It was a time in which, if you had a car with a radio and a little change in your pocket, you were on a roll in the Big Easy. Wade had these things, but on his road there would be bumps, turns, and twists which would almost cost him his life on more than one occasion. Wade didn’t look for trouble. He often went out of his way to avoid it.
But trouble found him.
3
Wade was the middle child of three children. His younger and older sisters were nine years apart. The siblings were far enough apart in age that they never had the same school friends or mixed in the same social crowd. His older sister Kate married young and left home at 18 before Wade really got to know her. Wade and his younger sister Barbara were friendly but had little in common because of their age differences. They never became close.
Wade’s parents were a normal somewhat dysfunctional upper-middle-class New Orleans family of European descent. His father was a chemist working in middle management for the same big oil company he started with after graduating college. Except for a few business trips during the year, Wade’s father lived a relatively quiet life at home. He had a workshop at home, and in his spare time Wade would help him with various “fixing” projects that ran the gamut from the new technology air conditioning units to lawn mower repair.
Wade’s father had served in the Army during WWII as an officer and chemist and had spent some time overseas. He never talked about the war or the time he spent in the service. He was proud to have served, but anytime he was asked about the war he would dodge the question and quickly change the subject.
Wade’s two uncles also served during the war in different branches of the service and received Distinguished Service medals for their performance. At family gatherings it became clear to Wade that his family was very proud of their military service to the country. At these family events, Wade’s father would politely participate in wartime conversation when he had to, but would usually settled into the quietness that reflected his generally mild-mannered “chemist” temperament.
Wade’s father didn’t do much with him as he grew up. However he was often quick to give opinions about the economy, government, and what Wade needed to do. The few times his father raised his voice were when Wade made a mistake, forgot something, or was the cause of a problem. When his father did become extremely upset, he would inflict beatings with his straight razor strap. But generally, his father stayed out of childrearing, leaving raising the kids to Wade’s mother. In his father’s stern view of the world, failure was unacceptable at any level. Wade was to excel in everything he did, but his father offered him little in the way of specific advice on exactly how excellence was to be achieved. Wade was expected to figure the details out for himself.
In school an “A” grade was not rewarded but considered acceptable. Receiving a “B” was considered to indicate slipping, and a “C” or below was considered failure and punishable. Wade’s early relationship with his father was at best “strained.” Little communication occurred between them except that involving Wade’s listening to talk about “standards” and “expectations,” along with opinions about whether or not he was meeting them. His father’s basically quiet demeanor, combined with a complete lack of interest in discussing anything in Wade’s life, left an empty void that did not begin to heal until many years later.
Early photos of Wade’s father show him in military uniform. He was handsome and reserved with small metal-rimmed glasses. He projected the image of a chemist. Wade’s grandfather on his father’s side was a shopkeeper who grew up in Kansas. For some never-explained reason they moved to east Texas. Soon after moving they got caught in the drought and windstorms that plagued the area, forcing them to relocate again. This time they moved to New Orleans. At the time of the move Wade’s father was four years old. Wade’s paternal grandfather died before Wade got to meet him. Wade was told that his grandfather was much in temperament like his father.
Wade’s mother was half Irish and half Cajun. She was brought up in the tough Irish channel neighborhood of New Orleans, in a middle-class family of public servants. Wade’s great-grandparents had migrated to the U.S. from Ireland to escape the potato famine at the turn of the century. Wade’s Irish grandmother met and married a Cajun rice farmer and had eight children. Wade hardly knew his grandfather on his mother side, as he died from Tuberculosis when Wade was six. Four of his mother’s siblings died young at different ages, leaving Wade’s mother and three sisters alone to support themselves as youngsters growing up in New Orleans.
Wade’s parents met in the early '30s at a social dance. A frequent family story was they danced to Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey bands one night and the Leo Soileau Cajun band the next night. Family photographs of the era showed Wade’s mother as being very beautiful; slender in fashionable dresses of the time, which reaffirmed her status as a social butterfly.
However, Wade’s mother could be hell on wheels. She had both an Irish temperament and a drinking problem. Most days she started drinking mid-morning and didn’t stop until she went to bed.
She was hard on the kids. Beatings were common and included heavy doses of yelling and verbal abuse. In public, the kids were often embarrassed and spoken down to. The verbal abuse took place in front of teachers, their friends, other family members, and even in public restaurants where plenty of other adults could easily hear. Wade’s mother was moody, and none of the kids dared to confront her at the wrong time with an unsolved problem. Her expectations were even higher than Wade’s father’s, and failure was not approved or tolerated in her house. A low test score in school, loss in a track meet, or an impolite gesture or oversight, such as forgetting to open the car door for a lady, quickly brought her verbal wrath and scorn. Any behavior considered worse would bring out the belt and lashings.
