the new guitarists who denigrate the traditional repertoire in favor of avant garde literature as mere technicians.
"I hate to say this but about all the concerts I've been to with the new guitarists have been very boring, driving audiences away from the guitar. It's a real shame. They're championing these avant garde works, which is fine, but they can't play the Spanish and romantic repertoire at all. They just can't phrase it. It's not in them. They sound like they're playing a typewriter.
"There's a lot of great guitarists now, and they're excellent technically, but there's still only a handful of great musicians."
He hopes artists like Parkening and Pastor help audiences "discern the guitarists from the musicians."
It may surprise those who've seen Heavin perform with aplomb at Joslyn Art Museum's Bagels and Bach series or some other concert venue that he as at ease on a horse as he is on a stage, as facile at roping a steer as he is at phrasing a chord, or as penetrating a critic of a rodeo hand's technique as of a classical guitarist's. But a look at his thick, powerful hands, deep chest and broad shoulders confrms this is rugged man. And he does work out to stay in trim, including working with horses.
"As a matter of fact this is the first year I haven't rodeoed in many years," he said. "The only reason I'm not this summer is that I'm in the middle of doing an album and my producer's worried about my losing a finger. I team rope now because I'm too old to ride rough stock. If I do get out of roping to protect my hands I'm probably going to have to do cutting or something just to stay on a horse. It's just that horses are in my blood. But it's tough with this kind of career because it takes so much time."
Heavin has competed on the professional rodeo circuit all over Nebraska. "It's funny," he said. "I draw good crowds at my concerts in western Nebraska because I know all the ranchers and rodeo people, and they're curious to see this classical guitarist who rodeos, too. I was playing a concert in Kearney and there were some roping friends in the audience. After I was done I went up and said to them, 'These other people think I'm a guitarist, so don't be telling them I'm a cowboy.' But it was too late. They already had. I try not to advertise it too much."
Heavin took to the rodeo as a boy to escape the music world he'd run dry on. "I started riding bulls and bareback broncs. I wanted to be a world champ bronc rider," he said.. He rodeoed through high school and for a time in college. He also participated in football, wrestling and track as a prep athlete, winning honors and an athletic scholarship to Kansas University along the way.
"I think my dad put pressure on me to be an athlete to some degree because he wanted me to be well-rounded."
At KU Heavin played on the same freshman football team as future NFL great John Riggins, a free-spirit known for his rebel ways. "I've never seen a guy that trouble came to so quickly. We used to go to bars and there was always a fight and John usually started it. He had more John Wayne in him than John Wayne."
Another classmate and friend who became famous was Don Johnson, the actor. Heavin hasn't seen the Miami Vice star in years but stays in touch with his folks in Kansas.
It was the late '60s and Heavin, like so many young people then, was torn in different directions. "I decided I really didn't wamt to be in school but I had the draft hanging over my head. I took a chance anyway and dropped out…and I was drafted within two months."
The U.S. Army made him an artillary fire officer and shipped him off to Vietnam before he knew what hit him. He shuttled from one LZ to another, wherever it was hot. "I was what they called a bastard. I was with the 1st Field Force. I was in the jungle the whole time. I saw base camp twice during a year in-country," he said.
Heavin was shot in action and after recovering from his wounds sent back out to the war. Luckily, his tour of duty ended without further injury and he finished his Army hitch back home at Fort Riley, Kansas. While stationed there he began missing working with horses and on a whim one day entered the bareback at a nearby rodeo.
"I drew a pretty rank horse, plus I hadn't ridden in years and I was still sore from my war injuries. I got hurt. When I got back to the base they were mad at me because I couldn't pull my duty. They were going to court-martial me."
Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and the incident was forgotten. "When I got out of the service my dad died shortly thereafter, and there was no music anymore." Heavin had been working a job unloading trucks for two years when a friend suggested they see a classical guitarist perform. The experience rekindled his love for music.
"I was enthralled. And it just came over me like that," he said, snapping his fingers. "That's how fast I made my deicison to play classical guitar."
Until then Heavin said he had never really heard classical guitar, much less played it. He began by teaching himself.
"I worked really hard. As soon as my hands could take it I was practicing six to eight hours a day and working a full-time job — just so I could get into college."
