A Pocketful of History

by Jim Noles

  The Cleveland Plain-Dealer was equally eloquent in describing the storm’s aftermath. Cleveland, it recorded, “lay in white and mighty solitude, mute and deaf to the outside world, a city of lonesome snowiness, storm-swept from end to end.”

  It was a description that could aptly be applied to scores of cities and towns from Ohio to Minnesota.

  But it was on the waters of the Great Lakes where the greatest drama played out. Waves at least thirty-five-feet high, coming in rapid succession in series of three, pounded those ships unfortunate enough to be caught on the lakes. And because of the cyclonic effect of the storm, the wind often blew counter to the waves—a sure recipe for disaster for ungainly, underpowered bulk freighters like the Price.

  If modern ships such as the Price were in peril, vessels such as the Plymouth seemed absolutely doomed. A fifty-nine-year-old wooden schooner vessel that had seen better days, the Plymouth was laboring humbly through the twilight years as a de-masted barge. When the storm first hit on Lake Michigan that Saturday, the Plymouth was being towed by the tug James H. Martin. When he had determined that the Plymouth was unable to make headway against the mounting waves and was threatened with foundering, the Martin’s skipper took the Plymouth to the safest waters he could find—near Gull Island—and beat a hasty retreat. He knew that the maneuver offered both ships a fighting chance; with the Plymouth under tow, neither had a hope of surviving.

  Nevertheless, his logic was scant consolation to the seven men left on board the Plymouth—particularly Chris Keenan, an unlucky federal marshal who was on board only because the Plymouth was the subject of litigation. By Sunday, as the Plymouth wallowed helplessly in the wind and waves, Keenan hurled a bottle overboard. It contained a short, simple note:

  Dear Wife and Children: We were left up here in Lake Michigan by McKinnon, captain James H. Martin tug, at anchor. He went away and never said goodbye or anything to us. Lost one man yesterday. We have been out in storm forty hours. Goodbye dear ones, I might see you in heaven. Pray for me. Chris K. P.S. I felt so bad I had another man write for me. Goodbye Forever. (Bourrie 2005, 39)

  Keenan, his six comrades, and the Plymouth were never seen again.

  The modern lake freighters scarcely fared better, particularly on Lake Huron. The John McGean, Isaac M. Scott, Argus, Hydrus, James Carruthers, Wexford, and Regina all floundered in the vicious teeth of the white hurricane. The first sign of their demise came as the fierce storm moved off into Canada. As the cities and towns along the Great Lakes began to dig out of their massive snowdrifts, the icy bodies of those ships’ crews began to wash stiffly ashore in the rough surf.

  Even before the storm had fully receded, the waves offered up another sacrifice. Late in the afternoon of Monday, November 10, an unknown ship was spotted floating upside-down in the gray swells off Michigan’s eastern coast. For the next five days, newspapers ran headlines pondering the identity of the mystery wreck, even after it sank beneath the waves.

  Finally, on November 15, a diver named Baker reached the sunken wreck and, braving the cold underwater gloom, felt his way along the raised letters that spelled the ship’s name on the bow. The front page of that day’s Port Huron Times-Herald extra edition read: “BOAT IS PRICE—DIVER IS BAKER—SECRET KNOWN.”

  The wreck was indeed the Charles S. Price; all twenty-eight hands on board were lost, from Captain Black to the unfortunate assistant engineer who had signed on at the last minute to take Milton Smith’s place.

  “I am indeed a fortunate man,” Smith told the Port Huron Times-Herald. “There is no doubt the Price is gone. It is awful to think of it.”

  Smith’s part in the drama was not over. For the next several days, he took on the morbid task of visiting morgues and identifying the thawing bodies of his former shipmates.

  The white hurricane’s legacy lasted long after the snowdrifts were plowed and the sailors’ bodies were buried. The demoralizing loss of so much tonnage on the Great Lakes—a major avenue of commerce for such staples as grain, coal, and iron—shadowed America’s economy for the remainder of the winter.

  Michigan had a happier legacy in mind, however, when the U.S. Mint celebrated the launch of the state’s quarter on January 26, 2004.

