My parents were in the Marines when they met. Dad came from the New Jersey and Pennsylvania area, living most of his life in Duryea, PA, a little ol' coal-mining town where his father owned a hardware store. Mom was from Milwaukee. My brother, Robert, whom I have called Rob since I could talk, because he would always "rob" me of what was mine, was born in Hawaii in 1954. The following year Dad was out of the service, he came to Milwaukee and worked for a year, then went in the Army for thirty years, involved with helicopters from the start of the jet-propelled helicopter program, quite historic. He served in the 11th Air Assault Division (Test) at Ft. Benning, GA, part of the topic of the book "We Were Soldiers Once, And Young" and the movie starring Mel Gibson.
Dad was very abusive, later diagnosed as a sociopath, right up there with Hitler, Manson, and Dahmer. His own mother had severely beaten him when he was just a little guy, she would belt him mercilessly, then lock him in the cold, dark pantry and yell, "The Boogie Man is in there! And he's going to eat you alive!!!"
He would shiver, shake and cry himself to sleep on the cold, dark floor. Time went by. When he was about 16, his father caught him smoking a cigarette. That was the last straw. His parents made him go into the military, signing him into the U.S. Marine Corps in 1952. He had not even graduated from high school. What kind of life would he have? What kind of father would he turn out to become? Time would tell.
Mom it seemed got her ideas about life and reality from Hollywood movies and television. A fantasy world made up of materialistic, one-dimensional fluff and nonsense. What kind of life would she have? She dropped out of St. John's Cathedral High School in Milwaukee to work at the Fanny Farmer Candy Store downtown on the corner of Plankinton and Wisconsin. She had to work to help support herself and her mother. Her father had left them. Who knows why? At this late stage of my life, I am still receiving conflicting stories.
The best evidence is that my grandmother had an adulterous affair with a man named Charles A. Herro. If you're ever in the Milwaukee area and around the neighborhood of W. National Ave. and 34th Street, take a look at the buildings there on the south side of the street. You'll see his name carved in stone at the top of one of them.
Anyway, my grandmother's name was Lois. And this guy, Charles, evidently caused the birth of my mother, Lois Charlene __________ (fill in the blank). As to the last name, that's where the stories conflict. God knows the truth. Mom says her last name is Adams, insisting that Wellington Becher Adams was her father. But older relatives tell me, no, her father was Charles Herro. All I can say is, no matter how we got here, God saw that we were born. If our coming to life was good enough for God, it should be good enough for us, amen?
Mom always has denied the allegations about who her real father may be. Eventually this fantasy-world life caught up to Mom and she was diagnosed with manic-depressive "disorder", what is today known as bi-polar "illness".
So, Dad was a sociopath and Mom bi-polar. How would you like to have parents like that? What kind of childhood would you have had, would you say it would have been stable, loving, secure, appropriate for raising kids? Well, I'll tell you what, it wasn't very good, but I don't believe in 90% of the psycho-stuff out there, and I have looked at it from all angles. Most of it is like The Emporer's New Clothes: there's nothing there, but in order to "see" it, you just need the proper (i.e., false) perspective.
Most of the psychological and many of the psychiatric diagnoses are baloney, my friend, it's just a marketing effort to make sin, lack of discipline, bad behavior and irresponsibility an "illness" and take people's money. Believe me, I know. I've been on all sides of that equation, yes, indeed. I've seen the diagnoses of the day, week, month, whatever. One shrink had a dozen patients in the institution and one day the shrink reassigned them with the same diagnoses, what the heck was THAT all about?
Another shrink would put ALL of his patients on the same med, no matter what their diagnoses. And whenever the term limits of the insurance plan were up, or whenever the government money was due to run out, bam! Suddenly all of the patients were miraculously "in remission" and were released. What a joke. And many of the shrinks had their own bouts with "mental illness". I knew two shrinks, a man and a woman, who were married to each other. And all of their kids were eventually admitted to the psych hospital! Come on! We literally have to stop the insanity here!
Anyway. My folks had crazy backgrounds, their parents thought crazy thoughts and acted on them; they transferred this down to their children. The Bible says that your sins will be remembered, and the punishments thereof will be transferred to your children, and to your children's children's children. Do the math. That means that your sins will cause trouble to you, to your children, to your grand-children (i.e., your children's children) and to your great grand children (your children's children's children). The SIN problem, or what today the secular humanists have renamed "psych" or mental, emotional and behavioral "problems", is generational. Watch out.
Jesus is the only answer. Not the Pill of The Month, The Psych Diagnoses of the Month, or the Therapy of The Month and so on. Not the self-help program, not the self-esteem program, not the twelve-step program. All you have to do is take ONE step of faith. Step to the cross of Jesus Christ and be delivered from sin today.
This is a sinful and fallen world controlled by Satan and his demons. Satan is called "the prince of this world" in the Bible. He is known as "the prince of the power of the air" and as "the ruler of darkness" as well as "the lord of the flies". Look at the way flies are attracted to crap. Look at the crap in this world. Satan is behind it. Darkness and lies. Bondage and slavery. Jesus says in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth and the life." Figure out what is really going on. Be free in the Lord Jesus.
