Deadly Goals

by Wilt Browning

  “Let not your hearts be troubled,” Jeannie’s pastor, the Rev. Paul D. Moore of Indian River Baptist Church, read from the Book of John a short time later. “Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you.

  “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also…”

  Moore took the text for his sermon from the parable of the Good Samaritan. “The culprit in this case,” he said, “is in need of compassion toward him. Jeannie’s family has replaced vengeance and hatred with compassion and has requested that First Corinthians, Chapter 13, be read, as an expression of the family, toward the life taken on earth.”

  Moore’s voice was strong as he read the passage about charity. Finishing, he looked up. There was silence in the room. “Jeannie loved all, regardless of origin, nationality,” he said, “and thus was friends with all.”

  After the service, a procession that stretched for three miles made its way to Rosewood Memorial Park. There, in the shade of an old evergreen tree in a section known as Singing Towers, the family gathered one last time beside the casket covered with a blanket of peach-colored baby roses from friends at the courthouse where Jeannie worked. They listened as Moore read the familiar Twenty-Third Psalm.

  “There will be no separation in Heaven,” the minister told those gathered when he had finished the reading. “No mysteries. No violence. No murder. No darkness.”

  The crowd remained silent as David White, a policeman, stepped forward to read from a poem he had written.

  To a friend much loved.

  To a friend who will always be remembered.

  The loving smile that warmed our hearts and made our day.

  Your life was not in vain.

  Your life filled ours with warmth and joy.

  We will miss you, Jeannie, and you will always be in our lives and hearts.

  A part of us passed away with you.

  Your life brightened ours like a falling star, lighting the sky.

  Yes, Jeannie, your life touched us all.

  You will never be forgotten.

  Later the Pricketts placed a bronze plaque at this spot:

  Regina Marie “Jeannie” Prickett Butkowski

  Beloved Daughter

  August 5, 1959

  May 6, 1989

  “I named her Regina Marie,” her father said later. “She never really liked the name, so she wanted to be called Jeannie.”

  2.

  Ten Fingers, Ten Toes

  IN THE YEAR in which his daughter had died, Ben Prickett still wore a crew cut, a holdover from his career as a Navy enlisted man. But the first time Carrie Carlyle saw him late in 1953, he had long hair, a style popularized by a new young singer named Elvis Presley. Ben was sitting with his girlfriend a few pews from Carrie and her boyfriend in Avondale Baptist Church in Avondale Estates, Georgia, one of Atlanta’s eastern suburbs.

  Less than a year later, Carrie, whose boyfriend had gone into the military and had been sent to Korea, was teamed with Ben to take part in the church’s annual door-to-door neighborhood survey. From that day, they never dated anyone else, and in July 1954, they were married.

  For a time, Carrie kept her job as a telephone operator, and Ben reported to work each day at the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Atlanta where he counted stacks of overworn currency. He spent a weekend a month in the Navy reserves.

  Before the couple would spend their first Christmas together, Carrie became pregnant and on Valentine’s Day, 1955, Ben quit his job counting money and signed on for active duty in the Navy. He was assigned to the amphibious base near Norfolk, Virginia. Carrie remained behind in Atlanta, where their first child, Sam, was born June 16, 1955. Before the summer had broken, mother and infant had joined Ben in a tiny apartment in the Oceanview neighborhood not far from the Navy base.

  Ben’s and Carrie’s first daughter, who would be given her mother’s name, was born less than two years later, arriving at Portsmouth Navy Hospital on April 5, 1957. Like Sam, Carrie was born with fiery red hair.

  Soon, the growing family would move with Ben to his new assignment at Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico, and there at 7:30 a.m. on August 5, 1959, Carrie would again be admitted to a maternity ward.

  As Carrie was wheeled into the delivery room of the U.S. Army hospital near San Juan a little more than 12 hours later, she noticed that two low platforms, one slightly higher than the other, as though they were bleachers for a sports event, were in place on one side of the room.

