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.”  

When You Close Your Eyes

“I remember we learned about love
In the back of a Chevrolet
Well it felt so good to be young
Feels like yesterday.”
Night Ranger

Weird dreams, perhaps because I had heard Night Ranger’s “When You Close Your Eyes” right before bed – or maybe it was because I was subconsciously thinking up material for the Somewhat True Mystery of the Missing Tiara. LeeLee’s emails are jarring my memory of what she calls those “romantic never to be forgotten teenage years.” She complimented me of my good memory and said she “sort of remembered” Pam Tucker stealing Ricky Hoopes” away from her. Wonder what year that was? Pam was my first real girlfriend and a great kisser. Night Ranger’s Greatest Hits album used to be on heavy rotation in our house. “Sister Christian,” “You Can Still Rock in America,” and “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me” were big hits back when the boys were in high school. Once they went with me to a Sociology Party at Jack Bloom’s with Hans Rees and Jimmy Satkoski and we air-guitared to “Rock in America” at full volume until Jack came running. “You’re great, only not so loud,” he admonished. The chorus for “When You Close Your Eyes” repeats the back of the Chevy line, then goes, “No good for an old memory to mean so much today.” Nothing wrong to cherish old memories – in my case of the back of a 1956 Buick.

At lunch Sam Flint mentioned that SPEA (School of Public and Environmental Affairs) is looking to hire four new faculty for next year. I suggested that Lake County Sheriff Roy Dominguez, who is leaving office at the end of the year, would make an excellent adjunct lecturer. He agreed.

Oops. Got an email chastising me for putting a review on the blog that had not yet appeared in Choice magazine. Somehow the editor had come across it. I profusely apologized and expunged the sucker. The editor thanked me and said she appreciated my prompt action.

Ella Magee retired after 21 years as a custodian in the Library/Conference Center. At the reception Chancellor Lowe mentioned that his first official day on the job was exactly five months ago and said that Ella always beat him to work, had the lights on for him, kept his office neat and clean, and had a sunny disposition even though the sun wasn’t up yet. The Reverend Dwight Gardiner, formerly an IU Northwest police officer and later in charge of Physical Plant quoted Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X on the value of education and compared Ella to Janus, the Roman gate keeper, in keeping the university’s gate in sterling order.

Terry Helton is tired of being hassled on his job and hoping to survive the winter in Ennis, Montana. He hunts deer because the meat goes so well in his chili. Prostitution was legal in Montana until 1982 and brothels once lined both sides of the street in Terry’s neighborhood. He lamented, “Damn! Why couldn’t I have been here when all of this was going on?”

Nineteen year-old Missy Brush requested that we be Facebook friend. Big Voodoo Daddy and Marianne’s daughter, she posted a Halloween photo showing her in a long red wig, white gloves, and green mask, leotards, boots, and Neptune-type outfit. My grandson James is in one photo taken after a play performance in Hobart. She mentioned getting an amazing tattoo and promised pics “as soon as it stops scabbing. It looks kinda icky now.” She has 172 friends (many Andrean High School graduates), four of whom are mutual friends of yours truly (Angie, Dave, James and fellow ex-Voodoo Chili groupie Lorraine Todd-Shearer).

With LeeLee’s help I have brought the missing tiara tale to a resolution. I want the concluding chapter to be about everyone gathering at Wendy’s Georgia plantation. I’ll see how she and others think. Here’s the denouement: “Time flew by as LeeLee, Sissy, and the Captain drank by the fire and mellowed out. The three of them decided to call Jimmy, who had mentioned the tiara in his account of the reunion and had sat near Wendy both during the dinner and at breakfast the next day. He was delighted to hear from them and eagerly reminisced about old times. He retold the story of being center on the seventh grade football team and, playing without his glasses, hiking the ball in punt formation to the Captain rather than the kicker. Nonplussed, the Captain boomed a punt 40 yards down the field. Jimmy couldn’t resist mentioning seeing the Captain walk around in the men’s locker room in yellow silk underpants with tiger stripes. He also told about showing up for a party at LeeLee’s house a day early and her family nonchalantly inviting him in for dinner. The talk then turned to Molly. Jimmy recalled a marathon study session at Schady Acres for a Civics class final interrupted frequently by jokes about the teacher’s smelly cigar breath. He, Molly, and LeeLee sat together at a Biology class bench and would get each other giggling so openly that the teacher, Mr. Gebauer (Ga-boo-boo) threatened more than once to separate the ribald trio. Eventually the subject came back to the tiara. “Sounds like we might be talking about more than one,” Jimmy concluded. “Maybe you should call Wendy and get a description of the one she wore and whether it was the original.” All agreed that was a good idea, but the hour was late and the case would have to wait.

