Let the Blog Wars Begin! The Boss vs. Ol' Ball Coach and Patti Scialfa too!

Springsteen or Spurrier? Gentleman or Jerk? RocknRoll Vs. College Football?

Normally these two worlds spin on separate axles but reading a little blip about the upcoming Springsteen release and tour in Sean Daly's St Petersburg TImes music column got me in a ranting mode. (Click on the title of this post to read what got me going -- be sure to read all the comments . . . )

It wasn’t Sean's words that got me -- he is very funny, entertaining and knows his stuff. (As opposed to the old music critic where I used to live: Dan McDonald of the Times Onion in Jacksonville. Dan would go to a bar to review a band and spend half his article talking about the chicken wings he ate. Dan wrote a column before the Born in the USA tour that was named something like "I liked Bruce better when he was skinny". It turns out that this musical "expert" had never seen Bruce in concert, yet felt confident in spending an entire column reminiscing about the good old days of Rosalita and what a great job Manfred Mann did with Blinded by the Light.

Here is the thing. I don’t care if you don’t like Bruce. I don’t like Celine Dion but I won't hold it against you if you have all her CDs (to your face, anyway). I can respect someone who has different musical tastes from me. But don't sit there like the great expert, licking the chicken grease off your fingers as you wax poetic about how great Bruce USED TO BE. And then admit you have never seen him in concert. Please.

Well of course Dan came back after having seen BorninUSA tour and of course he had changed his mind. He thought Bruce was great. But it was too late. I had already fired off a letter to the editor asking them to please get a decent music writer who was as passionate about music as Dan was about chicken wings. I probably said some other insulting things about Dan's taste that I can't remember now, but when I met him a few years later I said, "Yeah, I wrote you this letter after you blasted Springsteen BEFORE you went to see him in concert. I was pretty hard on you.” He was like, "You wrote that letter? I still have that letter!"

BTW, Dan is now the Food Critic for the Florida Times Onion. I kid you not.

But I have digressed. The point I wanted to make a couple of paragraphs ago was that my crazy meter goes off when someone says something uninformed about one of my heroes. A couple of dingbats wrote in the comments section of Sean's blog "Pop Music" about how bad Bruce had gotten . . .how political . . . how Pete Seger-ee. And I was off and running. It probably has to do a lot with the fact that the last couple of months have been really bad for me: my cancer has returned and spread to my spine and ribs so I’m back in treatment so my hair just fell out again . . . but that was nothing compared to losing my dad (my ultimate hero) on July 24, the day before my 46th birthday. Then last week I went to hang and mourn and rest at a friend's lake cottage and instead came home with a horrible infected abscess at the base of my spine that had to be surgically drained and yeah, I'm just looking for some poor smoe to make a dumb remark about the Boss.

But I got that out of my system and even was able to work in a little dig at old visor boy himself -- Steve Spurrier. And get this -- the guy who posts after me is so mad I bashed Spurrier he told me to go jump off the Skyway Bridge. Nice! Some people just don’t know how to express their anger in a proper forum. Harrumph.

So please, go read the comments and add your own outrage to the fire. In a couple of weeks, I will be in NYC listening to Patti Scialfa sing her heart out on the David Letterman Show. Mrs. Springsteen and I have both been told to jump off a few bridges before, so I am sure she will inspire my next rant and rave. Stay tuned.

Educator butted heads with Ku Klux Klan

Jane and Garfield Wilson at their Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary, December, 2006.

A man of quiet strength, he and his family were ostracized as he pushed for school integration.

By STEPHANIE HAYES
Published July 27, 2007

PLANT CITY - The Ku Klux Klan filled the room. Garfield Wilson, superintendent of the Walton County, Ga., school district, led the board meeting.

Wilson's wife was steamed.

"I want to tell you one thing," yelled Jane Wilson. "When my husband gets up and looks in the mirror, he sees a man, not a coward under a bed sheet!"

That man - the man she loved passionately for 50 years - died Tuesday of heart failure. He was 76.

Wilson of Plant City was a desegregation pioneer. During the civil rights movement, he championed a plan to gradually integrate Walton schools.

It didn't go over well.

Klansmen would stalk Wilson's three daughters on the playground, and gather on the lawn outside the house. Jane and the girls would hide in the bathroom, the only room without windows, and pretend it was a campout.

But Wilson never changed his tune. He was always soft-spoken and calm, never flashy. He wasn't the type to get up and make a fist-pumping speech or point fingers.

"There were so many nameless, faceless people like my dad who took these quiet stances," said daughter Jill Wilson, who works for the St. Petersburg Times.

When the family was no longer welcome in white circles, they attended black churches. Eventually, the family left town.

They settled in Thomasville, Ga. There, Wilson led a new district. Desegregation challenges were more subtle, but they persisted.

When one of Wilson's black principals was barred from a country club, Wilson played golf with him at a black course, his daughter said. Soon, other white principals followed.

Wilson learned leadership early. As a boy, he suffered rheumatic fever, but he still raised chickens and drove a tractor on his family's farm.

His mother studied to earn a master's degree, a scandal in those days, Jill Wilson said. While Mrs. Wilson took classes, her son cared for four younger brothers.

In college, he met Jane, who was wooed by his country values. His big brown eyes and sculpted build didn't hurt, either.

