(The latest in a series of posts on Gadfly History)
OMG 90 years old!?!!! Stephen Antalics rocks! I have the utmost respect and admiration for him. When I grow up, I want to be just like him: “a fierce fighter for justice for all!” Happy birthday, Stephen! — Olga
Wow, I had no idea this gadfly was 90 years old! Happy Birthday to Stephen! I’ve learned so much from your comments at city council meetings over the years. Thanks for all the wisdom. Your effort to make our city government the best it can be is inspiring. Keep it up!! In admiration and appreciation. — Breena
Happy Birthday, Steve, and many more! — Lynn R
Steve, Happy Birthday and many more! We need you! From Gadfly 002 to Gadfly 001 (with licenses to provoke.) — Bill
Happy 90th, Steve. I always await patiently for your eloquent commentary at City Council to wrap up issues of the day. Stay healthy & engaged!!– Bruce
Stephen Antalics is 90 years old today — June 21, 2019!
(The latest in a series of posts on Gadfly History)
Kim Carrrell-Smith is a 31-year resident of Bethlehem’s historic Southside, where she taught public history at Lehigh University for almost two decades. She is also an aspiring gadfly, buzzing in on issues of historic preservation, public education, city government, and other social justice issues. She tips her wings to the master gadflies who have served our community for so long!
Stephen Antalics is 90. I find that hard to believe, but it makes me happy to have an occasion to wish him well and say thanks. He has been a fixture at City Council Meetings: the battling, dodging, darting, eloquent King of Gadflies who has brought so much to the attention of our elected and appointed city officials. He’s fought for justice, for enforcement of laws, for equity and respect for our citizens (even though the majority of our citizenry is unaware of his advocacy)! He is not paid to do this, nor is he seeking fame or glory. He simply wants what is best, and fair, and uplifting for our community. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you why I really love Stephen.
As a fellow Southsider who holds an abiding affection for this eclectic, diverse, vibrant part of town, I love Stephen because as a lifetime resident here he gets this place in a way that no one else under 90 really can. He’s part of this place, and he’s seen the good, the bad, the ups and downs, the old folks departing, and the younger folks coming in. He’s seen the range of ethnicities change and morph over time as our population has ebbed and flowed. And he loves the history of this place that is represented in its people, its buildings –from churches to businesses and homes, to industrial structures, to streetscapes—he knows that history is important. He knows that it is a selling point for this side of the river, just as it’s a selling point for that other side. And he’s not afraid to show up and do his part to help folks understand that.
Gadflies, as we know, are underappreciated and underestimated. They show up when you want to end a meeting, or when you want to rush something through; they don’t seem to fit our efficient, speedy “lifestyle” these days. The Usual Suspects are met with rolling eyes, and sometimes more overt derision and disrespect. But they persist. And Stephen is the guy who looks past all of that, and does what is necessary to raise consciousness, and consciences. He puts himself on the line. He brings attention to small things as well as big issues. He persists. And he makes us better people here in Bethlehem.
Stephen is 90? Hard to believe. But I’m wishing him light, and happiness, and well-being on this big birthday, with all of the thanks I can send him. The King of the Gadflies: long may he reign!
(The latest in a series of posts on Gadfly History)
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be gadflies, Gadflies ain’t easy to love and they’re harder to hold They’d rather give you a snarl than diamonds or gold
fantasy first draft of Waylon Jennings’ and Willie Nelson’s hit song
Stephen Antalics – Bethlehem’s Gadfly #1 – is 90 years old Friday June 21.
Stephen doesn’t want me to make a fuss.
But I think he’s extraordinary.
For at least twenty years, he’s attended virtually every City Council meeting.
And held feet to fire. With facts. With wit.
A smiling Stephen recently described gadflies as “pit bulls — when our teeth sink into the shank, God help the poor victim, since we are unrelenting! We do NOT quit, since we wear gold badges and white hats. Offenders beware.”
I love this picture of Stephen. Clenched fists. A warrior.
