DIVISION 6
Best News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure/Category 1
Tony Cook and Staff, The Indianapolis Star
Religious Freedom Restoration Act revised
Supporters of proposed religious freedom legislation in Indiana say it would protect
business owners who don’t want to provide services for same-sex marriages.
Opponents say it would essentially legalize discrimination against gays and lesbians.
But legal scholars and case law suggest it is unlikely to do either.
It will be up to Indiana lawmakers to sort through the rhetoric as the Senate Judiciary
Committee takes up a pair of similar religious freedom bills on Monday.
Senate Bill 568, authored by Sen. Scott Schneider, R-Indianapolis, and Senate Bill 101,
authored by Sen. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, seek to provide greater protections to people
and businesses with strongly held religious beliefs.
They would prohibit state or local governments from substantially burdening a person’s
ability to exercise their religion – unless the government can show that it has a
compelling interest and that the action is the least-restrictive means of achieving that
interest.
Both are modeled on a federal law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or
RFRA. That law passed with bipartisan support in 1993 and was intended to provide
exceptions for religious minorities when a federal law impeded their religious practices.
Since then, 19 states have adopted similar legislation.
The tone of the discussion, however, has changed dramatically since then.
Social conservatives have embraced the legislation amid angst over increasing equality
for gays and lesbians. They fear business owners who oppose gay marriage for religious
reasons might be forced to provide services for same-sex weddings.
In Indiana, conservative Christian groups have been rallying for the measure ever since
last year’s failed effort to ban same-sex marriage in Indiana’s constitution and a series of
court decisions over the summer and fall that effectively legalized gay marriage in
Indiana.
But critics charge that such religious freedom laws are essentially a license to
discriminate. They say social conservatives have flipped the law on its head, using it to
discriminate against, not protect, another minority group: gays and lesbians.
In Indiana, the coalition of businesses, gay rights activists, and civil liberty advocates that
successfully beat back last year’s proposed gay marriage ban has been slow to react. But
a diverse group of opponents is beginning to emerge, including the Indiana Chamber of
Commerce, engine maker Cummins, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Jewish
Community Relations Council, and Indiana Equality Action.
And the rhetoric on both sides is heating up.
“Jon Mills, a spokesman for Cummins, called the bills “bad for business.”
“We believe they create potential liability for employers and harm Indiana’s reputation as
a business-friendly state. The bills also send a message that Indiana is an unwelcoming
state that allows individuals and businesses to discriminate against others.”
On the other side, conservative groups with deep ties to many Indiana churches are
lobbying hard. One such group, Advance America, is making a fact sheet available to
churches.
“SB 568 will help protect individuals, Christian businesses and churches from those
supporting homosexual marriages,” it says. “Christian bakers, florists and photographers
should not be punished for refusing to participate in a homosexual marriage!”
When asked if the pending legislation would afford such protections, Schneider said it
would.
But the message that groups like Advance America are peddling to their donors may not
be entirely accurate, according to legal experts.
In a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Brent Steele, a group of 16 legal scholars from
across the country – including law professors from Indiana and Notre Dame universities
– write that “it is not at all clear that the proposed Indiana RFRA would lead courts to
recognize such an exemption.”
In fact, only one such case has arisen in states that already have a religious freedom law.
In that case, a Christian wedding photographer was sued after refusing to photograph a
same-sex commitment ceremony in New Mexico. Although that state has a religious
freedom law, the photographer lost.
“Courts generally believe that anti-discrimination laws serve compelling governmental
interests, and nothing in the proposed legislation would change that,” they wrote.
But that’s not likely to ease the concerns of opponents who fear that the religious
freedom legislation could undermine local human rights ordinances, such as the one in
Indianapolis that protects people against discrimination in employment or public
accommodation based on sexual orientation.
“The thought of potentially being exempt from all laws or ordinances is extreme,” said
David Sklar, director of government affairs for the Indianapolis Jewish Community
Relations Council. “If someone is going to operate in the public square, they have a
certain obligation to do so equitably.”
Ken Falk, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, summed up
the feelings of many opponents this way: “You never want to have a bill that licenses
discrimination, which is what this does.”
But legal experts take issue with those claims, too.
“Opponents of the legislation may make unsupported claims about the extreme results
that it would produce, but they have no examples of judicial decisions actually reaching
such results,” the group of 16 law professors wrote.
Daniel Conkle, a law professor at Indiana University who specializes in religion, was one
of the letter’s authors.
“There’s been exaggeration on both sides about what this law would do in particular
settings,” he said.
Richard Garnett, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame and also an author of
the letter, said it is “unfortunate that the facts about how religious-accommodations laws
actually work, and what they actually do, are too often buried by inaccurate criticisms,
implausible predictions, and name-calling.”
Both professors say the role that judges play in religious freedom laws is being
overlooked. Such laws don’t say that religious objectors always win.
“Instead,” Conkle said, “they tell the courts to apply what amounts to a balancing test,
asking whether a law is sufficiently justified by compelling interest.”
That’s not the kind of nuance you’re likely to find on poster boards at the Statehouse on
Monday, where supporters are planning a noon rally ahead of the hearing. The Senate
Judiciary Committee is scheduled to take up the issue after the Senate wraps up its 1:30
p.m. session.
Best News Coverage With No Deadline Pressure/Category 2
Ed Bierschenk, The Times (Munster)
OWI or reckless driving charge? It may depend on county where you’re caught
The majority of operating while intoxicated cases filed in Lake County courts in 2014
have been reduced to reckless driving, according to an analysis conducted by The Times.
The numbers are far different in Porter County, where only a handful of operating while
intoxicated cases were reduced to a lesser charge.
Drunken driving goes by different terms, including driving under the influence. Indiana,
like Wisconsin, uses the term operating while intoxicated, called OWI.
For years, Lake County has been known as a place where drunken driving cases are
routinely pleaded down to reckless driving charges. The practice, opposed by
organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is still seen by Lake County
prosecutors as a reasonable way to move a case through a crowded court system over the
years.
Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter said the plea deals to reckless driving still
resulted in convictions of these people for a serious traffic offense. He said if his office
did not reduce most drunken driving cases to reckless driving charges, the county would
see a large-scale dismissal of cases – at least in the short term.
Lake County prosecutors, like those in other counties, don’t often go to trial on the cases.
Still, in Porter and LaPorte counties, the charges are rarely reduced.
The Times recently reviewed 2014 operating-while-intoxicated cases in Lake, Porter and
LaPorte counties, and a number of those cases still need to be resolved. In Porter and
LaPorte counties, the statistics include boating under the influence and driving under the
influence of alcohol and/or drugs; Lake County’s number only includes county courts and
not some city and town courts.
According to the latest U.S. Census numbers, Lake County’s population is 490,228,
Porter County’s is 167,076 and LaPorte County’s is 111,444.
In Lake County, 477 of the 827 cases resolved, or about 58 percent, were pleaded down
to reckless driving. About 6 percent of the cases were dismissed, and about 36 percent
resulted in operating-while-intoxicated pleas or convictions.
In Porter County, 560 of 691 cases resolved, or about 81 percent, resulted in an
operating-while-intoxicated pleas or conviction. About 60 were reduced to reckless
driving, with seven others reduced to public intoxication or lesser charges, or a total of
about 9.7 percent. Another 64, or about 9.3 percent, were dismissed.
In LaPorte County, 277 of the 430 cases resolved, or about 64.4 percent, resulted in OWI
pleas or convictions. Another 117 were reduced to reckless driving and three to public
intoxication, or a total of about 28 percent. Another 33, or 7.6 percent, were apparently
dismissed.
All numbers are approximate. There also is a possibility that some people whose OWI
charges were dismissed were charged, and possibly convicted, with other crimes listed on
data obtained by The Times.
LaPorte County
Robert Szilagyi, the LaPorte County prosecutor in 2014, said the reasoning for reducing a
charge is based on several factors, including a low blood alcohol content reading,
whether they are first-time offenders, and the manner in which the stop occurred.
“Regardless, even with the reduction, alcohol classes are required,” Szilagyi said.
According to Szilagyi, 70 percent of first-time offenders are not repeat offenders, and “it
becomes a hard lesson.”
Current LaPorte County Prosecutor John Espar said the prosecutor’s office
would ”absolutely not” be pleading down the same percentage of OWI cases in the
future.
“Both I and my staff of deputy prosecutors are firmly committed to a policy under which
criminal defendants are expected to accept responsibility for their crimes and the
consequences of their actions,” Espar said.
He said the policy is one that applies with equal force to OWI as to rape or robbery.
Espar added, however, that “in every case, a prosecutor must take into consideration the
facts of the case, the victim, as well as the defendant.”
For this reason, he indicated the “ends of justice” may dictate a departure from policy. He
said, however, that “the exception is not honored as often as the rule, nor does it represent
more than 35 percent of the cases.”
Lake County
In Lake County, St. John Police Cpl. Steve Rudzinski estimates he has made well more
than 1,000 drunken driving arrests over the last three decades.
In all that time, Rudzinski said he has had to appear in court on the arrests twice – and in
those were cases he was not the primary arresting officer.
More often than not, the person arrested in Lake County has his charge reduced to
reckless driving, according to the statistics.
“We always see a lot of that, because the Lake County prosecutor’s office is so busy and
they take plea bargains,” said Rudzinski, who heads up the Lake County DUI task force.
“You have a lot more crime and a lot more things going on and a jail that’s already
crowded,” he said. “You have to be realistic; you can’t send everybody to jail.”
The volume and seriousness of crimes being committed in Lake County were cited by
current and former Lake County officials for the large number of driving while
intoxicated cases being reduced to reckless driving. The Times reviewed more than 1,000
cases filed in 2014 in Lake County.
Lake Prosecutor Carter said if a person charged has a blood alcohol content of more than
.14, his office won’t reduce the charge except under certain circumstances. Lake County
Superior Court Judge Julie Cantrell said she will have prosecutors record the reasons for
the reductions in such cases. In some cases, if the traffic stop was questionable, the case
might be dismissed if the reckless driving plea isn’t taken.
Former Lake County Prosecutor Jack Crawford, now an attorney in Indianapolis, said
Lake County used to be more lenient when it came to drunken driving charges, but that
was because he thought they had so much violent crime to deal with than neighboring
counties, “and I think it’s probably much the same now.”
Crawford, who was prosecutor between 1979 and 1989, said a prosecutor needs to set
priorities. While driving under the influence is seen as a more serious offense than in the
past, Crawford noted a first offense is still considered a misdemeanor, and prosecutors
generally don’t have time to take misdemeanor cases to trial.
Still, in many places a prosecutor won’t take plea bargains to a lesser charge.
Porter County
The Times review of hundreds of 2014 Porter County cases showed that only a handful
were reduced to reckless driving. Cases were more likely to be dismissed than reduced.
None was reduced in LaPorte County, although there are a number of dismissals in both
counties.
“Our position in Porter County is if they are charged with DUI and we can prove it, then
they are going to plead to it or we’re going to trial with it,” Porter County Prosecutor
Brian Gensel said.
Porter County Superior Court Judge David Chidester said Porter County has been strict
about reducing drunken driving charges even when he was a young lawyer back in 1981.
“It had to be a very narrow set of circumstances and (prosecutors were) even willing to
go to trial and lose than reduce a DUI to a reckless for the sake of it,” he said.
A circumstance where that might occur, he said, is if the person tests right at the legal
limit of .08 blood alcohol content and there are problems with the physical field tests.
“Now you’ve got a tough case to plead to the jury,” Chidester said. He said in those cases
a plea to reckless driving, which includes therapy, may be the way to go.
Gensel said dismissals can happen for a number of reasons, including problems with
evidence or even the reason the person was pulled over.
In one case, for instance, Gensel said a felony charge had to be dismissed because the
person was stopped improperly.
Based on The Times’ review, Gensel asked his deputy prosecutor to review cases coming
out of Portage courts.
In looking at the dismissals, 30 of 36 charged OWIs couldn’t be proved even to be
reckless driving or public intoxication based on the lack of evidence, according to the
report made to Gensel.
Of the 30, it was reported about 15 were crashes where no investigation was done for
various reasons. Many of them, especially in the early 2014 cases, were cases where
vehicles slid off in the snow. The drivers had either completely left the scene, were
outside the vehicle when officers arrived, or were inside the vehicle but didn’t meet the
definition of operating the vehicle, according to Gensel’s office.
In almost all of those cases, Gensel was told that officials had neither proof of, or time of,
operation.