  “Mrs. Prickett,” said the Army doctor who greeted her, “we have a few young doctors here who would like to study our procedures. Do you mind having them watch the delivery?”

  “Not if you’ll let me watch, too,” she answered.

  The doctor smiled. “That can be arranged,” he responded and ordered a mirror be rolled into place and positioned so that Carrie, like the young doctors, could watch the miracle.

  At 8:20 p.m., the doctor placed a tiny baby girl on Carrie’s stomach. She looked at the little one. “Hi, baby,” she said softly.

  “I remember that she had hair as red as a copper penny, lots of it,” Carrie recalled years later. “And I remember I checked her fingers and toes the way all mothers do, just to make sure everything was working. She had ten of each. And everything was working perfectly.”

  For nearly a week, Carrie remained in the hospital while her third child grew strong. And when several times each day the newborn babies were rolled out of the nursery and delivered to their mothers, Carrie’s young daughter each time was handed to the woman who shared Carrie’s room. Each time, Carrie would remind the nurses, “That’s my baby.”

  It was an understandable mistake. The woman in the next bed had hair as red as Carrie’s infant daughter’s.

  Back in their small apartment, Carrie worked hard to make sure her two older children, Sam and Carrie, adjusted to the infant. Confirmation that Carrie, then only 30 months old, had accepted her baby sister came in an unusual way. One day while her mother was busy, Carrie stood outside the Pricketts’ apartment trying to stop cars driving through the neighborhood.

  “Please come in and see our baby,” she pleaded with strangers until a woman knocked on the apartment door and announced that she had been invited by a proud sister to see the infant.

  Following his tour of duty at Roosevelt Roads, Ben moved his family once again to Virginia’s Tidewater area, where he continued to serve as a Navy administration specialist. Later, Carrie got a job with the Army Corps of Engineers and began to make a career as a computer specialist.

  Their lives were typical of families of Navy enlisted men. They moved to a small house at 1301 Towanda Court in a subdivision called Indian River Estates, then a part of the county known as Norfolk Nineteen, later to become a part of the city of Chesapeake. It was a street of young families, most of them tied to the Navy, and within the seven households lived 17 children. Among the Pricketts’ closest friends were the neighboring Brattens—parents Brad and Arlene and daughters Tina and Denise. Denise was a year younger than Jeannie, but the two little girls quickly became friends. Tina became close to the two older Prickett children. All soon were as brother and sisters.

  Also sharing Towanda Court were the Whalens, whose daughter, Kim, developed a friendship with Jeannie that would last a lifetime. In 1965, Jeannie and Kim entered first grade together at Sparrow Road Elementary School less than two blocks from their homes. Denise followed a year later.

  Years afterward, Denise would have many warm remembrances of growing up on Towanda Court and her early friendship with Jeannie, memories of Barbie dolls and shared secrets, among them that Jeannie some day hoped to marry Davy Jones of the singing group, The Monkees.

  “That’s good,” Denise had replied at hearing the news, “’cause I love one of the Monkees, too, Mike Nesmith. And after we’re married the four of us wil
l always be buddies.”

  Though Denise developed a strong sports interest that Jeannie and Kim did not share, their friendships flourished. “Once Denise started playing softball a lot, and Jeannie discovered makeup, they no longer shared the same interests,” Jeannie’s mother later remembered. “But they remained close friends and Jeannie’s friendship with Kim also grew stronger.”

  All three eventually became students at Indian River High School. One of Denise’s classmates was Tony Butkowski, a tall, lanky high school football player with black, curly hair and blue eyes. Jeannie, too, had known Tony since elementary school. His father had died in a car crash in 1967, and her parents were friends of his mother and stepfather. Still, Jeannie didn’t become friends with Tony until they reached high school. She was only 15 when their friendship blossomed into young love. Prohibited from dating until she was 16, Jeannie didn’t have her first date with Tony until her 16th birthday. From that happy day until her graduation in June 1977, she dated no one but Tony. At the same time, Denise was dating one of Jeannie’s classmates, Perry Edwards Jr.

