Author: BECPlanning

When I’m out speaking about my books, I’m frequently asked what I like to read.

Here’s a list of 10 of my favorite books. I’ll no doubt add to this as I recall others that resonated with me.

I’ll also include a few novels that other people rave about, but which didn’t do anything for me. I’m always hesitant to criticize books by other authors, and I’m not saying these books are without merit, but for whatever reason, they fell flat with me.

My favorites.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: This is my all-time favorite book. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1986. McMurtry’s story of two former Texas Rangers driving cattle from Texas to Montana is sweeping and powerful.

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: For years, this was my favorite book until I read “Lonesome Dove.” If I had to pick a single author to read for the rest of my life, it would be Steinbeck. I can relate his masterful depictions of the common man to my blue-collar, Ohio Valley upbringing.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: This narrative of the 1959 slayings of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, and the subsequent executions of Richard Hickock and Perry Smith changed crime writing forever. It is gripping and should be on everyone’s reading list.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey: I read this classic for a political science class in college. Until the seventh grade, I read a lot. I drifted away from reading about the time puberty and hormones kicked in, and my attention turned to other pursuits. Cuckoo’s Nest reminded me of how much I had enjoyed reading, and it rekindled that fire.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett: A friend of mine suggested that I read this book, set in the fictional 12th century town of Kingsbridge, England. “It’s about a guy building a church,” he said. “Sounds boring,” I said. “You won’t be disappointed,” he said. I wasn’t. It’s a great book and the best of the Kingsbridge series.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain: Hands down, the funniest book I’ve ever read. This is Twain hitting on all eight cylinders.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: This is as close to perfect as a novel can be, which is why it’s on virtually every list of best novels. Did Capote help write it? Probably. However, avoid the authorship controversy and enjoy the book. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout: My agent turned me on to Strout years ago. This is a collection of short stories revolving around the residents of fictional Crosby, Maine. Olive is the main character in some of the stories and makes cameos in others. It’s also a Pulitzer winner.

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt: This memoir of McCourt’schildhood in Limerick, Ireland, is outstanding and a Pulitzer winner. It’s been years since I read it, but I recall laughing out loud at the scene where young Frank is demonstrating the moves he supposedly learned in dance class, even though he had been taking his dance class money and going to the movies.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway: It took me a while to get used to Hemingway’s rat-tat-tat style. I admire his breadth of work, but this novella, which won the Pulitzer in 1953, is my favorite. The main character, Santiago, is a fan of New York Yankees’ great Joe DiMaggio and references him several times in the book. 

Here are five that didn’t work for me.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: Maybe my childhood in Brilliant, Ohio, was too Mayberry-like, but I just didn’t get this one. Holden Caulfield was too tormented and fighting too many demons to be relatable.

Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper: I’ve tried numerous times to get through this one. Perhaps Cooper doesn’t translate well in the 21st century. Or maybe it’s me.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville: The first page was great, but otherwise it was 36 hours of my life that I’ll never get back.Read the CliffsNotes version.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: I’ve read it several times, wondering why a novel so respected and admired didn’t resonate with me. And I still can’t tell you. For me, it just sits there.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner: Yes, I realize that anyone reading this in Mississippi will consider it heresy that I’m not a fan of Faulkner. I found this book difficult to follow, and it was equally difficult to care about the characters.

 

It’s never easy to write a blog when one of the words in the first sentence is “died.” It’s even more difficult when the person you’re writing about helped to shape the man you are today.

Bill McHugh recently died. He was my high school football coach and journalism teacher. But more than that, he was one of the best men I’ve ever known. Other than my father, no man had more influence on my life than Coach McHugh.

He was a coach and teacher for 32 years. His obituary stated, “He had a gift for seeing potential in young people and mentoring them to succeed.”

That’s an understatement of titanic proportions. He coached in a rough area of eastern Ohio where, many times, people who get a college degree see it as a ticket out of town. He didn’t. He returned to the high school from which he graduated and began teaching and coaching. Over the years, he influenced the lives of hundreds of young men, myself included.

When I saw him last, dementia had already stolen part of the man I had known. But not all. We had a good visit, and he said, “Getting old is a bitch.” I had to laugh, because this was a man I never heard curse in the oftentimes maddening world of coaching high school football. In fact, he rarely raised his voice at practice. When he got really upset, he might have tossed his clipboard to the ground, but even that was rare.

“Who was in your class?” he asked.

That was a fair question. Who could be expected to remember all the puzzle pieces after decades of coaching? I rattled off the names of my former teammates, and he nodded, processing the mental image in his mind.