"He was all muscles. He weighed 185 pounds when we married. He was just out of the Army. I weighed about 104, and he could just pick me up and run upstairs," she said, giggling.

Wilson would cook for the family and patch the girls' pants when they wore thin. She never heard her husband raise his voice or lose his temper.

Still, if he had a point to make, he'd make it. He'd lower his eyebrows and look at you with those big brown eyes. And you knew.

Stephanie Hayes can be reached at shayes@sptimes.com or 727 893-8857.

Biography

Garfield Wilson

Born: March 3, 1931.

Died: July 24, 2007.

Survivors: Wife, Jane Wilson; daughters, Jenny Burke, Jill Wilson and Krista Komosinski; son-in-law, Ron Komosinski; granddaughter, Sara Burke; brothers Ed and Jim Wilson.

Services: 11 a.m. today at Bowdon Baptist Church in Georgia. Memorial donations to Hospice or the Salvation Army.

© 2007 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times

Dr. Garfield Wilson March 3, 1931 - July 24, 2007

My wonderful father passed away on July 24 2007. He went just as he wished. Playing golf with friends, he collapsed on the course and was rushed to the hospital. A doctor was in Dad's group and did CPR for 45 minutes with little result, but he hung on until all his girls (wife Jane, daughters Jenny, Jill and Krista and granddaughter Sara) could be at his bedside. We sang his favorite song to him (I'll Fly Away) and each told him how much we loved him. Then we let him go.

Because of my own terminal cancer diagnosis, Dad and I talked a lot about living with long-term illness and end of life issues -- not in a morbid way, mind you, but as a practicality. One of Dad's greatest fears was to finish out his days as an invalid, unable to care for himself. HE had a very specific "do not resuscitate" order in his living will and my mother bravely followed his wishes.

Dad's heart was damaged by rheumatic fever as a boy, then he had his first quadruple bypass surgery at age 41. Back then, this was a new procedure and few survived it. But my father had the strongest will to live of anyone I have ever met and he went on for another 35 years living each day with joy and passion. This was in spite of a massive heart attack, second quadruple bypass surgery and congestive heart failure in his fifties, and various scares and hospitalizations in his 60s and 70s. These visits usually ended with him coming out of an operating room doing the Seminole Chop, sporting some new electronic device (Pacemaker, Defibulator) implanted in his chest and cracking jokes to sooth my mother's fears.

I have a lot more to say about my dad so keep checking back with jillabuster in the months ahead. He was a great man, but an even better father and husband. The St. Petersburg Times wrote an article about him and his fight with the KKK Click here to read and my sister Krista and I will be working on his papers and news clippings to try and retell the remarkable story of this quiet man.

Here is the obituary I wrote for my father, which ran in the Atlanta, Tallahassee and Tampa/St. Petersburg newspapers.

Garfield W. Wilson, 76, of Plant City, passed away July 24, 2007. Dr. Wilson is survived by his wife of 50 years, the love of his life, Jane; daughters Dr. Jenny Burke, Tampa; Jill Wilson, St. Petersburg; and Krista Komosinski, Dunedin; granddaughter, Sara Burke; son-in-law, Ron Komosinski; and brothers, Dr. Ed Wilson, Bowden, Ga., and Jim Wilson, Concord, Calif. Wilson was born on March 3, 1931, in Bowdon, Ga. He graduated from Bowden High School and West Georgia College, served in the U.S. Army with distinction, then went on to earn his bachelor's and master's degrees from Auburn University and doctorate from Florida State University. He was a lifelong educator who fought on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement, serving on President Lyndon Johnson's desegregation task force while superintendent of schools in Walton County, Ga., one of the first large southern school districts to implement a comprehensive desegregation plan. Wilson started his education career as a high school math teacher, then was the first principal of Towers High School in Decatur, Ga., before moving on to serve as Walton County superintendent of schools. Wilson next served as superintendent of schools in Thomasville, Ga., then moved his family to Tallahassee, where he taught in the doctoral program at FSU and served as director of teacher education and certification at the Florida Department of Education for 16 years. He finished his career as a senior consultant with MGT of America and his own firm, Continuous Improvement Consultants. In 1995, Wilson and wife Jane retired to Mexico Beach. One year later, they lost their home in Hurricane Opal, but rebuilt and continued to enjoy their life playing golf, fishing, and watching sunsets each evening. Wilson was one of the founding members of the Mexico Beach Artificial Reef Association, serving as president during the years after Opal when reef restoration was critical. Wilson also served as board president for the St. Joseph's Country Club and as honorary "mayor" of 27th Street, where he watched over all his neighbors' properties, baited hooks, untangled fishing lines and fixed the bikes of all the neighborhood children who learned from him the healing power of WD40. The Wilsons moved to Plant City in 2002 to be near their children. Wilson was proud to watch his daughter Jenny defend her doctoral dissertation at USF in Human-Robot Interaction, read work published in the St. Petersburg Times written by daughter Jill, and walk daughter Krista down the aisle at her wedding to son-in-law Ron. Services will be held at Bowdon Baptist Church on Friday, July 27, at 11 a.m. Arrangements entrusted to Rainwater Funeral Home, Bowdon, Ga. Memorial donations can be made to Hospice or the Salvation Army. Condolences can be sent to the family by CLICKING HERE to go to guest book.