People have said to me, “what’s the use. You gadfly guys never win.”
Stephen’s had his share of winning.
But those naysayers just don’t understand.
Winning isn’t the goal for the gadfly. Speaking truth to power is.
His “That’s not right!” has wrinkled the brow of a generation of public officials.
Stephen’s gadfly lineage includes Socrates, Thoreau, Gandhi, MLK – are they losers?
Gadflies believe with MLK that the long arc of the universe bends toward justice.
Underappreciated is Stephen’s written and oral artistry.
Here just two weeks ago at City Council Stephen puts aside his prepared remarks and fills his five precious allotted minutes – on the fly – with a perfectly paced, perfectly shaped lament on the fate and state of the Southside, a haunting melody in his playlist over the years.
Stephen doesn’t want me to make a fuss.
But I love the man that he is for what he has done for us so completely unselfishly for so long.
Mamas, please let your babies grow up to be gadflies. Like Stephen.
We need ‘em.
If followers would like to send Stephen birthday messages, Gadfly will collect and post them.
Second in a series of posts on Gadfly History. The Gadfly seeks stories or suggestions for stories on the Bethlehem tribe of Gadflies. If we had something like Bill White’s Hall of Fame, who else would be in it? Eddie Rodriquez, Mary Pongracz, Bob Pfenning, Chuck Nyul, Lucy Lennon?
You see them together a lot in the same quadrant of Town Hall, Stephen Antalics and Bill Scheirer, the “iron men” of this generation Bethlehem gadflies. Stephen on the short side, Bill tall. Stephen, who can be crusty and truculent with Council, Bill always cool, soft spoken, urbane. Stephen in your face, Bill of gentle wry wit. I imagine them playing ball together in the old days in some half-lit Church basement gym. Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside. Stephen the point guard, dervish-like setting the plays, elbowing his defenders, trash talking, creating the openings, Bill, patiently underneath, biding time, counting the broken lights in the ceiling, waiting the pass, finishing it off. We tipp’d our hat to Stephen last time (see Gadfly History #1), Bill now.*
Bill must be a true numbers warrior. When his heavily detailed and impenetrable 400-page budget book, an accountant’s dream, damn near caused a riot, Mayor Callahan was forced to produce a slimmed down snappy version for weak-kneed Council. But no watered-down, gussied up version for Bill: “The new document, if [it] gets more citizens involved in the budget process, is a good thing,” he said wisely. “But it can never replace the detailed budget. That is the one I use.” And that’s Bill.
Nobody best accuse this mild-mannered man of lacking “stones.” During the ugly democracy-crushing debate over razing Broughal high school, “Professor” Scheirer took to assigning grades to the school directors, giving them a “C” for their often-chaotic procedures. “These parliamentary grades go on into your permanent record,” he quipped.
Bill tempered Mayor Callahan’s enthusiasm over a positive citizen mail survey, indicating wonkily that “the important thing is the nonresponses” and that a random sample of the nonrespondents “should be aggressively pursued, and that if those results differ from those who responded, the survey could be flawed.” Not something His Honor the Mayor wanted to hear.
And during the Broughal debacle he said, “just because other middle schools have athletic fields doesn’t mean Broughal needs them too.” Bada Boom! Run for the hills!
When Bill praised me for good alliteration in the phrase “prayer, pledge, past” I used in some pitch during public comment at Council, I replied, “Ahhh, took a little English along with that Economics, eh!” But little was I prepared for this moving meditation on personal and national tragedy that I found in the old newspaper files.
I thank The Morning Call for the Sept. 9 article on “The Falling Man,” a picture of a person plunging from the World Trade Center on 9/11. It may be the most compelling photograph I have ever seen. Although it was not appropriate to publish the photo on the first page of the Arts & Ideas section, where eyes that were too young might have seen it, I agree with the decision to publish it the day after the tragedy, for it has a very positive message.
In that situation, most of us would have retreated within ourselves in some corner of the building, cherishing the last few seconds of life, perhaps hoping that the fire would miraculously burn out and that the building would not collapse.