“With the snow continuing to fall, Sissy brought out sleeping bags, and they all fell asleep by the fire. In the middle of the night the Captain awoke with a start, still mulling over the facts of the case. When he closed his eyes, he imagined Wendy standing proudly with her classmates for the reunion group photo and decided that nobody in the room would have been so cruel as to have taken her tiara. A stranger must have done it. In the morning the Captain awoke to the sound of his cell phone ringing. A friend working security at the Philadelphia Airport informed him that four men had been arrested for pilfering luggage during the past few months. Perhaps the tiara might have been among the stolen valuables. The Captain hoped to interrogate the men and contact pawnshops where they might have taken their goods to sell. After Sissy served a very Vermont-like breakfast of fruit, yogurt, and granola, he called Wendy with the news and to get a better description of the tiara. She was delighted with the newest developments and invited all three down to her Georgia plantation. If the tiara was found and she was needed in Philadelphia, she could do that, too, after the holidays.

“What Wendy did not tell the Captain at this time was that she once had had three tiaras. The 1960 crown had indeed been with her for over 50 years and still resided in her China closet. Ten years ago, her husband had given her an expensive replica that she had worn at the reunion and was now missing. Her grandkids had bought a third for her sixty-fifth birthday, along with a Snow White wand, and insisted she wear it while she blew out 65 candles. She looked up, and all her granddaughters – her little princesses – were wearing tiaras. She had sent this tiara to Sissy in recognition that Molly was truly worthy of a crown. In fact, in the Homecoming Queen vote, Wendy was not the top vote-getter among seniors but received a plurality after the tallies of juniors and sophomores were counted. Younger sister Pam was also voted onto the court. Even though Wendy won fair and square, she thought Molly deserved belated recognition, too, but had felt self-conscious about taking credit for the gesture so did it anonymously.

“LeeLee and the Captain talked all the way back to North Hills. They relived reunion highlights – DJ Fred spinning golden oldies, David S and his wife showing off Arthur Murray dance moves, Jimmy and Phil organizing a stroll line, Barbara looking stunning in high heels and platinum blonde hair, Mary D doing Motown moves as her preacher husband looked on, the Captain himself accepting an invitation to slow dance with Marianne T. They talked about others besides Molly who had passed away – wild Bill McAfee and wilder Dick Garretson, Judy “Crazy” Otto and athletic Clara Rogers, beautiful Charmayne Staton and dour Charley Thomas. Characters all. LeeLee told Percy, as everyone knew him in school, about her husband Bob, a teacher who emigrated to the U.S. with his family from Ireland and wrote a memoir about his experiences, including being ridiculed when he went to a school in Detroit dressed in clothes that classmates found to be weird. Weirdness was something LeeLee and many of her classmates worried about back in that Fifties era of conformity. Was that something the Captain worried about as well, she wondered aloud. He replied that what he and his buddies most feared were racist cops. Away from North Hills one had to be on the alert because you never knew, he said, if a cracker might be lurking down the road. With that, the Captain gave out a hearty cackle to ease the tension. Before the two parted company LeeLee couldn’t resist asking the Captain if he still wore outlandish jockey shorts. With a wink he replied, “It all depends on what you mean by outlandish.” He promised to keep her abreast of new developments in the case of the missing tiara.

“It didn’t take the Captain long to break the case. The second pawnshop he visited had a tiara. The owner recalled, “When a guy brought it to me, I about laughed him out of the shop. It looked like something you’d buy at a dollar store.” The gems really sparkled though, so the owner took a chance and offered 25 dollars. The hunch paid off, and the tiara was appraised at ten times that amount based on the stones alone. The owner had been tempted to take the tiara apart but decided to wait a couple months. What luck! The Captain took several photos, gave the manager a down payment to put a hold on it, and called Wendy with the good news. Thanks to the electronic wonders of the Internet, Wendy quickly confirmed that it was a perfect match. She wired the captain a money order to compensate him for his time and trouble and to purchase the tiara and reiterated that she’d cooperate with the authorities to punish the thieves if they needed her. Then she made one more pitch for the Captain to deliver the tiara in person. “Bring LeeLee and Sissy and anyone else you want, I’ll have a limo waiting at the airport to drive you to my estate. In fact, I’ll invite everyone in our class who wants to come for a party. I have plenty of room. After all, I live on a plantation.” The Captain said he’d think it over. When he called LeeLee to tell her that the case was solved and mentioned Wendy’s offer, she said, “Why not?”

Bowled mediocre – plenty of strikes but too many splits – but won two of the quarter pots for tenth strike and ended the night converting a 3, 6, 7, 10 split. Engineers won a game and 83 year-old captain Bill Batalis was great. Talked with a fellow named Brian Pleasant (isn’t that a pleasant name?), who was on Phil’s Portage soccer team. On TV Purdue beat Virginia Tech, which made my teammates happy, but IU lost its first basketball game of the season to Boston College, finally facing a decent team in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge.