YEARS BEYOND MY STATE RECORDSJuly 29, 1948, the day I was transferred from the juvenile home to the training school was the most terrifying day of my entire life. In my life time I have had many close brushes with death. I have been in several auto accidents, I was shot at on three separate occasions, I had been beaten so badly I thought my life was in danger. At times I had felt so bad I wish I could have died. This is only to speak of the times in my childhood not of the times I could have died during my adult years. July 29, 1948 was the most terrifying day of my entire life.
I would like to say, "What happened to me that day." But that would not be my true feelings. What my true feeling are, "What they did to me that day." Yes what they did to me that day they should never have done. Even though I had stolen a car they should not have sent me to the training school. Reviewing what few records I have, from my memories of what they did to me and of the things they did not do for me, I can not find any excuse for then in sending me to the reform school. I was terrified that day and no one understood why but then there apparently were many things they did not understand. There is no excuse for them for they were adults, placed in a position to care and to protect me. To teach me those things I needed to know as I grew up and eventually left the institutions. They failed me on all counts, because I was a problem to them.
The months I was in the training school the first time I believe I have covered fairly well and hope that there are not too many questions left unanswered in that area.
When in the summer of 1949 I was released from the training school the first time to go home with my mother, was a very confusing day for me. I loved Mr. Parker. I hated to have to give up his dog Laddie. Yet I wanted to go home and be with my mother, if for no other reason she was my mother and it was expected of me.
Did I love my mother at that time? I can't truthfully answer that as to how I loved my mother or how strongly. It had been nine years since I had been taken from her. In those nine years I hadn't seen her more than eight times and that hadn't been but for three or four hours at a time. I never once heard her say she loved me. Her love had been denied me all of those years. I had given up all hope of ever being with her. I couldn't address her as "Mother" nor by any other enduring terms. Did I love her as any normal fifteen year old boy would love his mother? I truthfully don't know but I doubt it.
Today I can look back at those first few days and weeks I was home from the training school and I can see many things that tells me I never had a chance of making it. There had been no transitional help for me from a life in institutions to a life in an open society.
Even in spite of my guarded feelings of my mother, I was happy to be home. I wanted everyone to like me and to be proud of me. That had been like an obsession with me. I know now I had been institutionalized and I needed a lot more than any normal fifteen year old boy would need. In any spare time I had, and I had lots of that, I didn't know what to do with myself. I would sit in the back yard under the tree and just think. I would go for long walks by myself, usually following the creek south out of town, under the railroad bridge, to the woods south of town where I would sit and think for hours. When I had gotten my bicycle I would ride alone for miles on the country roads about town. There had been just too much spare time that someone should of had me doing something, or someone should have been doing something with me. Those were the kind of things that someone else had to help me with.
Those first few days I hadn't realized that there were any problems between my stepfather and I. If anything I thought it was just the newness of us being together for the first time. I had known of him since I was twelve years old for he had brought my mother to visit with me a few times. As time went on though I got the feeling he really didn't like me, something I couldn't understand and it only made me work harder to try and please him.
I was to later learn my stepfather had two children, a boy and a girl that were younger than I was, and he didn't want them with him either for he had farmed them out to his relatives to care for and to raise. So today I can see where he may have felt I was an intrusion into his life.
Today I can see were I was wrong in taking my uncle's truck but like the airplane, I didn't give it that much thought at the time. In no way do I want to excuse myself for either of these events but it is very difficult to show the reasons why this could have happened. I was not like a boy that had been raised in a "normal" family, where he was taught the difference of right and wrong and would have felt very guilty if he had done either of these things, knowing what he was doing was wrong. There were so many thing that were not in my world that is in a normal 15 year old boy.
After my uncle had caught me with his truck out in Wyoming I felt very bad about taking his truck for two reasons. One, he had yelled at me pretty good. The other reason, probably the most important one, I felt I had let him down. The airplane was another matter though, I never felt bad or guilt about that, not even to this day. When they sent me back to the training school for attempting to fly the airplane I felt at that time they had overreacted and I was being persecuted for a minor infraction, for all I had done was taxi it around the field. Sending a boy with these feelings and thoughts to the training school I feel is counter productive.
