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Thursday, March 4, 1976
University Daily Kansan
Promisina poet
Floyd Cobier has worked at a variety of jobs during his life but he has now found what he likes best. He has written poetry as a
Staff photo by DAVE CRENSHAW
hobby for two years, and at 48, is starting school at KU next fall. He plans to major in social welfare and concentrate on improving
Former machine operator adopting poetry as hobby
By KAREN LEONARD
Staff Writer
Things come out of him. Little things about prejudice and poverty—they just happen.
And when they come out of Floyd Cobler, they're usually inverse. In one of his poems, he said it didn't feel like he was doing the writing; it just seemed to come out of his. His poetry is a reflection of the feelings he has at the moment he writes them, he said.
Writing is a hobby for Cobler, 46, whose gray hair and worried expression seem to indicate a hard life. Some of his poetry is of personal tragedies. He lost two of his seven children. His youngest daughter died of leukemia after her mother was murdered last year.
His poetry is very personal. He writes about friends, about things that are wrong with the world, about the loving kindness he says he finds in the world and about people who have helped him when he's been down and whipped.
Cobler said he had been developing and improving his writing since then.
Occeer Moeller, one of the staff members at Penn House, a local non-profit organization that helps families with children in Lawrence, encouraged him to start writing when he first came to town two years ago, he said. Miller published a poem Cobler had about Penn House in their newsletter.
A BACK INJURE he received shortly after moving to Lawrence forced him to quit his job as a machine operator for E and E Specialties, a local cardboard display manufacturer, he said, and he has been on Social Security benefits since that time.
HE SAID HE felt confident that his poems, short stories and an autobiography in new progress will somebody be published. He said he would have written Johnson, associate professor of English, than told him his writing was more mature than that of most of KU's creative writing programs.
Coller has finished the first five chapters of his autobiography. He said the book would be the story of the life of an everyday person and the people that affected him.
"Bastically my life was nomadic, but everywhere I've landed, I've found a new job."
Although his formal education ended in the seventh grade, Colker has passed a high school equivalency exam and has been accepted to KU as a freshman for the fall semester. Because of this tuition, he will major in social welfare and work with Johnson on his writing.
HE IS A PROLIFIC writer. Cobler says he can turn out as many as 20 poems a day, usually spending no more than 20 to 30 minutes on each piece. He writes because
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"I've been told it has a human touch," Bobler said. "I don't want to ever lose that." Last summer he said he wasn't interested in formally studying creative writing. He was afraid his writing might lose that quality. But now he has changed its mind.
writing is easier than expressing himself orally, he explained.
Cobie's poetry tends to be a simple, personal statement describing his
"NOW I DON'T have the doubts about myself I had a year ago. nothing matter what I thought I'd be in this life, think there'a a rip-off coming, i just say it. Before, if someone with more authority said something was so, I'd back off," he said. "I came here about two years ago a pretty old woman."
He explained that the people in Lawrence who believe in him have made him believe in himself.
He was born 12 miles west of Mayetta. his father had lost his farm and the family was living with friends on a reservation at the time.
He grew up in Topeka and ran away from home for the first time when he was thirteen.
Since then, Bobler said, he has spent time in the Kansas Bovs' Industrial School.
HE SPENT TIME in the Army but went AWOL when he was in Austria. He turned himself in when he returned to Chicago and took a job at a barracles. Colber ran away again, though, after he became fed up with waiting for his course, which has since received a dignotic discharge.
"Since my father died I've run all my life, and I've learned not to forget something and don't know what it is."
Coler has worked as a longshoreman, a dock man and a farm hand. He has worked in the cotton fields, in a factory and in an office. He has dug ditches and he has been a foreman in a dry cleaners. And he once ran a card game in Minneapolis.
Since his back operation about two years ago, he hasn't worked. But the experience of not working has been very enlightening, he said.
He is proud of the fact that he has never been fired from a job.
"THAT'S WHEN I 1. started walking and met myself in the park." Most of me met women from walking.
For 10 years, he said, he worked in a restaurant. He was the counterman, the cashier, the bartender.
"I feel I'm lucky," he said. "I've always found a friend when times are tough. In Lawrence I've found a family. I couldn't name 'em all, but they've ever more to me than when I had my own family. Most don't have this when things go wrong.
Cobler talks about people with the conviction and vivere of the newly converted.
"I like to tell about this, and the best way to tell about it is by writing."
He says he is looking forward to going to college. He had thought about it a long time.
"I THOUGHT I was too old," Coller said. "Now I think I'm just young enough to start. Lawrence and the people I've met here have changed my outlook. I'm an easy person to encourage at times. But where I used to use, I can't do it, now I say I know it is possible."
after he finishes his degree in social
welfare, he says, he wants to work at a
pharmacy.