  Shortly after Jeannie’s graduation, Tony’s stepfather, Bill Hoffman, also a Navy man, received orders to report to a new assignment near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Tony still had one more year of high school, and with Jeannie’s encouragement, he lobbied for permission to stay behind and finish at Indian River High, where he was an outstanding student in addition to being a member of the football team. He failed to prevail, however, and his departure with his family was a time of great sadness for Jeannie, who had taken a full-time job with Stewart Sandwich Co. and had enrolled in night classes at Tidewater Community College.

  In the first weeks after Tony had settled into his new high school in New Mexico, he and Jeannie talked regularly by telephone, often for hours at a time. And although the calls became less frequent as time wore on, Jeannie remained deeply in love. As Tony’s graduation neared, she bought an airline ticket to Albuquerque to attend his commencement. But a week before she was to leave, a letter arrived bearing an Albuquerque postmark but addressed in a hand Jeannie did not recognize. It was from Tony’s new girlfriend and it suggested that Jeannie’s presence at his graduation might be awkward, since she and Tony were making marriage plans. In shock, Jeannie phoned Tony, who not only admitted that he was in love with somebody else but that it was he who had suggested that his new girlfriend write the letter.

  Hurt and angry, Jeannie changed her plans and flew instead to California, where her older sister, Carrie, had just given birth. “She said she’d use the airline fare to go take some pictures for me,” said her mother, who thought that Jeannie displayed uncommon resilience in the face of her disappointment.

  Still, in the coming months, Jeannie and her parents received letters occasionally from the Hoffmans. Brief updates of Tony’s wedding plans usually were included. In time, he did marry his sweetheart from Albuquerque, but first he enrolled at the University of New Mexico to study business.

  By that time, Jeannie’s father had retired from the Navy and taken a Civil Service job in Norfolk. He and Carrie sold their home of 18 years in Indian River Estates and moved a little more than four miles away into a new house on Steeplechase Drive. Jeannie continued to live with them, and while she stayed busy with her job and night classes, she seemed disinterested in romance. “I guess for about six months there, she must have gone out with several boys,” her mother remembered years later. “But I’m not even sure they were dates. It was more like she was going to go somewhere with a friend, and that friend just happened to be a boy.”

  With time, Jeannie moved out of the Pricketts’ home for the first time to share an apartment with two other young women, one of whom was dating a sailor who arrived one evening in the company of a handsome Colombian Navy enlistee named Tito. Jeannie liked Tito immediately and they soon were dating.

  When it became clear that Jeannie’s feelings for Tito were becoming serious, both Carrie and Ben voiced some private reservations, Ben more pointedly than his wife. They didn’t like this overbearing young man who had suddenly come into their daughter’s life. When it became apparent that marriage might be a possibility, they worried that Jeannie could end up living in a strange land, far from them. But they kept these thoughts from their daughter.

  “I learned that you can’t pick out who your children will marry,” Carrie said later, “and I learned that if you go against their wishes you run the risk of losing your children forever.”

  Before Jeannie’s relationship with Tito had run a year, the Pricketts’ fears seemed to be coming true. He presented Jeannie with a half-carat diamond engagement ring, and the wedding was set for early May, 1981.

  Despite their misgivings, the Pricketts began planning for the wedding. They rented the clubhouse at Kempsville Golf Club for the reception and placed an expensive order with a local florist. Longtime family friend Nora Casey agreed to prepare all the food for the reception, and the Pricketts paid for Jeannie’s $600 wedding dress. The wedding party was chosen, tuxedos ordered, bridesmaids’ dresses created, the music and the musicians chosen and scheduled, a photographer hired. A minister had agreed to perform the ceremony. Tito got a marriage license. Dozens of wedding presents began piling up in the Pricketts’ living room as the day drew near.