(Sadly, too many of my teammates died before Coach McHugh. Life can be hard in the Ohio River Valley, and it was the mileage, not the years, that claimed so many of my old buddies.)

Coach McHugh began coaching at Smithfield High School. He became the head coach at Buckeye North in 1972, after my school, Brilliant High, and Smithfield consolidated.

We talked a little about those squads. During my junior and senior years at Buckeye North, we had good teams and were 17-2-1. But while that was important to me as a 17-year-old, it was the relationship I had maintained with Coach McHugh that I will most remember.

(The photo included with this post was taken during that visit.)

A mutual friend, Christina King, brought Coach McHugh to hear me speak at Thurber House in Columbus. I was touched by the fact that the man I so admired wanted to hear one of his former students speak. (In all candor, I figured after coaching and teaching me for two years, he’d never want to hear me talk again.)

Over the years, I made sure that he knew that he’d had a tremendous impact on my life. I wanted to do well in college and in life because, in part, it was important to me that the men who had helped to shape me be proud of me.

My father died at age 72. He went quickly. We had a great day at the hospital on Sunday. He was alert and feeling good. Then, Monday morning, he was gone. The chaplain at the hospital told me that while his death was difficult to accept at the moment, there would come a day when I would be grateful that he left this world quickly, without a lingering illness.

She was right.

I hadn’t seen Coach McHugh recently. However, I was aware that dementia was taking its awful toll. Maybe it was best that I didn’t see him in that condition. I know it was difficult for his children to watch and selfish on my part, but I wanted to hold on to the mental image of Coach McHugh that I will carry to my grave – a man of great dignity, standing on the sidelines with his clipboard, guiding the lives of so many young men.

Rest in peace, Coach.

The General Federation of Women’s Clubs recently named me the 2022-24 Honorary Chairman of Education and Libraries. The GFWC represents more than 3,000 women’s clubs around the country and has nearly 80,000 members. It’s quite an honor and I’m grateful to the opportunity. I’ll be penning columns for the GFWC newsletter and high school-age newsletter. (No, I don’t belong to a women’s club. I got on their radar after speaking at the Ohio chapter’s state convention. Did it hurt that my first name is more commonly attached to females? You’d have to ask them.)

I recently spoke at the Wood County Public Library in Bowling Green, Ohio. I went to college at Bowling Green State University, and I always welcome an opportunity to head back for visits. Julie Carle, who was a classmate of mine back in the day, wrote an article about my visit for the BG Independent News, an online news site. Here’s a link to the site: Bowling Green was a launching pad for author Robin Yocum – BG Independent News (bgindependentmedia.org)

The book website – Shepherd.com – recently asked me to do an article for them, picking a topic of my choice. My article features the five “best books with the baddest badass dudes in crime fiction.” It was fun to write and I appreciate Shepherd giving me the opportunity to promote some of my favorite authors. The best books with the baddest badass dudes of crime fiction (shepherd.com)

This ceramic whale is a dresser caddy. Around 1960, my mom bought one exactly like it for my Dad from Tillie Williams, who sold Avon in my hometown of Brilliant, Ohio.

It sat on my dad’s dresser forever, the top full of loose change and his car keys in the whale’s mouth. It was one of the things that I closely associated with my dad.

About 25 years ago, I walked through my parents’ bedroom and noticed the whale was conspicuously missing from its spot on his dresser. I turned right around and tracked down my mother. “Where’s the whale?”

One of my nephews pulled it off the dresser. It probably contained 10 pounds of coins, so when it hit the floor, it pretty much turned to whale dust. Now, he was only about five-years old at the time, and I don’t want to call him out for a mistake he made before he was even in elementary school, so I’ll just tell you that his initials are Sean Dundar.

I was crushed. I spent the 25 years scouring second-hand stores and the Internet trying to find a replacement, but to no avail. Dad died in 2008 and went to his grave whaleless.

A couple of weeks ago, my sister Rhonda, the mother of the accused, sent me a link to an antique store in Skokie, Ill., with a photo of, “the whale.”

I felt like Ahab when he finally spotted Moby Dick.

I called immediately and spoke to a lovely lady named Lora Swanson, who owns Swantiques. Yes, the whale was still available.

It arrived a few days later and is in a case with my other prized possessions, safely tucked away from my nephew. Yes, he’s an adult now, but you can never be too careful. These things are really hard to find. Trust me.

In the meantime, check out the other bargains at swan-tiques.com.

Here’s a photo of my son, Ryan, with the Lombardi Trophy for the Washington Redskins’ Super Bowl XXVI win over the Buffalo Bills. Ryan is the executive producer for the former Redskins, now the Washington Football Team, and was a doing a video on the 1991 championship season. You’ve got a cool job when an actual Lombardi Trophy comes home with you.

