A RIGHT TO PRIVATE GRIEF
THIS IS WHEN IT is hell working for a newspaper.
A young woman is driving home from a party in Cobb County nearly a year ago. She is twenty-five and single, her best years still ahead of her.
She has friends and loving parents. She has a boyfriend.
She never makes it home that night. She disappears with no traces whatsoever. Police can turn up no clues.
And the months and months of grief begin for those close to Nancy Carol Campbell.
The rain was pelting down all over the metro area Wednesday. Most of the talk in the newsroom of the Constitution concerned Tuesday’s election.
Then, the call came. A car had been found submerged in water alongside the route Nancy Campbell was believed to have taken the night of her disappearance.
Slowly, the details came in. It was Nancy Campbell’s car, and she was inside it. Early reports said her death appeared to have been accidental. It’s a lousy job, but it has to be done. The softies say, “Leave her family and friends alone. They have enough to bear.”
But this is a big city, and this is big city journalism and somebody has to make those calls.
I tried the parents’ home first. What would their reaction be? Relief? What were those months and months of no answers like? Another reporter, who had worked on the Nancy Campbell story from the beginning, was with me.
“I don’t believe I could do it,” she said. “I don’t believe I could talk to the parents after what they’ve been through.”
The phone rang at the Campbell home. A woman answered. I identified myself. My hands were shaking.
“I’m sorry,” said the woman, “but the Campbells aren’t taking any calls. You must understand.”
I understood. Frankly, I was relieved.
There were other calls by other reporters. To Colorado, the last known address of John Kurtz, Nancy Campbell’s boyfriend. There were calls to an Atlanta friend who has since moved to California. No luck.
I tried a former sorority sister of Nancy Campbell’s. She answered. I told her what had happened.
“Oh, my God,” said Peggy Reese. “I’m in shock.”
We talked maybe fifteen minutes. Peggy Reese, who teaches school, said she had been “very close” to Nancy Campbell, that she had always felt something “bizarre” had happened to her friend.
I asked how they became so close.
“We were at Georgia together,” she said, “and I had been in a car accident. My leg was all bandaged up, and I was telling Nancy how bored I was because I wasn’t getting to go out.
“Nancy got me a date. We wound up dating these two guys who were friends, and we saw a lot of each other after that.”
After Georgia, Peggy Reese and Nancy Campbell stayed in touch. They talked on the telephone, about their lives, about their futures. ”I really believe Nancy was a happy person,” Peggy Reese said. “She liked her job. She was doing some photography which she enjoyed.
“She and John had been dating a long time, but I don’t think she was ready to get married. We are in that age group where we are looking for a lot of things in life.”
We talked about Nancy’s parents.
“I just went to see them several times,” Peggy said. “It was awful. They were so down, so depressed. I was convinced they would never breathe another happy breath.
“What happened today will be rough on them right now, but maybe in the long run, it will be better they know.”
Later, I thought about trying to call Nancy Campbell’s parents again.
I decided not to. To hell with big city journalism on a dreary Wednesday afternoon. People have a right to grieve in private.
RELIGION AND LARRY FLYNT
IT WAS THE PRETTIEST day of late winter. Larry Flynt was somewhere between life and death on an operating table in Button Gwinnett Hospital. Lawrenceville radio station WLAW was on the air with its daily gospel hour.
The first record, the announcer said, was the number one gospel tune in the country, “I’m A Believer Since Jesus Showed Me The Way.”
Some nut gunned down Larry Flynt and one of his lawyers on a Lawrenceville street Monday. “Nothing like this has ever happened here before,” said an old man at the hospital. Larry Flynt was on trial here for peddling dirty books. Larry Flynt said recently he is a believer since Jesus showed him the way.
Many people don’t believe that.
One woman was talking to another woman outside the hospital emergency room.
“I bet the Mafia done it,” she said. “He made too much money for the Mafia not to be in on this.”
The other woman agreed.
Somebody else said it was probably “some religious fanatic.” Larry Flynt gave his views on religion at the trial last week. Some didn’t hold to the strictest of Christian doctrine. I remember one of the things he said: “The Bible is a tool to live by, but it shouldn’t be an obstacle course.”
Flowers were already pouring in for Flynt. There were roses from somebody named Stan Coakley in Killbruck, Ohio. The card read, “Hang in there.”
Another arrangement came in from a Bob Flamm. There was no address. The card read, “You showed me how fear can shake a mountain and how faith could move it. Keep the faith. I’m pulling for you all the way.”
One of the flower-bearers at the hospital said, “You haven’t seen anything. We’re making one up from the PTL Club that’s gonna be six-foot tall.
PTL stands for “Praise The Lord.” The PTL Club is a Christian television program that is shown all over America, Canada and Latin America. Atlantans see it on Channel 36. Its headquarters are in Charlotte. A man named Jim Bakker founded it, runs it and is the television program host.
He sent the flowers.
I couldn’t reach Jim Bakker Monday. I talked to his assistant, Robert Manzano, by telephone. Here is what he told me about Larry Flynt and religion:
“Some of our members met Larry Flynt in New York and invited him to Charlotte to talk with Jim Bakker on the PTL Club.