In the past, Gensel’s office used to be able to “prove-up” public intoxication in such
cases, but according to the report a legislative change ended most of those, “because a
drunk guy sitting in a car waiting for the police to show up is the opposite of
endangerment.”
Two cases involved younger drivers who had registered on the low end of the breath test
for operating a vehicle while intoxicated and had already signed up for the military.
Conviction and prosecution would have precluded their enlistment, according to the
report
“We discussed the cases with their respective recruiters and had them complete all of
their treatment and public service obligations while the cases were pending, and then I
dismissed the cases the day before they reported to basic,” stated the report.
Pleas problematic
Frank Harris, with Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said there is no official data available
on how many drunken driving cases result in guilty findings. He estimated that – of about
1.4 million cases nationally – perhaps a million result in conviction for the original
charge. He called that a liberal estimate.
Harris said MADD is opposed to any plea reductions or diversions in drunken driving
cases. Recently, the organization successfully fought legislation in Arkansas that would
allow for such plea agreements.
In cases where prosecutors believe they have to plead cases down to a lesser charge, they
should at least require an interlock device to be installed on the vehicle for a minimum of
six months, Harris said.
An ignition interlock is a device about the size of a cellphone wired into a vehicle’s
ignition system. A driver must blow into the device to start the vehicle. If a measurable
amount of alcohol is detected, the vehicle will not start.
While a large number of drunken driving cases in Lake County continue to be reduced to
reckless driving, the policy is a lot tighter than it used to be, according to Porter County’s
Judge Chidester, who once worked as a defense attorney in Lake County.
“When I was a young lawyer, a person could have a .25 (three times the current legal
limit for blood alcohol content), and you could get a reckless over (in Lake County). This
is 1980 we’re talking about,” he said.
Chidester believes the situation changed in the 1990s when a decision was made to
establish a level at which a person no longer could receive a reduced sentence to reckless
driving unless there were other circumstances involved.
Lake County’s Carter said special exceptions that might result in a reduction can vary
depending on the case. Prosecutors look at the strength of the case and whether they have
good field test and machine results for intoxication.
For instance, Carter said the law requires that a person be tested within a certain time
period and that the officer be with the person and make sure he or she doesn’t do
anything like put something in their mouth.
“Sometimes that’s violated, and you can get the test suppressed and if (it gets)
suppressed, we’re not going to win (the case),” he said.
Over the years, Carter said the office has periodically refused to do a plea on a case
where the defendant’s BAC is lower than the standard set by the office to “test the
attitudes of the citizens of Lake County, to test our range.”
“Inevitably, the jury finds these cases not guilty,” he said.
For instance, Carter said in a case where a person has a .10 BAC, or 2 percentage points
above the limit, the person may testify to having three drinks within a certain period of
time. Both sides will call in experts to testify regarding the impact of alcohol on people
based on body size, he said.
“They say, ‘I was out last night and my wife and I had three drinks and we sat there for
another hour, and we thought my score was low and then we left.’ Well, that’s what the
defendant is going to be testifying – even though they are probably not telling the truth.
But that’s what they say,” Carter said.
He said, “Juries sit there and think, you know, it’s scientific to some extent, it’s
biological to some extent, and juries just get in that. So when we go to trial on that, a lot
of times we lose, because the juries think he or she paid for an attorney, I’m sure the
attorney is expensive, we’re here at trial, that could have been me, that could have been
my wife ... and, eventually, they come back with a ‘not guilty.’ “
Carter said a lot of time and tax dollars are spent on such cases, which he and some
others said can be tougher to prove than some murder cases because of the science
involved.
“So due to the volume that we have, I think it’s easier for us to move these cases, because
(a reckless driving charge) is still a major traffic offense,” Carter said.
Three major traffic offenses within 10 years can result in the permanent loss of a license,
he said. They also are ordered to receive alcohol treatment.
The reduction, however, also means if a person gets a second operating while intoxicated
charge within 10 years, they won’t be charged with a felony.
Still, Carter thinks the value in obtaining the major traffic offense on the person’s record
“outweighs possibly losing the case or tying up the court system.”
Carter said while Porter County does few reductions, officials there don’t have the
volume of his courts. Porter County’s Gensel suggested a more interesting comparison
would be to look at how Lake and Porter counties compare to counties of similar size.
“I don’t know if it is fair to compare Porter to Lake County,” Gensel said.
Practical considerations
Carter said the ignition interlocking system is usually used only on second and third
offenses. He said it can be expensive and time-consuming with the monitoring involved.
Still, he has no objection to its being done more often, he said.
Carter said the county’s policy is that if a person gets a second operating while
intoxicated charge, they can’t have it reduced unless there is some problem with the case.
Carter said he recognizes driving while impaired is a problem and needs to be rectified as
far as possible through punishment and treatment.
“I cannot do a plea agreement with no alcohol treatment. The judge would reject it and
rightfully so,” he said.
“I think that’s the pound of flesh they are getting out of it,” Carter said. “It’s not the
community service we order sometimes. It’s not the probationary period.”
However, Harris, with MADD, said studies have shown treatment programs don’t really
have an impact on preventing a drunken driver from committing the offense again, unless
an ignition interlock device is required as part of the program.
The organization notes a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration review
between 1989 and 1999 on diversion programs that involved alcohol treatment found no
evidence it reduced drivers committing the offense again.
Carter said he realizes some people are alcoholics and they are going to continue to drive
drunk – even if their license is taken away.
Carter said if Lake County were to follow the lead of other counties like Porter County
and not agree to reductions of charges to reckless driving, the system would become
clogged with cases, defense attorneys would demand speedy trials, and cases would be
dismissed.
Gensel did not discount Carter’s arguments.
Carter said more courts and prosecutors would be needed in Lake County if it were
decided not to accept reduced pleas in drunken driving cases.
He also said if Lake County refused to accept reduced pleas in drunken driving cases,
dismissals would rise, at least in the short term. But, he said, “it would level out” over
time, and defense attorneys would come to accept the new situation.
“But that’s a situation where would lose hundreds of OWIs in the process,” he said.
At this point in time, Carter said he is not willing to accept that trade-off.
Best Ongoing News Coverage/Category 3
Niki Kelly, The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne)
Religious freedom up for debate
Is it a battle for religious freedom? Or state-sanctioned discrimination against gays and
individuals in protected classes?
Those are the questions lawmakers will be wrestling with starting Monday when the
Senate Judiciary Committee takes up bills to establish a state Religious Freedom
Restoration Act.
“They’re silly and they embarrass Indiana,” House Democrat Leader Scott Pelath said.
“I’ve been mad about losing before â ¦ but some of these folks just can’t let the (gay)
marriage issue go. So they are dredging up new ways to use it as a wedge.”
But Republican supporters say the effort isn’t in reaction to legalized gay marriage in
Indiana but instead to the federal Hobby Lobby case that found in June the government
could not force the company to go against its religious beliefs and pay for contraceptive
insurance coverage.
“It’s not legalized discrimination. That’s a mischaracterization of the bill,” said Rep.
Timothy Wesco, R-Osceola. He has authored the House version of the legislation.
“I feel very strongly that it is to protect people and businesses from being forced to act in
a way that violates their religious beliefs.”
The bills essentially mirror the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which has
been on the books since 1993. The federal act doesn’t apply to states so 19 states have
since passed their own versions.
Indiana has religious freedom protections in its constitution but not in its law. And there
are only scant court rulings on the constitutional protection.
The law would say a state or local government action cannot substantially burden a
person’s right to the exercise of religion. But it isn’t an automatic win for someone who
would sue under the statute.
A judge could still determine that the action was essential to a compelling government
interest and it was achieved in the least restrictive way.
The proposals are in Senate Bill 578, Senate Bill 101 and House Bill 1632.
Religious conservatives point to specific ways that the measures could protect individuals
with sincerely held religious beliefs, along with Christian businesses and churches.
The Advance America website – a pro-family, pro-church organization – gives three
examples that would be affected by the religious freedom bills.
It says Christian bakers, florists and photographers should not be punished for refusing to
participate in a homosexual marriage; a Christian business should not be punished for
refusing to allow a man to use the women’s restroom and a church should not be
punished because it refuses to let the church be used for a homosexual wedding.
“The concern that churches have is they don’t know what’s going to happen in the
future,” said Eric Miller, founder of Advance America.
“It’s another reason to have legislation that is crystal clear. I think it’s wise to be
proactive. I don’t want to wait to have a problem arise.”
Jane Henegar, executive director of the ACLU of Indiana, said the legislation is a
solution in search of a problem. No supporters could give an example of an issue in
Indiana.
“The concern that churches are going to be forced to perform religious marriages they
don’t want to is a total red herring and incredibly far-fetched,” she said. “We would
defend any of them against any government action telling them how to conduct religious
activity.”
She said the religious freedom acts that have popped up around the country have instead
resulted in unintended consequences. For instance, individuals have challenged laws
about providing Social Security numbers or paying taxes.
“A lot of them have been frivolous but that doesn’t relieve the government and taxpayers
the costs occurred in addressing those claims,” Henegar said.
She also noted that the timing of the bill right on the heels of marriage equality in the
state has given a “widespread perception that the law has a discriminatory subtext.”
Another possibility is a dispute between a business that denies services to someone
because of someone’s race, gender, disability or religion.
Those are protected classes in Indiana. Sexual orientation is not included but 12 Indiana
cities – including Fort Wayne – have their own human rights ordinances that protect
gays.
Those local laws generally – with some slight differences – say a business can’t
discriminate in employment, housing and public accommodations based on those
characteristics.
Three messages left with the city of Fort Wayne’s Metropolitan Human Relations
Commission on the issue were not returned.
Chris Paulsen, spokeswoman for Indiana Equality Action, said those ordinances are
definitely in conflict with the religious freedom laws.
“I think this will override,” she said. “I think that’s the intent of the bill to be truthful. I
think it’s a civil liberties issue.”
She said there have been unintended consequences in other areas, including some
contending their religion allows child abuse or says a husband owns his wife.
A Feb. 3 letter signed by 16 law professors from around the country in support of the bills
said one issue that has arisen “is the possibility that religious owners of for-profit
businesses might use a state RFRA as a shield against discrimination claims.
That’s exactly what Paulsen thinks will happen.
“We can’t say ‘we don’t serve blacks here.’ That would be appalling. But this law is
saying they could say that,” Paulsen said. “I really don’t know what to expect. It seems to
have quite a bit of momentum. But talking to everyday people they are appalled that they
would bring something up.”
Perhaps the most famous case under a religious freedom act came out of New Mexico in
2006 when a Christian wedding photographer refused to shoot a lesbian couple’s
commitment ceremony because of the photographer’s religious beliefs.
One of the women filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission
and the photographer lost in court. The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in the couple’s
favor and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case.
The professors’ letter said Indiana judges would likely rule that anti-discrimination laws
serve a compelling interest of equality.
“Most cases, of course, do not involve anti-discrimination laws or disputes that arise
between private parties. Rather they involve disputes between the government and a
religious individual or group,” the letter said.
Sen. Scott Schneider, R-Indianapolis, said it’s hard to guess how courts would rule in
hypothetical situations.
“There’s a lot of rhetoric out there on both sides of this issue on what it will or will not
do,” he said. “It doesn’t speak to the issue of same-sex marriage at all. It simply lays
down a guideline for government agencies to meet before they can restrict or deny
religious freedom.”
Best General Commentary/Category 4
Matthew Tully, The Indianapolis Star
Statehouse Republicans embarrass Indiana. Again
Let’s call it what it is. It’s discrimination wrapped up in a legislative bow. It’s
divisiveness painted as something holy. It’s tired and cynical politics weakly masked as a
principled stand.
Sure, it is cleverly labeled with a market-tested name (the Religious Freedom bill), but
please don’t be fooled: This is nothing more than a government endorsement of
discrimination. Yes, in this land of liberty, our state’s government is prepared to push
into law a measure allowing one group of people to tell others that they are not equal and
not welcome at their businesses.
Those black-and-white images of signs announcing which customers businesses
welcomed? They don’t seem so much like faded relics of history today.
Once again, Statehouse Republicans have found a way to divide our state. They’ve done
so with a bill that will allow business owners to judge the morality of their potential
customers and to decide whether those customers are worthy of spending their money in
their shop, bakery, or whatever.
My goodness, can Indiana Republicans just get past an anger over gays and lesbians that
borders on the obsessive? Apparently, they cannot. And, so, after losing their war over
same-sex marriage last year, Statehouse Republicans have joined a national conservative
effort to create a crisis that doesn’t exist. Along the way, they are making clear that
yesterday – or, to be more accurate, the last century – still controls today’s Grand Old
Party.
