New Yankee Stadium

In the past few months, with all the talk of bailouts and stimulus packages, the use of the word billion has dramatically increased. (That reminds me of the birthday card my son Caleb sent me a few years back: Dick Cheney to W: "Did you hear we're getting over 100 Brazillian troops to help us?" W: Wow... that's fantastic! How much is a brazillion?") It seems only fitting that the Yankees would open a new stadium that cost that much ($1.5 billion that is, not brazillion).

Jacob and I planned a trip for the first series in the new stadium, a Saturday afternoon game with the Cleveland Indians. We got there at least an hour before game time thinking we'd have time to look around, see monument park and buy a cheese-steak sub before the game started. Everyone else must have had the same idea. We didn't see the monuments, although they're the same ones as in the old stadium anyway, and barely did a circuit around the stadium before heading to our seats with subs in hand, 2 outs into the top of the first.

One of the Yanks' new acquisitions, (costing almost as much as the stadium) Mark Teixiera, hit a homerun in the bottom of the first with Johnny Damon on base, and the good guys had an early 2-run lead. We should have left then while we were ahead, because it went downhill fast from there.

The Indians proceeded to pummel Chin-Ming Wang and a recent minor-league call-up who replaced him, for a major league record 14 runs in the top of the 2nd inning. Unbelieveable! Cleveland probably is wishing they could play all their games there. They used to say that the clubhouse in the old stadium smelled funny. The new stadium is spacious and luxurious and its the team that stinks.

We hung in until the fifth when, at 2-19, it was not even funny anymore. The final score was 4-22. It was probably payback for the last time I saw the Indians and Yankees play, when the Yanks scored 6 in the bottom of the ninth, capped by a walk-off homer by Alex Rodriguez, to win 8-6.

Jacob and I took a detour to Columbia University on the way back to the hotel and visited the Mathematics Department where my father earned his bachelor's and master's degrees back in the early 1930s. It's a pretty campus although high on a hill--we imagined that all 8 million New Yorkers will be up there when global warming puts the rest of the city underwater.

My Vote

My father gave me two insights, among many, into the status of African-Americans in our country in the early 1960s. The first was on a trip to New York City to see relatives in Brooklyn and a ball game in Yankee Stadium. Wherever we went in the city, he cautioned me to stay away from various people of color and I developed a fearful respect of their existence. He never said it, but as I grew older, I sensed that he wasn't practicing racial discrimination, just the recognition that life in the city was difficult and people were just as likely to victimize you for the sake of their own survival (right or wrong) as they were to say or do something nice to you.

One Thanksgiving, Dad, who taught Mathematics at Union College in Schenectady, NY, brought home one of his students for dinner. His name was Bob Holland and he was a star basketball player. I don't remember if the trip to his home outside Detroit, Michigan was too long or if he couldn't afford it, but Dad decided that Bob shouldn't spend the holiday alone and invited him to join us. He was an immediate hit to this family of 4 boys aged 7-17. We all took our turns trying to defeat him at ping pong and when our efforts proved futile, he gave us a second chance by switching to his left hand. Still, his athleticism and skill lifted him to victory.

Bob became a family favorite and in the winters that followed, I begged to attend Union home basketball games to watch Bob and his teammates, who more often than not came away victorious. This congenial, athletic, intelligent, and charismatic man became my new standard for not only people of color, but remarkable individuals of any race. I knew then, at the age of 10 or 11, that race was no limitation in defining a person's potential or character.

Through the civil rights movement of the 60s, the death of Martin Luther King, my college years at a small New England liberal arts school with a limited minority population, I marveled at the dignity of African Americans in the face of such horrible treatment in white America. And I questioned how a country built on the values of equality and opportunity could continue to allow race to be such a divisive factor.

Over the last 40 years, events have suggested improvement in the situation, some with personal connections. I was pleased to see the Sports Editor of my college newspaper from my freshman year, Bryant Gumbel, rise to elevated network TV status. I celebrated in the early 90s reading that a African American college classmate, John Jenkins, had been elected Mayor of the City of Lewiston, Maine--at the time a mostly white town. (John is currently Mayor across the river in Auburn.)

And not long after our whole family was pleased to hear in the news that Bob Holland had been the first person not named Ben or Jerry to be President and CEO of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. The irony of his rising to this position, I later learned, was the fact that he (and all others of color) had been barred from Sullivan's Ice Cream Shop, growing up in his hometown of Albion, Michigan.

