Oppenheimer film brings back A-bomb memories...

Bombing of Nagasaki, Japan/8-6-1945/Wikipedia

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune/Saturday, 9-2-23

I was five years old that summer when the Atomic Age was unleashed upon our world — the world I would grow up in.

It seemed exciting. Big bomb. I was used to hearing about bombs and bombing. The first five years of my life were a time history recalls as “World War II.” I came into consciousness during that very period.

But the atomic bomb was different. I had no grasp of the human tragedy when two of those bombs were dropped on Japan. I recall the jubilation here in America, in my family and in my home town Duluth, that the war was over, thanks to the atomic bomb.

No more rationing of sugar (jam was hard to come by) or gasoline for our car, or tires. Peace and prosperity had arrived (although at that age I wouldn’t have been able to put it that way), and we’d all live happily ever after, just like the characters in my storybooks.

Didn’t happen, did it.

These ruminations were prompted by the popular movie “Oppenheimer.” I recall my parents looking at the stark headlines in the Duluth newspapers and talking about this atomic bomb when it was first detonated (the subject of the movie) and then a couple of weeks later dropped to end the war. It seemed exciting to my five-year-old mind, but also scary.

Not to worry though. Of course it could never happen to America, to Duluth, to our neighborhood, to us. We would always be safe here. Of that I was confident. But maybe not as confident as I seemed.

Later that summer (the bombs were dropped in August 1945) I was playing on the front porch of our family home in what was then known as the West End neighborhood. I suppose I was pushing toy cars around, or something of that sort. My mother was inside the house, keeping an eye on me from time to time through the screen door. It was a beautiful late summer day.

But my contented play was abruptly interrupted by a horrifying sight. Glancing skyward toward the ridge of the western Duluth hillside, there suddenly appeared what was, to my young mind, an atomic bomb. An atomic bomb right here in Duluth.

It was huge (atomic bombs had to be huge, right?) and shaped like a giant bullet but pointy on both ends like a humongous football. And it moved slowly over the Duluth hilltop skyline right toward our house. The Atomic Age had materialized before my young eyes.

I cried out and ran into the house and the safety of my mother, who didn’t immediately understand what had alarmed me so. I must have said the atomic bomb is coming. The atomic bomb is coming.

She darted to the porch with me in tow, looked skyward and saw my atomic bomb. It was a blimp, or dirigible, or Zeppelin as they are sometimes called. It slowly glided overhead and continued southeastward out of our sight.

Safe.  She consoled me by explaining it was just a friendly aircraft shaped like an elongated balloon. On with my happy childhood.

But I never forgot it (to wit this column). And it was the first realization that maybe our world isn’t as safe as one thinks in early childhood. There have been quite a few wars since, and our main adversaries — sometimes enemies — all got the bomb before I fully grew up, but no nuclear bombs have been used. Yet.

I didn’t know then what was in store as the years went on, of course. I had to get through first grade…and the Atomic Age.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

A brief personal history of Duluth...

Plant built by Minnesota Steel Company (part of US Steel.
Photo: circa 1925/Northeast Minnesota Historical Center 

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune/October 16, 2021

 

When Washington Post columnist George F. Will turned 80 recently, he remarked that he had been alive for one third of American history.

 

What? Well, if you do the numbers, I guess it’s so. Three times 80 is 240. That about takes us back to the Founding Fathers, bless their souls.

 

This whole idea gave me pause, though. I’m close to George Will in age. Got him by a couple of years. I’d never looked at my tenure in this life that way. A third of American history? Seems strange, although true.

 

It means both Will and I were born around the onset of World War II. I actually remember a few things about the war. Couldn’t get jam for toast because of sugar shortages. My parents had to turn in “points” with money to buy certain things. My father sold our car — couldn’t get gas and tires. Oh yes, the Atomic Bomb went off at the end of the conflict.

 

It changed everything, of course, and even though I was a youngster, I do remember it. The rest is history, as they say. That rest being the remainder of the 20th Century and the first fifth of the 21st. Long time. I was there.

 

Will’s observation prompted me to do the numbers on how much of Duluth’s history I have experienced. About half, give or take. Hmmm. Half of the history of Duluth in my lifetime? Well, the numbers don’t lie.

 

So, let’s see what got my attention in the past eight or so decades of my conscious observation of things Duluth. Let me start by saying it’s changed. A lot.

 

I was born into an industrial city. We were really going great guns during the war building ships for the effort — my only memory of that was hearing other kids say their fathers worked in the “shipyard.” That all came to an abrupt halt at war’s end.

