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Saturday, May. 16, 2009

Mike Tharp: Mercedians welcome first lady

Howdy, Mrs. Obama.

Welcome to Merced County.

We're mighty glad you're here. Thank you for making us part of a schedule that sometimes must seem as busy as the bees that pollinate our almond trees every spring.

You do us honor by coming to speak to our first four-year class to graduate from UC Merced. No doubt your old Harvard prof, Charles Ogletree, Jr., who grew up in South Merced, has told you some about us. As have your trail-blazers and scene-setters.

They couldn't tell you all about us, though. So here are a few facts and yarns that may help you get to know us a little better.

We Mercedians look a lot like America -- we're brown, white, black, yellow and Other -- the same colors as most towns and cities across the land. A few of us are rich, some of us are middle class (lower and upper) and too many of us are poor -- around one out of five in our county of 255,000. About the same ratio don't have jobs nowadays -- 20 percent unemployment.

Still, we're all seeking a better life for ourselves and an even better world for our kids and grandkids.

One side of us you'll notice, Mrs. Obama, however short your stay: we're proud folks. And we don't put on airs. Who you see is what you get with most Mercedians. L.A., San Francisco, Sacramento -- they've all got good people, too. But any of us who've lived in those places, before calling this county home, are struck hard and fast by how down-to-earth most Mercedians are.

One reason is that our main livelihood hereabouts is literally down-to-earth. We're farmers -- almonds, hay, tomatoes, sweet potatoes -- and ranchers -- dairy and beef. More than a few of us are transplanted Okies and Arkies, part of John Steinbeck's migrant tribe.

That's one reason we're so easy to trust. A Mercedian looks you in the eye, Mrs. Obama, shakes your hand with a grip that even your Lara Croft muscles would consider firm, and you can take what he or she says to the bank. One, we hope, that hasn't needed your husband's bailout money.

If Chicago is the City of Big Shoulders, Merced County is the Land of Big Mustaches. Gaze into the crowd at the men in the graduation audience. You'll see some proud papas and uncles and brothers who look as if they just rode out of Dodge in 1880.

Our women you'll like. No shrinking poppies (our local flower). They'll tell you just what's on their minds, with all the manners they were brought up to display. It'd be neat if you met Carolyn Goings. She's retired now, spends the winter as a snowbird in Surprise, Ariz. But in February she drove four days round-trip from Arizona to Merced to attend a meeting about a new railroad underpass to be built near her home. She wanted her voice heard.

And like today's second-most famous multiracial figure in America, Tiger Woods, we've got a lot of folks who've colored outside the lines. Our Hmong and Lao, for instance, drifted here after fighting for America in the Secret War in Indochina. They've intermarried. Hope you get to say hello to Sam Malaythong, who owns Sam (no apostrophe -- there's a story why that he delights in telling diners) Café, and who's donated money and spicy noodles to many UC Merced student groups. There isn't a Thai restaurant inside the Beltway that serves better food.

We've also got Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Sikh and Croatian hyphenated Americans. Our sheriff is one of the latter.

Like the ones in San Pedro, L.A.'s port town, he resembles the high school football coach there who was once described: "He'd give you the shirt off his back -- then tell you how to wear it."

And, of course, Latinos make up more than half our population. Wish you could meet Juan Diaz, who reopened our hallowed Hangar Café at the Merced Airport a few months back. This column wrote that he's "one reason Merced will make it" because his bilingual, bicultural hard work makes our community better.

Another cool guy you'd enjoy spending time with, Mrs. Obama, is Robert Chad, who uses solar fuel cells on his farm. Last fall he showed a group of Mercedians how they were cutting his energy costs. He told one of them he also had installed a solar dryer behind the barn. It took a second for the penny to drop, but within days the guy writing this column had also strung clotheslines under his patio roof.

We're proud of our 4-H and FFA kids who show their cows and lambs and goats and pigs at our fairs. We're proud of our sky pilots, like Herb Opalek, an ecumenical minister who runs our Rescue Mission and has redeemed hundreds of homeless off our streets. We're proud of our high school and Merced College sports teams and coaches who, more often than not, turn out true scholar-athletes.

Lot of veterans here too, Mrs. Obama. Our Nov. 11 parade showcases their service. So we're deeply proud of the Mercedians who made the ultimate sacrifice in a war started before your husband became president: Army PFC Karina Lau, 20. Marine Lance Cpl. Travis Layfield, 19. Army Cpl. Cesar Granados, 21. Marine Cpl. Josh Pickard, 20. Army Sgt. Frank Gasper, 25. Army Pvt. Janelle King, 23.

And we can't help but brag -- it ain't braggin' if you can back it up -- about the Sun-Star's coverage of our community. At a time when newspapers are viewed as dinosaurs, we've won more journalism awards in the past two years than we ever have. One of our reporters right now is on her second tour in Baghdad. Our mantra in the newsroom and to our corporate parent McClatchy up Highway 99 is, "We're too small to fail!"

Most politicians don't much like or trust the press, but relax: we at the Sun-Star try to be the conscience of our community. We try to find what Watergate's Carl Bernstein called "the best obtainable version of the truth."

Ask your aides, Mrs. Obama, to pick up today's newspaper and our special eight-page Sunday special tomorrow about your visit to our commencement. You'll see the proof of what we deliver to our audience: local news nobody else can come close to matching.

Our Web site, www.mercedsunstar.com, offers even more evidence, especially our groundplowing series, "Sowing Hope," about the UC Merced med school. Our Valley needs that school, so we took a risk on a new joint venture. We were the first newspaper in America to partner with the new Center for California Health Care Journalism, linked to both the USC Annenberg School and the California HealthCare Foundation. Here you go: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/sowinghope/

Problems? Sure. Besides joblessness and poverty, we must deal with gangs, drugs, dropouts, and fractured families. Again, Mrs. Obama, we're like most American communities. No amount of funnel cake at the fair or "Gateway to Yosemite" gloss can cure those.

Our highest unemployment rate ever came after Castle AFB was closed in 1995. Over the last year, we've also lost County Bank and Gottschalks, two capitalist enterprises that personified every priority in giving back to us that your husband preached as a community organizer in Chicago.

But we're trying, ma'am. We've got some effective elected officials and bureaucrats, but our main agents of change come from within our own ranks. Lot of volunteers in Merced County. Lots of people who step up and do more than sign a check.

We may well be the most volunteer-driven community in the state. Our service organizations take specific constructive steps to improve lives much different from their own. Rotary gives dozens of scholarships to high-schoolers for college. The Lions collect eyeglasses and send them all over the world. Kiwanis founded Kiddieland, a neat park with rides that Malia and Sasha would enjoy. First dog Bo would like how active our local animal lovers are in rescuing all kinds of critters.

So before your wheels-up back to the Beltway, Mrs. Obama -- may we now call you "Michelle"? -- we hope that you carry home with you a sense of us as Mercedians. We're the people your husband ran to represent, Michelle. We want you to know that we're worth your efforts.

And even in only a few hours, we want you to feel our humanity, our decency, our honesty, our hope. We're all Mercedians, Michelle.

And we'd like to make you an honorary member of our community.

Again, much obliged for coming.

We hope to see you again.

You can bring your husband and daughters too.

They can go to Kiddieland.

We can get him a good pickup hoops game.

And tell him he doesn't need to grow a mustache.

Executive editor Mike Tharp can be reached at (209) 385-2456.