Not that I'm "carried away with this Jesus stuff", as my dad said on his deathbed in July 2001. No, not me. You'll see and if all of this Jesus stuff bothers you, let me know. I'll never bring it up again.
Sins will hurt you and those around you. Sin will cripple, maim and kill. Sin destroys. As a result of earlier sins of their own parents, Mom and Dad had severe problems of all kinds. Plus, we all have our own sins, too. Unfortunately, the folks had not graduated from high school. Later, they met and married in a whirlwind. They had kids. They fought and it was bitter, brutal, violent. Through it all they never said three words to their children: "I love you."
Actions speak louder than words as we all know, and between my Dad beating us and Mom screaming, "I WISH YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN!!!", childhood was rough. Divorced, alone with five kids, she slowly cracked up and all five of us were placed in institutions or group homes. Welcome to the world.
Before all of that, though, on my seventh birthday, Dad beat me almost to death, one of many brutal beatings we all received. Everyone says I seemed to get the worst of it, who knows why. Could be my big brown eyes. Could be, I reminded him of himself. Who knows? God knows.
Mom had given me a second piece of chocolate cake after I had brushed my teeth. Dad demanded later, "Did you brush your teeth?"
ANSWER: "Yes, sir."
He had "trained" us to say "sir" and "ma'am", or risk the wrath of his backhand. Or forehand.
The interrogation continued. I was frightened. His tone gave me the feedback that something was wrong but all I could do was tell the truth: yes, sir.
Then, slam! His quick right resulted in a palm across my left cheek. Down I went, the hand mark burning deep into my face like a branding iron. He was wearing a white T-shirt and his olive drab Army fatigue pants. He threw me like a sack of potatoes toward the hall, I hit the wall with my head and back. Then he kicked me down the aisle all the way to his and Mom's bedroom.
He tossed me up on the bed, yelling something about, "No one is going to lie to me in my own house, least of all one of my kids!"
Tugging off his Army belt, he wrapped one end around his hand and began flailing me with the heavy brass buckle, ripping open strips of skin through the thin pajamas.
On the first blow, you stiffen in shock, like splashing into an icy lake on the first day of summer. The second slash and your body quakes like Los Angles measuring 9.9 on the Richter scale. Then, on the third whip, you break completely apart . . . .
Blood was flinging out and up. I wailed the best I could, it hurt so much that you could hardly breathe, much less talk, yelp or screech in pain. Mom came running, her apron damp from splashes of dishwater.
"Oh! Len! Stop! Stop! You're--"
He backhanded her, she was sliding down against the door in agony and tears as I blacked out.
The next thing I know, inexplicably, I was bent over our pink bathtub. Mom was crying and dabbing alcohol-soaked cotton balls into my wounds. There were tears and fears on the bathroom floor that day as we hugged each other and cried. Happy birthday.
When things calmed down and Mom explained the whole issue to Dad, he just made that "thht" sound of sucking air between the spaces of his front teeth, trying to get pieces of Lucky Strike tobacco out of there, smirking and looking off, sort of ignoring Mom. He never apologized, of course. It was not in his nature to admit to any mistakes.
My birthday is on the second of July. On August 21 that year, 1962, my younger brother, Joe, was born. And in February 1963, Joey was awake, crying. He had an ear infection.
I hear something and went to the bathroom. Upon heading back to bed, I heard Dad yelling about, "No damn baby is going to keep me awake!"
Oh, yeah, Dad, it's all about YOU!
I stood there in the hall, wondering what was going on. Then, Dad got up and went to the crib, it was in Mom's and Dad's bedroom. He leered over it, then raised his hand like he was about to slap Joey!
"NO!" I shouted, "Don't hit Joey! Hit me if you have to! Joey's just a little baby!"
My Dad was startled. Mom told him to go back to bed. For once he did not come after me. Mom lifted Joey out of the crib, shut their bedroom door and headed to the living room. She told me to go to bed.
I went to bed but did not sleep right away. I rested on my back, looking up, wondering what to do and hating my father. Please forgive me for that.
In June of '64, the old man trashed the house, like a tornado had gone through it except for his stuff. Mom scooped us up, told us to take ONE thing and our pillows, we hopped on a train and left Georgia.
We had bounced around the country. You might say I'm from anywhere and everywhere, and from nowhere. By the end of Ninth Grade, I had attended nine schools. By age 18, I had lived in 25 houses in various states; Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, all the time coming back to Wisconsin. We were always on the wrong side of the Civil War. The folks divorced when I was eight. Bad stuff.
We lived in the Milwaukee ghetto after leaving my dad, that's all Mom could afford. Black kids stoned and beat us on a few occasions, calling us names I had never heard before . . . something like, "Yew White mucka-luckas!", whatever that means.