“He came but he was not put on the show. He and Jim Bakker went into another room and talked about religion off the record. Jim was concerned about Mr. Flynt’s sincerity concerning his recent conversion.
“The interview was taped, and when it ended, Jim Bakker said he really believed Mr. Flynt was a born-again Christian and that he was honest and sincere.
“He said he was a brand new Christian and confused and not clear in his philosophy. We caught a lot of flak from religious groups for having anything to do with Larry Flynt at all.
“But Jim Bakker said because he was a new Christian and confused, we needed to love him and help him rather than reject him. He said, ‘It is the job of a Christian to love and not to judge.’”
I asked the man to repeat that for me. I wanted to make sure I had it straight.
“It is the job of a Christian,” he said, “to love and not to judge.”
The woman with the Mafia idea was talking to her friend again.
“You reckon he REALLY got religion?” she asked.
“If he didn’t before,” her friend said, looking into the emergency room, “I bet he’s got it now.”
11.
SOME OLD PEOPLE
Come to think of it, the one burning ambition in my life is to live long enough to become an old man. . . .
SMOKEY BAILEY
THE PAST FEW MONTHS had been good ones for Ottis “Smokey” Bailey, a friend of mine. Smokey Bailey is the man who collects Bibles and then gives them away to people he thinks “need a good talkin’ from the Lord.”
I first met him in the cool of a springtime evening as he sat in his favorite chair under some trees behind the big apartment buildings at 2450 Peachtree. Smokey worked there as the building custodian. He lived in the basement.
“I come out here in the evenings,” he told me, “to study the Book. Every answer to every question ever been is in the Book.”
I wrote a couple of columns about S
mokey, and you responded with hundreds of Bibles for him. He beamed each time I brought over a new load.
Later, I would see him on street corners from Buckhead to Brook-wood, preaching to anybody who would listen—preaching to anybody.
There was the sweltering day in Buckhead. Smokey, long sleeves and a hat, stood in the park across from the old Capri Theater, Bible held high in one hand, the other hand waving toward the heavens.
He was glad to see me.
“Done give every one of them Bibles away,” he said. “Lot of folks out there got the Word wouldn’t have had it if you hadn’t brought me them Bibles.”
I passed along the credit to those who had taken the time, who had gone to the expense to load Smokey’s biblical arsenal.
Smokey Bailey is nearly sixty. He’s a color-blind black man without family, without a purpose other than to do what he thinks the Lord has insisted he do.
For his custodial work at the apartment buildings, he was paid $200 a month. Most of that went for new Bibles. He had layaway accounts at Buckhead bookstores. Smokey was always busted, and Wednesday his world caved in.
There are several versions to the story. Aycock, the management company that runs Smokey’s building, said Smokey was evicted Wednesday because the building owner, Mrs. Dorothy Johnson, instructed that it be done.
“He wasn’t doing his job,” said Garvin Aycock. “All I could do was what the law directs me to do.”
Mrs. Johnson has refused comment.
A resident who asked that her name not be used (“or I’d be evicted, too”) said, “A lot of it was racial. One of the men residents here complained that Smokey put his hand on some of the women’s shoulders. He put his hand on my shoulder. And then he’d say, ‘God bless you.’
“There wasn’t that much work for Smokey to do in the first place. Mrs. Johnson didn’t like him preaching either. Whatever else Smokey was, he was harmless. What happened today broke my heart.”
Smokey was fired from his job and kicked out on the street. A half-dozen sheriff’s deputies came and moved his meager belongings from his basement apartment out to the sidewalk on Peachtree.
Smokey had been warned. His checks had been stopped. “I didn’t know where else to go,” Smokey told me later. “I didn’t know they would do me that way. That ain’t no way to do anybody.”
People from Atlanta’s Housing Support Service came to help Smokey. They hired a truck to move away his belongings. Bibles were scattered up and down the sidewalk. A chair wouldn’t fit in the truck. A passerby stopped and purchased it for seven dollars. The movers gave the money to Smokey.
He was eventually taken to the Salvation Army, which has agreed to house him for ten days. Somebody paid to have his few possessions stored.
I can’t place any blame here. Maybe Smokey should have spent more time on his custodial duties before heading for his streetside pulpit. And he did have notice that the eviction was coming.
But an old man with a big heart and a message of love is homeless today, and that makes me sick to my stomach.
I do remember something Smokey said to me once, however. It had to do with not being overly concerned with personal gains and security while running in the human race.
“Money ain’t never worried me,” he said, ‘“cause my wages are comin’ later. The Lord’s been holdin’ ’em for me.”
PAULINE JONES
PAULINE JONES HAD ENOUGH troubles as it was. She is crippled and in a wheelchair. Arthritis. She was married once, but that was a long time ago. There were no children.
She has two sisters in Atlanta, but they have health problems of their own. They can’t help. Pauline is sixty-eight. And she is alone in the city.
What keeps her going is her stubbornness. You need that, and a good measure of it, when you fight The Big Red Tape Machine.
Two months ago, she entered a hospital for surgery on her legs. Doctors say there is a possibility she may even walk again. Pauline is still in the hospital going through a period of rehabilitation.