  “Everyone who sees our new Michigan quarter for the first time will get a fresh glimpse of our prized peninsulas and abundance of natural water,” Governor Jennifer M. Granholm said. “A quarter that begins its journey here today in Michigan could very well, months from now, wind up in the hands of a beachcomber in Southern California or a fisherman off the coast of Maine.”

  “Most who look at the quarter will miss a lot of the symbolism that is implied in the design,” added Patrick Heller, who owns a Lansing, Michigan, coin dealership and who served on the governor’s commission. “The Great Lakes and the geography of Michigan are the main reason for the prosperity of the state in years past.”

  “The other distinctive feature is that the state of Michigan is the one state that can be positively identified from space,” Heller added. “One of the members of the governor’s commission was Jerry Linenger, an astronaut from Michigan who had spent time on Russia’s Mir space station. His Russian co-workers were able to pick out Michigan from way out in space and identify it for him.”

  27

  FLORIDA

  The Costliest Quarter

  America’s history is replete with countless men and women who challenged the unknown, triumphed over adversity, and in the end, pushed forward the frontiers of knowledge. Florida’s quarter, designed by artist Ralph Butler to depict a soaring space shuttle and a Spanish galleon, its sails billowing as it tacks toward a spit of land festooned with sabal palm trees, certainly reminds one of that manifest national drive. So does the quarter’s inscription: “Gateway to Discovery”—a concept that beat out such competing designs as the Everglades, St. Augustine, and “Fishing Capital of the World.”

  But America’s quest for knowledge is often a costly one—as the image of the space shuttle reminds anyone whose eyes fall on the coin’s reverse. So, if the Florida design does nothing else, it offers the opportunity to remember the fourteen astronauts who gave their lives on board the Challenger and Columbia in 1986 and 2003.

  The Challenger mission, identified as STS-51L (for “Space Transportation System”), launched from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39B on January 28, 1986, on what should have been a weeklong mission. Much of the mission’s prelaunch publicity focused on NASA’s Teacher in Space program, which would take flight with this mission. The shuttle carried a TDRS-B satellite (to provide communications and data relays for spacecraft and satellites in Earth’s orbit), a Spartan satellite (which would have been deployed and then retrieved by the shuttle’s robotic arm after collecting spectrographic images of Halley’s comet), and a variety of scientific experiments. Coincidentally, it also carried two complete sets of that year’s newly minted U.S. Liberty coins—the first legal tender American coinage to make a trip into orbit.

  Seventy-three seconds into the mission, Challenger exploded, the victim of an O-ring failure in its right-side rocket booster, believed to have been caused by Florida’s unseasonably cold weather that week. The disaster cost seven astronauts their lives—lives well worth remembering here.

  Francis R. “Dick” Scobee was the mission’s spacecraft commander. A former U.S. Air Force pilot who flew combat missions in Vietnam, Scobee was a talented test pilot who had graduated from high school in Auburn, Washington, and in 1965, from the University of Arizona. He joined NASA in 1978; STS-51L would have been his second space shuttle mission. His official NASA biography listed a diverse number of hobbies—oil painting, woodworking, motorcycling, and racquetball, to name a few. Back on Earth, he left his wife, June, and two children.

  U.S. Navy Commander Michael J. Smith served as Challenger’s pilot. A native of Beaufort, North Carolina, who listed woodworking, tennis, and squash as his hobbies, he graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1967. Like Scobee,
he was a combat veteran of the Vietnam War and a former test pilot. He was survived by his wife, Jane, and three children.

  Judith A. Resnik, a classical pianist who held a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, was born in Akron, Ohio, and later graduated from Carnegie Mellon University. Her engineering work included stints with RCA, the National Institutes of Health, and Xerox before she joined the astronaut program in 1978. On board as a mission specialist, STS-51L would have been her second shuttle mission.

  U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Ellison S. Onizuka was another mission specialist and, like Resnik, was marking his second shuttle mission. A native of Kealakekua, Hawaii, Onizuka earned degrees from the University of Colorado before going on to become a test pilot for the Air Force. He was survived by his wife, Lorna, and two daughters and is remembered as America’s first Japanese American astronaut.