Heavin brashly convinced the chairman of the Southwest Missouri State University music department to start a degreed classical guitar program for him. "I said, 'Look, I want to get a degree in guitar and I'm determined to do it. And I don't know why nobody has a program in this part of the country.' He said, 'I agree, let's try this and see what happens.'" As the pioneering first student hell-bent on finishing the program, Heavin graduated and he said the program has "grown into something really nice and become very popular."
His chance meeting with his mentor-to-be, Segundo Pastor, occurred at a concert in Springfield, Mo., at which Heavin was playing and the maestro was attending on one of his rare American visits. Heavin was introduced to "this little old man who couldn't speak English" and arranged to see him later. He played for Pastor in private and the master liked the young man's musucianship. The two began a correspondence.
When Pastor returned the next year he asked to see Heavin. "I spent practically a whole day with him and I played everything I knew. Then he said, 'If you come to Spain I'll teach you for nothing.' I didn't realize then what this meant or how it was going to work out," Heavin said. A university official aided Heavin's overseas studies. But the student still had no inkling his apprenticeshup would turn out to be what he termed "one of the most wonderful experiences of my life."
"When I arrive there was an apartment for me. The maestro's wife was like my mom. His son was like my brother. And I realized only after I got there that I was his only student. He rarely takes them. There were Spanish boys waiting in line to study with him."
Appropriately, the rodeoer lived a block from the Plaza de Toros, the bullfighting arena, and next door to the hospital for bullfighters.
"I lived in the culture. I wasn't with Amreicans at all. My friends were all Spanish. I taught them English, they taught me Spanish. During the 10 months I was there I had a two-hour lesson from Segundo almost every day. He puts all of himself into that one student. That's why he doesn't take on many. It was really like a fairy-tale because the man literally gave me a career. The thing that's odd about it is that I had only been playing about a year when the maestro invited me to Spain. It was confusing because there were Spanish boys who could play better than I."
It was a question that nagged at Heavin for a long time. why me?
"The whole time I was in Spain I kept asking him, 'Why did you pick me?' and he would never answer it. The last night I was there he knocked on my door and we went to the university in Madrid. It was one of those romantic Spanish evenings. We were walking down a wet, cobblestone street and he put his arm on me and said, 'Yeah, the Spanish boys are good guitarists but some day you'll be a great guitarist," recalled Heavin, still touched by the memory. "That gave me a lot of confidence to go on."
Heavin often performs at Espana tapas bar in Omaha
During his stay abroad Heavin toured with Pastor throughout Spain, When the apprenticeship ended they performed duo concerts across the U.S., including New York's Carnegie Hall. Heavin's career was launched.
While the two haven't performed publicly since then, Heavin said they remain close. "Now that I'm in the States he comes more often. When he visits we just have fun and enjoy ourselves. Two years ago he came with Pedro, a friend from Spain, and they did a duo concert here."
Asked if in some way Pastor replaced his father, with whom he was so close, and Heavin said, "Oh yes. He's like my father, no doubt. He's my mentor, too."
After earning a master's degree at the University of Denver Heavin came to UNO in 1982. He heads the school's classical guitar program, which he said is a good one. "I've got some students who play very well."
Besides teaching Heavin performs 25-30 concerts a year, a schedule he's cut back in 1990 to work on his first album.
"I've just finished doing the research on the pieces I want to put on. Now I'm learning the pieces. I'll probably go into the recording studio in October or November," he said.
As with Pastor singling him out for the chance of a lifetime, a patron has discovered Heavin and is helping sponsor him. "Another fairy-tale happened. A stockbroker heard me play and thinks I should have lots more recognition. He wants to get involved in my career."
The guitarist is looking forward to touring more once the album is done. He has been invited to perform in Australia and Pastor has asked him to do concerts in Spain.
"People ask me why I live in Omaha and not on the coast," he said. "I dearly love Omaha. I love the Old Market. I don't like huge cities."
Heavin, who practices his art about five hours daily, said success has little to do with locale anyway. "It's an attitude. To do anything well requires an aggressive attitude. You have to just want to, and I've always done well financially playing guitar and teaching."