In my recent visits to New York City, especially Manhattan, I noted the change since the 1960s in terms of the racial landscape. I've walked the streets of Harlem, where my father never would have gone, and witnessed the tremendous diversity downtown, where conceivably every ethnic group in the world is somehow represented; all of them participating in some fashion in the synergy of this financial capital of America.

While New York and other major American cities reflect ethnic diversity as a function of economics, one other place struck me in recent years in the same way: the Santa Monica Pier. A visit with a former Bates College roommate and ski teammate Norton Virgien in California included a walk out on the pier among Asians, Latinos, African Americans and others, all enjoying the beautiful day, the ocean, the pier vendors and performers. They weren't there by necessity and yet all co-existed and reveled in the day.

This week when I cast my vote for President of the United States, I thought of Bob Holland and John Jenkins, New York City and the Santa Monica Pier; and voted for a man who, for the first time in my opinion, will be a President for all Americans, not just those of a certain race or ideology. I don't think that America has a greater need than the leadership of someone who has compassion for all of its citizens and the ability to project it globally.

I'm truly proud to have cast my vote for Barack Obama.

The Crossing

The only heirloom that remains to document my father’s paternal grandmother is a Lincoln rocker which sits in our living room. Dad gave it to me shortly after my first marriage. I don’t remember whether I asked for it or he offered it but the conversation certainly began with his recollection of his two grandmothers, both named Augusta. “I had the best grandmothers,” he recalled with great affection. Augusta Dorothea, his German grandmother, was the owner of the rocker, and a profound influence on her grandson in spite of her limited English and his limited German.

The rocker is an un-upholstered version of the chair Lincoln popularized during his Presidency and which flourished in the 1860s and 1870s. Rocking chairs were especially popular in the latter part of the 19th century in America and this caned model was Augusta’s favorite point of repose. Mahogany-colored and lacking the decorative arm-loops or engraved headboards, Augusta’s was utilitarian, if not ornate.

This heirloom, an artifact really, is the only one that documents the long and satisfying life of Augusta Dorothea Rathminder Maddaus. That we have so little to remember her by seems, in itself, incongruous. Dad loved to talk about her, to the exclusion of his parents and most other relatives. He had an abiding reverence for her and the life she led. His passing three years ago erased the memory, and we’re left with the chair, two photos and a few details that enable us to reconstruct her life.

Augusta was born in Riga, the capital of the modern-day Baltic Republic of Latvia, on September 12, 1850. Riga was part of the Russian Empire at the time of her birth, ruled by Tsar Nicholas I and later Tsar Alexander II, during the time of the Latvian national movement. Augusta’s Riga, though ruled by Russia and inhabited by Latvians, was an enclave of German merchants and she spoke German all her life and immersed herself in German culture. Her selection of names of two of her children, Ingo and Freida, trace directly to her love of the historical romance novels of Gustav Freytag.

Augusta’s parentage remains somewhat of a mystery. In a short manuscript written in Latvian, it is suggested her father was Andzs Rathminder, who for over 60 years was teacher in the Latvian village of Vecpiebalga, 100 kilometers east of Riga. A school teacher of high regard, longevity and influence in Latvian culture, Andzs is included in the Latvian Encyclopedia, published by Arveds Svabe in the 1950s. In the Kaudzitis museum in the rolling hills above Vecpiebalga, dedicated to the writers of the first Latvian-language novel in the mid-19th century, Rathminder is revered as a teacher of the Brothers Kaudzitis, and father of Lize Rathmindere Kaudzitis, wife of Matiss. Records there indicate 4 Rathminder daughters, but none with the name of Augusta. Could she be the daughter of Andzs’s brother Janis, who was a poet and teacher in Riga most of his life, or at the very least the granddaughter of Andzs Rathminder, (father of the revered schoolteacher) or the adopted daughter of Andzs himself? Her birthplace in Riga and German tongue cast doubt on her parentage.

It is known that she left Riga in the mid-1870s and traveled to New York City (more specifically Brooklyn) to marry Oscar Wilhelm Maddaus, the son of respected Riga portrait artist and art teacher Johann Karl Ludwig Maddaus. Oscar's emigration to the US preceeded Augusta by a number of years and his marriage to her was his second. His first wife Margaret, and three children Adelaide, Clara and Oscar were apparently victims of an influenza epidemic late in 1872 into 1873. All four were interred in the Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn in August of 1873, in what would become the family plot.