I accidentally kicked a bucket of scrub water on Mom one day when we lived at 1151 N. 21st Street in Milwaukee. She ran out into the street and flagged down a cop car. Just my luck. I barricaded myself into a bedroom and the cops came knocking, threatening to shoot their way in if I didn't open the door. This was just the first of many times that Mom called the police on me.
When I was ten, my brother and I patched our shoes with a cut-up oatmeal canister to get to school in the snow during December 1965. Well that didn't work too well, our socks and feet were wet by the time we got there. Dad rarely sent money, then the court ordered him to send $10 a week for each of the five kids, that's all. Ten bucks a week, Sweet Pea, that's all you get. Grandma lived with us to help out financially and with housework, cooking, cleaning, shopping, mending, whatever. She was great, a true blessing in our lives who often said, "Trust God." We never did. We raised Hell instead.
Dad remarried, some German woman named Anita who had children from a previous marriage, Jeannie and John Tipton. My brother and I lived with them for a while in Virginia, then returned to Milwaukee and my mother again when I was 12. Shortly after that, on Saturday February 3 1968 a car hit me, twice, before it could stop. I almost died. They said I would never walk again. Then they said I would never be able to play sports again. What a life, hey?
One night Rob and I were throwing a football to each other in the alley where we lived at N. 24th Street and W. Juneau Ave. Some men were talking down the street from us, looking our way, gesturing. Rob suddenly says, "Run!", so we take off running. He told me that the men were angry that one of their pick-up trucks had been broken into and guns had been stolen. They thought we did it. They chased us.
We ran down the H-shaped alley toward the McKinley Street end, then out onto N. 24th Place and back south toward Juneau Ave. The men were hot on our trail. We turned east onto Juneau. Bam! Bam! Shots rang out. They were shooting at us! Rob said he heard a bullet zing past his right ear. We ran into our yard and hid in the bushes.
The men came down the sidewalk. Our neighbor to the west, a Puerto Rican lady whom my mother claimed was a prostitute, was sitting on her porch steps, smoking a cigarette. She yelled to the men, "They went in there!", pointing to our yard. They came in the yard but by then we had crawled over to the other side and sneaked across the fence into the neighbor's yard to the east to escape. Another close call with death.
Somewhere around that time I started noticing how there was a certain amount of unfairness in our house. Maybe this was how Grandma had treated Mom, giving her unrealistic ideas. My younger siblings, for example, were able to eat sugar-coated cereals, but Rob and I had to eat oatmeal every day. I rebelled against this. One day Rob and I stole the box of Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes. We went on a "caper", that's what Rob called our little missions into the kitchen when everyone else was sleeping. Like Tony The Tiger always says, Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes are great! But we got in trouble for that.
Another thing that went on was that new rules were being made up on the spot. Now, you have to have rules, but before you inflict them on someone, you should inform them ahead of time what the rules are, so that everything is communicated and understood in advance of any adverse action. Well, this was a dysfunctional house, right, not Leave-It-To-Beaver-ville. Grandma would make up rules to fit "the little ones", our younger siblings, Ann, who was only a year younger than I, and Joe and Barbara, seven and eight years younger.
One day, suddenly, Rob and I were told that we couldn't have any ice cream. So, later, I stole the half-gallon of Golden Guernsey Butter Pecan and we ate ourselves sick. Another time, I got mad about something and barricaded myself into the basement. I pulled the master power switch and everyone was in the dark. Mom called the cops. They couldn't get in, but this time at least they didn't threaten to shoot their way through the door.
Time went by. In the summer of 1969, Joe and I were taking turns watching television. He'd have one day, I'd have the next. I really, really liked watching The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and I SPY in the afternoon. Well, one day, I was late getting home from the playground. My program came on at 4:00 p.m. and it was oh, about 4:08, I guess, when I got home.
Well, Joe is watching cartoons and I just went on up there and switched channels on him. He complained to Grandma, then she made up a rule, if you're not in the living room on time, you lose your day! Grandma says to me, "You're late, old boy, so now you loose your turn."
What? Hey, no makin' up rules as you go along! No fair! And I pleaded my case to no avail. She wouldn't let me watch it. This was a crazy situation and I responded accordingly. Joe started laughing at me and I was so angry and frustrated that I lost my cool like a fool and punched him in the stomach, right in the solar plexus, just below the base of the sternum. That was horrible. I know, I know, that was wrong. He folded over in pain and Grandma said, "That's it! You're out! Momma's calling the squad car as soon as she gets home!"
And, guess what, Mom comes home from work, freaks out upon hearing the story, and calls the cops. But they wouldn't come. They said, we'll take him tomorrow. I took a bath and put on my Sunday best, again they didn't show. Have you ever been stood up for a date?
So, they call hours later and say, the next day for sure, they will come and take me away. And they did. Thursday July 10, 1969 I was driven to the Milwaukee County Detention Center. The cops could not believe that I was a "problem child", they had talked to the nuns at school and learned from Sister Marie Sarah, the principal, that I was an A-student and had started for two years on the football and basketball teams. The nuns in the convent told the police that I was a leader, always helping others, scrubbing the convent floors for them on Saturday mornings and so on.