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From the Archives: Photographer Monte Kruse Works Close to the Edge
I've dipped into the archives again for this early profile I did of photographer Monte Kruse. The man has crazy talent. When I first met him 21 years ago the bulk of his work was as photojournalist but as the years have gone by h's gravitated more and more to fine art photogtaphy, often shooting nudes. The first two images below are from fairly recent work he's done of agrarian nudes – depicting the human form in the throes of doing farm work and showing the nuance and contours of bodies hardened and developed by that kind of labor intensive, close to the ground activity. This blog also features a later story I did on Monte titled "Photographer Monte Kruse Pushes Boundaries." You'll also find stories on the blog about Monte's mentor, photographer Don Doll. The blog features yet more stories on other photographers, including Monte's good friend Jim Hendrickson, as well as Larry Ferguson, Ken Jarecke, Rudy Smith, and Pat Drickey, superb imagemakers all. Look for a big feature on Jim Krantz in November. And if you're a film fan, the blog has dozens of pieces on filmmakers and other film artists, including Alexander Payne, Nik Fackler, Joan Micklin Silver, Charles Fairbanks, and Gail Levin. Explore…enjoy.
©Photograph by Monte Kruse
From the Archives: Photographer Monte Kruse Works Close to the Edge
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally published in the Omaha Metro Update
Picture the hard but wild throwing pitcher Tim Robbins portrayed in Bull Durham. A tall, lean, free-spirited kid whose oversized ego hid an underlying naivete and vulnerability. That may be a pretty close take on what Monte Lee Kruse looked liked pitching for Creighton University in the mid-'70s, before he became a noted photographer. The 6'5, 200-plus pound left-handed power pitcher must have cut an intimidating figure on the mound.
Kruse was good enough to get drafted by the Chicago White Sox, but knee injuries prevented him from ever playing an inning in the professional ranks. But this is not a story about Kruse the athlete. He long ago traded in a ball and glove for a camera as his means of self-expression.
The point is that many who know Kruse today as a talented freelance photographer of gripping human scenes would be surprised to learn he played competitive sports at all. Kruse is too complex to pin down easily. Just when you feel you have a bead on him, his story throws you a curve.
Someone who knew him back when – former Creighton athletic director Dan Offenburger – recalls Kruse as a "quiet, kind of country kid. Intelligent. He kind of marched to the beat of a different drummer."
At 35, Kruse still exudes a commanding presence that sets you a little on edge. His sheer size is daunting enough. Add to that the force of his mercurial personality, blunt manner of speaking and piercing eyes and your first impression of Kruse is that of the brooding artist. He admits he can be temperamental.
"I swear a lot and I can be a real pain in the ass to work with because I'm real nervous and I try to get everything just right. I really push people," he said. "But when they see the end product…well, I haven't had a client yet that's been dissatisfied."
After spending a little time with him though his big, overgrown kid's mug and down-home informality put you at ease. Just beneath the rough-hewn exterior is the keen sensitivity and intelligence that characterize his work.
In the stark black and white tones of his photos you sense his nearly spiritual kinship with and empathy for the disenfranchised of society. You feel the sensualist's appreciation for faces and bodies and his appetite for life.
"I'm out to experience life to its fullest extent," he said almost as a motto.
The documentary, fine art and commercial photographer travels widely on assignment across America and abroad. Home for Kruse is not so much a place as a state of mind. That seems about right for someone who has lived out of his car in leaner times. Perhaps as a reminder of those times his tiny hatchback is loaded with personal possessions.
Home is often a room at the YMCA or a hotel. Omaha is as close to a permanent haven as he has, spending several months of the year here.
Much of his photojournalistic work documents the lives of people on the fringe of society, where Kruse has been himself.
Anyone seeing his gut-wrenching images of the mentally ill homeless or AIDS patients is struck by their strong emotionalism and stark, naked truth. His photos combine the best elements of art and reportage. They are at once interpratative and restrained, as enigmatic as life itself.
In 1987 he spent three weeks documenting a Chicago AIDS hospice called The House. The resulting photos have been published in several newspapers.
"It was awful. All the guys I photographed are dead now. You have to keep up kind of a wall. If you get too involved, you're not going to be able to function. I do get choked up a little because I get to know these people real well. But you still have to get your f-stops right and the image right," Kruse said. "You do that the best you can and then you leave. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a social worker. My job is to go in there and photograph these people and write about them. That's how I can be a doctor or shaman. Then it's up to the public to disseminate the information."