As ridiculous as this is, it’s also serious and damaging. A General Assembly that should
and could spend its 2015 session tackling the state’s deeply entrenched problems is
instead seeking to tear our state a little further apart.
It’s sickening. It’s pathetic. And for a moment this week, before I decided I would not
allow some misguided politicians to define the state I love, it made me ashamed to be a
Hoosier.
The moment of shame, mixed with anger and a bit of sadness, hit hardest when Jason
Collins, the first openly gay NBA player, sent out a brutal but fair message on Twitter
Monday night: “Is it going to be legal,” he asked, “to discriminate when we come to the
Final Four?”
Well, the law won’t be in place by the time the 2015 Final Four comes to town next
week. But it will be in place the next time it comes here. And the next time a lot of
visitors come here. And, yes, Jason, I guess that is the goal our legislative majority wants
to achieve. They want businesses to have the right to turn you and so many others away
because they don’t like who you are.
On behalf of a good chunk of Indiana, I’m sorry.
The Tweet from Collins came hours after a majority of Indiana House Republicans
passed the so-called Religious Freedom bill, which should from this point on be called
the Freedom to Discriminate bill. That vote paved the way for the Senate to send the bill
along to Gov. Mike Pence, who is eagerly waiting to give it a hug.
When he does, Indiana will have officially endorsed discrimination. Its government
majority will have sent a message to many of its residents that they are not equal citizens
of this state. It will have told the nation that Indiana government will side in some cases
with discriminators, and not those who have been discriminated.
It doesn’t matter whether this new law is limited in scope. The fact that it will be a law at
all is shameful. And it’s going to hurt Indiana.
Business leaders have made clear that the law will add to the troubles Indiana already has
with luring companies and employees to Indiana. If the legislature were trying to
reinforce Indiana’s image as a backwater, it couldn’t have done better than this. I
Googled “Indiana” Tuesday morning, and this issue was at the top of the page.
How embarrassing.
But this shouldn’t be a debate about the economic impact of a law, or about the state’s
image. That is not what matters most. Rather, it should be a debate about being a decent
and welcoming state. Or at least a tolerant one. One that abhors the idea of dividing its
people for political means. It should a debate that considers the harm a public
endorsement of discrimination can do to the people who will now be more open targets of
discrimination. It should be a debate about what kind of state Indiana truly wants to be.
Few laws are worse than those that give the majority the power to bully a minority. Those
are the laws that this country always looks back on with shame. Those are the laws that
expose the worst impulses in our elected leaders.
So, yes, for a moment this week I was embarrassed to be a Hoosier. But it is the
Statehouse Republicans who voted for this travesty who should be embarrassed. The fact
that they are not shows just how desperately their party needs a new generation of
leaders.
Best Editorial Writer/Category 5
Doug Ross, The Times (Munster)
Agency’s board needs watchdogs, not lapdogs
The Lake County Solid Waste Management District is an agency in crisis. Steps must be
taken now to prevent that from happening again.
Times Investigative Editor Marc Chase’s series of stories this week shows the Lake
County Solid Waste Management District board was ineffective in controlling wasteful
spending at the district, to say the least.
Ousted Executive Director Jeff Langbehn’s undoing was the purchase of a $751.14 gift
for an employee, using a government credit card to do so. But the board missed plenty of
other opportunities to question the agency’s purchasing practices.
Over the past six and a half years, taxpayer dollars paid for tickets for “Jersey Boys,” a
surfboard and even a Chicago hotel stay for a board member and his family.
The $15,023.25 for clothing and wardrobe accessories might have been easier to explain
if that money went solely for uniforms and not for three Victoria’s Secret dresses as well.
Now the board is getting active. Finally.
Among policies under review by the board are controls over vehicle usage.
Over the past 13 years, the agency bought 34 new vehicles. Langbehn was issued a new
take-home vehicle at a rate of nearly one every year over those 13 years.
Why would an agency whose mission is to promote recycling and find responsible ways
to dispose of household waste need take-home vehicles? What kind of after-hours
garbage emergency would require an urgent response from an agency employee?
Board members know they should have been more vigilant.
“What has been done in the past, board members should be ashamed of,” said board
member Bob Clemons, who represents Crown Point. “We need to restructure the whole
board to make it as fail-safe as possible.”
Commissioner Gerry Scheub, a longtime member of the solid waste board, agrees.
“It was our fault as a board,” Scheub said. “I don’t blame all of this on Jeff (Langbehn).
We’re all guilty of not staying on top of stuff. We were guilty for not doing our
homework.”
The solid waste district has an unwieldy board, with 27 members as dictated by state
statute. With that many board members, it’s difficult to even achieve a quorum, let alone
to feel individual responsibility for watching over the agency. The Indiana General
Assembly must take up this issue in the next session.
We urge a radical reorganization of the agency, including a much smaller and more
engaged board. We need watchdogs, not lapdogs and bobbleheads, on that board.
Best Business/Economic News Coverage/Category 6
Erin Blasko, South Bend Tribune
Blackthorn: Broken promise?
Blackthorn Golf Course was supposed to be the centerpiece of a gleaming corporate
office park for South Bend, one that could rival Edison Lakes in neighboring Mishawaka.
When then-Mayor Joe Kernan pitched the idea to the public in 1992, he touted the $5.4
million golf course project as a “pump for future development.”
Even better, the course would be supported by user fees and other income, such as
concession and pro shop sales – no taxpayer money would be spent for construction,
operation or maintenance.
“It’s got to pay for itself,” Kernan said. “There won’t be any subsidies as there are with
municipal golf courses.”
“It will be different from anything else in the marketplace,” he added confidently. “We
will have something special, a destination golf course. We feel it will be the envy of
every city in Indiana and, I think, throughout the Midwest.”
A Chicago consultant hired to oversee the project projected a $3 million revenue surplus
over 20 years, to be split between the city and Airport Authority, which owned the land.
What could go wrong?
Two decades later – as the city prepares to sell the 226-acre course at a substantial loss –
the answer is clear: quite a bit.
While Edison Lakes continues to grow at a steady pace, more than half of the lots in the
115-acre Blackthorn Corporate Park remain available.
And the golf course has been far from the financial boon that was projected. Records
show the city has used about $6.9 million in tax increment finance money, from property
tax collections in the Airport TIF District, to make debt payments and pay for renovations
at the course.
Granted, course revenues have been sufficient over the years to cover operational costs,
but just barely. Records show a profit of $69,898 over 20 years, or about $3,500 per year
on average – not nearly enough to manage the debt or pay for renovations to the course.
Despite the numbers, Kernan defends the project.
“We clearly needed resources to be able to build the project, and TIF money was one of
those resources that was used,” he said in a recent interview.
And he still calls Blackthorn a success.
“When you’re talking about half of that ground (being developed), that’s a lot of ground
and a lot of investment that’s been made out there, and the golf course very clearly
helped stimulate that growth,” he said.
Others have a less optimistic view.
Bill Panzica, vice president of Panzica Building Corp., and treasurer of the Blackthorn
Corporate Park Owners Association, said the park, despite its ideal location close to the
Toll Road and U.S. 20 Bypass, lacks some amenities necessary for success. As for the
golf course itself, he says it’s been a non-factor for development.
“A few of the businesses on the golf course liked it because of the view. It was great for
that. And it did bring a lot of deer to our property, and they loved to eat all the bushes,”
he said. “Beyond that, I don’t think it’s an asset and I don’t think it’s a hindrance.”
Common Council member Dave Varner, who is also a member of the city’s
Redevelopment Commission, thinks the project has flopped beyond golf. The
commission owns the course and the undeveloped property surrounding it.
“As a development project, I don’t think it met any of its goals except to be a nice golf
course,” Varner said. “Blackthorn still has a lot of empty space; we struggle to fill it. And
if you look at Edison Lakes, the Mishawaka counterpart, they seem to be able to sell just
about anything they make available.”
Mistaken assumptions
Though present-day critics of the golf course benefit from hindsight, there were warnings
about the project from the start.
Notably, the late T. Brooks Brademas, a prominent local developer, opposed the use of
municipal bonds to finance the course, fearing – justifiably, as it turned out – that
taxpayers would be left on the hook.
“No lending institution would lend to (the city) on the strength of a golf course, because
it’s such a risky endeavor,” Brademas said at the time. “That’s why they needed to
underpin it with the city’s ability to tax. I think that’s improper.”
Brademas, who died in 2007, also questioned the value of a golf course as a lure for
development.
“Any public official who believes the development of a golf course is the answer to our
economic development growth does a major disservice,” he said.
To be fair, no one could have predicted the extent to which golf would decline in
popularity in the years after the course was built, or the way in which the housing and
financial crises of the 2000s would squeeze the sport’s middle-class participants.
Also unknown at the time was the fact that the University of Notre Dame would decide to
build its own golf course just five years later.
“If you look at all the assumptions that were made across the country, not just in St.
Joseph County, with regard to the golf industry in early ‘90s, it was a very steep upward
trajectory,” said Greg Downes, a member of the Redevelopment Commission who also
serves as secretary of the Blackthorn Corporate Park Owners Association. “Everybody
was saying demand would continue to grow.”
In fact, the number of golfers in the U.S. has decreased dramatically over the past 20
years, from about 30 million to 25 million in the past decade alone, according to the
National Golf Foundation.
At the same time, the number of courses in the U.S. has continued to drop as more close
each year than open.
Blackthorn, meanwhile, has stayed open with the help of tax money. Records show the
city used $6.2 million in TIF money to pay off the debt on the course between 2002 and
2013, and another $800,000 to finance capital projects, including improvements to the
clubhouse and grounds.
The city also loaned the course about $300,000 over the past four years, for the purchase
or lease of mowers, carts and other equipment.
By comparison, the surrounding corporate park generated no more than $361,000 in
property tax revenue in 2014, according to information available online through the
county assessor’s office.
Tax increment financing, or TIF, is a public financing tool that allows local taxing units
to capture property tax revenue generated by increases in assessed value in a particular
area – in this case the Airport TIF District – and use it to support economic development
in the area.
To what extent the flow of TIF dollars from the corporate park to the course has affected
the development of the park is not clear; the park accounts for just a fraction of the
revenue generated by the Airport TIF, which encompasses large portions of the city west
of the river.
What is clear is that the park has not lived up to expectations.
Of the 33 lots open for development at the park, just 16 have sold, property records show,
accounting for 14 new buildings. Some of the businesses include Abro Industries, a
supplier of adhesives and automotive fluids; Villing & Company, a marketing firm; and
Gallagher Bassett Services, a risk management company.
The park is also home to South Bend Career Academy, a tax-exempt charter school that
received $1.5 million in startup TIF money from the city in 2011.
Downes defends the use of TIF dollars to support the course, making a distinction
between redevelopment and general fund money.
“There’s wide misunderstanding – no property taxes from homeowners have ever been
used,” Downes said. “That’s not the same pot of money as TIF. TIF dollars come as
result of increases in economic development.”
True, Varner said, but TIF districts capture property tax revenue that otherwise would go
to the general fund, putting pressure on homeowners to make up the difference.
“The city ought not embark on these speculative redevelopment deals,” Varner said. “I’m
all in favor of assisting companies that are here to build something that’s going to pay
taxes and employ people … but when we go off on these projects … “
‘Play-and-stay’
Soon, the golf course will no longer be the city’s problem. Negotiations are underway to
sell the facility to Acquisition Group, an investment group led by longtime course pro
Tim Firestone.
Acquisition Group submitted the only responsive bid for the course in October, offering
the minimum $1.66 million based on the average of two separate, independent appraisals.
If the sale goes through, the city will take a loss of about $3.9 million compared with
what it cost to build the course in 1994, not accounting for inflation.
Firestone has said he plans to build a hotel on the course next to the clubhouse, where the
practice hole now sits, turning the facility into a “play-and-stay” destination, similar to
Swan Lake in Plymouth.
The city expects to close on the sale by the end of next month.
The city also tried to develop a hotel at the course, but a deed restriction granting the
Blue Heron the exclusive right to operate a conference and catering center at the park
complicated the process.
Whether the deed restriction extends to the course itself is a matter of debate, but its mere
existence, coupled with periodic legal threats from the Blue Heron, have spooked
investors over the years, Panzica said.
But even with a hotel, Panzica, whose company developed two lots and owns a third at
the park, believes the area would still suffer from a lack of nearby restaurant and retail
development.
“The thing I get most out of people who look at Blackthorn is, ‘Where do we go for
lunch?’” Panzica said.