Wade had a memory of a family party at an aunt’s house during the Christmas holidays when he was around ten years old. Other cousins had arrived and presents were being stacked high around the Christmas tree for later distribution. His mother had been drinking heavily and was having a discussion with one of Wade’s uncles. Voices were suddenly raised and a few loud curse words were exchanged. All of a sudden his mother punched his uncle in the face, knocking him down and almost unconscious, breaking his nose. The party came to complete stop as his uncle fell to the floor. Wade’s mother stood over him still cursing and yelling. Two older cousins stepped in and restrained her as his uncle got to a nearby dining room chair. Another aunt brought a napkin wrapped in ice for his uncle’s nose. After recovering for a little while he said to his wife, “Get the kids and let’s go.” Asked if he was okay, he replied, “I’m fine but I don’t need to be around that bitch any longer.” Overhearing the comment, Wade’s mother came charging out of her chair saying, “Who are you calling a bitch? Get the hell out of here.” Wade’s uncle soon left with his wife and kids, holding ice on his nose. He gave quiet thanks to Wade’s aunt for hosting the party.
Wade’s father, embarrassed by the incident, said to Wade’s mother, “Maybe we should go as well.” Wade’s mother sat up in her chair, a fresh drink in her hand, and replied loudly, “I’m not going anywhere. They need to go. I’ve just started to enjoy myself.” As family members began to re-gather it became obvious that nobody wanted to be around Wade’s mother and she finally wandered over and sat down by herself in an overstuffed chair – with another drink in her hand. She had not only exhibited distasteful drunken behavior, but she had certainly set a wrong example for at least 15 cousins from ages 3-12 years old, who witnessed the entire event. Wade’s mother eventually passed out in the chair, and Wade’s father and an aunt went over and propped her up and then managed to get her to the car in her drunken stupor. Wade and his younger sister sat in the back seat and said nothing on the way home. When Wade’s father pulled into the driveway of their house, he told Wade’s sister to go open the side door. He said to Wade, “Help me get your mother upstairs”.
While punching another family member was a somewhat unu
sual event for Wade’s mother, her drunken public state and arrogant attitude were not. As Wade grew older and stronger and his father physically weaker, Wade was often told to get his mother from the car and bring her upstairs on his own. Wade would always stay awake for a while after getting his mother in bed to make sure she was asleep. He did so because on several occasions just after he had drifted to sleep, his door would fly open. In the middle of the doorway would be his mother with a belt in her hand, energized by a second wind. She would enter his bedroom, yelling wildly, and would start beating him. Sometimes she would pass out from exhaustion on the floor next to his bed. After she finished beating him, he would get her back into her bed in the next room before going back to sleep. His father would normally be fast asleep while all this took place.
4
Perhaps not surprisingly, discipline problems at school began to emerge early for Wade. His parents enrolled him in a private Catholic grammar school starting in the second grade. Holy Angels School was located just two blocks from his home. The school was run by the Sisters of the Blessed Word, offering education to boys and girls from grades two through six. Wade could walk the two blocks to and from school from his house without the assistance of his parents when he was old enough. His house and school were on the same side of the street, which had little traffic. This was a real benefit to his parents.
Located in a suburban upper-middle-class neighborhood of New Orleans, Holy Angels was highly regarded. It had the reputation of a no-nonsense, strict-discipline institution providing a good Catholic education. Like many institutions in the city, Holy Angels had its own legacy. Parents of many of the neighborhood students attended Holy Angels when they were children.
The school taught both boys and girls, although they were separated in all classrooms and recreational activities by a long and wide tiled hallway. At the end of this center hallway stood the principal and administrative offices. The ground floor on the both sides of the hallway was used for assembly, lunch, and restrooms, with stairs in the corner leading upstairs to the second floor with its separate boys and girls classrooms. Basketball courts were just outside the assembly room on the bottom floor.
The sisters were quick to teach school rules and students immediately learned that punishment would be swift if there was a violation of those rules. There seemed to be rules for everything. The punishment for violating them could be anything from having to write prescribed sentences several hundred times without a mistake, or being ridiculed in front of classmates, to being put in a dark cloak closet with the door closed. And then there were the beatings with a ruler or yardstick. Yardsticks were a quarter inch thick and were made of hard maple or oak But the worst punishment was being sent to see the principal, who called students’ parents and who would suspend any who did not change their behavior.
The vast majority of students took the rules to heart and complied. A few students tested a rule now and then if they thought they could get away with it. Usually after one of the punishments they quickly got back in line. Still a small number of students took every opportunity to get away with things trying to circumvent the rules. The nuns kept keen eyes on the students and knew every trick in the book, so few ever got away with very much. Wade was one of those few that found himself at the wrong end of a yardstick or locked in dark closet many times.
After several trips to the principal’s office in the fourth grade, a call home resulted in more beating from his parents. He had to repeat the fourth grade. Holy Angels officially classified Wade as a “problem child.” When he finally moved to the fifth grade, his problems at school hadn’t improved much. Toward the end of the fifth grade year, the principal called his parents in for a meeting. Only Wade’s father attended the meeting because his mother was at home drunk.