 

But we were a steel-producing town, out there in Morgan Park. A lot of kids’ dads worked there too. Up to several thousand in good times, if memory serves. (All of this is memory, and not well-researched history.)

 

When I was young, and the plant was still going strong, it was called American Steel and Wire Division of United States Steel Corp. It was Duluth’s king industry, its fortunes linked to the city’s in very important ways. Like jobs.

 

Every so often there would be layoffs at the steel plant, and it was big news. But it always seemed to bounce back, along with its adjacent Universal Atlas Cement Co. in Gary-New Duluth. That is until they didn’t in the 1970s. The steel plant slowly wound down to the open field on the site today, everything disappeared except contaminants left behind in the soil on which it stood.

 

11th FIS F-102 Delta Dagger 56-1485
in arctic colors about 1959 (Wikipedia)

The demise of the steel plant closely coincided with the permanent closing of Duluth’s U.S. Air Force base, causing even more grave concern for the economic outlook of Duluth. The Air Base had been hastily constructed after World War II when a new war, a Cold War, began concerning our leaders. That sustained the base’s mission for around 20 years, as its role in defending the northern United States from Soviet missiles increased. But then the U.S. government pulled out, leaving only a state Air National Guard base in its wake and a federal prison camp in its former facilities.

 

No major steel plant? No sizable Air Force base? And oh, I almost forgot, the huge Marshall Wells hardware operation with a national reach, and the Coolerator Co., the Kleerflax Linen Looms all closing. The list was getting pretty long. Plus, it eroded the city’s population, eventually dropping about 20,000 from 100,000-plus.

 

Glancing back again, it didn’t have huge chimneys spewing industrial smoke but along came UMD, slowly growing into a large institution and economic force. It started small about 1947, replacing a small teacher’s college, and by the time I got there a decade later it had about 2,000 students. It now has more than 10,000 and it has a huge impact on Duluth, along with the several other campuses of higher education, not the least of which are St. Scholastica and Lake Superior College.

 

And, of course, we had two large hospitals — St. Luke’s and St. Mary’s —that had been around since at least early in the 20th century. I was born in St. Luke’s. Take a look at them today, with St. Mary’s emerging as part of today’s Essentia that is transforming downtown Duluth’s skyline with towering new construction.

 

Duluth has become a major regional medical center, akin, but perhaps not equal, to the Mayo Clinic’s impact on Rochester, Minn. It contributes mightily to the economy. I don’t know how many are employed in our far-flung medical facilities but it likely rivals or surpasses the jobs at the old steel plant and other former businesses.

 

In the middle of these changes, starting in the 1960s, Interstate 35 was constructed right through town. And as important to Duluth, the Arena Auditorium was built over waterfront junkyards, opening in 1966 and since expanded as the DECC, becoming the city’s preeminent cultural/entertainment/sports center.

 

For much of my lifetime what we know as Miller Hill Mall was undeveloped woods and later a golf driving range. Downtown Duluth was the center of commercial activity with five good-sized department stores, half a dozen movie theaters and a passel of specialty shops, restaurants and taverns. Now the Miller Trunk area has the lion’s share of that.

 

Can’t forget tourism. I’m running out of space here, and I’ve left out a lot of Duluth changes in the half of its history I’ve witnessed (like mega railroad activity), but the bottom line is that Duluth has transformed itself through thick and thin (lots of thin) and always survives.  Development of Canal Park and Lake Superior’s shoreline has greatly enhanced tourism, turning a downtrodden downtown neighborhood from junkyards and dilapidated buildings into a shining attraction with numerous hotels and restaurants for locals and tourists.

 

What about the arts? The Duluth Symphony (now Duluth-Superior Symphony) is a decade or so older than I am, and the Duluth Playhouse is decades older than that, going all the way back to the early 20th Century. For years, though, that was about it. In fairly recent years, Duluth has developed a vibrant arts community encompassing all the arts and a downtown neighborhood to show them off.

 

Oh, there’s so much more to say, like the arrival of television in the early 1950s that also played a huge role in Duluth’s evolution. And we once had two daily newspapers, morning and evening, the diminution of which was influenced by the advent of the World Wide Web.

 

I must stop, but not before saying we are a transformed, and become more vibrant and interesting city in the decades that I have been part of it. Glad I was born here, and glad I stayed…for half of this town’s existence, and all of mine.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

Bombs in the news…

By Jim Heffernan

Bombs have been in the news a lot lately — the N-bomb, the F-bomb, Michael Moore’s Broadway show (bombed). Now the United States and North Korea are staring each other down over North Korea’s bomb plans.

