Coach Orr called out to quell Ames riot

By ART CULLEN

It does not seem like yesterday. It seems like it was 26 years ago. VEISHEA, the annual spring celebration at Iowa State University, erupted in a riot in the heart of Campustown. At the time I was the managing editor of The Daily Tribune in Ames.

Riot police had their shields up as drunks threw rocks and beer bottles at the oncoming forces.

Our man, Tom Wallace, was there with a backlit picture of the brigade that looked like something out of “A Clockwork Orange” (Stanley Kubrick version 1971).

It all started when some joker started a couch on fire in the middle of Welch Avenue, I recall. Everyone gathered around the campfire. Little did I know that our uncontrollable reporter, Finn Bullers, was at Ground Zero shortly after the fun started (in a professional capacity only). Cyclone basketball coach Johnny Orr and football coach Jim Walden were called out in the dark of morning to urge the kids back to their party houses.

That’s all it took.

Coach Orr telling them to go home.

Bullers gave the fire-starter a ride home and tape recorded their conversation as the reporter drove.

The county attorney wanted Bullers as a criminal witness. He was dispatched to Nebraska to work on a long-term project about sandhills and returned to Ames after the smoke cleared.

The riots have continued every few years since then.

The latest round last week did not need Fred Hoiberg to get out of bed. The cops cleared them out. A student suffers from a serious head injury. VEISHEA was cancelled for this year. The students pledge that they will do better in the future.

Several riots over a 26-year period should sober everyone up. [pullquote]VEISHEA has seen its better days. It used to be a wholesome spring celebration of life on campus. It has become a sot event, more uncontrollable than a Saturday night after a home football game in Iowa City.[/pullquote] Is that what Ames wants to be known for? Having more drunken oafs than Iowa City?

First lesson for a college kid when the cops show up: Go pass out in the corner. And stay there.

Republican US Senate candidate Joni Ernst of Red Oak says she wants to make Democrats squeal just like she made hogs squeal during castration. The Cedar Rapids Gazette may have made her squeal when it documented that she missed over half the votes in the Iowa Senate this year — that’s 117 votes.

Ernst claimed that her service in the Iowa National Guard caused her to miss the votes, except for five days when she was called out of the capitol for her US Senate campaign.

The Gazette found that she was on duty for the Guard during only 12 of the votes. The rest of the time she was doing something else.

Working on male hogs, perhaps?

One of Ernst’s many competitors for the Republican Senate nomination is blowhard Sam Clovis of Sioux City.

He bloviated to the Carroll Times Herald last week that President Obama might have been impeached by now were it not for the fact that he is black.

“It’s not that what he has done would not rise to the level where it might be impeachable,” Clovis said. “I don’t think it’s a practical, pragmatic issue simply because I don’t think the nation is ready for it. You know, within this generation we just went through an impeachment of a president and it didn’t end well and now we have a situation where race is thrown into the card as well. And whether we like it or not, race is an issue.”

Clovis said the House would vote to impeach were it not for the media. He acknowledged that it would look through the media lens that Obama had been impeached because he was black.

Hammerin’ Hank Aaron, still my home runs leader, a day later said this:

“We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go in the country. The bigger difference is that back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts.”

Eric Wordekemper is working as an undergraduate assistant with the Creighton Bluejays baseball team this spring as the Storm Lake native recovers from Tommy John surgery. Wordekemper is working with relief pitchers, which is how he spent most of his time in the minor leagues with the New York Yankees organization. The bullpen has been stellar with a combined earned-run-average under 3. That’s pretty good for college pitchers.

Wordekemper hopes to return to professional pitching next year. He reached AAA Scranton with the Yankees, and also has played in Taiwan and Mexico.

VEISHEA stands for Veterinary, Engineering, Industrial Science, Home Economics and Agriculture — the original colleges at ISU.

It also was Johnny Orr who kept basketball player Sam Mack out of prison for robbing an Ames Burger King. Mack’s picture hung behind the cash register when the place was robbed.

Orr begged a Story County jury for mercy.

Who could tell the Coach no?

The Ames police chief predicted that responding officers left so much lead in Mack’s backside as he fled the restaurant that he would never be able to jump again.

But he went on to play for the Houston Rockets in the NBA.

The police chief went on to become a Story County supervisor.