They knew something was wrong in our house. I tell you, it was a crazy situation, a crazy house to grow up in. The police said that they wished they could take me home with them, that I seemed like a nice kid, an ideal boy. One of the cops said he could use someone like me to change storm windows and screens on a seasonal basis. They had talked to the principal over at our school, St. Rose of Lima Catholic Grade School. The nuns told them how I was a good student and athlete, they told the cops how I survived getting hit by a car. Sister Mary Katherine told them how, just weeks after the accident, she entered me in the City-wide English competition for Sixth through Ninth Grade students, and how I took Second Place overall. The nuns told them that I was always helping, volunteering, scrubbing the convent floor on Saturdays and so on. They thought I was a decent kid. The cops and nuns didn't understand how a decent-sounding kid could have the trouble at home that I was experiencing.
Inside I felt all messed up. Now I was thrown out of the house and heading to who knows where. My eyes fixed on the Motorola radio in the center of the dash just above the transmission hump in the tan Ford sedan. I fantasized about knocking these two guys out and taking over the sedan, amazing what you think when you feel trapped. We drove over to State Street and all the way out to Watertown Plank Road and the Detention Center, juvenile jail. I was there a slap month, four weeks, a calendar month while they decided what to do with me. I didn't really fit in anywhere... how often I've felt that way in my life... one day I would learn how "lost" I really was.
On Monday August 11 I began my residency at St. Charles Boys Home, where I stayed until Friday May 25 1972. Kids and staff there often said the same thing to me, "You really don't belong in a boys home."
St. Charles was started by a Catholic organization, the Brothers of Holy Cross, in 1920 when the Wauwatosa Women's Club, the Red Feather Organization (later United Fund) and a few other charities pitched in and with the help, authorization and blessing of the Milwaukee County Children's Court, obtained some property and started the institution as the St. Charles Boys Farm. Yes, it was agrarian in nature at first, for about thirty-five or forty years.
They took in orphans and so on, all manner of needy boys, then kids from troubled homes, then juvenile delinquents. Later, just before I was released and definitely after I returned to work there, they were shifting away from the typical orphan, needy or troubled kid and juvenile delinquent to become "a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed adolescent males". As years went by, throughout the 1980s, more and more kids were admitted who were taking various psychotropic prescribed meds. Now I guess everyone in the place is on meds, including most of the staff! But I left in 1981 although I still keep up with the place in one way or another.
Back to 1969. The family was breaking up and I was the first one to go. Dad was long gone from the scene and a world away in another marriage Stateside but he was also in Vietnam keeping the helicopters flying.
Mom was cracking up, Grandma was elderly and unable to contend with the antics of five wild kids. Shortly after graduating from the eighth grade; in fact, ten days after I had turned fourteen, I was placed in the Milwaukee County Detention Center, where I sat for a solid calendar month. From there I was sentenced to two years at St. Charles Boys Home, but I stayed for two years and nine months until the family was stable enough for me to come back home. The family was split apart. Mom and Dad had divorced, twice. All five of the kids ended up in some kind of out-placement setting. I was the first one to go. It was tough but made me who I am. A month after arriving at St. Charles Boys Home I found an old typewriter and started a weekly newspaper. I still work as a writer today, I can tell you a long story about all that sometime if you're interested.
From the boys home I started high school. During the boys home and Solomon Juneau High School years I somehow earned 25 awards and had perfect attendance the entire time, can you imagine! They even created a special award for me, never given before or since, The Coaches Appreciation Award, how about that. After high school, I attended college, where at first I majored in Psychology, played football and basketball, worked two jobs during summer, then ended up pursuing a degree in Language and Literature with a Psychology minor. Later I studied marketing and advertising and a bunch of other things.
I was a resident of St. Charles Boys Home from August 11 1969 until May 25 1972. The day I got out, the chief psychiatrist invited me to his office in a big bank building downtown. I stopped in on my way home from school to see him. His secretary called me "Mr.", how about that. She acted so sweet and nice, with her perfumed odor, nicely styled hair, pearl necklace, fancy clothes, nylons and high heels. An ideal young woman, I'm sure, treating me like an equal, me with my Afro and double-knit polyester flared pants with Converse All-Star basketball shoes.
She ushered me in to the doctor's office, he directed me to a chair and we chatted. His first question was, "So, Dennis . . ." (pause)
"How did you 'get it all together' and do so well? How were you able to succeed so brilliantly."
Well, I didn't have much of a clue of course. I had learned to cover things up and to get along. I had learned to sublimate certain things and pursue other goals. But I would never presume to think that I "had it all together".
But, we talked. I'm sure that I said something articulate along the lines of, "Well, uh, I, uh, like, uh, you know, uh, I, uh, just, uh, learned about what was right, and, uh, I did it. Uh . . . ."
The doc said he wanted us to stay in frequent contact and that he thought I was St. Charles' greatest success story ever. He wanted to refer to me and use me from time to time if he could, with my permission, ask me to talk to students of his and so on. Mighty interesting. Maybe he had built me up to more than I really was. But he was very nice and had always praised me for different things.
