THE BELL CURVE -- Joseph N. Bell

After almost 60 years in journalism and 80 years of living, deja vu --

as Yogi Berra once pointed out -- keeps happening all over again. Seldom

does a week go by without an event being commemorated or people making

news -- too often these days by dying -- that doesn’t touch a responsive

chord for me.

Last week was full of such chords, starting with the 25th anniversary

of the Chowchilla kidnapping. To those of you too young to remember this

weird affair, three rich, bored and mindless Northern California college

students -- now in prison -- kidnapped a whole school bus full of

children and transferred them to a carefully prepared tomblike truck,

buried in a rock quarry and equipped with water and chemical toilets.

While the kidnappers were negotiating ransom, the victims dug themselves

out.

I spent several days in Chowchilla talking to the children and their

parents before an almost surreal interview with the bus driver, whose

story contradicted virtually everything the children had told me. One of

the mothers wrote me a year later: “It is sickening to me when I consider

the long-range and side effects, just to our family alone, that have come

out of this awful thing. Talk about a pebble dropped in the water -- this

was the whole mountain. And at the moment, I can’t think of a punishment

suitable for those who did it.”

Then there was the release of the newly edited “Apocalypse Now” in

which director Francis Ford Coppola restored almost an hour of film that

had been cut from the original. This brought back a day my wife -- then a

magazine editor -- and I spent with Martin Sheen, long before he became

President Bartlett in “West Wing.”

Sheen -- as the spiritually ravaged Capt. Willard, the central figure

in “Apocalypse” -- relived for us the chaotic days of filming, especially

the key scene in which he is assigned to kill the Marlon Brando

character, and Sheen’s near-fatal heart attack that held up production

for six weeks. If you see the new “Apocalypse” -- and I certainly intend

to -- you might reflect that Sheen, who had taken on too much of the

character he was playing, did this key scene on his 36th birthday after

he had been drinking all day. He wasn’t supposed to break a prop mirror,

and when he pulled his bloodied hand away, Coppola tried to stop the

action, but Sheen waved him off and the scene played out -- all of which

seems a very long way from President Bartlett and “West Wing.”

But the news events that hit closest to home were the tragedies in

Midwestern football camps where heatstroke took the lives of two strong

and healthy athletes required to work out in 90-degree heat and

oppressive humidity. That took me back to the summer of 1942, when I was in the third class of aviation cadets to be subjected to the Navy

Pre-Flight School in Iowa City, Iowa, where Navy brass sought to discover

the fine line between producing supermen and destroying them. They did

both.

I’ll put up the heat and humidity of central Iowa against any place in

the world -- and I was there just trying to survive the Navy jock

fantasies in July, August and September. Navy Pre-Flight training was

designed by former heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney, and I

strongly doubt that he ever trained for a fight in August in Iowa. At

least in the sun.

We would be fed beans for breakfast and then sent out to leave the

beans on an obstacle course that featured a 10-foot wall I can still see

glowering at me. The only way to get over it was to hit it on the dead

run and get a slippery foothold high enough to grasp the top of the wall.

After the obstacle course, we were scattered into various sports from

boxing to soccer, where we spent most of the rest of our time for three

months in the grip of coaches who mostly live in a distant galaxy where

they believe devoutly that any demands can be excused if they produce

real toughness in the individuals who survive.

One of the coaches at Iowa Pre-Flight was Bernie Bierman, who took the

University of Minnesota to a bunch of national football titles. So there

we were -- mostly soft college kids whose idea of exercise was carrying a

six-pack back to the frat house -- in full football gear in Iowa in the

sun in July. On our first day, Coach Bierman put us through some

exercises, and we were all panting on the ground as he walked among us

asking, “Is there a quarterback here?”

I was the only one stupid enough to raise my hand. I figured Bierman

wanted someone to call the signals while everyone else worked. So the

coach stood over me and said, “You a quarterback, son?” I allowed I truly

was, and he said, “Well, we don’t need a quarterback for this next

exercise, so you go take 10 laps around the track.”

I remember the first four laps, but after that it is all a haze. When

I didn’t show up for dinner, my roommates came looking for me and found

me staggering around the track dehydrated and semiconscious. They took me

to my room, cooled me down and brought me back. We always thought the

odds were better to avoid Sick Bay. When I regained my senses, I picked

up the moral instantly. I have never volunteered for anything -- in the

Navy or civilian life -- since that day.

And I’m very wary of coaches.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.