With his finger on the trigger, he placed the shotgun barrel under his chin and prepared to pull.
“I am not impressed,” I blurted out. “Do you hear me? And right now, you are pissing me off because you have no idea how much I care about you, and right now I’m all you got, and goddammit, if you took a second to put that gun down and talk to me you’d know you’ve got a friend here—me—right here, and fuck it, I’m worth at least a couple goddamn minutes of your time!”
I had no idea what I just said. What I did know was that it sounded all wrong. Nothing like what was in the “empathy training” the county workers gave us when I came up with the idea to open this place. I was nineteen then, and I didn’t see any adult organization doing much good when it came to truly helping young people. A teenager would run away and get caught, and instead of anyone listening to them to find out why they ran away—like, maybe they had a reason to run away—they were just sent back home, often for another beating or molestation. The experience I had with a friend who needed an abortion but couldn’t get one because it was illegal in Michigan, plus a classmate who had overdosed and another kid from my old Boy Scout troop who had hung himself was enough for me to start this hotline center. My rules: It would be run by young people for young people. You need a place to crash, you got it. You need a pregnancy test, we do it for you. You high on drugs? Drop by and let it wear off while sitting with us. We will never call the cops, and your parents will never know.
The ethos of this was shocking to many of the adults in the area, although some, like the VFW and the Rotarians, wrote us checks because they saw the good work we were doing, even if it was a bit unorthodox. But the results were that the runaways didn’t keep running, young girls weren’t forced to have babies they couldn’t care for at sixteen, we handed out free birth control, and our phone lines were open from 3:00 p.m. to midnight (’til 2:00 a.m. on weekends), seven days a week.
It was now 1975 and I was twenty-one. This was my first confrontational encounter with a loaded gun. My only goal was to keep both shells in the barrels of that gun. The very next sound I heard was not a shotgun blast.
“Don’t yell at me!” he shouted back.
Whew. He had chosen to engage me instead of the trigger.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell,” I said, my own voice now quivering. “It’s just that I’ve had a rough day and it just can’t fucking end like this with you killing yourself.”
Making it all about me really threw him off.
“Hey, man,” he said, lowering the gun from his head. “You OK?”
OK. So now I had confused a distraught crazy guy. This could go any of a number of ways. I decided to try to pull it together.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Not very professional of me.”
“I just can’t go on,” he said, calming down a bit. “Nothing in my life has worked out. And I don’t want you stopping me. I just want you to let me leave this world and…”
“Hey, you’re the one with the gun.” (I really didn’t need to remind him.) “You have the right and the power to leave this world anytime you want. All I’m asking for is a few minutes of your time. Can you please give me that?”
The muscles in his body relaxed a bit more, and he seemed to forget he still had a ready-to-fire gun in his hands.
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“How ’bout you let me hang on to the gun while we talk. When we’re done, I’ll give it back to you. Still loaded. You can make your decision then.”
There was a long pause and a longer stare at me and he considered my offer.
“C’mon. Gimme the gun,” I said with a faint smile. “The last fucking thing you and I need right now is a gun!”
As I said that, I laughed a nervous laugh, and a faint grin briefly grazed across his face. I had moved closer to him by now and was holding out my hand. He reached out and gave me the gun. I gently switched the safety on with my shaky hand and then cracked open the shotgun and removed the shells.
“Safekeeping,” I assured him. “Let’s go in here and talk.”
And for the next two hours I heard the story of his life. As I was the only one there, I could hear the phones ringing in the other room and automatically going to the answering machine. He told me about flunking out of a trade school and then losing a series of jobs due to his drinking. His wife had left him and returned twice, but now she had started seeing another guy in the same apartment complex. He had no kids but wanted some, and his parents thought of him as pretty much a loser. I could see how far down the rabbit hole he was, and I began to wonder if there was a point of no return beyond which one could not climb their way back up out of their pit of despair. He grew tired after a while and asked me if we had any booze in the place. I told him that wasn’t allowed, unless it was for special occasions like some guy wanting to blow his brains out. He got a good laugh off that and then decided to turn the tables on me.
“So, what’s your problems? Everybody’s got problems. What’s yours?”
I did not want to depress him further. I told him it’s the same as every guy: chicks.
“You got that right, man. They got our number. And then they don’t let up.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but they got their good points.”
“Heh-heh, you got that right, mister!” he said in that special code spoken only between guys.
“We just gotta keep at it and find the right one,” I continued. “She’s out there. Yours is out there. Mine is out there. Too many fucking women on this planet for there not to be the right one out there for us. Just gotta keep on keepin’ on.”
“Yup, keep on truckin’!”
We were just about out of mid-seventies catchphrases when all of a sudden it dawned on him that the phones had been ringing nonstop.