Even so, Downes views the project as a success, noting the jobs the park has created
through the businesses that located there and its influence on adjacent development,
including Ameriplex at Interstate 80/90, formerly Portage Prairie.
Kernan’s opinion?
“It’s easy to go back and say why would you do it this way or that way, and obviously
people are going to be critical of it,” he said. “But I believed that it was a game-changer
for us out in the northwest part of the city.”
Best Short Feature Story/Category 8
Joseph Pete, The Times (Munster)
From God’s forsaken house to a garden of ruins
When they learned much of the sanctuary roof caved in, local photographers rushed to
the majestic ruins of the City Methodist Church, a long-abandoned downtown cathedral
that skilled craftsmen carved out of Bedford limestone to glorify God in a hardscrabble
mill town nearly a century ago.
They wanted to capture whatever images they could of the towering nine-story church,
which was constructed with an attached auditorium and school as a civilizing influence in
1925. That’s when a rough-hewn, teenaged Gary was filled with taverns, brothels and
shanties and hard men who drank hard liquor and forged the hardest metal of all in a city
built to feed America’s then-insatiable hunger for steel.
The photographers believed the roof collapse meant the end – after four decades of
neglect, countless gawkers and wild arson rampaging through downtown Gary – was
finally near.
Their instincts were right.
The end was near.
Gary has now fenced off the church at 577 Washington St., a Gothic fortress that once
was the largest Methodist church in the entire Midwest with 3,000 worshipers. The city
blocked off urban explorers, the adventurous photographers who venture into decrepit
buildings to snap pictures of the decaying architectural treasures society has thrown
away.
For years, they have chronicled the church’s slow disintegration since it was abandoned
for good in 1975, a process that accelerated when the church’s interior was exposed to the
elements after the Great Gary Arson of 1997.
City Methodist Church, dubbed “Seaman’s folly” almost immediately by people who
questioned whether Pastor William Seaman built it too big, ultimately buckled under the
weight of hefty maintenance bills after white flight and downsizing in the steel industry
emptied out the pews and winnowed the remaining faithful down to around 200 people in
the early 1970s.
Lately, the church has mainly hosted curious neighborhood kids, rogue photographers
who have splashed it all over Instagram, and filmmakers who have shot a Freddy Krueger
flick and other movies there.
The city had been planning to fence off the forsaken church even before a large portion of
roof collapsed, opening the great vaulted sanctuary up to the sky. Gary had already been
looking to revive a mothballed plan that dates back to 2007 to transform the blighted
church into a European-style ruins gardens.
“It’s in its infancy stages, but we want to preserve as much as possible,” Gary Building
Commissioner Steven Marcus said. “It’s in the downtown historic district. It’s one of the
properties that adds to that district. We want to preserve as much as possible of what’s
historical, but also figure out a way to repurpose the property.”
Ruins garden
Gary hopes to give new life to a crumbling church even the most pious had long ago
given up on, as part of an overall effort to rejuvenate a downtown that once bustled with
department store shoppers and theatergoers and diners in their Sunday finest. Now the
downtown has few flickers of life outside of banker’s hours when the Gary SouthShore
RailCats aren’t playing, but revitalization efforts are underway.
The city recently razed the Sheraton Hotel tower no one had checked in to for decades
and is now bankrolling an effort to turn the mostly empty Gary State Bank high-rise
office tower into a data center with a street-level bank branch.
Much of what remains of City Methodist Church – often held up as a symbol of Gary’s
decline from a nouveau city of grand ambitions to a diminished burgh that suffers from
crime and blight – would likely be torn down so the most dramatic architectural features
could be stabilized and appreciated safely. Immense columns and vaulted arches in the
sanctuary would remain as a testament to a bygone Gary, a prosperous company town
that had once been a playground for Chicago architects.
“The structure of the building was built really, really tough, but we need to stabilize the
building,” Marcus said. “We hope to move as quickly as possible.”
A ruins garden would be a public park that could host weddings, performances, and
special events, Marcus said. Goths – remember them from high school? – already have
been getting married in there for years.
An amphitheater could even be built on the grounds of God’s forsaken house at
Washington Street and Sixth Avenue. An appointed commission will have to determine
exactly what programming takes place there, such as if the Gary Shakespeare Co. would
be given the opportunity to stage plays against such a striking backdrop, Marcus said.
Tourist attraction
Similar ruins gardens litter England and Continental Europe, but are less common in the
United States. The City Methodist Church ruins gardens likely would be the largest of its
kind in the country if funding is secured and the project comes to fruition, said Tiffany
Tolbert, field director of the Northwest Field Office of Indiana Landmarks.
Such reclamation projects could become increasingly common in other Rust Belt cities,
such as Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, where inner cities have hollowed out and
forsaken architectural gems are worth saving but beyond renovating, she said.
“Even in its current state, City Methodist Church is still awe-inspiring and popular with
photographers,” she said. “It’s a tourist attraction. More and more people have been
discovering it online through Instagram or Twitter. Some call it ‘ruin porn’ where they
take pictures of City Methodist, Union Station or other buildings. Architecture students
from Chicago also come down to study its classical form. If it could be preserved to
prevent further unsafe photography without compromising it as a tourist attraction, it
would be a huge benefit to the city without incurring the substantial, astronomical cost of
demolishing the entire building.”
People from all over the country already call the Indiana Landmarks field office to find
out about how to visit City Methodist Church when they’re passing through town, and
whether the neighborhood is safe, Tolbert said. Along with Union Station, it’s one of
Gary’s 8,000 or so vacant properties that attracts the most attention.
“It’s significant architecturally,” she said. “People do forget that, in its creation, Gary
rivaled Chicago in design ... that Chicago architects and builders treated Gary like a little
playground.”
Turning the church into a ruins garden could boost its popularity, Tolbert said.
Flowers and other flora could make it look nice. Signs could explain architectural
features. A stripped-down, stabilized structure would be safer and more inviting to less
risk-tolerant souls who would never consider wandering around inside a vacant building
that could be filled with squatters and who knows what else.
‘Reminiscent of Chernobyl’
St. John-based photographer Joey Lax-Salinas has been photographing City Methodist
Church for years, and happened to be leading an Indianapolis television news crew into
the building the morning after a large portion of the sanctuary roof collapsed. They were
filming footage for a report on how Gary is addressing its glut of abandoned properties
after learning suspected serial killer Darren Vann led police to six victims dumped in
vacant homes.
When Lax-Salinas saw the the blue sky through the grand sanctuary and watched the
clouds pass through, he had two thoughts: it would make for a cool time-lapse shot and it
would likely force the city to completely fence off the property. A sense of lost
opportunity came over him: He had been hoping to photograph the church again this
winter.
“I’m disappointed that it happened,” he said. “But I’ve been in every nook and cranny of
that church and knew somebody’s going to get hurt if they didn’t do anything.”
Gary can’t be faulted for the church’s condition because the city has limited finances and
has had far more pressing issues, Lax-Salinas said. But it’s a monument to the storied
past of a once-thriving boom town that had been celebrated as the “City of the Century.”
The church looks epic, to the point where it feels like a movie set that’s too expansive to
be in a Hollywood studio, Lax-Salinas said. It’s been a backdrop for both low-budget
music videos and a $195 million Hollywood blockbuster: “Transformers: Dark of the
Moon.”
“It’s surreal and otherworldly,” he said. “It’s reminiscent of Chernobyl, which was
abandoned after the nuclear accident. I remember thinking that, after watching a
documentary about Chernobyl, that this is kind of what that looks like.”
Lax-Salinas has shot the church a few times each year, bringing a police officer friend
from high school along as hired security. He still can’t shake his initial awe.
“The first time I visited I was in shock,” he said. “It was an abandoned building that was
so long deteriorated that all the drywall and plaster was just dust on the ground.”
Much of the interior has disintegrated, but the arches and columns that account for much
of the visual appeal still look like they’ll stand at least another 100 years, he said.
“The old architecture is awe-inspiring,” he said. “We just don’t build churches like that
anymore. Churches now are square and efficient and aimed at saving money and energy.
They don’t have that appearance, that spiritual look. It was the end of an era.”
Normally, photographers who want to shoot abandoned buildings have to venture far into
the countryside to find some eerie old barn at the end of some meandering gravel road,
Lax-Salinas said. City Methodist Church has been such a draw because it’s shocking to
find an edifice so grandiose in such a deteriorated condition smack in the middle of a
city’s downtown. It’s easily accessible: just 25 minutes from Chicago, within a few
hours’ drive of other major Midwestern cities such as Milwaukee and Indianapolis, just
off the Indiana Toll Road, and a few minutes from a major interstate highway.
Over the last five years or so, the church’s haunting sanctuary has become increasingly
popular as a tourist attraction because images of it have been shared so widely on
websites like Flickr and Facebook, Lax-Salinas said. It’s drawn budding shutterbugs and
gear-saddled darkroom veterans from all over. They often find his pictures online, and
call him to get intel on how to get inside and what to watch out for. They often travel
from a distance and plan to visit urban ruins in both Gary and Detroit, just four hours
east.
“Photographers will make a day out of it,” Lax-Salinas said. “It’s a playland for taking
pictures. But if the city doesn’t do something, we’ll lose the building completely at some
point, lose it entirely. It’s dangerous and at risk of collapsing. Just as a liability concern,
they need to cover themselves for a lawsuit.”
Built as a gift for God
Someone was eventually going to get killed if the church hadn’t been fenced off,
photographer Guy Rhodes said. The East Chicago-based professional photographer, who
recently shot the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia, has seen less safety-conscious
photographers enter in sundresses and sandals, including to shoot senior portraits, without
even watching their step.
When he saw rubble from the roof strewn on Sixth Avenue, he feared it was the
beginning of the end for a building that was meant to last forever. Rhodes has long
lamented that nothing has been done to preserve the decaying church, which he considers
a work of art.
“For me it’s just the architecture, the lighting and design,” Rhodes said. “I really
appreciate the craftsmanship that doesn’t exist in today’s world of vinyl siding. This was
a Gothic cathedral and the limestone work was so intricate and all done by hand. There’s
ornamentation on the steeple that you’d never see from the ground, like hand-carved owls
where they etched every feather and every claw. Skilled stone masons built it as a gift for
God.”
A church that was built for eternity is eroding away because no one has taken care of it
for decades, Rhodes said. He compares it to ice slowly melting, and notices different
bricks have fallen in every time he visits. The stonework and stained glass appears sturdy,
but much of the rest of the building, such as drywall, has succumbed to neglect and the
elements.
“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking. It’s like watching a building melt.”
Rhodes has worried City Methodist would ultimately share the same fate as many historic
buildings in East Chicago, such as when the ornate edifice of the 1st National Bank &
Trust Co. downtown was razed in 2005 to make way for a Walgreens parking lot because
no one wanted to do anything with it.
“The City Methodist Church was built to last forever, but there’s been no love and care
for a building that was constructed with such craftsmanship,” Rhodes said. “The people
who built the place would likely be very upset to see what condition it’s in today, which
speaks to our throwaway society. The cinder block boxes they build now are sucking the
soul out of our society. Buildings used to be meant to inspire excellence.”
The cost of demolition and preservation will likely be steep, well into the millions of
dollars. Rhodes wishes Chicago’s many wealthy preservationists would take an interest in
nearby Gary.
“At the end of the day, if the building is saved, it doesn’t matter if some millionaire made
it his private house,” Rhodes said. “So long as it’s not a pile of rubble. At all costs, it
cannot be torn down.”
Best Profile Feature/Category 9
Joseph Pete, The Times (Munster)
Longtime Gary businessman closes store but does not give up on city
People used to dress up in heels or starched button-down shirts before heading to
downtown Gary in 1955, when Albert Cohen opened his furniture store, Union United
Corp.
Broadway bustled with shoppers headed to Woolworth’s, J.C. Penney, Green’s
Furs, Sportsworld Sporting Goods, Sax Fine Footwear and Goldblatt’s Department Store.
Fedora-clad visitors dined at restaurants like the Fountain Room or Skylight Room, saw
movies at the Palace Theater, and took lessons at the Rina Rosa Accordion Studio. They
flocked to a hotel restaurant by his furniture store for the roast duck.
Union United, on 761 Washington St., thrived for many years in those days.
“It was very profitable in the beginning,” said Cohen, who at age 89 has finally decided
to close down his store, one of the few retailers remaining in downtown Gary. “It was a
very viable community when you go back into the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was booming
downtown. Broadway was like Chicago, a mini-State Street. There were stores all the
way up and down Washington Street. It wasn’t like Broadway, but they were all viable.”