My former employer, the Columbus Dispatch, is celebrating its 150^th anniversary this year. As part of its Dispatch@150 series, reporters Bethany Bruner and Holly Zachariah wrote a lengthy story in Sunday’s paper on some of the big crimes the paper has covered over the past 150 years. They interviewed this old crime reporter for their lead. It was very nice to be included. I’d like to link you to the story, but it’s locked on the website for subscribers.

Reverting back to football for a minute, I’ve got to tip my cap to quarterback Joe Burrow of the Cincinnati Bengals for getting his team to the Super Bowl. This is a kid that Ohio State said wasn’t good enough to get on the field. He transferred to LSU, where he won the Heisman, the Maxwell, the Unitas Golden Arm Award, Walter Camp Award, Davey O’Brien Award, Lombardi Award and Manning Award. He quarterbacked LSU to an undefeated national championship and now has the Bengals in the Super Bowl. The best part of about Joe Burrow is that he seems to be a better person than he is a quarterback, and that’s saying something.

In February, we took our first vacation in several years and went to Anna Maria Island, Florida. It was great, except for the part about being on vacation in Anna Maria Island, Florida.

Apparently, we picked the one week of the year when it’s as cold in Florida as it is in Central Ohio. It was miserable. After a couple of days, we decided to take a walk on the beach because Melissa was sick of being cooped up in a tiny bungalow with me. I mean, because we thought it would be romantic. I thought we had walked out onto the Arctic Ocean. Not only was it freezing, but the wind was blowing so hard the sand hitting our legs felt like we were being attacked by killer bees. It was so miserable, in fact, that Melissa decided being cooped up with me wasn’t such a bad thing . . . so long as she had plenty of alcohol.

I got Melissa a power-washer for Mother’s Day. Let that sink in, boys. You know you’ve got a good woman when she’s happy with power tools for Mother’s Day. She was so excited to try it out, she actually asked if I would mind if she power-washed the deck. I said, “It’s your special day, sweetheart, power-wash to your heart’s content.”

Melissa also wanted a garden. I pointed out that having a garden might not be a good idea because we live in the woods. I began a recitation on photosynthesis, and the necessity of sunlight to . . . Well, never mind, we have a garden.

She Who Must Be Obeyed wanted a raised bed garden. I purchased treated, two-by-tens and built three, ten-foot-by-four-foot raised bed gardens in the back yard – exactly where she told me to build them. After they were built and put into place – exactly where she told me to build them – Melissa decided that a) they spoiled the view from the kitchen window, and b) there wasn’t enough sunlight in the woods where I built the beds.

“Not enough sunlight, you say?” I asked.

She ignored my sarcasm and decided that the garden was better suited for the side yard, about 100 yards southwest of the original construction site. She harnessed me up and I lifted the back of these monsters on a wheelbarrow for her, then lifted the front and carried them to the side yard. These were, what’s the word I’m looking for, oh yes, HEAVY. Such exertion can aggravate an affliction called sciatica, which feels like someone is poking your rear with a cattle prod, keeps you awake at night, and makes you whimper like a little girl. But, hey, we had fresh tomatoes.

And, just to show you that God has a sense of humor, a weekafter the raised beds were filled with dirt, vegetables planted, and a cute fence placed around the garden, a giant maple tree fell out of the woods and crushed the fence and the string beanarbor. I spent several more days cutting up the tree, repairing the fence, and . . . well, you know the drill.

Speaking of falling trees, the nine-footer I put up in the living room fell over the first night it was up. It sounded like a giant redwood crashing through the house. It was fatal for several ornaments.

I’m wishing all my readers the best for the holidays and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2022.

I was getting ready for work when the three-year-old granddaughter came into the room, held up a Ring Pop, and asked if I would open it for her. It was 7:30 a.m.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

She pointed toward the kitchen, where the candy dish was apparently within reach of a two-foot, eleven-inch child.

“Did Mimi say you could have a sucker before breakfast?” I asked.

Of course, I already knew the answer to this. She was doing the end-around, testing to see if she could catch Pap in a moment of weakness and cause him to commit a major violation of house rules. Mimi – AKA, She Who Must Be Obeyed – is not giving candy to anyone before breakfast. A violation of this rule would not put the three-year-old in trouble, but I would be facing some serious scorn.

She smiled and gave me, “the look.” She knows “the look” will soften me up. I have never been around a child like this one. She can melt my heart one second, and have me pulling out my hair the next. Instead of answering my question, she said, “Ring Pops taste good.”