As we concluded our brief little session, the doc said that anytime I was downtown, be sure to check with him, at least, phone and talk to his secretary. If he was out of the office, I was welcome to use his own personal parking space on the ground level of the big bank building, how about that. I did use it a few times, just to let him know I was around.
Somehow, I did very well at St. Charles. So well, in fact, that a year and a half after being released, I came back to work there. I know, I know, everyone is plotting to escape from that hell-hole and here I finally get out but then come right back, waltzing in through the front door. From November 5 1973 until January 31 1981 I worked as a Crisis Counselor. I was in charge of training all new staff on Second and Third Shift when I left. In 1981 I was making $11,800 per year, it was just not enough to survive, so I went to work as a bus driver for the Milwaukee County Transit System. My first year there I was able to earn $27,000, a far cry from patching my shoes with cutout pieces from a Quaker Oats canister.
During my time as a bus driver, I drove Jeffrey Dahmer to work almost every weeknight for two years, but that's another long story. And he wasn't the only mass murderer I dealt with, there was a guy named Robert John Wirth who killed seven or eight elderly people in the winter of 1987-88. I testified at his trial, historic because it was the first time in Wisconsin history that a murder conviction was obtained with the help of DNA evidence; this was all written up in the newspapers for weeks and weeks, interesting stuff in my scrapbook.
Back in 1973, after seeing the movie "America Graffiti" I became quite interested in cars, eventually restoring several classics (the '55 Chevy is my favorite) and muscle cars, which somehow lead to a career in advertising, then in technical writing, where I still am today.
In 1987 I was fortunate enough to win the annual Milwaukee Advertising Club Contest and my career branched off in another direction including advertising sales, color magazine production, broadcasting, video, public relations and special event promotion. I've worked in radio and t.v. and have a "side job" as an announcer, so life has been exciting and fun.
Anyway, to make the career change, I "bridged" by switching to bus driving on the night shift and working days as a writer at an ad agency and as a result, I became involved in writing advertisements, training programs and manuals for various companies, covering a variety of marketing, engineering and technical perspectives. I was promoted to Account Executive, a fancy term for salesperson, and did pretty well marketing our services. They made me a vice president of the ad agency, in charge of business-to-business development. I was 34 years old.
Although I had only taken one advertising course, in 1987 I entered and won the annual Milwaukee Advertising Club contest, giving the top presentation among 45 entrants. Many of them had Bachelor's and Master's degrees in advertising, mass communications and so on. Many of them had been in the contest every year since it started. But that year, even though I wasn't sure whether there was a God or not, I had said a silent, humble prayer, "God? If you want my life to go in the direction of advertising, You will see that I win this contest."
God spoke pretty clearly to me, even though I was unsure of Him. I followed the path He laid for me and left the bus driving job to pursue a career in the advertising field. Today I have a Master of Arts Degree in Mass Communication, but it's no big deal, it's not who I am or anything like that, it's just a piece of paper. I believe that God makes each one of us a certain way, He provides the giftedness we need to fulfill His plans, that's what it's all about. God made Moses, Joseph and David of the Old Testament to be leaders. God made Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan and Brett Favre to be talented athletes.
He made you with your special giftedness to be good at something. God made you to have the unique and wonderful characteristics that you do. We are all as different as snowflakes, all with unique purposes just as the body has different parts for different purposes. Hands and feet, eyes and ears -- heads and hearts.
He made me to excel in journalism, advertising and announcing. Why do people call me, "The VOICE of God"? Well, the voice came from God. I didn't create this voice, God did. It was His gift, to be used for His purposes. It's all about giftedness, not about man-made college degrees. Those will all burn when the world ends, I guarantee it. Now, we can go on and earn a degree for the glory of the Lord, and use our knowledge to help others in His name, but if we do it for ourselves or for the esteem of men, tell me, of what lasting value will that be?
As for the Ex, we met in 1978. I just have not been worthy of the blessing, as usual. We were married in 1982, and had three children, all boys, including twins. The oldest was born in '85 and the twins came in '86. All boys.
On Sunday October 20 1996 an incident ocurred pursuant to the activites of two 15-year-old bullies who attacked my then 10-year old son, Garret. Garret, Ryan, and Kyle, my children, were playing with their friends, including such children as Jeremiah Johnson (12), Joey Gunderson (10), Eddie Piatulski (9) and others; there was a group of about 12 boys between the ages of 9 and 12, until the bullies arrived and skewed things a bit.
The younger boys had been playing touch football. The older bullies arrived and suddenly announced, "It's tackle!" and began getting quite rough, slamming extremely hard into kids, kicking them, tripping them, punching them and more.
When Garret ran out for a pass and swung around, his hand tapped the glasses of his team mate, Michael Flores, also age 10. The incidental contact knocked the spectacles off of Flores face.
The bullies, J.J. D'Amato and his cousin Dominic suddenly decided to exact revenge for this. While Dominic held Garret while J.J. struck him with fists, hitting him in the abdomen repeatedly. Then things turned sinister as the bullies announced that everyone had to punch Garret for knocking the glasses off of Flores, or the bullies were threatening to harm the others if they did not participate in punching Garret.
