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.”  

Ambiguous Liberation

“Liberation is not deliverance,” Victor Hugo

In a chapter entitled “Ambiguous Liberation” Molly Geidel, author of “Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties” discussed how atrocities committed during the Vietnam War caused members of the Committee of Returned Volunteers, composed of former Peace Corps members, to advocate the abolition of the very organization they once served, believing it was doing more harm than good to indigenous peoples.

In the Archives Friday were four Valparaiso Technical Institute graduates looking through our collection of their alma mater.  When I first spotted them, I guessed incorrectly that they were from SOAR (Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees).  I had an appointment with VU English professor Allison Schuette to show her how to make use of Gary city directories, with listings both by name and street address, for a project tracing white flight during the 1960s and 1970s.  On my suggestion she first met with librarian Tim Sutherland to learn more about utilizing census data.  Then we toured Gary neighborhoods.

Allison Schuette

Driving through Glen Park on Harrison Street, I pointed out the house where Fred “Pop” Pearson, a press operator at Anderson Company, once lived.  The father of the kids’ Portage Little League coach, he was one of many longtime residents who resisted family pressures to flee Gary.  We passed shuttered Lew Wallace High School, and I described the once-viable Junedale and Morningside areas.  We passed the house on Adams Street where 74 year-old Ruth Pelke was murdered by several teenage girls – a deathblow for the area’s reputation.  Crossing Broadway, I drove by St. Joseph the Worker Church that was once a social center for the city’s Croatian population.  Heading south, I pointed out Michael Jackson’s old neighborhood near Roosevelt School and well-tended homes on the West Side, including near St. Timothy Church and where former Mayor Richard Hatcher lives.  Passing through Tolleston, I located the house on Fifth Avenue where Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas grew up and Dolly Millender now resides.  

Approaching Aetna, Allison and I ruminated about the many folks who bought starter homes there in the 1950s, including some Allison has interviewed from Valparaiso, and, on my end, former Post-Trib managing editor Terry O’Rourke’s family, and our good friends Jim and Kate Migoski.  Bowling teammate Melvin Nelson still lives north of the South Shore tracks in Glen Ryan subdivision.  Heading back to campus, I took Allison down Martin Luther King Drive and turned right on Twenty-First Avenue, pointing out 4 Brothers Market and the Delaney housing projects across from a more recent one.  On Thirty-Fifth the bungalow where Congressman Peter Visclosky grew up looked to be in decent shape.  Next time, I promised, we’d go to the site of Wilco Foods, owned by Jon Costas’ parents, and to my Jay Street neighborhood that, up and down Third and Fourth avenues went from all-white to virtually all black in what seemed a matter of months.  We used to shop at Wilco on Miller Avenue, which became Ralph Foods before being boarded up, like the Dairy Queen across the street whose milkshakes I loved.

Looking up Jay Street in Gary city directories, I noticed our neighbors the Demkos, Polizzottos, and Mokrises, who moved away before we did.  When we purchased a house within the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 1977, the only original neighbors left were the Withams, Blandos, and Arellanos across the street from us.

After 10 people were gunned down at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush, pandering to Tea Party fanatics and the NRA, said, “Stuff happens,” adding: “The impulse is always to do something and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”  After being criticized for being “tone deaf,” Bush claimed he wasn’t referring to the Oregon tragedy.  The GOP Establishment candidate has no credibility and trails anti-politicians Trump, Carson, and Fiorina in the polls.

On Saturday grandson James bowled a personal high 188.  IU put a scare on number 1 ranked Ohio State, losing 34-27 in a contest that came down to the final play, an incomplete pass in the end zone.  Had the Hoosiers scored, Tom Wade and I are certain that Coach Kevin White would have gone for the win and attempted a 2-point conversion.  That evening Dave was one of four finalists nominated for best East Chicago teacher of all time.

Sunday Patty Heckler invited friends and members of the orchestra formerly known as Rusty Pipes to a party at son Mike’s home in Hebron.  A train buff, Mike actually had a miniature model in working order that folks rode around his property.  Due to the chilly weather, Mike kept a big bonfire going.  Brother Bob, a Merrillville H.S. science teacher who performs gigs at a Wrigleyville bar, sang while playing an organ and accordion.  Beforehand, Dave, Marianne Brush, and I guessed what his first number would be.  I thought it would be something by Lynyrd Skynyrd, his dad’s favorite band.  Having seen Bob perform many times, Marianne nailed it, but I was close because the second number was “Sweet Home Alabama.”  Bob was in Voodoo Chili along with Dave and Missy Brush’s dad, “Big Voodoo Daddy.”

At the party was Tom Johnson, for eight years a football coach at Andrean along with Ted Karras, Jr., Brett St Germain, and Wally McCormack, who went on to become head coaches at Walsh University, Lake Central High School, and Portage respectively.  Johnson recalled linebacker George McGuan, one of the 59ers stars and the son of good friends of ours.  When he heard Horace Mann High School was closing, Johnson took his mother in a wheelchair for one last look.  They were amazed how well maintained the building was and how respectful the students were to them.   What a shame a purpose could not be found for the jewel of Superintendent William A Wirt’s work-study-play progressive educational system.

                                       Harvey Jackson; photo by Jeff Manes

Jeff Manes interviewed Teamster Local 142 recording secretary Harvey Jackson, who played football and swam at Hammond Gavitt High School.  He told Manes:

  I grew up in Columbia Center.  It’s a housing project.  That area has changed for the better today.  The houses we lived in were all red block buildings.  My dad left when I was 2.  It was just me and my mom.  She was one of 14 kids from Decatur, Alabama.  She kind of migrated up here with her brothers who got jobs in the mill.

Paula graduating in 2001 being hugged by sister Rhonda Labroi and with Archbishop Tobin

The Post-Trib also ran AP writer Sharon Cohen’s heartbreaking article about suicide victim Paula Cooper entitled “No Escaping Brutal Past.”  After serving 27 years in prison for murdering Ruth Pelke, Paula seemed to have made a successful transition to life on the outside.  She had a boyfriend, a job as a legal aide with the Indiana Federal Community Defender’s Office, and friends who believed in her, including Indianapolis Archbishop Joseph Tobin.  Nonetheless she felt unworthy of the love she was receiving and guilty over what she did as a 15 year-old.  While she ultimately learned to cope with life in prison, the real world proved too much for her to handle.  She was prone to fits of temper and may not have trusted her inner demons.  Before she shot herself, Paula bought a new outfit and wrote notes to her sister, mother, fiancé LeShon Davidson, and close friend Ormeshia Linton.  Paula wrote: “This pain I feel every day … I can’t deal with this reality … I must have peace, peace of mind, peace in my heart.”  At a memorial service Archbishop that Ruth Pelke’s grandson Bill attended, Tobin asked the “angels of God to lead her to paradise.”  So, so sad.  Abused and molested as a child, Paula deserved a better fate.

Legal Aide Paula Cooper, 2015