Forgiveness

“While wallowing in my own self-pity, I suddenly pictured somebody with a whole lot more problems . . . . Paula Cooper.” Bill Pelke

 Bill Pelke and Paula Cooper

An address by Calumet Region native Bill Pelke, entitled “The Answer Is Love and Compassion for all of Humanity” and about his personal healing from a family tragedy, will kick off SPEA’s Public Affairs Month at IU Northwest. The founder of Journey of Hope . . . from Violence to Healing, Pelke spoke to a group of IUN students at my behest about ten years ago and was incredibly moving discussing a life-changing event.  In 1985 four young teenage girls went to the Glen Park home of Bill’s 78 year-old grandmother Ruth Pelke on the pretext of seeking Bible lessons.  Once inside, one of them struck her on the head with a vase. Then, they stabbed her over 30 times with a 12-inch butcher knife and left her dead on the floor, taking ten dollars and the keys to her car, which they ditched when it ran out of gas.  The following day, Bill’s father discovered the body lying in a pool of blood with the knife still in her.  Soon apprehended, the girls were found guilty and 15 year-old Paula Cooper, the supposed ringleader, sentenced to death by electrocution.    

A few months after listening again to the grisly details of how her beloved grandmother died at the sentencing hearing, Bill Pelke, a crane operator at Bethlehem Steel, broke down in tears and a vision came to him of his grandmother’s image with tears streaming down her face.  Bill next experienced a sudden epiphany.  As Pelke later wrote, “I knew those tears of Nana were tears of love and compassion for Paula and her family. And I knew Nana wouldn’t have wanted Paula to be put to death even though Paula had killed her.”  From that moment on, despite opposition from his own family, Bill Pelke dedicated his life to saving Paula’s and, beyond that, waging a worldwide campaign against capital punishment.  

 Paula in prison kitchen; Bill in Brussels

A petition to have Paula Cooper’s sentence reduced garnered over 2 million signatures, and Pope John Paul II made a personal appeal to Governor Robert Orr, who in 1987 signed legislation raising the minimum age for capital punishment from ten to 16 years.  It did not apply ex post facto to Paula, but in 1989 the Indiana Supreme Court reduced Cooper’s sentence to life imprisonment.  While incarcerated, Cooper met Bill Pelke, who forgave her, and the two stayed in touch.  Becoming a model prisoner, Paula was released in 2013 after serving a little over 26 years. She appeared to be adjusting to her new life but in May of 2015 committed suicide. She had recently broken up with a man and perhaps didn’t trust her instincts or was overcome with guilt or remorse.  The news devastated Pelke but did not derail him from continuing his work on behalf of death row inmates. Just last October Pelke represented Journey of Hope in a campaign against the death penalty in Uganda.

Concerned about not seeing any publicity for Bill Pelke’s April 1 appearance, I broached the subject with Dean Pat Bankston, and he promised to look into the matter.  I notified columnist Jerry Davich and will contact reporter Carole Carlson.  I am tempted to ask Karl Besel, who arranged the event, if he needs someone to introduce Pelke.  Reverend Dwight Gardner, a longtime Gary resident who once worked at IUN, would be perfect. His sermons at Trinity Baptist Church on Virginia Street often stress forgiveness as central to Christianity.

I consider myself a forgiving person but am still ambivalent about the three home invaders who terrorized Dave, Angie, and me 19 years ago.  Had they been apprehended and imprisoned, I believe I could have found it in my heart to forgive them. That is certainly true of two young sidekicks who seemed under the control of the ringleader, who called himself Don Corleone.  That bastard deserved to serve hard time.  He was needlessly sadistic, threatening violence, kicking me in the back hard enough to collapse a lung, and whacking Dave over the head, causing a concussion.  Had any of them touched Angie, pregnant at the time, we’d have fought them and probably be dead now. 

below, Midge and Vic Lane in Easton, PA on Lafayette campus across from their home

Spotting William K. Klingaman’s “The Darkest Year: The American Home Front, 1941-1942” in the Chesterton library New Books display, it once again hit me that Midge and Vic were expecting their first child, me, at the time of Pearl Harbor. As Marquis Childs observed in “I Write from Washington” (1942), the country was slipping “down the shelf of time into another era in the soft days of 1941, but we had little or no awareness of it.”  Had I not come along, Vic probably would have gone off to war, and our lives might have turned out drastically different.  As it was, he received a deferment due to being a chemist engaged in important home front work and was on the way to providing a comfortable middle-class lifestyle for his family.  Vic was conflicted about not serving, given the adventures and accolades veterans experienced. Not that it mattered to me or my buddies.  Though we sometimes played war games, we never bothered to ask veterans about their war stories. Nor did they seem eager to offer any.

 Detroit police keep eye on white protestors and arrest black protestors at Sojourner Truth housing project

From Klingaman’s book I learned that FM radio stations came into being in 1941, and a limited number of televisions were sold in New York City and a few other markets. RCA advertised a phonograph containing a “Magic Brain” capable of playing both sides of a record without flipping it over.  The 1942 confrontations over blacks moving into Detroit’s Sojourner Truth Housing Project highlighted white resistance to integration.  With African Americans streaming into the Motor City, there was a desperate housing shortage, which the Sojourner Truth facility was intended to ameliorate.  Over the objections of black community leaders, it was built adjacent to an all-white ethnic neighborhood.  As six black families prepared to move in, protestors burned a 20-foot cross and rallied to prevent them. During subsequent stand-offs some 40 people were injured and over 200 arrested.  Eventually a heavy police presence restored order, but federal officials postponed indefinitely occupancy by blacks.  Detroit’s police commissioner lamely stated, “There is no use moving these people in if you need an army to protect them.”  “These people” in many cases had sons in the military and were supporting the war effort.  All they wanted was a decent place to raise their families.  

Sam Chase senior yearbook picture

Pat Chase recently donated family documents to IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives. Included are photographs of his grandfather, who worked at American Bridge, and his father’s memoir, “The Life of Samuel Moore Chase.”  In 2004 94 year-old Sam Chase heard former President Bill Clinton on TV discussing his autobiography, and he decided to do the same. Chase sent a copy to Clinton and received an autographed letter of thanks.  He grew up in the Ambridge neighborhood on the west side in Gary Land Company housing built for American Bridge Company employees.  Chase wrote: 

 We had sand dunes and woods a block from our home.  One day I came home with a beautiful yellow flower for my mother.  It was a cactus!  She spent an hour picking the “prickles” out of my fingers with tweezers! I remember a great toboggan slide at the American bridge Company that had been built for us to use in the winter. My first experience with campaign politics was when R.O. Johnson was running for mayor.  He promised us a new playground if elected; needless to say, he got elected and we never got the playground.

 My mom was great but could be stern. When Paul Cavanaugh and I were 4, we opened the window of my bedroom, climbed out, and got on the porch above. Mom came to the window and said, “Are you having fun, boys?  Better come in now.” When we got in, she gave me a good spanking, the only one that I remember.  Mom played the piano and we’d sing and she’d accompany me on the clarinet. She’d put on plays for us.  She was a great actress.  Every Thursday, Mom would bake bread for the week.  She always made me cinnamon and sugar rolls from her dough.  She was a good mother.

At age 14 Chase saw a sign advertising plane rides for three dollars and took a 15-minute ride.  He recalled: “The pilot sat in the front and I in the back.  When we banked to come in for the landing, I felt safe because I could hold on to the wing above me – what a thrill.”  

Chase was senior class president at Gary Emerson in 1927 when a majority students boycotted classes in reaction to 18 African Americans being transferred to their school.  At a mass meeting Chase voiced opposition to the strike, arguing that ample channels of communication existed for the arbitration of student grievances. Chase recalled “making a speech, sitting on the goal post at the football field; they threw stones at me - I wasn’t very popular.” He was shouted down, and a cry went up for new elections.  The school board caved to the strikers’ demands, and the boycott ended after five days in time for the football season.

Here are happier senior year memories recounted by Sam Chase:

 I started in the band playing drums and switched to clarinet.  We went by train to the state band contest in Indianapolis and won first place.  We had a chartered train with night coaches.  On the Circle in Indianapolis we found a novelty shop and bought all sorts of goodies, such a itching powder and sneezing powder.  We put the sneezing powder in the fans on the coach and the itching powder in Bobby Bucksbaumm’s bunk bed.  That same year, we went to the national contest and were part of a thousand piece band directed by John Philip Sousa in Grant Park in Chicago.  We stayed 3 days and 2 nights on Navy Pier.  We slept on army cots – fun!

 I organized a 15-piece dance band to compete in the annual “Spice and Variety” program.  We won!  Then the Palace Theatre asked us to take the place of Vaudeville for a week.  We did and put some of the other “Spice and Variety” acts in the show – fun!  I was also in a musical trio.  Harrison Ryan played banjo and Louis Snyder and I clarinets.  Our biggest gig was playing Saturday mornings on WLS radio station. We’d take the South Shore line each week for several months.

 One Friday I got caught smoking at an off-campus hang-out.  Principal E.A. Spaulding kicked me out of school.  As it was a weekend, I didn’t tell my parents.  Calling my dad at the office Monday morning when they wouldn’t let me back in school, he said, “You got yourself in this mess, get yourself out.” I did.

 I worked three summers in Hall’s Drug Store.  Clarence Hall, the owner, loved to go to the horse races in Chicago and would leave me in charge.  One day, he told me to change the window display while he was gone.  I did.  When he came back, he was mad. I soon found out why.  I had put milk of magnesia and toilet paper in the same display.

 On graduation day Dad took me to lunch at the Gary Hotel and gave me a beautiful Waltham watch as a gift.  After lunch we offered me a cigarette.  He had never let on that he knew I smoked.  We smoked together for the first time -gee, today I’m a man.

Chase worked at Hall’s that summer and in the fall went to college at IU in Bloomington. With the Great Depression in full force he dropped out after two years and spent the next decade playing in various bands before getting married and settling down to raise a family.

After I posted information on Bill Pelke’s upcoming talk, Patty Butler Jones, who like Bill lives in Anchorage, wrote: “I went to IUN from 1981-1983 and lived at 43rd and Jefferson [in Ruth Pelke’s neighborhood] while I was studying there before transferring to IU South Bend. Wonderful of you to tell your story to the students and faculty in Gary.”  Regarding Paula Cooper taking her own life, Helen Pajama wrote: “Sometimes it’s difficult for prisoners to forgive themselves.  Most are not the same person they were when they went in.  It is a real test for victim survivors to choose forgiveness over rage, or self-pity, while others in society want to kill the offenders. Thanks, Bill, for your voice.”