I know that a lot of people will have trouble in understanding this but there is a big difference in a "bad boy" who knows the difference between right and wrong and a boy that has not been taught any values and is fairly emotionally unstable. The reform school can not teach that later boy anything but only make matters worse. Anyway, in a way, sending me back to the training school was like sending me home for I was raised in institutions. They never taught me any values in those years so what did they think they could accomplish by sending me back to the training school? Of course when they sent me back to the training school I didn't look at it, like going home. Everyone was mad at me and I was being punished.
I will also note at this time, referring to the newspaper articles that appeared in the Nevada Evening Journal on August 31, 1949 and the one that appeared in the Ames Daily Tribune on September 1, 1949. In both accounts damages were estimated at $300. In the Ames newspaper it spelled out how those damages were occurred. My account of attempting to flying the airplane was much more accurate than what appeared in either of the papers. Which I have found to be quite normal for newspapers, for usually they only get their information second or third-handed. My account of that event was told in very great detail and I feel that it was very accurate for I have thought of that night many times since. The plane had been sitting out in the open, well away from any other airplanes and buildings. I never hit anything with that airplane nor caused any damage in any other way except use some fuel in the airplane. The worst it could have been was a dollar for the fuel. I will pose a question for you. Could they send a boy to the reform school because of a dollar? You be the judge of what happened. Of course I didn't know of this until I discovered the newspaper accounts of this event, some forty years later.
I only wrote of the notable events that happened to me during my second stay at the training school. Anyone that knows anything about institutions know that they are not exciting nor is there a lot of fun there. I can relate it to a person that has never been in an institution as a long, long stay in a hospital where nothing much happens.
The time I ran away from the training school is still somewhat of a shock to me that those men shot at me. I can not even find a reason as to why they would even fire warning shots. I was only a runaway and a threat to no one. I fully believe those men had every intention of hitting me in the legs or killing me. I was fair game. It is always open season on runaways from juvenile homes or training schools. It is a pathetic condition but it is true. If someone kills a boy form one of those places, they just say, "We warned him to stop but he didn't." Case closed. Who really cares if a "Bad Boy" gets killed.
I have never been able to understand the reasoning behind them cutting me off from Mr. Parker. I believe it is the worst thing that happened to me at the training school. It was something that was to drastically effect the rest of my life. I think that any psychiatrist or psychologist would agree with me that it was one of the worst things they could have done to me, for he was the only one I would opened up to. Was the training school there to help me? There was no way after that.
I feel that a lot of people will think that the man that came in my cell during the night while I was in isolation, there in the training school, would also have a grave effect on my life. But they must remember, though I didn't like it, like many other things that had happen in my life I liked even less, it had been sort of a way of life for me. It wasn't like I was an innocent child that knew nothing about those sort of things. Even then it was just as great of a crime for I was only fifteen years old. Even if I could have legally given my consent I didn't for I had submitted out of fear. Am I angry about what happened? No, for he was only a shadow in the night. How can I be angry with a shadow? Can I be angry at the training school or the State of Iowa? Not hardly for they were not aware of nor would they have approved of what he did to me. I have been hurt and frustrated over this all of my life but not angry. It wasn't the first nor the last time this sort of thing was to happen to me. It would be years before I even knew what he had done to me was called sexual abuse or possibly even sexual assault.
That event of self-abuse (Well that is what they called it.) that happened in the carpenter shop rest room. I am sure that anyone familiar with adolescent behavior will tell you that was greatly mishandled. First off my supervisor should not have quickly opened the rest room door, that was my privacy. Since he did open the door and seen what I was doing he should have just as quickly closed the door and forgot what he had seen. Since he didn't and he reported me to the front office, the man that came to see me should have forgot it and said nothing to me. Since he didn't he should never of publicized what I had been doing to the institution. I sometimes wonder how I grew up and had so many problems with people like these teaching me my values. Anyone who knows anything about adolescents (we were all adolescents once) know that they all "self-abuse" themselves. That man included, and he was probably doing it occasionally at that period of time he was talking to me.
In writing this book there were many instances where I had a lot of problems. Sometimes it was very emotional as I had to relive each event in turn, sometimes so bad I had to break away from my writing for days at a time. The most difficult part for me was my sister's untimely death. It was and still is so difficult for me that I don't want to go further into events surrounding her death nor our relationship. I feel that the book has more than covered that area, at least as far as I want to go.
After I was released from the training school the second time and returned to my home in Nevada, Iowa, I had a lot of problems, not only the original ones that were still with me but also the ones that I faced as I entered school.