Far from any cool, impassive detachment, however, his photos are clearly the work of a caring observer. In fact, Kruse pursued the AIDS story because a close friend of his, Gary H., was stricken with the disease.
"When you see somebody dying of AIDS you better feel something. You don't have to spread it across the page. You have to have restraint and tell the information, but you better have a sense of compassion. Objectivity is for journalism class. When you get out in the real world you're going to have a point of view and it's going to come through."
Many of the most telling shots depict a patient named Bill. In one, he writhes in pain while taking a bath. In another, he prays in his bed of despair. And in another he receives a nurse's tender attention.
Most images snatch glimpses of hope, such as a patient and his friend embracing on a stoop or planning their future together on a walk.
A lingering portrait is that of Daryl, a patient with one finger pressed against his temple. The caption quotes Daryl saying, "If I had any guts I would take a gun to my head and get it over with, but you know what, I won't do it because I believe a cure will be found somehow, someway. Maybe I am gutless, I don't know."
Kruse has known degrees of desperation himself. A string of carthetic events helped shape him and now informs his work.
By 1977 he had abandoned the sports and college scene altogether, only recently having discovered photography. A passion for the medium and life led him on a cross-country odyssey that eventually landed him in California, where he learned his craft and worked as a fine art photographer. He knew he'd found his life's work.
"It's the only thing I've ever done that can match the excitement of my sports career."
In Calif. he photographed his first nudes, which he continues to shoot today. He also did landscapes until tiring of that genre. "It didn't fit my temperament, so I started doing people – photojournalism. I was kind of shy to begin with and then I just gradually got used to it."
He said it's no accident his work focuses on people. "I think that's just a reflection of me. I've always loved people. I've always loved talking to people, finding out what it's all about. If I'm not around people I get real nervous. I have to be flooded by humanity."
©Photo by Monte Kruse
He returned to Creighton a few years later to study under Rev. Don Doll, a Jesuit priest and world class photojournalist whose work Kruse greatly admires.
"I had a period where I was really spinning my wheels, caught between doing fine art work and photojournalism. One reason I came back to Creighton was Don Doll. He's a great photographer. He's inspiring to talk to. If I had a mentor it would probably have to be him. I also went back to Creighton because I have a lot of friends here. After I get back home from being gone three months I sometimes just like to come to Creighton and walk around the campus."
Kruse graduated from the school in the late '70s and later served a hitch in the U.S. Army. There was a trip to the Middle East, too. His life and vocation were turned upside down in a three-year span during the '80s when both his parents died.
"My father died all of a sudden. I don't know what happened but I had an explosion in my work where I got really intense."
Then his mother became terminally ill with cancer and Kruse spent three months caring for her. "My mother died and I went through another metamorphosis."
It was while working those tragedies with the help of his photography that Kruse found his unique visual style. He prefers a highly naturalistic style that employs available light for dramatic effect. He brands himself with the tag, "Found Light Photography."
Like many young artists trying to establish themselves Kruse struggled making ends meet. He found it difficult getting his work published because so much of it graphically shows aspects of the human condition readers would rather not be reminded of.
"The toughest thing to do is docuementary work. There is not a market for it," he said. "People don't want to look at that stuff and they don't want to be made aware of it."
He suffered through some hard times before breaking through. "Two or three years ago I missed a lot of meals I was making so little money. When I was in really bad shape , yeah, I lived out of my car. If it hadn't been for the support of people like my brother, Mark, I would have been a derelict in the streets. My brother actually kept me afloat for two or three years." He said Mark, who lives near Omaha, is one reason why he remains here.
"I can't survive without Mark. He's the only person I have left out of my (immediate) family. He's done so much for me. It's kind of difficult to leave somebody who's been that close to you for that long. We don't see each other for two or three month periods, but on the other hand it doesn't really matter. If you love somebody what's the difference if you're gone a year? I think it's important for an artist and his work to have a center. If you don't, what are you? You're nothing."
Creighton University
Kruse said his off-the-beaten-path lifestyle is distorted by some into bigger-than-life dimenstions. What some see as eccentric is really practical in his eyes.
"There's kind of a mystique and romantic notion people have about me. But the YMCA is actually a nice place to live. If you're in town for two weeks why should you pay $50 a night at a hotel when all you're going to do is sleep there? I'm out to purchase my freedom, and if I had to live in a pig pen for the next three years I would do it."