Ryan broke away and ran home to tell me.
In past dealings with these neighborhood bullies, we had learned how evil they were. One time they knocked the boys off thier bikes and stole their bicycle helmets. Another time they stole their basketball. They always hit them or threatened to do great bodily harm to them. When the took their helmets, they smashed them with a baseball bat and shouted, "This is your HEAD!!!"
On the afternoon of Sunday October 20 1996, Ryan abrputly ran home to shriek, "Dad! The bullies have Garret! AND THEY'RE BEATING HIM UP!!!!"
I was under the big two-tone maroon-and-silver 1985 Chevrolet Caprice Classic station wagon at the time, performing axle maintenance. My hands were full of thick, black axle grease. I quickly pulled myself from under the vehicle and ran to the playfiled as any caring, concerned parent would.
When I approached, the bullies were still holding Garret and evidently preventing him from leaving. J.J. D'Amato had his back to me and was saying, "Whatever you do, DON'T tell your dad."
I announced, "J.J., I'm already here. Let go of my son."
The bullies departed, claiming that they had said they were sorry.
About two hours later, a pair of Milwaukee police officers came to my house to inform me that the bullies had called, reporting that I had grabbed them, thrown them through the air, body slammed them, stomped on their chests, grabbed their heads and banged them on the pavement ten times, through them bodily through the air again and threatened to commit further harm.
The police notified me that upon interviewing the bullies, the one bully's mother was very frightened for her son. The police went on to inform me that the bullies displayed marks on their torsos and that whenever a minor in the State of Wisconsin claims that an adult caused bodily harm, and the minor has bodily markings, this constitutes Felony - Child Abuse.
They said, "Put your hands on the wall."
They frisked me, put the cuffs on me, and put me in a van. They failed to read me my rights at any time if that matters.
After over a year and several thousand dollars of lawyer fees, the charges were dropped. The trump card was that, about two weeks after the original incident, the bullies beat Joey Gunderson on two separate ocassions, one day apart from each other. The last time they smashed his face on the curb, breaking his front teeth.
e had Joey and his mother with us in court and the bullies, their parents, the D.A. and others were quick to agree that what they had claimed I did to them was false.
I had been CHARGED with Felony - Child Abuse, but not CONVICTED of it. The charges were dropped.
About six months later we learned that one of the two officers originally on the scene is the uncle of the bullies, Officer Vincent Fonte. And you of course know that police NEVER do anything wrong, they NEVER lie or break the law or violate the rights of citizens, hey?
So go down to the Milwaukee County Court House and pull the file for Case No. 1996CF965351 dated October 22 1996 to verify what I'm saying. Notice how the police reports of so-called witness interviews read like they were stamped with a cookie cutter. When the witnesses were called, they had the complete OPPOSITE viewpoint of what the officers had put in their reports. Nothing like falsifying reports, hey?
For a total of eight years of my life I worked two jobs. Time went by. There would be success, then setback. Eventually I started feeling extra tired and sick all the time about 1995. I gained weight. We were still married then and the Ex would sometimes come with me to the doctor and report all of the symptoms, and he'd treat the symptoms.
There were some things that I can now associate with each other, 20/20 hindsight, that I could not then. The symptoms included frequent urination, especially during the night, excessive thirst, fatigue, weight gain, mood swings and so on. Bizarre stuff. And the Ex calling me all kinds of names. Earlier I had been Mr. Wonderful, her co-workers would melt if I called her, "Ooooohhh . . . There's someone calling for you and he doesn't have a husband's voice!"
She would tell them stories about how I did this or that around the house, the perfect husband at one point, yes. Then the co-workers would inquire, "Does he give lessons? I have a 200 pound lump at home who just sits there while I do everything."
Yes, yes, it's true, it's true, I was "The World's Greatest Husband" at one point. How rapidly and hard I fell to become the world's worst husband and all-time champion couch potato.
I continued to schedule doctor's appointments but was getting nowhere. Eventually I have to have most of my colon removed. Luckily, due to advancements in this type of surgery, I did not need a colostomy bag. Yuk! But I was not the man I once was and continued to inexplicably decline.
Well, one day I couldn't get in to see the doctor but one of the other practitioners in the clinic had an opening so met with one of his associates. And this one doctor comes along and studies my medical records for a few minutes to get familiar with my case and remarks, oh, I see you have diabetes, but why aren't you being treated for it?
That explained a lot. Diabetes is a deadly, debilitating illness. The original doctor had never said any more than, "Cut down on your sweets and get some exercise."
I had practically eliminated anything that I would consider "sweets" from my diet, and I was getting exercise, walking and playing a little basketball. But for him to say what he did would be the same as telling a lung cancer patient, "Cut down on your smoking and get some exercise." I filed a medical malpractice lawsuit.
Our marriage had crumbled over those years when all I could do was go to work then come home and go right to bed. Getting the diagnosis was good, but came late. I was already developing neuropathy, heart problems and failing vision.