The man in the photo had the strength of intellect to clearly see that was not going to happen. Rather than passively wait for his death, he chose to end it on his own terms, showing the “control” mentioned in the article. But, it was more than that. It takes strength of character to initiate some action that will almost certainly result in one’s death, if one is not suicidal.
In a way, his act was not unlike the courage of the passengers of Flight 93 who chose to take positive action rather than wait to die.
Whatever went through this man’s mind, I believe it was an act of self-affirmation, essentially an act of human dignity. He also sent a message to the terrorists: You mayhurtus, you may kill some of us, but you will not defeat us.
That, my friends, is something.
Bill Scheirer – economist, community organizer, government critic, preservationist, gadfly.
The Gadfly seeks stories or suggestions for stories on the Bethlehem tribe of Gadflies. If we had something like Bill White’s Hall of Fame, who else would be in it? Bill Scheirer (with Stephen the current other “iron horse” in Bethlehem Gadflydom), Eddie Rodriquez, Mary Pongracz, Bob Pfenning, Chuck Nyul, Lucy Lennon?
Click here for Stephen Antalics, “With a stigmatic past, Bethlehem’s South Side suffers history of neglect, ” Morning Call, June 22, 2001. Antalics 6-22-01
The name of Stephen Antalics, who ranks as Gadfly No.1 in the pantheon of Bethlehem Gadflies, first appeared in the pages of the Morning Call in 1996, but here is the 2001 first article with his by-line (a robust 1000 words). Stephen burst into print here as a Southside warrior, and current City Council attendees recognize that his combative voice is undiminished. Stephen sees a kind of Civil War at the very beginning of Bethlehem history rather than mid-way as in our country at large. From the get-go it’s the North and its high-toned Christians and culture v. the “sin city” of the South filled with speakeasies, gambling, opium dens, and brothels (who knew??). The “native Americans” of the North looked down on the “foreign invaders” of the South and the “unopposed infiltration of organized crime.”
Most importantly, for Stephen this “arrogant attitude never disappeared” and “can still be traced in social attitudes and administration policies even today” [2001]. To wit, the 1950s Clarke-Rapuano Study, the city’s first formal redevelopment plan, relegated Southside development to “a later date.” To wit, the 1970s Gruen plan urged the formation of “Southside 76,” but “This plan never saw fruition.” Thank God for Bethlehem Steel and Lehigh University – “There is a God!” literally exclaimed one businessman. In the 1990s, for instance, Lehigh responded to Southside needs “by building a student housing and shopping complex . . . on Morton Street, designed to improve the area and keep the buying power in the community,” but the City administration refused “to amend zoning codes to reduce the number of student housing in a given area by a density clause.” “A drive down Montclair and Birkel avenues today [2001] shows the results of this omission,” claims our Gadfly. Bottom line: the history of the Southside is a “history of neglect.”
What do you think of the Stephen’s vision of history here? How does it relate to the resurgence of the Southside we are seeing now? What about Lehigh’s current construction of additional dorms close to the Southside business district? How about Stephen’s grim Jeremiah-type prophecy at the just-past September 4 City Council meeting about the Montclair/Birkel cancer spreading to the Northside via the Airbnb contact? What else does the piece make you think about? Stephen, would you like to comment on your own piece of seventeen years ago?
way that no one else under 90 really can. He’s part of this place, and he’s seen the good, the bad, the ups and downs, the old folks departing, and the younger folks coming in. He’s seen the range of ethnicities change and morph over time as our population has ebbed and flowed. And he loves the history of this place that is represented in its people, its buildings –from churches to businesses and homes, to industrial structures, to streetscapes—he knows that history is important. He knows that it is a selling point for this side of the river, just as it’s a selling point for that other side. And he’s not afraid to show up and do his part to help folks understand that.
Although it was not appropriate to publish the photo on the first page of the Arts & Ideas section, where eyes that were too young might have seen it, I agree with the decision to publish it the day after the tragedy, for it has a very positive message.