But it has been slow. Slower than normal because she doesn’t know if she will have a place to live when the hospital releases her.
It all began months ago when the Atlanta Housing Authority ordered her to leave her apartment at the AHA high-rise at 2240 Peachtree.
The other tenants were complaining. Mrs. Jones drinks too much, they said. She gets frightened in the middle of the night and calls the fire department, they said. And she keeps cats in her apartment. There is a rule against pets in AHA apartments.
Pauline wouldn’t budge. “Somebody’s poisoned one of my cats,” she says. “I had two kittens left in my apartment. They are all I have.”
The AHA took her to court. Tenants from her apartment came by bus to testify. The jury ruled she must leave. Her attorney managed to hold off any further action by appealing to a higher court. Recently, the higher court ruled against Pauline Jones again.
She got that bad news in the hospital the other day from her own law firm, which decided to inform her in a rather matter-of-fact letter that also mentioned she might be evicted within ten days. Pauline didn’t need that. “Physically, she is coming along fine,” said a doctor at her bedside. “But psychologically, all this hasn’t helped a bit.”
I talked with two lawyers and one housing authority spokesperson about Pauline Jones this week. “We had no choice,” they said. “We had the other tenants to think about. We even offered her another apartment, but she wouldn’t take it.” Graciously, the AHA says it will not evict Pauline from her apartment until the higher court sends down its final order to the lower court. “Then,” said the spokeperson, “we will proceed.”
The AHA’s suggestion for Pauline Jones is a private nursing home.
I looked to finger a heavy here, but I don’t know exactly who it is.
The housing authority is legally within its rights to evict resident Pauline Jones. The other tenants, just as needy, were howling. Fire trucks in the middle of the night aren’t exactly what elderly people living in a high-rise apartment building need to see.
And the AHA had offered Pauline another place to live. It had warned her of the consequences if she didn’t vacate.
And she is stubborn, and she is eccentric, but at sixty-eight, she has every right to be.
She doesn’t understand how bureaucracies work, and she doesn’t understand legalese. And the thought of moving frightened her.
And when it gets lonely in the night, who can begrudge her a drink and a couple of cats to keep her company?
And when she asked me last week, “Where will I go when I leave the hospital? How can I afford a nursing home on $188.40 a month?” I didn’t have an answer for her.
It’s a big-city dilemma. An urbanliving standoff. Nobody to blame. Nobody to go to for help. And a little old lady nobody seems to want is caught squarely in the middle of it all.
THE MAN WITH NO SOCKS
HE WAS AN OLD man out of a picture book, and I am a sucker for old men. We would get along famously, I was certain. I would ask questions about the mysteries of life and living and he would provide answers based on the truths experience had taught him.
I watched him totter across the street toward the bus stop in downtown. He wore a tattered baseball cap. If I live long enough to be an old man, I will wear a tattered baseball cap.
His shirt was wrinkled. His pants were baggy. There were no strings in his shoes and he wore no socks. Why, on such a fine spring morning, should a man have to lace his shoes and wear socks if he chooses not to?
He carried a newspaper under his arm. He shaved sometime last week. If I live long enough to be an old man, I will browse over the newspaper at my leisure in the morning and shave only when I damn well please.
He peered at the first bus that came by and chose not to board it. He asked the obnoxious dude standing next to him had such-and-such bus been by. He got no reply. The young tough ignored the old man. The young tough also wore an ear ornament. Never trust or st
rike up conversations with men who decorate their ears.
It was my chance to talk to the old man.
“Need any help?” I asked.
“Help?” He asked back. ”I don’t need any help. I need a bus. I ain’t stayin’ down here all day.”
I apologized. Old men can be stubborn and independent. If I live long enough to be an old man, I will be stubborn and independent and defy anybody to treat me like an old man.
“I came down here to get my check,” he went on. “The government gives me enough to live on. I don’t need much. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I used to drink, but I don’t drink anymore. And I don’t fool with no women. That’s what costs money, foolin’ with women.”
I was pressing my luck, I knew, but I wanted to keep the conversation going.
I asked if he had any family.
“I had a wife,” he said. “She’s been dead thirty-five years.”
And children?
“A houseful. That’s why I never did marry again. You get that many young ’uns to raise, you ain’t got no time to be out chasin’ around for another wife.”
A bus came by. He squinted through the morning sun and tried to see the sign above the front window. It wasn’t his bus. I was glad. I wanted to hear more.
“You believe I’m eighty-one years old?” he asked me.
He looked every day of it, but I lied. I told him I couldn’t believe he was eighty-one.
“Well, I’m not,” he laughed. “I’m just eighty. But if the Lord lets me live another month, I’ll be eighty-one.”
He was rolling now, the old man. He talked about his children. Some were successful. One son had a house with eight rooms in it. Some were not so successful. He had a daughter who had been in a wreck.
“Drinkin’ caused it,” he said. “She had $35,000 worth of doctor bills. I told her to quit the bottle. She wouldn’t listen to me. I knew something bad was going to happen to her, and it did.”
Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You: A good beer joint is hard to find and other facts of life Page 18