The Ex would just scream and scream and scream all the time. I guess I had Bad Husband Syndrome (BHS), a disease that I discovered.
Bad Husband Syndrome - No matter what you say, think, or do, as well as don't say, don't think, or don't do, YOU'RE WRONG!!!
Well, now, that does it. And I did a lot of things wrong; I sinned at least daily and struggled with some major issues, too. Now you know what a louse I am. I suppose you'll have nothing to do with me now. Go ahead.
If she was running late I would try to pick up the slack. Maybe I would start supper. Then it would be, "What planet are YOU from!?! Why did you make spaghetti and meatballs!?! THAT WAS FOR TOMORROW! Now you've spoiled everything!!!"
So, a few weeks go by and the next time this situation comes up, I just plop down in the living room and watch t.v. Then, it's, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!?! You're the laziest man on earth! You could have started supper, made spaghetti and meat balls or something!"
Needless to say, when your marriage is crumbling, there will be a breakdown in communication, which leads to distrust, followed by other losses such as a lack of intimacy, and doubt about the important issues such as financial concerns, use of time, as well as spiritual matters. This general decline of the important conditions of life brought about a lot of dissatisfaction. The way I handle it is to more or less keep it inside and keep on trying, sometimes in unrelated areas. For example, things were bad at home. Kathy was yelling all the time, that was her way of coping or letting the pressure out. I would tend to work late hours to avoid the yelling or seek additional announcing opportunities as a way of bolstering support, when I should have laid down my life for my wife as Ephesians 5:25 teaches. But, I didn�t heed those words. She would yell, I would go on an emotional retreat, there would be further breakdowns, and the situation would spiral into a worse condition.
It was all probably just another indicator of how bad the relationship was. One strange thing about it, as we neared the end, even though we were praying, studying our Bibles and attending church more and counseling more, things unraveled. All this happened in the last four years, the years in which Kathy decided not to work so took a four-year vacation.
I had worked two jobs for a total of eight years. She had never, ever worked even one full-time job. As the years passed and I moved up the employment world feeding chain, I was happy to come home one day and tell her, "Honey, you don't have to work any more at all if you don't want to, thanks to my new job -- a 25% salary increase!"
So, in the last four years of our marriage, things turned their worst, coinciding with when the diabetes was finally diagnosed. One day while on vacation in July, I was examining the finances. She had been complaining that I should take over the checkbook and so on, so I was glad to comply. But it had not been balanced for eleven years. I spent three days going through things and discovered that she had drained the savings account, charged things up to the hilt on three credit cards I did not know about and had severely damaged our overall credit rating.
I just asked, where on earth did $50,000 go in four years? And how did you get over $23,000 in credit card debt as well?
She blew up. Shouted that all I cared about was money, and that I was trying to force her to go back to work just so that I could get a new car.
Oh, the car, the car. I was driving a 21-year old Buick. I called it a "slide over" model because only the passenger door opened after she broke the driver's door in a fit of rage a while earlier. The Buick was rusty but trusty. And I committed to drive it until the twins graduate from high school in June 2005. So this was untrue, but she persisted in her angry venting, eventually grabbing the nearby floor fan and striking me with it.
Now, I'm not going to hit a woman but I will protect myself. She beat me about the head, shoulders and back. Later, I filed a Restraining Order in Milwaukee County Court. At the moment of the flailing, I considered my options as I tried to block those blows and told her, maybe I should stay at my mother's for a night or two, and went upstairs to pack a bag. She followed me there, then began hitting, scratching and kicking.
She shouted, "GET OUT!!! GO AHEAD AND GET OUT! DON'T EVER COME BACK OR SO HELP ME I'LL KILL YOU!!! GET OUT! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU AND I NEVER LOVED YOU! NO WONDER YOU'RE MOTHER SAID SHE WISHED YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN! NEITHER DO I!!! GET OUT AND DON'T YOU DARE EVER COME BACK!"
So, that was basically the end of that chapter of life. Pfft! Almost twenty years of marriage, poof. Gone. And here I am today, still alive, coming at YOU live through the Internet. I thought I would never recover. Here I am, still afloat by the grace of God.
My life has been my life, that's all. I don't look at it as GOOD or as BAD, it's just my life. There were good and bad things happening, same for everyone. I had it rough as a kid, but not as rough as some have had it. I may not have known about or experienced security, love and relationships, but I have grabbed onto them now. God has always been there, whether I knew about Him or not.
I've won plenty of awards all my life, I've done well, better than anyone else in my family, not like that's a standard to measure things by, but my life brought me here and I'm somewhat satisfied, but continuing to move on. We are not the measurement or the ruler. The Bible is our standard, you know that. It's God's word.
Are you religious? I'm not. Not really. Have you ever heard about Christ and the living, personal, real relationship we receive by grace through faith? That has nothing to do with religion, or with good works, as you can see. The Bible defines religion in James 1:27, " Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." There's a real challenge -- keep unstained by the world! Try it sometime. Every thought, word and deed is bound by the flesh and the world. Anyway, I'm not religious. I used to sit in church pews for 52 weeks a year and receive accolades for that, but I didn't really know whether or not there was a God. I didn't know Him, I had no relationship with Him.