Cobler says he hopes that as a welfare worker he can encourage people to "stand up on their own two feet and look people in the eve when they talk to them."
He also said he hopes that a diploma will give him the status he feels he needs to help others. He said his father was killed in Afghanistan.
"When I want to meet somebody, I'll have the credentials to prove I'm qualified to work for you."
INADQUATE HOUSING is one of the patient'sober he wants to work on after it has been completed.
Cobler has already succeeded in changing stipulations in the leases for the Edgewood apartment building, and he projects where he lives. He said that although he hadn't had any problems with the landlord, other tenants had had to wait getting needed repairs on their apartments.
"Instead of community development funds going into highways speeding people out of town, the funds should go into the community to go into housing," he said.
"The people used to be scared they'd be evicted if they complained," he said, but after he talked with Curt Schneider, Kansas lawmaker or 10 items in the lease were removed.
"The poor wonder what things are happening like they are," he said. "They don't seem to realize they have the power to run the country through the right to vote.
Fear through ignorance is another problem Coller would like to do something
"I don't like to see people afraid and not knowing their rights—their right of birth,"
Procedures by which any registered voter in the Democratic or Republican Party can help select delegates to the two national elections defined this week by party representatives.
Delegate selection defined
By JACK FISCHER
You Are Missing Out.
Staff Writer
The procedure for selecting Kansas delegates to the Democratic National Convention was explained Monday at a meeting of the Lawrence Young Democrats.
Garth Burns, president of the Young Democrats of Douglas County, said the selection process began with 122 county level meetings and proceeded to five state conferences. There, all but eight of 34 Kansas delegates to the national convention will be chosen.
A meeting of the state Democratic party will choose the remaining eight delegates, B. Dale Garner.
UNDER THE RULES created in 1973 by the National Democratic Commission on Delegate Selection and Party Structure in 1975, Mr. Obama designated a presidential candidate instead of the "winner take all" rules that were in place during the 1972 presidential election, he said.
The rules committees of county Democratic parties will decide the minimum amount of support needed by a particular candidate at the county delegate meeting to entitle that candidate to have a sentite to a district meeting, Burns said.
The National Democratic Party has ruled that the maximum amount of support needed by a candidate at the county level to elect a state contact meetings is 15 per cent of those present.
PEOPLE SUPPORTING a candidate at the county meetings who can't muster the minimum support required for one delegate can join together with supporters of another candidate or support sending an unclever delegate to the district meeting, Burns said.
In the interest of time, those present can switch their support only once, he said.
A candidate with the support of more than 15 per cent of a county's meeting will receive additional delegates based on a mathematical breakdown of the additional support
Douglas County can send 20 delegates of the 114 being sent to its far-county district
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Happy Hour—4 nights a week
He said that in Douglas County, the district level, which is the largest of the county subdivisions, was chosen to begin the selection process.
Nineteen of the 34 delegates sent to the national convention are selected at the state convention, Lungsturm state. The state convention usually elects the five delegates by the districts and the remaining 14 from the state convention at large, he said.
To participate in the county meetings, a person must be a registered Democrat and a resident of the geographic location in which the meeting is being held, McMillain said.
HE SAID EACH of the five congressional district conventions in the state elected three delegates to the national convention and recommends a fourth to the state convention.
The three districts in Douglas County will meet at 7 p.m., March 30 at the Douglas county fairgrounds and, at meetings in separate buildings, those present will elect 21 delegates from each district to send to the county convention.
Lungsturm said meetings could be held at the precinct, ward or count district levels.
THE KANSAE Republican Party process for delegate selection can begin with meetings below the county level, depending on the decision of each county party, John Lungstrum, chairman of the Douglas County Democratic Party, said in a telephone interview yesterday.
The 122 county level meetings will be at 1 p.m. April 3. Locations will be published on the school's website.
12-2 p.m.—general public
2 p.m.-3 a.m.—members only
7 days a week
Happy Hour—4 nights a week
Beer Night
T.G.I.F.
Steak Night
Thurs. Night: All the spaghetti
AT THE DISTRICT level, a candidate must receive the support of 20 percent of the county delegates to send one delegate to the national convention. Burns said.
June McMillin, vice chairman of the Douglas County Democratic Party, who also spoke at the meeting, said delegates elected at both the county and district meetings, and attended at the National convention to vote for the candidate they said they supported.
The county convention will elect 36 delegates to the congressional district and 15 delegates to the city council.
m a h a b F R E W f a o f w r t m a d d p o r t a h o f I s t h a c re l t h e r m M t i g h b a s e f o he