She had a point. Cherry Ring Pops are delicious. I said, “Yes, they do, but they have zero nutritional value and they’re bad for your teeth.”

I’m not sure what I was thinking, talking about nutritional values and dental care to a three-year-old with a Ring Pop in her fingers. I might as well have been speaking Klingon.

“Candy is good,” she said.

Her verbal skills are still limited, but she was driving home her point. It was a diversion because she had still failed to answer my original question. Being a former newspaper reporter who dealt with shifty politicians, I was not about to let her off the hook. “Did Mimi say you could have a sucker before breakfast?”

“No.”

She is still brutally honest and has yet to realize the benefits of a convincing lie.

I held out my hand and wiggled my fingers. “Hand it over,” I said.

This did not bring on an onslaught of tears. I suspect because she knew there were more Ring Pops in the candy dish.

They taste good, you know?

***

I was in North Carolina recently and found this diploma on a wall at a Cracker Barrel restaurant. It’s a 1918 diploma from Rayen school in Youngstown, Ohio.

I took the photo because I’m always curious as to how such an item becomes separated from the family. Maybe I’m more sentimental than most, but I would think someone in the family would consider it a prize.

The graduate was Lillian Mary Weisbeck. I went online and found her in a 1940 census. She had married Walter Ball and was living on Logan Ave. in Youngstown. Her parents were Albert and Theresa Weisbeck.

I haven’t been able to track down any additional information. If anyone reading this in the Youngstown area has information on Lillian or her family, please get in touch with me through my website: http://www.robinyocum.net.

***

Just so you know that I do treasure such items, here’s a copy of my grandfather’s diploma from Lincoln High School in Brilliant, Ohio, in 1928. To the best of my knowledge, Raymond Yocum was the first member of my family to graduate from high school. He liked to tell people that he finished in the top 10 in his graduating class, which was true. Of course, there were only 10 graduates that year.

On the other side of the family, my grandfather Ullrich left school when he was 10-years old to work in the glass factory in Brilliant. His father said, “You can read and figure numbers. That’s all you need. Get to work.” He became a self-taught engineer who worked on Andrew Carnegie’s famous Carrie Blast Furnaces at the Homestead Steel Works in Swissvale, Pa.

I’ve had such an easy life.

There is a new Netflix series out on serial rapist Billy Milligan. He’s the guy from Columbus who beat the rap on three rape charges by claiming to have 24 different personalities.

I never believed this for one minute. Billy Milligan had two personalities – serial rapist and weirdo.

Fortunately for him, I guess, he was able to pull off the multiple personality ruse and escape conviction. When I was covering the crime beat for the Columbus Dispatch, I heard numerous stories from police officers of Milligan sitting in his cell in the Franklin County Jail and reading the book, Sybil, which was about a woman who allegedly had multiple personalities.

Billy was apparently rehearsing for his performance before the psychiatrists.

Milligan’s life of crime began in 1975 when he went to prison for rape and armed robbery. Apparently, he had only one personality at the time.

After being released from prison in early 1977, he was arrested again in October of that year and charged with raping three women on the Ohio State University campus. Claiming multiple personality disorder at his trial, Milligan was subsequently found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a mental health center. I recall at one point he was given weekend passes from the institution. Apparently, that’s how we protect women from rapists in Ohio.

In the 1980s, when I was on the investigative team for the Dispatch, I was at the office of then-Ohio Public Defender Randy Dana, working on an in-depth story about a man who I believed had been wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death. One day, a guy walked into the office where I was working and dropped off the mail. I looked at him, realizing that I should know who it was, but was drawing a blank.

After he left the room, the defense attorney who was helping me with the story grinned and said, “Do you know who that was?”

“Help me out,” I said.

“Billy Milligan.”

Dana had hired Milligan as an office boy. So now the guy who escaped conviction for three rapes was drawing a state paycheck. Lovely.

I spent much of the next month at the public defender’s office, reading a voluminous trial transcript and working on my story. Every time Milligan saw me in the office, he wanted to stop by and chat. He spent much of this time haranguing me to write a story about him and the injustice he had suffered.

This went up my spine like a flare. I said, “Injustice? It was the justice system that kept you out of prison, remember? You raped three women and claimed it wasn’t your fault because of all that multi-personality mumbo jumbo.”

He did not take kindly to my description of his alleged multiple personality disorder. I certainly didn’t want to be friends with Billy Milligan, but I must admit that it was interesting to hear him ramble on about one thing or another.

Sometime after that, I was at the Rhodes State Office Tower working on another story when I happened upon a reception being held in conjunction for an art exhibit by Milligan. Not only did we give this rapist a state paycheck, but we were sponsoring his art exhibit.