  Two weeks before the wedding, Jeannie, now a thin five-feet-two with dark eyes, auburn-colored hair and with the body of a model, looked more beautiful than ever as she tried on her long, white wedding dress so that adjustments could be made.

  A week later, Tito’s sister arrived from Colombia to represent her family at the wedding, a houseguest of the Pricketts, as was her brother.

  But in the days before the wedding, things began to go awry. Jeannie discovered that Tito had continued to write to the woman he had left behind in Colombia, and a noisy argument ensued. Then on Thursday before the Sunday wedding, Tito was arrested in Norfolk for speeding and driving under the influence of alcohol. He told authorities he was worried about his impending wedding, and he called Jeannie to bail him out.

  On the day before the wedding, Tito and Jeannie got into yet another loud argument in the Pricketts’ home. “He was mouthing off at her,” Carrie said. “That’s the way Tito was, very verbally abusive to Jeannie. It was all Ben could do to keep quiet when that happened.”

  This time, though, it was Carrie who couldn’t remain silent. She came to Jeannie’s defense.

  “Tito,” she said, bristling, “if you don’t want to be married to Jeannie, you tell us right now.”

  Tito did not respond.

  “Are you telling me you want the wedding cancelled?” she pressed. “You don’t want to get married?”

  An awkward pause ensued before Tito finally answered. “That’s right,” he said. “I don’t want to get married.”

  The house fell silent. Tito walked out, got into his car and drove away.

  Stunned, Jeannie ran to her room crying, and after attempting to comfort her, Carrie began canceling all the wedding plans. She called the minister, notified the photographer and the musicians. Most of the food already had been prepared, she learned when she called her friend Nora, and would have to be frozen for later use. The flowers were ready, too, and since Sunday would be Mother’s Day, Carrie had them sent to nursing homes to be given to mothers who might not otherwise get any attention. Finally, depressed and exhausted, she sank into her couch beside her husband. Ben, who had spent nearly $5,000 on his daughter’s wedding, was getting drunk.

  After a few hours, Tito returned. He and Jeannie talked quietly, then left the house together for a dinner they had planned with friends. Tito and his sister remained with the Pricketts three more days until Tito left for a new assignment in Florida.

  Jeannie went on as if nothing had happened, seeing the cancelled wedding as just a delay. She and Tito talked frequently by telephone and wrote regularly. Late that summer, Jeannie packed many of her belongings, including a prized stereo, into her car and drove to Florida. Alt
hough she didn’t say so to her parents, they thought that she was leaving with intentions to be married. She stayed only a week, however, and returned without her stereo and some of her other things, but she never told her family what happened, and they didn’t ask about it. They were just relieved that she never wanted to see Tito again. Eventually, they learned, he returned to Colombia and married the woman he had left behind.

  By the summer of 1982, Jeannie’s first love, Tony, had completed his junior year at the University of New Mexico, and his marriage was ending. His stepfather completed his career in the Navy and decided to make the Virginia Tidewater area his retirement home. Tony agreed to help his family move back to the area where he had grown up. He had heard about Jeannie’s planned wedding from his mother, Mary Ann, who had continued her friendship with Carrie. He even had telephoned his regrets to Jeannie when he heard about the last-minute cancellation. Now, with his own marriage at an end, Tony called again to tell Jeannie that he would be returning briefly with his parents and would like to see her. She accepted excitedly.

  “Her reaction wasn’t surprising,” her mother said years later. “Tony was always the love of her life. We all loved Tony. If Tony came back today to see me, he’d still call me Mom.”

  The visit went well, allowing Tony and Jeannie to renew their relationship, and after Tony returned to his classes at the University of New Mexico, he kept in touch. Their romance blossomed anew over the long-distance line. Jeannie even resigned from her job with the sandwich company and went to work for a temporary service so that she would have more flexibility when Tony came to visit during breaks from his studies.