But the steel mills that motored Gary’s economy started to lose ground and lay off
workers. Racial tensions mounted. Residents moved south or east, and shopping malls
started sprouting in corn fields. Unemployment rose, crime soared and the city’s
population started to plummet – it’s fallen by 55 percent since its peak in 1960.
One by one, the shops that made downtown Gary a destination for residents of
Hammond, Chesterton and the rest of the region skipped town or went under.
But not Union United.
Cohen never gave up on Gary, a city the native Chicagoan moved to after falling in love
with a Gary girl – the place where they made a life together and reared their children.
It wasn’t always easy. He’s been robbed at gunpoint. He’s watched a neighboring
building burn down. He’s shrunk his business from six employees to one and had days
where not a single customer walked through the door.
“You become attached to a community and the friends you make there,” he said. “Gary’s
been very good to me. I could have left and moved back to Chicago, but my heart has
always been here. I have a lot of fond memories here. I like Gary. I’m eternally optimistic
and always hoped it would come back.”
‘A nice guy who always played things straight’
All the other stores on that stretch of Washington Street vanished long ago. Trees and ivy
devour the abandoned brick three-story parking garage just north of Union United. The
Gothic ruins of the City Methodist Church, one of the nation’s most iconic symbols of
urban decay, are two blocks away.
Still, Cohen has driven down from his home on Chicago’s Gold Coast six days a week,
sailing past the river of commuters flowing into the city while Frank Sinatra crooned or
Ella Fitzgerald purred on his car stereo. His daughter only recently persuaded him it was
time to retire, after years of trying.
“He is a nice guy who always played things straight,” said friend William Choslovsky, a
Chicago attorney who has known him for decades.
He has helped generations of Gary residents furnish their homes, sometimes after they
could not get credit anywhere else. He’s sold mattresses to the grandchildren of
customers who shopped there in the 1950s or 1960s. A police officer who heard the store
was closing dropped by to reminisce that he bought his first bedroom set there 30 years
ago.
Willa Thomas, a Gary native who moved from Alabama to Hobart for a missionary trip,
bought a couch and a love seat at Union United last week. She just arrived back in
Northwest Indiana on a bus with nothing more than her bags, and made a beeline to
Cohen’s store so she could make her new place a home.
Thomas said she enjoyed shopping there over the years partly because Cohen had always
been understanding with late payments. He’s always pleasant. And then there’s the
furniture.
“I love his furniture,” she said. “Everything is nice, good quality.”
Gary has a few other furniture stores, but Union United had the widest selection, Kim
Winters said. She bought her living room set there and fears homes in Gary will start
looking the same after the store closes for good this fall.
“If you go to Value Furniture or Harlem Furniture, they don’t have French Provincial like
that,” Winters said while pointing to chairs. “They have a more unique selection. You can
find things you don’t see in other stores or homes.”
Union United is in the middle of a going-out-of-business sale, and will shut down in
September. A liquidation firm has drawn in hundreds of customers with giveaways,
including for an iTunes gift card and a 60-inch color television.
It’s the busiest the place has been since the 1970s.
Devoted to his work
The store is decidedly old-school. Cohen has kept it afloat during the Great Recession by
trading stocks on his iPad and MacBook Pro, but he still uses an adding machine to tally
up purchases. A “rate schedule” reads that answers are $1, answers that require thought
are $2, and correct answers are $4, but dumb looks are still free.
Cohen could have retired years ago. But he burrowed into his work after his beloved
wife, Shirley Alterwitz, whom he proposed to two weeks after their first date, died.
“I think I owe my longevity to the store being my mistress,” he said. “I’ve been a
widower since 1963. Having something to do and a place to hang your head is important.
I’m nervous about being retired. I don’t have any special hobbies. Retiring is not going to
be simple. I’m going to have to try to make a plan for myself on a daily basis, so I’m not
just sitting at home watching baseball.”
He could have left Gary. He looked into rents in Merrillville, and deemed it too
expensive, especially since he owned the former garage where he sells Ashley furniture
and Frigidaire appliances. He didn’t want to work for a landlord.
Cohen bought the building in 1962, and expanded by buying the building next door in
1974.
“I didn’t like anything about the building,” he said. “The roof leaked. It looked terrible. It
was pretty decrepit. It still looks bad, but it was my building.”
His focus was never on making money. Cohen used to extend credit to about 90 percent
of his customers, and estimates he was never repaid about $4 million to $5 million over
the six decades he ran the store. He decided not to let it keep him up at night.
He tried another line of work once, setting up a brokerage office at 504 Broadway in the
late 1960s. But a secretary embezzled his money and the firm ended up being
undercapitalized. He notified the Securities and Exchange Commission, which shut it
down.
“We closed the office in an orderly way,” he said. “No one lost money except me.”
Union United has lost money for the last three years. Heating bills in the old, drafty
building rose to $4,000 a month when the polar vortex froze Northwest Indiana, and
Cohen said the store can’t survive another winter that bad. He’s conserved funds as best
he could over the years, but said it’s tough to operate a retail store when so much of the
city is abandoned.
He’s not sure how he’s going to stay occupied during retirement, though he enjoys
walking along Lake Michigan. But an autumn romance might be blooming.
“I’m going to rob the cradle,” he said. “There’s a young lass in California – she’s 80 –
who I met in 1969 at a cousin’s wedding. She lives in L.A., but is coming here later this
month to attend a wedding. She called me last night and we talked for two hours, until the
phone ran out of battery.”
Best In-Depth Feature or Feature Package/Category 10
Marisa Kwiatkowski, The Indianapolis Star
Indy Met’s Pumas: Troubles, triumphs, champs
Nick Reich stared at the black-and-white photo on the table in front of him.
The beaming smiles, the celebration, the pride. It all seemed so far away.
The former head basketball coach at Indianapolis Metropolitan High School tried to
remember that moment of glory four years ago, so poignant and yet so fleeting.
He tried to remember how he had brought together a group of teens who struggled with
poverty, bad grades, criminal activity, anger and frustration. How he had turned them into
a family.
But a gaping loss overshadowed the good times in his memory.
“It’s so stained,” Reich said. “I almost have to be forced to think about that.”
Slowly he did remember, starting back in 2007. Reich, a coach with no coaching
experience and a troubled past of his own, approached a group of kids playing a pickup
game at Washington Park on the city’s Eastside.
Like other kids who would join the team, they came from neighborhoods where high
school graduation wasn’t a given and violence was all too common. Many of the kids at
Indy Met had little to build on besides raw talent, and their own heart and fight.
It would be enough to achieve something no one thought possible. It was a partial
victory, to be sure, but a major one nonetheless.
Building a team
The first time Reich laid eyes on three of his core players, he was passing out fliers at
Washington Park Family Center during open gym.
In 2007, Reich was the director of student and family services at Indianapolis
Metropolitan High School. The public charter school, operated by Goodwill Education
Initiatives, was just three years old and needed students.
Reich touted Indy Met’s unique learning environment. At that time, there were no bells or
passing periods at the high school. Teens often sprawled on couches or in the hallways to
do their schoolwork.
The curriculum was designed for students who hadn’t been successful elsewhere, whether
they had gotten in trouble or were highly intelligent and bored by traditional classes.
Reich, as a school social worker, provided additional support through parenting and anger
management classes and a school-based food pantry and by connecting families to
financial assistance when they faced eviction or their electricity being shut off.
Basketball was just one more tool to get teens to graduate from high school.
“There are kids that can get disconnected from education without something to keep them
connected,” Reich said.
At Washington Park, Reich saw talent in JerrBryon Graves, Raymond Green and
Anthony Jackson.
The boys knew each other through open gym but weren’t close friends. That soon
changed.
Forging relationships
JerrBryon said his friendship with Anthony and Raymond developed quickly during their
freshman year at Indy Met. Anthony even lived with JerrBryon and his mom at various
times.
Anthony said Raymond and JerrBryon were his brothers, the two people he could be
himself around.
He gave Raymond the nickname “Boosie,” because Raymond’s haircut resembled that of
the Baton Rouge, La. rapper of the same nickname.
Raymond’s mom Lakishia Green said her son would pack half a dozen sweaty, smelly
teenage boys into his bedroom.
JerrBryon remembers them staying awake all night to play basketball. Raymond even
attended JerrBryon’s travel basketball games to support his friend.
“These two guys are my brothers,” JerrBryon said. “They meant a lot to me.”
They were connected by a love of the game.
Indy Met didn’t have a gymnasium, so the school rented space for basketball practice at
various parks around the city. It didn’t have money for practice jerseys, so the boys
played shirts versus skins.
Reich drove a short, 15-passenger school bus wherever the team needed to go, and he
washed the players’ game jerseys at his house after every game.
He became a father figure to many players.
Reich brought Raymond to the doctor and to get contact lenses. He and his wife took in
players when they were having trouble at home.
When Anthony considered dropping out of school during his junior year to get a job after
his girlfriend became pregnant, Reich and others persuaded him to stay. He received help
through the school-based food pantry.
A year later, when Anthony celebrated his son’s first birthday at Monkey Joe’s in
Castleton, the entire team showed up in the bus to celebrate with him. They left directly
from there for a basketball game.
During the boys’ senior year, the entire team spent the night at Reich’s house before
some of the games. Reich said it was a matter of necessity. When they slept over, he
could control what they ate for dinner, when they went to bed, what they had for
breakfast and when they left the house.
Everything Reich did had one purpose: to keep the kids in school. To give them a goal to
strive for. To give them a fighting chance to resist the pull of street gangs that thrived in
some of their neighborhoods.
It was no easy task.
Reich said he could fill a book with tales of players who spent time on Indy Met’s
basketball team but didn’t finish. Many simply outplayed themselves in life as often as
they challenged other teams on the court.
Courting trouble
The first sign of trouble came on Nov. 17, 2007, the Saturday before the first game of the
2007-2008 season.
Around 12:30 p.m., the team left the school after practice and started walking north along
White River Parkway to Municipal Gardens so they could play some pickup basketball.
A man was walking along the same street. When their paths crossed, two players
pinballed the man between them. One player sucker-punched the man on the side of his
head, then took his coffee and threw it on him, according to records from the Indianapolis
Metropolitan Police Department.
“Everybody was hyper, feeling like we was the man,” said Anthony, who was there but
did not hit the man. He said they made a stupid mistake.
Two witnesses who were driving by called police, and officers caught up with the group
of 10 players. One player told police he struck the man to protect his friends. All of them
were arrested.
The player who hit the man was charged with robbery, battery, criminal gang activity and
disorderly conduct, according to police records. The other nine faced charges of robbery,
disorderly conduct, criminal recklessness and criminal gang activity.
Reich told The Star that he and other school officials vigorously fought the criminal gang
activity charges. The Star does not have access to their juvenile records, but Reich said
all the charges eventually were dropped.
But the player who hit the man and Raymond, who also messed with the man, were
suspended from the basketball team for the season.
The school allowed Raymond to practice with the team, but he couldn’t play in a game.
He showed up for every practice. Reich persuaded school officials to let Raymond play in
a couple games at the end of the season as a reward.
Anthony was expelled from Indy Met midway through that same school year for an
incident involving a gun at school. He came back his sophomore year but challenged
authority. Anthony told The Star he was suspended 25 times during high school.
“I don’t know what was wrong with me,” he said. “It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t right. It
wasn’t helping me. I was getting affiliated with the wrong things and wrong people.”
Anthony said people questioned whether he might end up in jail. His academics suffered.
He said he lost focus until junior year, when he started to pull himself together.
The team also struggled in those early years. The Pumas ended the 2007-2008 season
with a 10-10 record.
Anthony, Raymond and JerrBryon all played sophomore year. The team finished with
eight wins and 14 losses.
Then, before the start of the 2009-2010 basketball season, Raymond and JerrBryon were
among five teens arrested for breaking into a home.
JerrBryon said Reich was extremely angry and yelled at him.
“It was just a dumb mistake,” JerrBryon said. “I can’t tell you what I was thinking back
then, but it was a dumb mistake.”
Again, they were suspended from the team. Reich fought to allow them to practice, but he
was overruled. Both boys were banned from the team during their junior year.
Reich said officials questioned his motivation for seeking leniency for his basketball
players.
Some felt Reich was motivated by self-interest, since JerrBryon and Raymond were two
of the best on the court.
But the coach said his motivation was much more simple: He wanted to see his players
graduate high school. Reich said his mindset was always, “What happens to them if … .”
“You balance potential and problems,” he said. “By that time, I deeply cared about both
of those kids.”
Second chances
Reich believed the players were coming around.