When I entered school, I was sixteen years old and in the freshman class of the Nevada High School. I think most people will instantly see, I was two years behind in school. This forced me to associate with kids two years younger than I. What kid my age who was in a higher grade would associate with a freshman?
There was another problem. Once it is known that a boy or a girl has been in the reform school there is a stigma attached to them. No other kid will associate with them nor will the parents of those kids want them to associate with a kid that has been in the reform school. It makes no difference why that boy or girl was in the training school or any other institution. They were there and that is all that matters to them.
I once asked a person, what type of boys they thought were in a training school. I also have a letter in my files, written by a psychiatrist, describing the type of boys he thought were in a training school. Surprising how similar both their thoughts were. Thieves, arsonists, rapists and murders. When they are talking about thieves, they are talking about violent ones such as armed robbers. Not kids that went for a "joy ride" one night or did a little "shop-lifting." They don't know about the kid in a small southern town in Iowa, that I have a newspaper article on, who went around town after midnight honking his horn and wound up in the Iowa Training School for Boys.
All of the years I was in the institutions, I never met a murder, rapist, or arsonist, not in any institution I was in. I don't remember anyone bragging about those things and there had been a lot of bragging going on. How they had gone for a "joy-ride" in a brand new Lincoln or Cadillac. How the police had to chase them halfway across the state to catch them. That sort of thing. I don't remember anyone ever saying they set fire to some building, raped someone or murdered anyone. Maybe they were there but I sure didn't meet them. If any of that type were there then it had to have been a very small minority.
So when a stigma is attached to a child, adolescent or younger, it makes no difference whether or not they were in a training school, state juvenile home or even an orphanage, if they had been involved in any type of social problems, their fault or not, it will effect the social well being of that child with other kids their own age.
This was the sort of problem I was faced with there in Nevada. Of course it didn't help matters any when I unknowingly tried to date the daughter of the man who's airplane I had tried to fly. I want to emphasize that, I tried to fly it, not “steal” it as the newspaper and everyone else said. To me there is a big difference.
Then there was the sheriff. He was one of those "Good Old Boys." He had been in office so long, people really couldn't remember when he hadn't been around. I think he believed he only had one "bad boy" in town and that was me. He would be sure to stop by and see me every couple of weeks, seeing if I couldn't solve some big crime for him.
Why did I really break into the airport that night and steal the money? It could have been a thoughtless act on my part but I suppose I did it for spite for I felt I had spent served several terrible months in the reform school for a minor offense of taxing the airplane around the airfield. Later it was to give me great satisfaction the sheriff couldn't prove it. Though, overall, I have never felt very good about that night.
I believe from the time I broke into the airport and returned from California and went to Davenport is pretty well covered. I can't give much more information about the sexual assault on me in Yuma, Arizona without being more specific about the assault itself than what I did (Though I can remember every second of it.) and I don't think I want to get involved in that. Though the assault bothered me, at that time I was more concerned about the loss of the money. After all it was in the middle of the winter and it was a long ways home. To this day, I have never been able to remember leaving Yuma, Arizona that night after standing by the poker table. What happened that night, I really don't know. Statute of limitations never run out for murder? I hope that I only walked away but if in worse case, today, I don't think a jury in the land will convict me of anything after what that man did to me that night. This is not bitterness that speaks, only the hurt feeling which I still carry deep within me today, from what that man did to me that night in Yuma, Arizona.
I think it is human nature that a lot of people will think that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Life might be a little better if they had a different job, moved down the street or maybe across town. Maybe if they lived in the town just down the road, possibly in the next county, or maybe if they lived in another state life would be a little better.
I wonder what a boy would feel if he had absolutely nothing going in his life. He didn't feel that anyone really cared about him. I wonder if he would think that maybe the grass was a little greener on the other side of the fence when he seen a car with the keys in the ignition an it had a full take of gas.
I was sixteen years old when I was sent to Davenport to live with my uncle, and it had been pretty obvious to me, I wasn't wanted at home. To some, a 16 year old boy is a pretty old boy and he should know the difference between right and wrong. If they think that about me, they didn't read my book very well but only skipped through the pages if that.
When I had first seen that new Ford sitting in the building on the fairgrounds, my first intentions had been only to go for a ride around town. A "Joy-ride." To me I wasn't stealing the car, only borrowing it without asking, driving it around for a short time and then returning it without anyone knowing it had been gone. After I had taken the car and had noticed the full tank of gas, I had started thinking about the grass on the other side of the fence not giving it a thought I was now stealing the car.