Documentation of Augusta’s initial arrival in America is not extant but it is clear she traveled from Riga with the express intent to marry Oscar, and by May of 1877 their first of seven children, Elsa, was born. Oscar worked at the time as a woodcut artist and had contracts with a number of companies including The India Rubber Comb Company in College Point NY and Remington Sewing Machine Company and Reed & Barton Flatware Company. In fact, his work for Reed & Barton may have been pivotal, as their discontent with his turn-around times and his lack of ability to produce human figures for work on their 1877 catolog, suggests a difficult period for his business. Whether it was his work or his father’s health (Johann retired his teaching position in July 1877) or both, they returned to Riga and by May of 1878 their second child and first son Oscar was born in Riga. Oscar W. was in Riga on his father’s death on August 1, 1878.

Four children followed, Ingo, Freida, Senta and Harold, nearly one a year through 1883 and, while is unclear as to when, Oscar returned to his work in Brooklyn ahead of his family. What followed had to be at once, a typical event in terms of trans-Atlantic immigration, and yet a heroic effort on the part of Augusta Dorothea Rathminder Maddaus.

Armed with a US Entry Visa in her name, dated October 22/Nov 3, 1882 and executed in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg, and with her six children’s names and birthdates listed (Harold added after his birth in 1883), Augusta traveled with her children and no other family members via Hamburg Germany and Le Harve France to New York City. All are included in the passenger list of the steamship Lessing, of the Hamburg-America Line. Built in 1874, the Lessing made frequent trips between New York and Hamburg from 1875 to 1888.

On October 16, 1883, Augusta arrived with her 6 children, infant to age 6, at Castle Garden at The Battery, the very southern tip of Manhattan, the receiving point for over 10 million immigrants between 1830 and the opening of Ellis Island in 1892. Her determination and fortitude in crossing the Atlantic with 6 children in tow is a testament to the reverence our family holds for her. She settled in Brooklyn, surrounded by her family whom she lived with through Oscar’s death in 1896 and until her own passing in 1937.

Augusta’s Lincoln Rocker will forever memorialize her crossing and one family’s foothold in America.

Brooklyn Heights

This past Saturday, the Yankees Friday night loss a distant memory, we took the # 4 Subway from Union Square on 14th Street in Manhattan, changed to the A line at Fulton Street (we thought it was the #2, but we're from Maine), traveled one more stop, under the East River, and emerged in Brooklyn at High Street. I wanted to see if I could identify the neighborhood my father's parents lived in back in the 1950s. I'm not sure if I ever visited them there but I remember one time we saw Dad's Aunt Freida, who lived down the street.

The neighborhood is called Brooklyn Heights and the street, Columbia Heights. I recognized the promenade first and the view of Manhattan immediately; Battery Park at the South end of the Island is to the right and Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty can be seen in the distance. To the north, the Brooklyn Bridge dominates the East River and the Empire State Building and Chrysler Buildings are in view. The city-scape provides a unique visual that almost overcomes the senses.

I did recognize a couple landmarks on Clark Street on the way from the subway, the Hotel St. George, still signed as such, and the Towers Hotel, no longer signed, both of which were home to the Brooklyn Dodgers when they were in town; that is, until they broke my Dad's heart and departed for LA. The apartments on Columbia Heights were not familiar, so I pulled out the trusty cell-phone and called Mother for some direction. After a bit she recalled that Grandpa and Grandma lived at 81 Columbia Heights and I found the building at the corner of Cranberry Street. She remembered it for the proximity to (19th century abolitionist and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe) Henry Ward Beecher's church and a bakery down the street. She recalled that my grandparents lived on the 3rd floor and that 'Pop' chose the neighborhood because it was only one subway stop (via the #2 or #3) to Wall Street, where he had his office. Somehow I think the view and the upscale setting, not to mention the reputation as 'America's first suburb,' might also have been factors. Business must have been good in importing in the 50s.

Aunt Freida lived for a while at 47 Willow Street, a block from Columbia Heights Street, and later moved to 123 Columbia Heights, where she lived when we visited in my youth. I didn't recognize the latter when we went by; it's either been renovated beyond recognition or replaced entirely. Aunt Elsa, the eldest of Pop's five siblings, also lived nearby and attended Beecher's Plymouth Congregational Church on Hicks Street.