I will give Milligan this – he was a talented artist. I was looking at one of his paintings when he spotted me and walked over. It was a Rube Goldberg-type painting of a chain reaction. The final scene was a candle burning through a rope that was holding a grand piano over a baby in a cradle.

He said, “Makes you think, doesn’t it, Yocum?”

I said, “It sure does, Billy. It makes me think that you’re even more bizarre than everybody thinks you are.”

Again, he wasn’t amused.

On July 4, 1986, Milligan escaped from the Central Ohio Psychiatric Hospital and ran to Bellingham, Wash., where he was living under the alias, Christopher Eugene Carr. He moved into the same apartment building with Michael Madden, a student at Western Washington University.

Madden disappeared Sept. 3, 1986. Big surprise here, Milligan sold Madden’s car after he disappeared and cashed Madden’s $7,000 disability check. Not long after that, another big surprise, Milligan disappeared from Bellingham.

I received a phone call from Lt. David MacDonald of the Bellingham Police Department, who was trying to locate Milligan. MacDonald gave me information for a story on Madden’s disappearance and Milligan’s possible involvement. He said Milligan was the only suspect in Madden’s disappearance. I wonder which of his personalities was capable of that?

To my knowledge, Madden’s body has never been found. Milligan was never charged in connection with the disappearance.

Milligan was eventually captured in a hotel bar in Florida and sent back to an Ohio mental institution.

He was released in 1988 and died of cancer in 2014.

Melissa and I took a little break last week and went to Seabrook Island, S.C. It’s just outside of Charleston, so we took a day to visit the history of downtown – Rainbow Row, The Battery and White Point Garden.

However, by far, the most fascinating part of the day was our visit to the Warren Lasch Conservation Center, which houses the Confederate submarine, the H.L Hunley.

On the night of Feb. 17, 1864, the man-powered Hunley made the first successful submarine attack in the history of warfare when it detonated a bomb in the hull of the USS Housatonic off the coast of Charleston. The Housatonic sank in minutes; the Hunley never returned from its mission.

The late adventure author Clive Cussler funded a mission to locate the sub. It was discovered in 1995 and raised in 2000. Since then, researchers have been painstakingly working – with dental tools – to preserve the Hunley, which is on display in an underwater tank.

The remains of Lt. George E. Dixon, the leader of the mission, and his seven crew members were found entombed in the sub. In 2004, thousands of people turned out for the funeral procession through Charleston to their final resting place at Magnolia Cemetery.

If you’re in the Charleston area, don’t miss the opportunity to visit the museum. I guarantee it will be worth the trip. In the meantime, you can visit the museum’s excellent website at www.hunley.org.

A Visit to the Vineyard

We made a side trip on our way south and stopped by my favorite winery – Stony Knoll Vineyards in Dobson, N.C. This is a former tobacco farm that has been in the Coe family for 125 years.

Van Coe began converting from tobacco to grapes in 2001.

Very nice people and great wine. My favorite is the Chambourcin.

If you’re in the neighborhood, stop by. The vineyard is located at 1143 Stony Knoll Rd. in Dobson. You can check them out at www.stonyknollvineyards.com.

A Nice Tribute to Our POW/MIAs

Over the weekend, I went to Bowling Green, Kentucky, to watch my daughter’s University of Tennessee-Martin volleyball team play in a tournament at Western Kentucky University. (Yes, I’ve been logging a lot of Interstate miles lately.)

I was touched by the display WKU has for our soldiers who were prisoners of war or missing in action. It is a single black chair with the POW/MIA logo, with black stanchions cordoning it off. The display includes a plaque that reads:

Since World War I, more than 92,000 American soldiers are unaccounted for. This unoccupied seat is dedicated to the memory of those brave men and women for the sacrifices that each made in serving this great country.

Meet WKU’s Big Red

It was my first visit to WKU. It’s a beautiful campus.

On a less somber note, the WKU mascot is called “Big Red.” You may have seen Big Red on the commercials for the old Capital One College Mascot Challenge.

While at the tournament, Big Red stopped down to visit my granddaughters. You can see by the photo that Cali was excited to meet Big Red. Cami . . . not a fan!

Buckeye Book Fair Set for Nov. 6

I was accepted to participate in the Buckeye Book Fair on Saturday, Nov. 6.

If you’re a book fan, this is a great book fair. This year it will be held at the Greystone Event Center in Wooster, Ohio.

Here’s a link to the authors and illustrators who will be participating in this year’s fair.

https://buckeyebookfair.org/2021-authors-illustrators/