He said there was nothing JerrBryon hated more than the word “tutor,” but he buckled
down when he needed to make decent grades in order to play basketball. And basketball
kept Raymond in school and away from alcohol and trouble with gangs.
Some of that philosophy of forgiveness came from Reich’s own experiences. He spoke
openly to the team about his own past, which included arrests, smoking weed and
dropping out of college.
“I’m not perfect,” Reich told his players. “I did a lot of stuff I’m not proud of and I want
to help you avoid some of those same things.”
By Raymond, JerrBryon and Anthony’s senior year, every player on the varsity team had
gotten second or third chances.
And it seemed as if Reich’s efforts were finally paying off. Anthony and JerrBryon
returned to the team that year. Raymond took some convincing, but he also agreed to
rejoin.
Reich said the 2010-2011 boys basketball team had talent.
Raymond was the top scorer. He went hard all the time. Once, when Raymond was sick
during practice, he threw up in a trash can then ran back over to his place in line.
JerrBryon, who grew to be the leader, was the best in the state in assists and the team’s
go-to guy for big shots.
Anthony was extremely athletic and a great rebounder.
Other players brought plenty of the qualities Reich promoted in his players – heart and
fight.
“Everyone bought into their role or job and that’s what made them unique,” assistant
coach Richard Bishop said.
Reich thought the Pumas had a legitimate shot at winning a sectional title. Bishop said if
they were shooting for success, they should shoot for the top – for a state championship.
There were a couple of things head coach Nick Reich neglected to mention when he
recruited Richard Bishop to be his assistant basketball coach.
“So, where’s the gym?” Bishop remembers asking after he arrived at Indianapolis
Metropolitan High School before the 2010-11 season.
Oh, we don’t have one, Reich replied. Later, he asked Bishop, “Do you know how to
drive a bus?”
Reich said it hadn’t occurred to him to mention that the charter school didn’t have a gym.
In the previous three years, the boys basketball team had practiced at three different city
parks. Every game was a road game. It was their “normal.”
Bishop, who was once an assistant coach at North Central High School, was used to
having a nice gym and players who wore practice uniforms and rode in a large athletics
bus.
Instead, he was handed guidelines for driving a dingy, white 15-passenger bus.
Even some of their workouts were unorthodox.
Bishop remembers watching the players run up and down the steep hill between White
River Parkway and the bank of the river in 95-degree heat. A line of players stood along
the edge of the water to ensure their teammates didn’t slip and fall in.
“You realize other teams aren’t doing this?” Bishop asked Reich.
Early in the season, Bishop wanted JerrBryon Graves and some of the other players
kicked off the team. He said they cut corners, got in trouble or gave up. The assistant
coach came from a “no kid is bigger than the program” philosophy.
But Reich believed every player was bigger than the team. He asked Bishop whether
JerrBryon would graduate from high school if he wasn’t on the team. And what about
Anthony Jackson? Would he?
Reich didn’t think so.
“For me, the goal was to get kids out of high school using basketball,” he said. “It wasn’t
about building a basketball program.”
So when Anthony left in the middle of a game to sit in the stands, he got another chance.
When 6-foot-10 William Kennedy quit the team midway through the season because he
thought he wasn’t getting enough playing time, he was allowed to come back.
Indy Met’s 2010-11 season started off rocky, with the Pumas losing three of their first
five games.
But, slowly, they pulled together. The team rallied to a last-second win against Charles A.
Tindley Accelerated School midway through the season. The Pumas also beat Guerin
Catholic High School, which had a strong program.
Indy Met played an up-tempo game, and the teens were so close that they shared the
basketball. They impressed people in other ways, too. Reich said people often
commented to him how respectful his players had been on and off the court.
But there still were lessons to learn.
Respecting the game
It was the fourth quarter. The Pumas were dominating the Indiana School for the Deaf on
Jan. 27, 2011. Indy Met’s score was in the mid-90s to the Orioles’ 26.
Reich’s players wanted to break 100 points, which they had never done. He agreed but
told them they couldn’t score another point after hitting 100.
The Pumas scored 101 points and held firm.
Then, in the last seconds of the game, Jonathan Kelly stole the ball and ran up the court,
because he wanted to dunk the ball. He missed, and the buzzer sounded.
Reich was livid. Jonathan’s action, he said, was “intolerable.” He had disrespected the
game.
Reich got in Jonathan’s face while he was still lying on the ground. He continued
throughout the handshake line and into the locker room.
He made Jonathan go back onto the court, with spectators still in the stands, to run
suicides. Without being asked, JerrBryon led the rest of the team onto the court to run
with him.
They were one team, one ego, one family.
“It speaks to how close the kids came together,” Reich said. “It would not have happened
any other year.”
From there on out, everything clicked on and off the court.
‘Heart and fight’
The Pumas won five of the next six regular-season games, then took home the program’s
first sectional title before moving on to the regional semifinal at Martinsville High
School.
Two seventh-graders at Martinsville East Middle School were assigned as ball boys
during the semifinal on March 12, 2011. They excitedly cheered for Indy Met.
It didn’t look good for the Pumas. At one point in the second half, they trailed
Southwestern (Shelby) by 16 points. But they didn’t give up. The Pumas fought back for
the 47-44 win.
“Pinch me,” Raymond Green said at the time. “I need to make sure it’s true. From gym to
gym, bus ride to bus ride, it doesn’t seem real this is happening. These are my Met
brothers. They are my family.”
Reich had his players line up and high-five the ball boys, saying they were his good-luck
charms.
It launched an unlikely friendship. Later that night, when the Pumas returned to
Martinsville for the regional championship game against Shawe Memorial, the ball boys
brought several friends to cheer in the stands.
The Pumas trailed by 12 points in the second half. Raymond looked across the free-throw
lane at Anthony.
“This ain’t over,” he said.
Anthony nodded.
They fought back hard to tie it up.
With seconds left on the clock, JerrBryon tried to run up the court but was confronted by
a Shawe defender well before half-court.
With a one-handed baseball throw, JerrBryon hurled the ball as the clock expired. The
Shawe players all turned toward the basket and watched. The ball looked as if it might be
wide to the right, but it glanced off the inside of the rim and sloshed through the net.
JerrBryon’s teammates swarmed him at midcourt.
“Heart and fight!” Reich yelled. “Heart and fight! That right there was heart and fight!”
JerrBryon’s shot captured national attention. ESPN named it the No. 1 play of that day.
Media outlets across the country shared the video.
Suddenly, Indy Met’s improbable playoff run was in the spotlight. People were fascinated
by the team’s success without a gym, without practice jerseys and in the face of
adversity. There was a focus on the closeness of the team, including the fact that they
spent the night at Reich’s house before the regional games.
Players were baffled by the attention.
“Why is everyone making a big deal out of this?” Raymond asked while eating dinner at
Reich’s house.
The public loved an underdog.
‘My best moment’
Next up was North Daviess from Elnora, on March 19, 2011. With more than 20 friends
of the Martinsville ball boys cheering them on, the Pumas again started out slow. But
they stuck to their game and pulled off a 61-50 victory.
Indy Met – in just its fourth varsity season – was headed to the Class A state
championship game.
The Pumas would face Triton, a powerhouse that was making its third state finals
appearance in four years.
“Triton was like Goliath to us,” Reich recalled.
The game was played at the glittering Conseco Fieldhouse, now named Bankers Life.
Going into the championship on March 26, 2011, Raymond was averaging nearly 20
points per game. The team was ready.
But nerves were running high. At one point early on, there were four back-to-back steals
without a basket. Triton raced to an early lead, but with 1.1 seconds left in the first
quarter, Raymond tossed the ball to JerrBryon, who knocked down another one of his
half-court buzzer-beaters to tie the game.
The teams were evenly matched. Triton forward Clay Yeo, 6-5, was an inside force, and
the Trojans also were draining 3-pointers. With 25 seconds left in the game, the Pumas
led, 52-50, and the Trojans started fouling. Two big offensive rebounds by Anthony gave
the Pumas four turns at the line, inching their lead to 57-52.
The Tritons hit a 3-pointer to come within two, but it was too late.
When that final buzzer sounded, the Pumas had won 59-55. Reich wrapped Raymond in a
hug. The rest of the team latched on for a group hug. Raymond’s mother tried to run onto
the court but was stopped by security.
“That moment right there was my best moment,” Anthony said. “Just to see all my
teammates so excited. It was a time to remember.”
In the locker room afterward, Reich told the players to use the feelings they had to propel
themselves forward and overcome adversity in real life.
“Don’t let this be the highlight,” he told them. “Let this be a springboard.”
The aftermath
The next two months were a whirlwind.
Goodwill Industries, which founded and operates Indy Met, paid for a trip to Washington,
D.C., for the coaches and players. The team was honored at an event, visited
congressional offices and sat courtside at a Wizards game.
“More important than their winning record was the way the team played and how the
players conducted themselves on the court,” Goodwill Education Initiatives’ board of
directors wrote.
They were praised by rival fans, high school sports officials, referees and members of the
community. State legislators honored them, and they were invited to speaking
engagements throughout the city.
Their story also inspired people to donate to Indy Met. Goodwill raised millions of
dollars in a few months, Reich said, enabling the school to accelerate building a school
gym.
“It was a good time for the school and city, because they doubted us,” JerrBryon said.
“We had a lot to prove to a lot of people.”
“They treated us like we was winners,” Anthony recalled. “They treated us with respect.
We actually felt noticed for a time. It was the best time of my life.”
Reich, who resigned at the end of the season, hoped the players’ story wouldn’t end there.
All but one of the Pumas’ eight players were seniors, and Reich wanted them to attend
college.
“Until these guys set foot on a college campus, my job is not done,” Reich said in 2011.
“Hopefully after that, we’ll be able to sit back and reflect on what we’ve done.”
Indeed, some would go off to college.
As the school year came to a close, JerrBryon committed to Presentation College in
South Dakota, Anthony committed to Purdue University North Central, and Jonathan and
Reese Williams committed to Indiana University-Kokomo.
But not Raymond – not the team’s leading scorer, the one who had declared, “This ain’t
over.” When others were getting letters of acceptance, Raymond received another kind of
letter.
He would not be graduating from high school, let alone going to college. He had failed
his End of Course Assessment. He would have to stay in school if he wanted to graduate.
But Raymond didn’t stay in school. He walked away from Indy Met. He went back to his
old neighborhood, back to his old ways.
“That day that he walked out of the school, we lost the game of tug of war,” Reich said.
“We were winning up through the state championship game, and we were winning after
that, but when he got that letter that he didn’t pass the test, we lost.”
When Raymond “Boosie” Green walked into the kitchen of his family’s Northside
apartment on Oct. 16, 2011, his mother, Lakishia Green, didn’t turn around.
“Ray,” she said, “go take the trash out.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the 19-year-old replied.
It had been six months since Raymond and seven other Indianapolis Metropolitan High
School students crowned a successful basketball season with a state championship.
It had been four months since Raymond found out he hadn’t passed his End of Course
Assessment and wouldn’t graduate with his friends and teammates.
Now, four of those teammates were settling into life on college campuses. A fifth was
preparing for missionary service as part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints.
And Raymond was here, in his old neighborhood, a high school dropout tangled up in a
life of alcohol and violence.
Lakishia said her son still had a vision to do more. She said Raymond had signed back up
for school. It would start in two days.
Raymond returned from taking out the trash, then, telling his mom he had left his hoodie
outside, he disappeared out the front door. She continued mopping the floor.
Shortly afterward, just before 9 p.m., Lakishia opened the door to shake out the mop and
heard voices. People were howling.
A guy she knew was crying as he walked toward her on the sidewalk.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Kishia,” he said. “I’m sorry, Ms. Kishia.”
She grabbed him. “Sorry for what?”
“Boosie got shot,” he told her.
After calling her father and aunt, Lakishia left the apartment and moved toward the
cluster of police cars.
“I didn’t know if my son was dead or alive,” she said.
Raymond was sprawled in the middle of 32nd Street, just west of North Keystone
Avenue. She looked at her son’s red shoes. His feet didn’t move.
It was then that Lakishia knew.
‘It’s burned in your brain’
Nick Reich, the former head coach of Indy Met’s championship basketball team, got a
call and headed to the scene.
The young man he loved lay still in the middle of the street. Reich stood 10 or 15 feet
away, staring at Raymond’s body.
“I don’t remember crying,” he recently told The Star. “It’s like a train wreck. It’s
something you can’t take your eyes off of.”
Richard Bishop, who served as assistant coach during the 2010-11 state championship
season, arrived soon afterward.