“Man, you the only one here?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, shit, man, I’m keepin’ ya from your job. You better get back to it.” He paused and thought for a moment. “Unless you need me to stick around and give ya some help on the phones.”
“Nah, that’s OK. I’m about ready to close down for the night after I do my paperwork. You OK now?”
“I think so. You gonna gimme my gun back?”
“Yup. That was the deal. Your life is in your hands. I’ll just ask you to consider not ending it anytime this week. Maybe try an AA meeting. Hang out with your sober friends. Can you do that?”
“Sure. I can give it a try.”
I handed him his shotgun.
“How ’bout dem shells?”
“Nah, I think I’ll keep those. A memento of this night. Cool?”
“Cool,” he said with a nod of his head.
As he left in his truck I could hear his radio blasting out “Fly by Night” by the band Rush. As I watched him go down Coldwater Road to the intersection of M-15, I noticed that he dutifully obeyed all traffic signals and speed limits, small indications given by those who at least, for now, on this balmy summer night, might want to live.
A Public Education
I’M NOT QUITE SURE when the honeymoon ended.
But my days as a novelty of being the youngest elected official were about to come to an end. And it was God who would do me in.
It was a regular monthly meeting of the Davison School Board, pretty much like any other monthly meeting. Recognition of visitors. Done. A request for maternity leave. Approved. A motion to pay some bills. Passed. Then I made a motion that our public schools be opened on Wednesday nights for extracurricular activities, just as they are on every other weeknight. As this was “church night” (the night the Protestant churches held midweek services), the public schools were always closed. I suggested to the school board that this was illegal. I brought a lawyer from the ACLU to the meeting to make the case. I might as well have flown him in from Moscow. They looked at the ACLU man like an interloper who had no business here. The entire issue was tabled and referred to “further study.”
At the following m
eeting, the committee set up to investigate whether or not to keep the ban on Wednesday night school activities presented its findings: the ban should be dropped. Amen.
The superintendent also mentioned that denying access to our schools by students who don’t go to church night may be in violation of the Constitution. And that we would probably not prevail in court.
I had not threatened any legal action, but I guess that was what they assumed when they saw the lawyer from the ACLU sitting in the front row. I made the motion again, one of the two other Catholics on the board seconded it, and the board voted unanimously to do the right thing. But it was a reluctant vote, and the other board members did not like being put in the position of voting against the wishes of the born-again Christians in town.
The Free Methodist and Baptist churches in Davison were now keeping an eye on me. They were not going to forget what I had done to challenge their influence and power in town. And just saying a few prayers for my soul would not be all that they would do.
Prudence would have dictated that I perhaps ease up, maybe back off a bit, try to get back into their good graces so that I could still have some effectiveness on the board. And for a while that was what I did. But I was nearing the age of twenty, life was moving by so fast, and I was getting older. “Wisdom” had not yet set in.
“Mr. President,” I said, “I’d like to make a motion that we endorse the directive from Lansing that we publicly reaffirm that our schools have a nondiscrimination policy and that we believe integrated schools provide the best education.”
And then—why not?—a twist of the knife:
“And that we invite people from all races to come and make their home in Davison.”
A long, long pause.
“This is ridiculous,” board president Russell Alger finally said, exasperated. “We do not discriminate in Davison, and there is no need for this. Next order of business.”
“You didn’t ask if there was a second for my motion.”
“Why are you doing this? Anyone can move to Davison and go to our schools,” the dentist on the board said.
“Then why, out of six thousand students, are there only about fifteen who are black?”
“Fine,” he said, “I’ll second the motion.”
A roll call was then taken and they all voted against it.
“Are there other motions?” President Alger barked.
“Yes,” I said, not down yet for the count. “I’d like to move that we name Central Elementary School ‘Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School.’ I think this will send a positive message to the students and to the rest of Genesee County that Davison is indeed the place that you just described.”
“Michael,” said board member Patrick McAvinchey, the only one who was still friendly to me. “You don’t have to keep proving your point. Everyone gets it. Let’s move on.”
There was no second for that motion. The local paper covered my idea in a way that inflamed the local residents. I decided I needed to have a record of what I actually said at these meetings.
I walked into the next meeting and set my little Sears Silvertone tape recorder down on the table.
Mrs. Ude, the board secretary, asked me what that was for.
“It’s so I can record our public meeting. Just for my use.” I then hit the record button.
She looked over to President Alger with a Stop him, PLEASE! look of horror. Alger got up, reached over, and turned my recorder off, the way a parent would turn off the TV when you refused to go to bed. I put my finger out and hit Record again. This time the dentist on the board, Dr. McArthur, reached across the table and turned it off.
“You’re not taping these meetings,” he said. “Don’t make us take this from you.”
I have seen gangs on the street and, granted, they can look threatening at times. To have a gang of elected officials—adults who are at least thirty years older than you—threatening you like this, well, that took a minute to process.