What do I think should be done with a boy like this, one that feels and thinks the way he does? Well first off I don't think a boy should ever get to that point. Since he has gotten to this point I believe that he should be put somewhere and since he is such a runaway (Can't counsel a boy that isn't there.) a place where he can't runaway. Then he should patiently and thoroughly be taught some values. To help him find ways to feel good about himself, that he isn't the terrible person he thinks he is. That there is purpose to life other than what he has already seen. There is a multitude of things that could be done for this boy for he is in deep trouble and it is all inside of him. A little psychiatric help wouldn't hurt.
I once said a long time ago, "If they couldn't have helped me along the way, I wish that they would have killed me instead of sending me back to the orphanage for that is where my life ended."
The other alternative is to "punish" this boy, lock him up and then in a short while let him go. If he lives long enough, if he don't take his own life, he may wind up in prison for life as a habitual criminal with no respect or understanding from anyone. "He was a bad kid since he was nine years old, even after all of the chances and the good things that were done for him." Thankfully I never succeeded in taking my own life and I was never in a penal institution after the ending of my book.
In February of 1951, I think it was a very illogical error on the federal judge's part in sending me to Denver to live with my mother. What I needed more than anything was a psychiatric evaluation not a change of scenery. I will say one thing though, the majestic Rocky Mountains of Colorado are a sight to behold.
When I had gone to Denver, I was still suffering from being institutionalized, I had no values, I had no goals in my life. I had absolutely nothing in my life except my mother. I had no friends. I knew nothing about Denver though I thought it was a great place once I got there but thinking how nice it was didn't solve any of my problems and only delayed the inevitable.
That car I took off of the roof of that garage, where the police chased me across Denver at a high rate of speed, shooting at me several times, the one I finally cracked up in some sort of land fill, then the police officer beating me up. I have often thought of that and what they did to me afterwards.
It had all started out as a "Joy-ride." I had no intention in keeping the car, stripping it down or selling it. I was going to drive it around for a while and then leave it somewhere, where it would be easy to find. I am sure that there are many more people than there are not that would say that is stealing and it should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Today I would agree to that in part but today I wouldn't do something like that for on my own I have learned a few values since then. But today is not then.
A lot of learned minds, greater than mine, have wrestled with the problems of the police chase, probably every since the first police chase. Whether to chase or not. So I won't go into as to whether or not they should have chased me on that dark March evening. From the newspaper accounts I take that the police knew that they were after a stolen car, a "Joy-rider." To let me go I would possibly get away. They chose to try and stop me, I had other ideas about that. So they then chose to chase me rather than let me get away. The chase now mushroomed into something more serious when I nearly collided with that car. Would I have been driving at that high rate of speed if they had broke off the chase, thereby setting a precedent? Letting everyone in a stolen car know that the police will not chase them if they run from them. A lot of them possibly harden criminals. I don't know what I would have done if they had broken off the chase, probably got out of that car and ran as fast as I could for home. But there would have been another car at another time.
After nearly colliding with that car is when they started shooting at me. For many years I couldn't understand why they had done that, my reasoning had been, "All I had done was go for a "Joy-ride." That wasn't serious enough to kill me." As I was researching this book and putting things together, I realized in narrowly missing that car I had endangered someone else's life. At the time of the chase I didn't realize I was endangering anyone's life. So I now think that they did have a right to shoot at me, seeing that they had chose to chase me, to prevent me from killing someone in my mad dash across the city. This is how serious this "Joy-ride" had mushroomed into. My ignorance could have cost me my life if no one else's. All because someone thought it would be better to send me to Denver than to take the long road and find out what my problems were.
I wound up wrecking the car, the policeman had beaten me up because he had let his anger get out of control, something a policeman should never do. I wonder if he would have been so angry at me if he had known anything about me.
It amazes me after all I had done, endangering lives, wrecking the car I was driving, being responsible in part for the total destruction of a new police car, I only served six months in the reform school. Did they bother to check my history? What did they expect to accomplish, in of all places, that reform school?