  Ronald E. McNair was born and grew up in Lake City, South Carolina. He graduated with a bachelor of science degree in physics from North Carolina A&T State University in 1971; he earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology five years later. A fifth-degree black belt karate instructor and an accomplished jazz saxophonist, he had, in 1984, become the second African American astronaut to orbit Earth on shuttle mission STS-41B as a mission specialist. He was survived by his wife, Cheryl, and two children.

  Gregory B. Jarvis, one of the shuttle’s payload specialists and on board to conduct experiments on behalf of the Hughes Aircraft Corporation, was one of the mission’s two rookies. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he graduated from New York’s Mohawk Central High School and later earned degrees from SUNY–Buffalo and Northeastern University. An avid squash player, bicyclist, and classical guitarist, he was survived by his wife, Marcia.

  Sandra Christa Corrigan McAuliffe rounded out Challenger’s crew as the other payload specialist. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, the thirty-seven-year-old economics, history, and law teacher from New Hampshire’s Concord High School represented the culmination of NASA’s Teacher in Space program. She was survived by her husband, Steven, and two children.

  Regrouping in the wake of the Challenger disaster, NASA began launching shuttles again the following year. Nearly ninety missions helped fade the memory of the Challenger tragedy. The morning of February 1, 2003, however, brought a vivid reminder of the dangers—and the human cost—associated with space travel. As the shuttle Columbia reentered earth’s atmosphere upon the completion of mission STS-107, it exploded over the skies of Texas. The disaster cost the lives of another seven astronauts.

  U.S. Air Force Colonel Rick Douglas Husband served as Columbia’s mission commander for the ill-fated flight. A native of Amarillo, Texas, he held degrees from Texas Tech and California State University, Fresno. His official NASA biography noted that the former test pilot enjoyed singing in his church choir, water and snow skiing, cycling, and spending time with his wife and two children. STS-107 was his second shuttle mission.

  U.S. Navy Commander William C. “Willie” McCool was born in San Diego, California; he later graduated from Coronado High School in Lubbock, Texas, and the United States Naval Academy (as second in his class) in 1983 before earning a master of science degree from the University of Maryland. A test pilot like Husband, the former Eagle Scout was piloting Columbia on his first space shuttle mission and left a wife and sons behind.

  With the Columbia disaster, U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Michael P. Anderson became the second African American astronaut to die in space. A graduate of Cheney High School in Cheney, Washington, and the University of Washington, the son of an Air Force officer called Spokane, Washington, home. Anderson served as the payload commander on board Columbia, his second shuttle mission, and was survived by a wife and children.

  U.S. Navy Captain David M. Brown, a Navy flight surgeon in addition to a carrier jet pilot, joined NASA’s astronaut program in 1996. Born in Arlington, Virginia, he held degrees from the College of William and Mary and Eastern Virginia Medical School. While at William and Mary, he was not only a collegiate varsity gymnast for all four years but also performed in the Circus Kingdom as an acrobat, seven-foot unicyclist, and stilt walker. STS-107 was his first shuttle mission; he served on board as a mission specialist.

  Kalpana “K. C.” Chawla, born in Karnal, India, later moved to the United States, where she earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas and a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado. An aviator as well as a research scientist, she held pilot licenses for multi-engine aircraft, gliders, and seaplanes. On board Columbia, Chawla was a mission specialist tasked with operating the shuttle’s robot arm. Back on Earth, she was survived by her husband.

  U.S. Navy Captain Laurel Blair Salton Clark was, in addition to being a NASA astronaut, a naval flight surgeon, diving medical officer, and submarine medical officer who listed scuba diving and parachuting among her hobbies. She called Racine, Wisconsin, her hometown and was a graduate of Racine’s William Horlick High School. She earned a bachelor of science degree in zoology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and later earned a medical degree from there as well. Survived by her husband and son, she served as a mission specialist on board Columbia.

  Israel Air Force Colonel Ilan Ramon rounded out Columbia’s crew as one of the shuttle’s payload specialists. A fighter pilot with over 4,000 hours on a variety of jets, he was Israel’s first astronaut and had been trained to work a multispectral camera designed to record desert aerosol. A University of Tel Aviv graduate, Ramon was survived by his wife, Rona, and their four children.