“Listen,” I said, “you should not see this as anything other than what it is—a chance for me to have a record of what is said here, especially what I say. This is a public meeting. This should not be a problem.”
“Mr. President,” board member Mr. Greiner said, “I’d like to make a motion to disallow any recording devices of any kind to be used during our meetings.”
“Second,” said Dr. McArthur.
“All in favor?” the president asked.
The vote was 6 to 1. I was ordered to turn it off or they would end the meeting.
I told them to have their sergeant in arms turn it off. As they didn’t have a “sergeant in arms,” the dentist turned it off.
The next day, the reporter from the Flint Journal who was present at the meeting wrote a story about what had happened. It caused quite a stir among the journalists in the area—and of course with those ACLU types. At the next meeting, they, and a few citizens, showed up and placed their tape recorders on the school board table.
I noticed they were letting people record without having to ask permission. I asked them if they were going to enforce their policy.
“We are not going to allow any recordings of these meetings,” President Alger bellowed. “Turn them all off now and take them off our table.”
“You do realize that Michigan has passed an Open Meetings Law,” the reporter from the Journal piped in.
“You’re out of order. Remove your device.”
Nobody moved. The board members all looked at me: YOU did this to us! YOU ARE FINISHED!
The meeting was abruptly adjourned. Angry voices filled the room.
The next day I called the county prosecutor, Robert Leonard, to see if he could help me. For a D.A., Leonard was a pretty liberal guy. He had established the first Consumer Protection office in the state. One day, while speaking at an antiwar demonstration, he stood on the stage and pointed out to the crowd the FBI undercover agent standing among them.
“There he is, spying on you for exercising your constitutional rights!” Leonard shouted into the microphone. This did not endear him to the FBI.
Prosecutor Leonard was more than happy to help me. He had his deputy prosecutor inform the board that they were breaking the law by not allowing the public or the press to tape the meetings. For such a clean-cut law-and-order group of elected officials to be dressed down by law enforcement in such a public way was a humiliation that went beyond anything I’m sure they had ever experienced. It would be safe to say that this group had never even seen a parking ticket in their lives. If they could have sent me to my room and grounded me for a year they would have done it right then and there.
I also filed a lawsuit against the board. They couldn’t believe what was hitting them. At the next meeting they backed down and quietly withdrew their rule to prohibit recording devices.
Upon passage of the motion, I hit Record. They wanted to hit me.
All but one board member would now keep their swivel chairs turned away from me. They avoided eye contact or any conversation with me. I was the snitch, and they had reached their boiling point.
The next few meetings went by with little or no fanfare, and business was decided quickly and smoothly, without much discussion. It was quiet. Too quiet. Something didn’t seem right.
About this time, one of the board members referred to something one of the others had said at the “previous meeting.” But I was at the previous meeting—and thanks to the wonders of magnetic cassette tape, there was nothing of the like said at that last meeting. After the meeting, I approached the one friendly board member who was still talking to me. I asked him what this issue was that they discussed.
He sighed. “We’ve been holding meetings and not telling you,” he said apologetically. “It’s not right and I’m not going to any more of them. I’ve told them we should stop.”
I was floored. Secret board of education meetings were being held behind my back? He said they had met at the president’s house so that no one would know.
I went home, my head in a fog. There was no Internet in those days, so I had no way to look up “How to Make a Citizen’s Arrest.” The next day I drove down to the county prosecutor’s office and told him what happened. He blew his top.
“Those fucking bastards! I’ve had it with them. I’m throwing ’em all in jail!”
I considered asking him if he could say that one more time, just for my own pleasure.
“Kenny,” he said shouting over to his assistant prosecutor, “call the radio and TV stations. We’re bringing criminal charges against the members of the Davison Board of Education!”
And he meant it. And he did. It was only a misdemeanor, but still, he told the media that he was issuing warrants for their arrests. In case they preferred jail time to working with me, he also filed suit to make sure they would comply with state law requiring open meetings. Prosecutor Leonard had had it after the numerous violations of church/state separation, banning tape recorders at public meetings, and now this.
“They’re recidivists!” the prosecutor told the local radio station. “They keep breaking the law—and I don’t know any other way to get their attention.”
The news shook the little Republican town—and the lawbreaking school board president immediately met with the prosecutor and signed an agreement to never ever do it again.
“You brought this on yourself,” an unrepentant Mrs. Ude told me before the next meeting. “It was your behavior that forced us to meet without you. What makes you think that we would want you at our meetings?”
“They aren’t your meetings,” I said to her. “These meetings belong to the citizens of this district! And they elected me to represent them. And when you hold secret meetings and don’t inform me, you take away those people’s right to be there.”
Here Comes Trouble Page 24