We circled the neighborhood one more time, walked the length of the promenade, went past a small park labeled the Harry Chapin Playground and continued to the Cadman Park where we encountered the first directional sign for the Brooklyn Bridge Walkway. Having already walked a couple miles around Brooklyn Heights, the additional mile across the Bridge on a sunny, hot day presented a formidable challenge but the flow of the many walkers, runners and cyclists carried us along and the views of Manhattan ahead and Brooklyn to our rear were magnificent.

My mother's grandfather, the Rev. George Frederick Behringer, was one of many who was invited to celebrate the 13-year completion of the bridge in 1883, walking across as we did 125 years later. While the Brooklyn Bridge was the first to connect Manhattan and Brooklyn, his church in Brooklyn, ironically enough, was removed to make way for the Williamsburg Bridge, the second Manhattan/Brooklyn connector.

We arrived at City Hall Park in Manhattan with enough time to hop on the #4 to 59th Street and a headed west for Beth's first-ever visit to Central Park. By the time we got to The Tavern on the Green, our legs had had enough. Nonetheless, we continued to Columbus Square, passing one of the many musical street performances scheduled in the city that day, this near the Lincoln Center, and took the C train downtown to 14th street and the L train back to Union Square.

Before heading back upstate we met my friend Stefan, a Berliner who is working at the UN as part of his legal traineeship in Germany. While I have ancestors from both sides of the family who lived in New York City, Stefan's intelligence and inquisitive nature have led him into virtually every neighborhood in the city. He never ceases to amaze me with his erudite commentary on the places he's been.

Yankee Stadium--The Final Season

Beth and I spent a long weekend in New York, a visit with my Mother and brother Phil in Scotia wrapped around two days and one night in the Big Apple. My primary reason for heading to NYC was to see the Yankees one last time in the "House that Ruth Built." I bought two tickets in the Loge level, third-base side, the section my father usually preferred back in the 60s when he took Phil and I as kids. The seats are still great, but the demand now is high and the only way to get them is through Stub Hub at quite a premium. But for old-times sake I bit the bullet and made some season-pass owner happy.

We got there early enough so that we could watch some batting practice and visit Monument Park before the game. There are an incredible number of retired number plaques and monuments out there, but considering the Yankees history, its not surprising. It takes a lot of great players to win 26 World Series! In my first trip to the Stadium, Mickey Mantle hit a home run and became my favorite. I have quite a few others including Lou Gehrig, even though I never saw him play, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.

The Cincinnati Reds young star, Edinson Volquez, held the Yankees bats in check and the Reds won 4-2. The game turned on a fly ball lost in the lights. Johnny Damon played it into a double and three Reds runs followed. The Yanks threatened but couldn't come back all the way. It was the first game I'd been to with Beth that they hadn't won and I'd considered her a lucky charm. Last year the Yanks came back from 4 down against the Cleveland Indians and won on a Alex Rodriguez walk-off three-run homer. That, of course, set the standard which this year's team, even with A-Rod back, couldn't reach.

Still, the crowd of 53,000+ was pretty excited when Robinson Cano singled in a run in the seventh inning. The rally fizzled and I could imagine Dad, looking down from heaven, lamenting "these guys are terrible, they'll never win at this rate," just as he had since the first game we ever saw, and through 8 world championships as well.

Some of the traditions go on even when the Yanks lose. The right field bleacher 'bums' start the game with (clap, clap) "JETER," (clap, clap) "JETER,"... until he acknowledges them with a wave of his glove. They proceed with the rest of the infielders and outfielders until all have been welcomed. And there's always the bottom of the 6th after three outs are recorded and the grounds-crew rakes the field to the music of the Village People, stopping to lead the crowd in physically spelling out "Y-M-C-A."

In spite of watching the Yanks go down to defeat, it was still an electrifying experience and, as baseball fans always say, "wait 'til next year." The Stadium will be history, but they're building a new one across

the street which already has some history of its own, even before the first pitch has been thrown. It seems a construction worker buried a David Ortiz jersey in the cement to jinx the Yankees, and once it was disclosed, they had to dig it up. Have you noticed Ortiz has not had his usual terrific season for the Red Sox this year--who's been jinxed, is my question? I guess we'll find out in October!