  Ironically, when U.S. Mint director Henrietta Holsman Fore joined Governor Jeb Bush and NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe at the John F. Kennedy Space Flight Center to mark the official launch of Florida’s quarter on April 7, 2004, the space shuttle had not yet returned to flight. In fact, it would not do so until the following summer, when the Discovery blasted into space on a two-week mission—proving once again that Florida was indeed the “gateway to discovery.”

  28

  TEXAS

  Texas Ties One On

  Let’s be honest—did anyone really expect subtlety from Texas’s state quarter? After all, it is a state that has enthusiastically embraced self-satisfied slogans that range from “Don’t Mess with Texas” to “Texas: It’s Like a Whole Other Country.”

  And at first glance, Texas’s state quarter does not disappoint. Based on a design by Daniel Miller, the coin displays the width and breadth of the state—the largest in the continental United States—with, of course, a lone star prominently displayed. Roughly juxtaposing the quarter with a state map, it seems as if the star is fixed upon the town of Cleburne, the county seat of Johnson County.

  If the star does indeed mark Cleburne, then it complements another subtle facet found on Texas’s quarter—the lariat that encircles the perimeter of the coin. That length of braided rope symbolizes the state’s cowboy heritage and the longhorn cattle those cowboys drove to market along routes like the famed Chisholm Trail—which, as fate or quarter design would have it, just happens to pass through Johnson County.

  Despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, cattle drives did not begin in Texas—far from it. Even in colonial Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas, Eastern “cowboys” collected free-ranging cattle and, often with the aid of dogs, drove the relatively tame beasts to market. In fact, some say that the origin of the pejorative term “cracker” came from descriptions of early Florida settlers who would crack their long bullwhips as they collected their cattle amid the longleaf forests of the future Sunshine State.

  In Texas, however, settlers faced much wilder beasts and more challenging conditions. But early experiences with cattle driving demonstrated that the potential for handsome profits existed in the dusty wake of a cattle herd, as when an ambitious group of Stephen F. Austin’s colonists drove a herd of surplus cattle through the treacherous swamp coun
try of eastern Texas into New Orleans, where they fetched twice their Texas market value.

  Texas became a state in 1845, and around that same time, cowboys mounted a series of successful but relatively small drives. They followed a trail that stretched through Austin, Waco, and modern-day Dallas, crossed the Red River near Preston, and then led north along what would one day be the eastern edge of Oklahoma. North of Fort Gibson, the trail split into various terminal branches that led to such cities as St. Louis, Independence, Sedalia, Kansas City, and other points east. In time, the trail became known as the Shawnee Trail.

  In 1846, that trail bore Texas’s first large cattle drive when Edward Piper herded 1,000 head from Texas to Ohio. But within seven years, trouble arose on the trail. The Texas cattle carried ticks infected with “Texas fever”; as the Texas herds passed through Missouri, those ticks found new hosts among the cows on Missouri’s farms. The Texas cattle had developed immunity to the fever; their Missouri brethren were not so lucky. Missourians responded with quarantine laws and, in some cases, armed vigilante bands.

  Meanwhile, on a happier note, the California gold rush generated enough demand for slaughter beeves that, during the early to mid- 1850s, adventurous cowboys guided herds through the Rockies and across the West’s deserts to hungry West Coast mining camps. To the hungry miners, cattle worth $14 in Texas sold for $100 or more. With the outbreak of the Civil War, New Orleans and Confederate commissary officers provided another destination.

  The end of the Civil War found between 3 and 6 million head of cattle roaming the wilds of Texas. Locally, some were worth as little as $2 each, and with cattle demanding as much as $40 a head in the North, it did not take long for Texas cowboys to take to the trails once again. In the spring of 1866, Texans drove over a quarter million cattle to market.

  Of those cattle, some headed east to Louisiana, where the cattle were shipped by boat to Cairo, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri. Heading in the other direction, Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail through hostile Indian country to army posts in New Mexico and on to Denver.