In the meeting the principal told Wade’s father that while Wade would probably finish the fifth grade, his grades and behavior were such that he was going to be put on the probation list for problem students for the Archdiocese Schools of New Orleans. Wade’s father asked, “What does that mean?”
“It means it is unlikely that Wade will be allowed to attend the next level of Catholic School education in the city.” In other words this was a blacklist notification to all other Catholic schools that he was a behavioral problem. Outside the principal’s office, Wade’s father said, “This disgraces you and the family. I don’t understand what is wrong with you, but we have to do something.”
Wade replied, “Why don’t you beat me, Dad?”
His father didn’t reply. For the first time his father seemed to take the magnitude of Wade’s problem seriously. In those days problem children had very few options. Enrollment in the public schools would probably mean repeating another grade. There were out-of-state boarding schools including military academies and reform schools. There were no support groups, special or continuation educational programs, or counseling sessions for young kids going down the wrong path.
For problem kids of draft age, the solution was to go in the Army. Wade was under age and this was not an option. The typical solution for problem children under the draft age was reform school. Wade’s father began investigating out of state reform and military schools and decided they were a choice of last resort.
Father Timothy at their local church was a good friend of Wade’s father, who often consulted with the priest and usually took his advice. Father Timothy told Wade’s father about a new experimental school at the lakefront that had recently started operation and was accepting certain problem children. This school was having some success. But the lakefront was a considerable way from home, which would make getting Wade to and from school an impossible commute.
After a few weeks of investigating, Wade’s father told him that he had come up with a possible solution to the problem: “If this new alternative school will accept you, you are going to have to move in with your Aunt May and her family.”
The school went by the name of Westbrook Alternative School. It was located on West End Boulevard near the lakefront within a couple miles of Lake Pontchartrain and not far from his Aunt May’s home. Wade was uneasy about the suggestion at first. The new area of the school meant new gang territory and other family members he would have to get used to. He also wasn’t sure they would accept him, but he knew his only school alternative would be a strict reform school in Mississippi or Alabama. Wade’s other alternative was leaving school; joining a gang or running away from home and making it on his own. Wade thought about his options and reluctantly accepted his situation and agreed to meet with Aunt May’s family and the principal of Westbrook Alternative School with his parents.
5
Westbrook Alternative School was a private, non-denominational school created as an experimental school for kids with problems within the greater school district. It covered grades 5-8 which included kids from twelve to eighteen years old. Under its charter with the school district, if a student was going to reach the age of eighteen during the school year and was still in the sixth grade, even they could be admitted. A few students from “broken homes” were even a little older, although age was rarely discussed or monitored by the School District. These few age exceptions were made on a case-by-case basis, depending on the problems a child had, psychological and academic test results, and the conduct of the student. In cases of older students the paperwork had to be juggled, since technically these students were adults and no longer considered under the control or responsibility of the school system.
Westbrook was one of the first alternative schools in the city and was certainly the only one to administer a battery of behavioral, aptitude, preference and learning ability tests to diagnose a student prior to admission. The school would only accept students with certain scores on a number of tests whose profile met a pattern that showed certain academic aptitude and behavioral characteristics. This selection approach, along with its creative teaching methods was under scrutiny by the school board. Members of the board and teachers were quick
to express mixed opinions in hearings which eventually led to conditional approval of Westbrook’s application as an experimental school for the limited term of five years. Westbrook’s unique approach was also received with much skepticism, and in some cases ridicule, by some of the school politicians in its first two years of operation. Early skeptics were quieted by the good results the school began to achieve. Westbrook was still maintained on short leash with the School Board, with just two votes over the minimum needed for approval of their five year charter term.
There was always a risk of mixing older with younger kids in the same class. Westbrook’s new approach combined classroom studies with psychological counseling. Classes were designed to address specific academic deficiencies rather than a locked-stepped, year-to-grade system. The students got what they needed at the level they needed it. A much older student might be in a third grade level math class and a younger, brighter math student in third grade might be attending a sixth grade math class.
A meeting was held with Wade, his parents and Mr. Ralph Scudder, Westbrook’s Principal. In that meeting Scudder explained the school philosophy and what made Westbrook different. Mr. Scudder made it very clear that Wade would not be admitted until he took a battery of tests which would take him an entire day to complete. The admission tests would be administered on a Saturday. Based upon those test results, the school would determine whether or not Hanna could be admitted and how his courses would be designed.
Scudder indicated that in addition to courses, Wade would be required to participate in counseling sessions at least twice a week with a school psychologist. He told the Hanna’s that Wade’s counselor would be Mr. Peter Colmes. He said Mr. Colmes was one of four counselors at the school and that the students called him “Mr. Pete.” The Hanna’s agreed that Wade would take the required tests.
Silent Sanction: A Novel Page 3