In many, many decades of life, I have found that living is more tranquil when bombs are not in the news. I’m old enough to actually remember the dropping of the A-bomb on Japan, bringing World War II to an end.

The A-bomb (for Atomic) is the father of the N-bomb (Nuclear). Somewhere in there to further scare us are the H-bomb (hydrogen, stronger than the others) and another N-bomb (Neutron), which only kills people but leaves buildings standing. Drop a neutron bob on New York City, for example, and Trump Tower would remain standing. Not so much its inhabitants. 

I was 5 years old when atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. News of it was everywhere, and even a child of kindergarten age understood that it was something terrible, frightening. I can recall my parents talking seriously about it at supper, ignoring the Lone Ranger on the kitchen radio in the background.

The whole idea of such a big bomb frightened me. And here’s how it manifested itself on one occasion: I was playing on our front porch when a huge bomb-like object suddenly appeared in the sky above western Duluth. It terrified me. I ran into the house screaming to my mother that the atomic bomb was coming.

She darted onto the porch and saw immediately what it really was: a blimp (a.k.a. dirigible). Not the Good Year blimp, just an ordinary blimp that looked an awful lot like a great big bomb. My mother allayed my fears, explaining that it was a harmless aircraft. Not to worry.

As time went by, the atomic bomb became kind of a fun thing for kids. One of the big breakfast cereal producers—General Mills, maybe Kellogg’s—offered kids an “Atomic Bomb Ring” for 25 cents and a box top from one of their cereals. I got one. It was an adjustable metal ring with a tiny plastic bomb on top. If you held the bomb close to your eye, inside the bomb you could see something like sparks flying. Wow.

Of course the threat of an atomic attack prompted the schools to add atomic bomb attack drills to fire drills. I learned later that some schools in the country had the kids “duck and cover” beneath their school desks. We just filed into the hall and stood facing the lockers lining the wall until the all clear. This was not nearly as much fun as a fire drill, which required us to file outside the school in orderly fashion and breathe the fresh air of a beautiful day. You could say atomic bomb drills bombed in comparison.

Oh yes, the F-bomb. Got to deliver on that. It was brought to the fore recently by short-lived White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci in an interview with a New Yorker magazine reporter during which Scaramucci dropped several F-bombs, shocking nearly everyone and probably resulting in the loss of his job after serving just 10 days.

But it opened the door to several media organizations, like the New York Times, to use the entire F-bomb word in reporting on Scaramucci’s diatribe. I was shocked. I remember the first time I ever saw the word in print: summer of 1963 reading Irving Wallace’s novel “The Carpetbaggers.”

It’s a word that was very familiar to teenage boys of my generation, and many generations before and after, but nobody ever wrote it down, for goodness sake. (Goodness had nothing to do with it.)

I had actually learned the word several years before. Right around the time the A-bomb was employed for the first time, I learned what is today referred to as the F-bomb stood for. A neighbor boy and I were in the alley next to my home (these things always happen in alleys) discussing various swear words and their seriousness. They were all bad, of course, but “hell” and “damn” didn’t seem like they would bar you from getting into heaven, should the occasion arise. A few others were more serious—you know what they are without my actually spelling them out.

Then my friend (we weren’t close, though) said he’d tell me the “worst” swear word of all. It was what we today refer to as the F-bomb. And he was right. It has endured as the worst swear word of all throughout the many, many decades of my life. Oops, we’re back to square one.

Editor's note:  We learned to "duck & cover" in the 50's.  Check out the video the Dept. of Education and civil Defense Dept. prepared for those of us growing up in that era HERE.

The Story of Ruth Anna Aurora...

Today marks another day of congressional hearings related to the appointment of Sonja Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice. While we are all interested in the political nature of what those hearings will mean to the future of our nation, we additionally see that there is more to this woman and her life story. Sotomayor frequently refers to her mother’s influence on her life. How her mother of Hispanic origin raised a very successful family as a single parent suggests a poignant and interesting life story. Everyone has a life story to tell and that is what makes life and people so interesting.