It may be noted that from the time I had left the Iowa Training School for Boys the names of other boys, girls, and adults is all but nonexistent. Though I do remember a few of the friends I had in the orphanage that I didn't mention, and I remember several of my friends in the juvenile home as well as several adults that had contact with we me along the way, I have not been able to remember names of anyone that had contact with me after I had left the Iowa Training school for Boys except for one boy that I had named in my book.
Maybe that is normal but I have always felt after I left the juvenile home I started blocking boys my own age out of my life. When Mr. Parker turned his back on me I did the same with adults. Girls I didn't know how to deal with so they were simply blocked out.
Years ago, I think before my time, training schools were called, "Industrial Schools," Maybe some still are. I guess that had sounded to much like child labor so they change the name of those institutions to "Reform Schools." For some reason or another they must of not like the sound of that either for they changed them again, this time to "Training Schools." There is a saying, "A rose by any other name would still smell the same." That was very true with those "Schools" I was in, the names had changed nothing. Why they called them "Schools" is beyond me. I feel that they never taught me anything but how to live in them or possibly go on into a military life which was blocked to me. The best I can see is that they may have broke into an adolescent's behavior cycle and that adolescent may have had a better life afterwards. But I wasn't in a cycle, I was on a straight road and all of the exits ahead of me were being sealed off.
The Colorado Training School for Boys was no different than the Iowa Training School for Boys, if anything the environment I had to live in was worse for teaching me anything. There was no close interaction between the staff (guards) and "Students." To me it was a prison and I was a prisoner for an unspecified period of time. If I didn't follow the rules they would come down on me hard. If I ran away they would kill me. True or not, this is what I believed and felt while I was there for that was the atmosphere I lived in.
As I was researching and writing my book I at times was mildly shocked when I discovered something I never realized before. One of those things I was sort of shocked over, if that is the word I should use, was the period of time after I had left the Colorado Training School for Boys to the time I had gotten myself into trouble again by taking the car from the airport.
I was released from the training school near the first of November, it was four months until I had broken into the hardware store and had taken those rifles. Rifles I didn't want but wanted to get rid of the following morning when I woke up. Then the period of time until late summer of that year when I had taken the car from the airport. That had been a period of about nine months. When I had noticed this I stopped and wondered why. What had happen that had slowed me down?
I thought about how favorably my stepfather and I were interacting at that time. Well at first anyway. He in a sense was giving me an exit off of the road I had been traveling on. Then he had left only days before I had taken the rifles. Then I had a change of heart about the rifles, as though I felt bad about taking them. An unusual feeling for me. Then there was the period of time before I took that car at the airport. I think I honestly tried to go down a new road on my own. But there had been easy exits back to the old road. There was no one around that I felt really cared about me or showed any interest in me. My stepfather had left several months before. My mother and I had little contact with each other. I wasn't on parole for I never saw anyone. I had no friends to be with. I have searched my mind for "the" reason why I had slipped back to my old ways so easily but I find that there must have been a multitude of reasons why I did.
When I had taken that car from the airport, it wasn't exciting for me not even before I had decided not to take it back. I had a feeling of loneliness as though I was lost in spirit and didn't know what to do.
I was eighteen years old when I was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution for Boys In Englewood, Colorado. Tell any eighteen year old boy he isn't a man and he will probably want to fight you. To me I was the same boy I was when I was back at the orphanage, juvenile home, with the fears of the boy who had entered the Iowa training school for the first time. Even though I had grown up in institutions, I was scared as to what was going to happen to me. I have noticed, if anything I have at times had an overactive imagination as to the dangers to myself and this was one of those times, I needed someone to console me and I needed someone badly. Was I at that time willing to give the only thing I had? Yes, very much.
After leaving the correctional institution it was only a few months before I had entered the Federal Reform School Boys. I went through that one as I had all of the other institutions but for one thing they had given me the beginning of a skilled trade, as limited as it was.
When I had left the Federal Reform School I had decided I was never going to do anything that would get me put in an institution again. It wasn't anything that someone did to me or for me, I had decided this was the end of it. A decision I know now I would have broken if I hadn't met the girl who was to be my future wife. She gave me a purpose in life. She literally saved my life.
Why did I get involved with the man in Charleston, South Carolina? The one in New Orleans? Or even "Ma Brown?" To me it is very obvious as to why that had all come about. I had never asked for it to happen, it had been the farthest from my mind when it did come upon me. But emotionally I was wide open for it to happen. If you can not understand that, then you have never really been alone, nor have you ever felt so bad you were only a thought from suicide.