It's all about relationship, I think you know that. I believe in the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and I do know that the Bible is God's Word, He left it for us, He is all powerful and although some have tried to change His Word, He has protected it for us. Therefore, the Bible reveals God and is to be our standard for living.
The truth is, I finally learned in 1990 that God is real and that those years of sitting in the church pews thinking, "just in case there is a God, He'll count this toward my righteousness" were wasted. Wasted! With God, it's not religion but RELATIONSHIP that matters. And how can anyone call God "our heavenly Father" unless they have a relationship with Him and are one of His children? Now, God has no grandchildren, so you can't "inherit" true belief from your parents. God has one and only one Son, His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. So we are adopted into God's family by trusting personally in Christ, by grace through faith. And the Bible tells us that grace comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. That's how we are saved and placed into a relationship with God.
Relationship is based on blood -- in this case, the blood of the Lord Jesus. One day in 1990, I examined myself. Who am I? Certainly not my job. I had just lost my job, and with it went a large part of my identity. I realized, hey, no one is identified by the work that they do. We must have an identity apart from our pastimes. Was God real or was he like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy? That was on my mind those first few weeks in March, 1990. Well, God straightened me out on that, true to His word, the Bible. Look up Jeremiah 29:13 some time, then take a look at John 14:6 and tell me what you think.
No, I'm not religious. I have a relationship with God, though. And I hope you do, too. It's made all the difference in my life. Now I know The Truth, The Truth, the Lord Jesus Christ, has made me free. Free of religion, which is really a system of man-made rituals and ceremonies and made-up rules, trying to be righteous enough to get to heaven.
With the relationship, though, God made the way to heaven. We're all sinners, right, I am, you are, everyone is. Look at Romans 3:23 sometime. Sin is the issue. We can't cover, un-do, or pay for our sin. Jesus took care of it on the cross, paid in full. He did it all. He cried out, "It is finished!", then He died and God the Father raised Him on the third day according to the Scriptures, to show that He was eternally satisfied with the price Christ paid. He paid it all. Check out First Corinthians 15:1-4 when you get a chance. That summarizes The Gospel.
That's all there is to it, it is the central relationship of my life and will be for all eternity. Over the years of my life and especially since 1990, I have learned a lot about relationships and love . . . love really is all about doing for others, instead of yourself. Self sacrifice. Jesus paid the price for all of our sins, once for all, on the cross. He said in the Bible that He is the way, the truth and the life, no one comes unto the Father but by Him. He also tells us that the road to Hell is broad; it's wide and easy to find, many go in there. But the gate to heaven is narrow, and few there are who enter in. Jesus is the gate. He is the light of the world and told us to let that light shine, not to hide it under a bushel basket.
One day after losing my job I pondered who I am and what my purpose in life was. I felt that, if there is a God, my life should have something to do with this God. If there was no God, I guess I would be free to determine whatever I wanted. Free thinking. But first, I set out to determine whether or not there was a God.
Searching on the FM radio band, I found a Christian station and listened for a few days in March, 1990. Pastors like Charles Stanley, Adrian Rogers, J. Vernon McGee and others were asking a similar question that haunted me, "Do you have a living, personal, REAL relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, if not, my friend, the Bible says you're lost, and if you're lost, the Bible says that you're going to Hell for eternity."
Well, I never really had a relationship with anyone. Couldn't trust my own parents, they'd beat you or disown you. And although I did not believe in God, I believed in Hell! How ludicrous! But after three days of haunting soul-searching, I got on my knees, you know? Then, deciding it wasn't low enough for a sinner like me, I got face flat to the linoleum and as much as possible, emptied my mind of all thought.
I cried out, "God? Are you there?" Yes, me, the sinner, the kid who stole money from his mother's wallet, the guy from the boys home, I came to the end of myself internally and cried out, "God? Are You there?"
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, between the words "You" and "there", faith was born inside of me. I trusted in the Lord Jesus in a living, personal, real way. We must have a relationship with Him, otherwise, we cannot possibly call God our Heavenly Father.
Well, as you know, relationships are the critical key to living a happy, successful life. Relationships are eternal because God created us in His own image and likeness, He made us male and female, to be in spiritual fellowship with Him and physical harmony with each other.
Because sin was so horrible and alien to God, death became the penalty. Now, we can all have kinship with Him through trusting in the finished work of Jesus on the cross -- the death, burial and MOST IMPORTANT, o.k., the resurrection of Christ proved that God accepted what Jesus did on our behalf. When we defy the world system that is set against God and claim Christ as our personal savior, God tells us in His word, the Bible, that He will take us to heaven when we die.
Look at Romans 9:9-10, "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved."
This is quite a lot for you to digest, I'm sure. I will just let it rest and YOU can bring it up when you feel comfortable. There is a lot here. So, moving on . . . .