“It’s burned in your brain,” Bishop said. “That image, to see a man with so much
potential lying there. The loss isn’t what gets you. You look at the potential of what could
have been.”
Raymond lay there uncovered for four hours, Lakishia said. A crowd gathered around the
yellow caution tape. People screamed at police to cover up the body.
Reich remembered seeing little kids playing nearby.
“And you wonder why kids grow up desensitized to the value of human life,” he said.
No one has been charged in Raymond’s death, according to the Marion County
prosecutor’s office. Lakishia Green said police told her that her son was shot while trying
to rob someone in a car.
“He was in the wrong,” she said. “He knew better than that.”
Lakishia couldn’t cope with her son’s death, so Reich took over. He got Raymond’s
funeral paid for and picked the casket and the plot in Sutherland Park Cemetery.
He also helped figure out how to get Raymond’s former Indy Met teammates home from
college. Two of them, JerrBryon Graves and Anthony Jackson, considered Raymond
their brother.
Anthony had just seen Raymond that weekend, while home from Purdue University
North Central. He said he immediately broke down when he found out his friend was
dead.
JerrBryon, who was attending college in South Dakota, had just finished basketball
practice when he got the call.
“I went into shock mode,” JerrBryon said. “I felt like it was my fault because I was in
South Dakota.”
He and his other Indy Met teammates served as pallbearers.
‘How do you deal with it?’
Reich said losing Raymond made him question his relationships with other players.
Several of the players relied heavily on him and expected him to bail them out. They
called from college to complain because they missed home, or it was cold, or they were
in trouble.
For years, they’d been a family. Now he wondered if he was a crutch.
He pulled away. He stopped returning calls or, if he answered, he told the players to
figure it out themselves.
“What’s the point of all this?” Reich asked. “If you still aren’t capable of doing things for
yourself, then I was highly unsuccessful anyway. So what’s the point?”
For him, in a lot of ways, Raymond’s death was where the story ended. Reich had to
force himself to remember the basketball championship, the time before he saw
Raymond’s body lying on that street.
“Those two events are always linked, and there’s just no way that they can’t be,” he said.
“There’s a start point and an end point, and all of that is together. But the end point is
probably more powerful in a lot of ways than some of the other things that you
remember, unfortunately.”
Reich left his job at Goodwill Industries the month Raymond died to become executive
director of Circles Indiana, an organization that works to alleviate poverty. He founded
Social Insight LLC, a consulting firm, in 2013 and still works there today.
“I didn’t really know how to deal with it,” Reich said. “His championship ring is still
sitting in my console of my car, so how do you deal with it, you know?”
Earlier this month, with Lakishia Green and The Star, Reich returned to the place where
Raymond died. He hadn’t been there in years, but the memories were as vivid as if it had
happened yesterday.
A telephone pole closest to the spot where Raymond died was covered with stuffed
animals, CDs, empty alcohol bottles and items with the names “Raymond” and “Boosie”
on them. A tribute to Raymond was spray-painted in red on the pavement: “Truth.”
“Justice.” “Miss you.”
Memorabilia also coated a large tree toward the other end of the block. Reich walked
over and stared silently at the tree.
“Coming here just pisses me off,” he said.
Reich said he didn’t know Boosie. He knew Raymond, the kid whose smile lit up a room,
who loved basketball so much that he practiced every day, even when he knew he
wouldn’t be able to play in a single game.
Seeing the shrine just reminded Reich who won: the streets.
‘Trying to make it every day’
When the Pumas won the state championship, Reich had told his players to use it to
overcome adversity and find success in real life.
Raymond’s death stung. And he wasn’t the only former player to stumble badly.
Former Puma Jared Tapley is serving 45 years in prison relating to the death of his thengirlfriend’s 4-month-old daughter. According to the Marion County prosecutor’s office,
an injury on the left side of the girl’s face appeared to match the pattern of Tapley’s high
school basketball championship ring.
Prison officials declined The Star’s request to interview Tapley.
The Star couldn’t find all of the players, and some declined to talk. But others appear to
be taking Reich’s advice to heart.
William Kennedy, the 6-10 Puma who clogged things up defensively on the court, now is
an elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is finishing his two-year
missionary service in Vancouver, Canada, then plans to return to Indiana to play
collegiate basketball.
“My basketball career is not yet over but, for right now, I serve others for two years,”
William said. “It has blessed me and my family tons, as well as others.”
He said his time on the team taught him not to give up when things are difficult and to
always be a light and example to others.
Anthony left college in 2013 after tearing his ACL during the off-season. He came back
to Indianapolis for rehabilitation, got married and moved to Florida for a short period of
time. He and his wife are no longer together.
Today, he said, he works at the Johnson & Johnson warehouse in Plainfield. He contacted
Purdue University North Central and hopes to re-enroll in the fall. His son, who was born
while he was in high school, is now 5 years old.
“I’m just trying to make it every day, just day by day,” Anthony said. “I’m just thankful
I’m alive. I want to keep doing better and going forward.”
JerrBryon is a junior at Presentation College in South Dakota. Last March, he and his
longtime girlfriend had a son.
He said he wants to get his degree to “let my son know that if things don’t work, you
can’t quit.”
JerrBryon, who is a business major, said he wants to open a basketball facility if his
basketball career doesn’t take off. He’d like to be a personal trainer and help kids learn
the game.
“I got a lot to prove to the doubters and my family,” he said.
‘Ain’t nothing changed’
Reich recently reconnected with JerrBryon and Anthony. The three men met at
Raymond’s grave site. JerrBryon and Anthony, who have remained close, traded jabs on
which person would win a game of one-on-one. They teased each other about whose
statistics were better. And they reminisced about Raymond’s talent.
Four years later, they’re still family. Mourning a loss. Remembering good times. Pressing
forward.
“Ain’t nothing changed,” Anthony said.
Reich said meeting with The Star and telling the story pushed him to remember those
good times. He recaptured that sense of pride they had when they won the state
championship.
“Knowing the things that we overcame on a daily basis, it really amazes me,” Reich said.
“Those kids and the way they handled that attention and the media, it makes me
extremely proud of what we were able to accomplish at the time.”
But the relationships they had with each other were what made it so special for him.
“I don’t think that I was a great high school basketball coach,” Reich said. “I was the
right coach at the right time for the right group of kids who probably all needed each
other at that point in our lives. I’m not who I am and where I am without each of those
kids. They’re probably not who they are and where they are without each other.
“It’s not basketball, it’s not Xs and Os, it’s nothing I did,” he said. “It’s nothing but heart
and fight.”
Best Sports Event Coverage/Category 11
Dan Korb, Evansville Courier & Press
Halftime screaming energizes Ealges
Coach Rodney Watson got mad. Then his University of Southern Indiana men’s
basketball team got mad.
Then they all went out and won.
After a halftime in which the players screamed at each other in the locker room – and
senior Gavin Schumann gave roommate Bobo Drummond a piece of his mind – USI
rallied from an 11-point second-half deficit to beat visiting Lewis 64-60 on Saturday.
The key was Drummond.
The 5-foot-10 redshirt sophomore point guard scored a career-high 21 points, with 15
coming in the second half when he also sank three of his five 3-pointers, as the Eagles
ended a three-game losing streak.
“I’m better when I’m more emotional,” said Drummond, who went 7-for-12 from the
field. “I also felt energized by the crowd.
“We have a big history around here and I don’t want to disrespect that.”
When asked about what happened at halftime, Schumann, who is Drummond’s
roommate, smiled.
“I was just trying to energize him,” said Schumann. “Some people might think it’s
arguing, but we’re like brothers. We have to be. We live together.”
Said Drummond: “I’m glad Gavin’s not afraid to get on me. That meant a lot to me.”
Watson – who twice called a timeout in the first half to yell at his players about their
lackadaisical play – said he and his assistant coaches stood outside the locker room at
first to let the players have it out.
“Halftime was spirited,” he said. “There was more energy shown in that locker room than
we’d shown all week.”
After falling behind 39-28 with 17:26 left in the game, the Eagles (12-5, 5-4 Great Lakes
Valley Conference) scored the next seven points on a rebound basket by senior Austin
Davis, a Drummond 3-pointer after senior TeNale Roland drove the lane and passed the
ball out to his teammate and a Davis tip-in.
Although Lewis (12-6, 4-5) pushed its lead back nine, it quickly vanished. A 9-0 Eagles
run did the trick, getting the USI crowd on its feet and chanting “USI, USI, USI.”
That run began with a rebound basket from 6-8 senior forward Shane Seniour. Then
Seniour did it again, but only after missing a shot, grabbing the rebound, missing a shot,
grabbing the rebound, and finally scoring.
“The biggest thing for me was playing with passion,” said Seniour, who finished with
eight points and seven rebounds. “I found my passion.”
After a missed shot by Lewis, Drummond buried his second 3-pointer of the second half.
After 6-3 junior guard Travis Britt blocked a shot by 6-6 Lewis freshman Max Strus,
Drummond raced up the court and sank a basket in the lane to tie the score at 46-46 with
9:04 left.
A 3-pointer by the Flyers’ Capel Henshaw was answered by a 3-pointer from USI
freshman Brett Benning. The teams traded baskets again until Lewis went ahead on a
three-point play from Ryan Jackson.
Then Drummond swished another 3, this time from at least 24 feet out, to tie the score at
54. A little more than a minute later, Benning sank both ends of a one-and-bonus free
throw to put USI ahead for good at 56-54 with 3:53 remaining.
Neither team scored again until, at 1:21, Seniour cut to the basket, caught a pass from
Britt and sank a layup. After Lewis’ Jackson missed the front end of a one-and-bonus,
Drummond sank both ends of a one-and-bonus at the other end, and the Eagles led by six,
60-54.
The Flyers still made it interesting, with 3-pointers from Jackson and Gabe Williams. But
USI answered with four consecutive free throws from Schumann – who contributed 12
points – to clinch the victory.
“Coach said our leg was in a trap,” said Drummond. “We needed this win today.”
Best Sports News or Feature Coverage/Category 12
Dana Benbow, The Indianapolis Star
Ben Utecht: Traumatic brain injury
There is a love letter hidden somewhere in Ben Utecht’s house.
It’s a heartbreaking, agonizing missive he hopes his wife never reads.
He’s asked her to open that letter only if what he fears most comes to pass. If his mind
slips away to the unknown. If he no longer recognizes her face. Or the names of his three
sweet daughters.
If he becomes oblivious that the world he’s living in is his world.
I’m in here counting the days, while my mind is slipping away
I’ll hold on as long as I can
Utecht, 33, was a tight end for the Indianapolis Colts when the team won the Super Bowl
in 2006. He was a star at the University of Minnesota, offered a scholarship at the age of
16.
Football was a blessing for Utecht. And it was his worst curse. He suffered five
documented concussions playing the sport he loved. He left the NFL in 2009, released
after a season in Cincinnati with an injury settlement.
It was time to go. He had traumatic brain injury.
“It’s unlike any other injury in the sense that it truly affects the soul,” Utecht said. “Many
doctors will tell you that the thing they fear the most is a neurological disorder or disease
because it is the deterioration of the identity of a person.”
Inside his Lakeville, Minn., home on a picturesque wooded lot of snow-covered trees,
Utecht stutters at times as he talks. It takes him longer to get his words out. Sometimes,
what he wants to say just doesn’t come to mind.
He has long-term memory lapses, gaps in family history. When he’s performing on stage,
he forgets lyrics. They’re songs he’s been singing forever, but he now has to tape a paper
with the words to the stage when he performs.
Utecht has been a musician his whole life; a member of five choirs in high school,
singing national anthems at NFL games, playing the piano and guitar, classically trained
and performing with symphonies. Now, with his football career behind him and the
unknown ahead, he is throwing himself into his love of music full time.
He has an album, “Ben Utecht: Man Up,” set to release in December. A single from that
album, “You Will Always Be My Girls,” is based on that hidden love letter.
It’s what he wants his wife, Karyn, 5-year-old Elleora and 4-year-old twins Katriel and
Amy Joan, to remember about his love for them, should he no longer be able to say it
himself.
I may not remember your name or the smell of a cool summer rain
Everything and nothing has changed, nothing has changed
The song, for Karyn, is a heart-wrenching reminder of what may come in the future. It
touched her the first time she heard it.
“It grew to have more of an emotional reaction for me as I realize ...” Karyn trails off.
As she realizes the husband who was her college sweetheart, that rugged, strong NFL
star, may one day not be the same man.
Her dream man.
Karyn said she knew Utecht would be perfect for her the minute she laid eyes on him.