I’ve held such a story in my memory for years, thinking some day that I will write it in book form. The story is of my mother’s life and the book is yet unwritten. But today, July 16, on this anniversary of my deceased mother’s birth, I am writing a shortened version of her fascinating story. (More about her memory of the Cloquet fire is a column–What a Day to Remember–I included in my book, Cooler Near the Lake.) It’s a bit of family history that does not in any way include the heart of her life journey. But it is a beginning and worth the while to tell. It seemed appropriate to share this short version of her story on the very date she was born 110 years ago that also collided with two important world events: the date that the Atomic bomb was set off and the date Apollo 11 took off for the moon. It’s July 16 and a story of many life collisions is born.

The story of Ruth Anna Aurora…

Today, July 16, 2009, marks the 110th birthday anniversary of my mother, Ruth Anna Aurora Carlson (1899-1983). She shares that July date with a couple of momentous events in American history – both of which she lived to see.

The first atomic bomb was set off on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert, marking the dawn of the nuclear age. On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 embarked for the moon, landing astronauts there for the first time a few days later.

Ruth’s early life, beginning in the horse-and-buggy era, was quite dramatic as well. Her parents, Charles and Anna Carlson, were young Swedish immigrants who met in Duluth in the 1890s. Anna came to America in her teens and worked as a domestic servant in Duluth before her marriage at age 19. Charles held a variety of jobs from street railway conductor to grocery clerk.

Ruth was their first-born – in a house in Duluth’s West End that still stands, but has been moved about a block from where it was located on July 16, 1899. When she was very young, the family moved to Ellsworth, Wis., where Charles took possession of a farm. In Ellsworth the family started to grow, another daughter born three years after Ruth, and then a succession of additional daughters, all daughters, that numbered six girls by 1912.

Some of the daughters were born in Ellsworth, the younger ones in Duluth after the Carlsons moved back. Ruth always said that her mother didn’t want her daughters to grow up on a farm. Anna’s heart was in the city.

From an early age, Ruth showed a talent for music, having the ability to play the piano by ear without formal training. In Duluth, as she was growing up, she got formal training and was given many opportunities through their church – Bethany Swedish Lutheran Church in the West End – to hone her talent. Her training also encompassed the pipe organ, which she played as a teenager at Bethany under the tutelage of the regular organist.

At home, the family, living on Piedmont Avenue between Third and Fourth streets, was growing, but dark days loomed. In 1917, at the age of 38, Ruth’s mother Anna died, leaving Charles with six daughters, Ruth being the eldest, not yet 18.

At about the same time, America became involved in World War I, and the regular organist at Bethany Lutheran was called into the Army. Ruth, by then his assistant, took over as chief organist pending the return of the regular organist. He never returned. He was killed in action in France.

So, while still in her teens, Ruth found herself as organist at a sizeable Lutheran Church established 30 years before by Swedish immigrants who settled in the West End, and which by 1918 had grown to some 900 members.

There was more drama. The great 1918 Cloquet fire, which devastated the Duluth area, leveling outlying communities and part of Duluth with massive loss of life and property, threw Ruth, her father and younger sisters into agonizing fear as the blaze threatened to move into the West End where they lived.

Ruth and her recently widowed father stayed up all night watching fiery refuse sweep before the strong wind down Piedmont Avenue, and making ready to evacuate their small home and flee with the children to the waterfront, about a mile away. To their great relief, the wind turned overnight, driving the fire back. The family was safe.

But the following year, her father, Charles, also died. He was in his mid-40s. It left the still-teenaged Ruth as the head of the family – six girls, one of which had been born with severe disabilities involving epilepsy and retardation. Ruth and her oldest sisters kept the parentless family together, declining offers from people at their church to adopt the younger girls. Ruth was the paid organist at Bethany and earned the remainder of her living giving piano lessons. In those days, piano teachers went to the homes of the students for the lessons, just as doctors went to the homes of the sick to treat them. In time, her two oldest sisters found jobs and helped support the parentless family.

The high drama of her early life was largely over by 1920, when she turned 21. She continued to study the piano at Duluth’s Lachmond studios, mastering the classical repertoire, as she organized the music of the church, including providing accompaniment for countless weddings and funerals, and shepherding the growth of her youngest sisters with the help of her oldest siblings.

She didn’t marry until 1932, when she and my father, George H. Heffernan, started their lives together. They had two sons, Rodney, born in 1933, and this writer, born six years later.

She continued as Bethany organist and director of choirs throughout, finally retiring in 1976 at the age of 77. She died in 1983 at age 84 and is buried in Bethany Cemetery in Hermantown alongside George (1894-1971), and in the same plot grouping as her parents, Charles and Anna, and three of her sisters. Two other sisters are buried nearby. Ruth had outlived them all.