It was about 20 years ago that 1965 Wayland High School graduate, ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran Jon Gambee wowed the crowd and longtime venerable Democratic Party leader Jim Pino.
Barry County Democrats didn’t win much at the ballot box, but they had the best and only game of political discourse in Hastings with a long-running “First Friday” series at the aged, but historic Thomas Jefferson Hall. Pino was the master of ceremonies for the monthly forum, and because he had connections he was able to summon such Michigan political heavyweight speakers as Howard Wolpe, Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow, David Hollister, Lynn Jondahl, Zolton Ferency and Paul Hillegonds. All spoke for free except the modest lunch they were provided.
Pino was a retired owner of a classical music record shop in Lansing who moved to the Nashville area to take up gentleman farming. He was a devout Quaker, a member of the Society of Friends in Kalamazoo. And he was universally loved and respected, even by Republicans.
But Pino did not hesitate to tell me the best First Friday program ever was Gambee’s presentation about the horrors and eye-opening events during his career as an employee at the Kalamazoo County juvenile home.
Gambee told his audience that for many years he had to handle unruly and angry teen-age males and he often suffered a variety of injuries in such melees.
He quipped, “It got so bad that I was on a first-name basis with the personnel at hospital emergency rooms.”
Things changed, however, in a way that surprised him. A new administrator, Don Nitz, came to the home to implement a very different “liberal” conflict resolution style approach. Gambee acknowledged he was more than just skeptical about Nitz’s theories on how to handle violent, unruly teen offenders.
Nitz adanced the notion that meeting the teens’ violent outburst with violent response was the outdated method that just didn’t work. He insisted that juvenile detention officers try instead to avoid putting their hands on the kids and attempt other non-violent approached to diffuse the situation.
Slowly, but surely, the handling of negative incidents had fewer injuries and improved the morale of the workers and of those incarcerated. And Gambee himself was spared so many trips to the ER.
Gambee, not a snowflake, nor a libtard, admitted at the end of his presentation that the whole experience in resolving problems without use of force was a positive development in his work.
Of course, the message was something Pino cherished, being a Quaker and a lifetime pacifist.
There were several times in the next few years that Pino would call me to ask if Gambee would be willing to make another presentation at First Friday, but he developed health and physical issues to cause him to retire from his hosting duties.