A crucial piece of Kruse's freedom is being able to "do work that really matters." He said, "I can't really explain it, but it's what keeps me going." He discovered how to secure that freedom a few years ago by doing corporate photography, which pays far better than photojournalism. He snaps candid shots of CEOs and rank and file workers for annual reports, newsletters, brochures and other corporate publications. His local clients include Creighton University, the Catholic Health Corporation, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Ramsey Associates Inc.
"In an indirect way my corporate work finances my more humanistic work. For a lot of years it was rough and even now it can be rough, but I have nough people that back me today. That backing can go -it's always tenuous. But I think my clients are my friends."
A $3,000 or $4,000 corporate job can underwrite his taking riskier, lower paying assignments, such as his accompanying Rev. Ernesto Travieso and about 80 healthcare professionals and students to the Dominican Republic in 1988. The medical caravan went to the country under the auspices of Creighton's Institute of Latin American Concern. Kruse documented caravan members delivering medical care and supplies to impoverished natives at rural clinics that took three to four hours to reach by backpack and mule.
"Monte came with us and had a good rapport with the people there," said Travieso. "He made a documentary slide presentation on the project and it was really, really beautiful work."
Kruse feels his own travails have helped him understand other people's plight. "Sometimes I look back on when I was on my ass, with nothing to do, and how people looked at me. It wasn't very pleasant. I learned never to make judgments upon people. You just accept them the way they are."
Last year saw Kruse do several documentary projects. One brought him to Los Angeles' skid row, where he photographed the mentally ill homeless for a national photo agency. "As I was leaving that shoot I was choked up. The homeless have rights, too. They've kind of chosen a different way of living, unless they're mentally ill, but this is how they live, and it should be accorded them."
After completing the AIDS and homeless shoots and having his mother die Kruse was drained. "I said, 'Man, I've got to do something a little more upbeat.'" Fortunately a Kennedy Foundation project on mental retardation surfaced. He described the assignment as "very upbeat, very human." For it he traveled all over the U.S., spending two weeks with each of his mentally retarded subjects. One was a girl living just outside Sheldon, Iowa, near his hometown of Little Rock. "This farm girl is an absolute angel. I photographed her taking care of sheep on her father's farm. She sews, she does everything."
Inspired by the film My Left Foot, Kruse returned to Sheldon last summer to record the daily lives of a married couple with cerebral palsy. The photos are running as a special feature in the Sheldon Iowa Review, a prestigious small town paper. He said the project is "something that I've really been invovled with. It's taken a lot of my heart and soul, and now we're having to go through the woes of trying to get it published." Editor Jay Wagner confirms that while Kruse can be "a bit demanding, when you're working with someone as talented as Monte I guess it doesn't matter. He's got a great eye." Wagner calls the pictures "powerful."
Kruse recently went to Fargo and Grafton, N.D. to profile developmentally disabled individuals there for the Catholic Health Corporation. He approaches the disabled like all his subjects.
"I just think that they're people like you and I. On a certain level you can communicare with them and have a helluva good time, or a helluva bad time. You've got to let them be who they are."
That philosophy underscores his general technique for getting people to be themselves before the camera. "You've got to observe people and if you stay with them long enough they'll always fall into who they are and what they do. Then you can tell them to hold that. I only photograph people that want to be photographed and want to tell their story."
He was in Chicago recently making arrangements to photograph some of the city's cultural icons, including author Studs Terkel, columnist Mike Royko and blues musician Louie Meyer, for an American artists series he is shooting with the aid of a grant. He plans going to New York, L.A. and other locales for more artist portraits.
"There's so many people I'd love to do – Eudora Welty, Jacob Lawrence, Sonny Rollins, Gregory Peck. I feel I have to do Gordon Parks, the filmmaker-photographer-writer. I've read about him and what he went through and it's always kind of kept me going."
His goal is to publish the photos in a book someday. with the help of corporate sponsors. It may sound crass but Kruse enjoys the business side of art. "A lot of it is just getting out there and pressing flesh. You've got to hustle."
Now that he has tasted success, he isn't about to let it slip away. He said that while he "didn't mind being poor at the time, I could never go back to living like that. I'm into fine dining, I love fine wines, I love women. To hell with the starving artist bit. That's a myth of the past."
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