She watched him sing the national anthem before she ever met him.
“I thought, ‘Why can’t I meet a guy like that?’” she said. “By God’s grace, He let me.”
And I will remember your smile and your laughter
Long ever after this moment is gone
Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri remembers Utecht always singing in the locker room when
he played with the team from 2004-07.
“You can’t really rag on a guy,” he said with a smile, “when he sounds that good.”
Vinatieri has talked to Utecht on the phone and that smile doesn’t stay for long when he
thinks about what Utecht is going through.
“It’s tough when guys are putting their hearts into it,” he said, “and get banged up like
that.”
Beyond the five documented concussions, Utecht thinks he endured more than he can
count. “I really can’t put a number on how many,” he said.
His first concussion, though, he’s sure came early. He was in middle school in Hastings,
Minn. Like almost every player across the country at the time, Utecht was doing a drill
called “bull in the ring.” The drill has been around as long as football but it is now
banned nearly everywhere.
Team members form a ring around a single player. The player in the middle shuffles,
preparing for oncoming attacks. One at a time, players slam into him at full force. He is
the target of blow after blow, and if he moves too slowly, the hits can be punishing.
After that first concussion, Utecht soon came to realize the symptoms all too well. There
was the one in Cincinnati. He took a shot in practice from a blitzing linebacker during a
regular offensive drill.
“And you know, my vision went blurry on the field, headache on the field,” he said.
That night, he couldn’t sleep and had horrible night sweats, completely drenching the
sheets.
“I knew for sure. I sat up in bed,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘Man, I have a
concussion.’”
But instead of taking a break from football, telling the team he was out, Utecht played
through it. He had already missed eight games with rib fractures and a torn plantar fascia
in his foot.
“So I wasn’t about to walk in the next day and say, ‘Umm, I can’t play,’” he said. “That’s
what players deal with at every single level. There is so much pressure. And there are
some injuries that you can play through, absolutely. But not brain injuries.”
Utecht knows now that he should have stopped. Should not have played through it.
Maybe the brain trauma would have been lessened. Maybe he wouldn’t be 33 and
wondering what his life will be like 10 years from now, when his daughters are teenagers
and need their dad the most.
You will always be my girls, you’re the beauty of my world
No matter how tomorrow unfurls, you will always be my girls
The good news is Utecht hasn’t been given a specific diagnosis of a progressive brain
disease.
“That’s an answer to prayer and it’s one that I hope never comes,” he said. “But my
vulnerability and my openness comes out of what is to come.”
He sees former players in their 40s and 50s diagnosed with devastating diseases such as
chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease of the brain that ultimately
leads to severe dementia. He wonders if those repetitive hits to his head may one day
mean Alzheimer’s disease for him.
“I’m just thinking to myself, ‘Man, if I have some of these minor things now?’” he said.
“Sometimes, I just pray that it never manifests itself the way it has with some of these
other unfortunate players.”
Utecht tries not to dwell too much on what could happen.
“You can go down that path. I really try not to,” he said. “We’re a really faith-based
family. I’m very much at peace with the future and what’s in store.”
But, of course, he does have lingering thoughts of what could happen.
“It definitely does make me sad to think about what they’re going to have to go through if
the worst ever happens to me down the road,” he said. “What is that going to be like for
them is more of my concern than what I’m going to go through.”
His daughters hang on him. They call his name over and over – “Daddy look. Daddy,
daddy look” – to watch their ballerina twirls and balloon bouncing. He sings to them
every night before they go to bed.
“It feels like I am sleeping under the stars,” Elleora said.
They know nothing of their dad’s football injuries, his worries about his future.
“Honestly, I think that my focus for them is just to create the most loving environment
that I can as a husband and a father,” he said.
Karyn, a former Miss Minnesota, says they were once living a fairy tale life. Ben in the
NFL, winning a Super Bowl. Karyn competing in the Miss America pageant.
“Sometimes I would have to pinch myself,” she said.
And they still are living a fairy tale – just a different one. Love, devotion, family and for
better or worse.
I can still feel you here in this place beyond all tears
Where love does what it does ... it stays
Utecht grew up, as he describes it, a river rat. Hastings is a small agricultural town
located where the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers meet.
He also grew up the son of a Methodist minister. His family – parents, Jeff and Lori, and
younger sister, Ashley – lived in a parsonage on the church parking lot.
Inside the home, the order went something like this: faith, family, music (his dad had
gone to school to be a choir teacher and his mom is a classically trained singer) and, of
course, sports.
Utecht played baseball, hockey and football, but he had a real knack for football.
He received a scholarship offer from the University of Minnesota at age 16, which was
far rarer at the time. It came after Utecht played at a summer camp at the college.
He remembers that camp. All of it. He was 6-5 and weighed 205 pounds. Because his
high school was so small, they used a rushing-dominant offense. That meant few chances
for Utecht to catch the ball.
But he could catch the ball and showed it during that camp. One play in particular stood
out to everyone who was there.
“They threw a fade route up along the sideline. I went up with this guy and I just
completely jumped up and over him and just ripped the ball right out of his hands,”
Utecht said. “The wide receiver coach at the time just went screaming and running on the
field and jumped on me.”
Utecht was called into the office where then-head coach Glen Mason made the offer on
the spot.
“It was a huge surprise. You come out of a really humble home when you’re pastor’s
family,” he said. “You have to do a tremendous amount of schooling in order to make a
humble living.”
His parents couldn’t afford to help him much with college expenses, “so that was like a
dream come true,” he said.
He bought his mom, a family counselor, a Golden Gophers sweatshirt, presenting it to her
with the news when he returned home.
“She just lost it, like sit down weeping,” he said. “It was great.”
But something happened to Utecht after that. That humble, river rat, pastor’s kid wasn’t
so humble anymore.
“I was a pretty prideful kid, pretty arrogant for quite a while,” he said. “Until, I believe,
God used my injuries to really bring that humility to my life.”
Seasons turned and turned again
Till they became remember when
The injuries. The conversation always seems to return to the injuries.
Utecht wants to make a difference, not only in brain injury research but in bringing
awareness and changes to football at every level – from youth to the NFL.
If he had a son, he would not let him play football until he was at least in high school.
He wants a national organization created that oversees all of youth football. He wants that
organization to create a high-level, non-contact football program.
He wants no contact for kids during the most developmental stages of their brains. He
wants no contact for kids so their bodies – especially their necks – can be strengthened.
“That would save almost six years of full head-to-head contact for kids,” Utecht said.
“And I promise you it would not have an effect on who goes to play in college and who
goes to play in the NFL. If anybody tells you otherwise, it’s not truth.”
He’s heard of parents being called weak for not letting their sons play football. All you
have to do, he said, is go online and watch videos of people suffering from brain disease,
what their families are going through.
“They’re unrecognizable,” he said. “And if you have parents that are calling out your
children for being weak or you for being weak for keeping them out? Then, in my
opinion, they’re advocating for brain disease. And there is no way you can win that
argument.”
The love in your heart made this man complete
My Cinderellas you danced on my feet
Utecht has one thing that he wants heard. And he wants it heard loud and clear.
He has nothing against football and nothing against the NFL.
“I’ve been very careful. I want people to know that I love this game,” he said. “I’m so
appreciative of the NFL for the chance to play and the chance to give me a head start on
life outside of football with my family.
“But it doesn’t mean they can’t do things better. It doesn’t mean they don’t need to find a
way to take better care of our players.”
There has been no criticism from the NFL, or anyone else for that matter, on Utecht’s
stance. On his platform. On his speaking out. On his testifying at Senate committee
hearings.
He is the national spokesperson for the American Brain Foundation and the American
Academy of Neurology. In April, he was awarded their 2014 Public Leadership in
Neurology Award.
What Utecht brings to his position is a heartbreaking story that touches people – touches
the scientists, the researchers, the politicians, said Catherine Rydell, chief executive of
the academy.
They hear the medical jargon and statistics. But Utecht is the face, the real story.
When he received that award, he told his story in front of 1,500 neurologists, scientists
and researchers.
“I can tell you,” Rydell said. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.”
You’re the only thing that matters, that matters to me
You will always be the ones I come running to
One in six are affected by brain disorders. That’s more than 60 million people in
America. Plenty of NFL players have become part of those statistics.
“You can’t play football without concussions (so) I believe that a righteous organization
would make sure that they take care not only of the past retired players but of their future
players,” Utecht said. “That they would take care of their brain health.”
When you realize your brain is no longer healthy, it’s devastating. That happened to
Utecht when he was with the Colts in 2007. It was his fourth documented concussion.
But this is one he doesn’t remember getting.
“That’s when I first noticed memory loss,” he said. “My first serious bout of amnesia.”
He has watched that concussion happen on camera. And still can’t remember. The Colts
were playing the Denver Broncos. It was halfway through the first quarter and Utecht
ended up on the ground. A pursuing defender jumped over him and clipped the back of
his helmet with his foot.
“It was not a hard hit. It was just a very specific hit and my head bobbed down,” he said.
“And the next thing you know, my whole body went limp.”
Teammates surrounded him. He finally came to, got up and talked to players. He sprinted
to the coaches on the sidelines and talked to them.
He remembers none of it. Not one second of it. His first memory of that game is halftime.
The offseason after that game is when he and Karyn started noticing the subtle changes in
Utecht’s behavior.
“They were minor cognitive changes that were somewhat puzzling and frustrating,” he
said. “From memory retention, sometimes stuttering a little bit in speech or struggling to
get out what you are trying to say. And even some memory gaps.”
No matter how tomorrow unfurls
To the moment I am done with this world
Utecht had never been able to sing “You Will Always Be My Girls” to Karyn live. He
knew he wouldn’t be able to get through it. She listened to it for the first time in the car.
“She just lost it,” he said. “It was tough. It was really hard.”
And it’s gotten harder.
Each time Utecht stutters. When he forgets the lyrics to songs he’s sung a thousand times
on stage. Or when he has to ask her to remember something for him.
Then, the words to that song are haunting. They are, after all, based on that love letter.
“I hope,” said Karyn, “to never read that letter.”
My yesterday babies in curls
You will always be my girls
Best Sports Columnist/Category 13
Gregg Doyel, The Indianapolis Star
This story is about Gene Keady’s combover.
Hey, why dance around it? It may be a terrible idea for a column, but it was a terrible
idea for a hairdo.
You think you know how terrible his combover was? You don’t know the half of it. By
the time you’re finished with this story, you’ll know just how much it cost the legendary
Purdue basketball coach to maintain the combover until he got rid of it last year. You’ll
know the absurd lengths he went to keep it.
And you’ll know that the combover could have killed him.
And know this. When he returned my phone message, these were the first words out of
Keady’s mouth:
“I don’t mind you writing about my hair.”
How good a sport is Gene Keady? He knew I wanted to talk about his hair. He knew that
was the story, but only if he agreed to talk. No phone call, no story.
Keady called me right away.
So those were the first words out of his mouth. These were the next few:
“It was ugly,” he says. “Everyone was always asking, ‘What is it? Why are you doing it?’
I did it because I was on TV. I did it because I was going bald. I thought I looked
gorgeous with the combover. Of course, it was very ugly.”
Well, it was worse than that. It was obvious. It was embarrassing. It was dyed black and
wrapped around his head like a turban.
It wasn’t even real.
“I had extensions,” Keady tells me, at which point I put the phone down and started
throwing up. OK, not really. But still. Extensions?
“Well sure,” he says. “Men were just starting to get extensions, so why not?”
I’ve never known a man who had hair extensions.
“Now you do,” Keady says.
Keady knew his hair needed work – what, you think a man can just roll out of bed and
look like that? – so he brought in his personal hairdresser twice a week during the season
to tidy it up. She came with extensions. She came with hair dye. She came with cream.
She left each time with $300.
You read that right. Gene Keady paid $600 a week to have his hair look like that.
Everything changed in 2011 when Keady, who has worked with Steve Lavin at St. John’s
since 2010, went to Silverleaf Tavern in New York City and was approached by a male
fan. They talked, and kept talking, and talked so long that the fan’s dinner companion
came over to fetch him.
Kathleen Petrie didn’t know who Gene Keady was, but she liked him. And he liked her.
Keady’s friend, St. John’s associate athletics director Mark Fratto, could see it in the way
Keady wouldn’t even make eye contact with Kathleen. So Fratto gave her the coach’s
number, urged her to call, and she did a few days later.
They married in June.
It’s Kathleen who hated the hair enough to get rid of it.
“But not at first,” Keady says. “She let it go almost a year. I think the final straw was the
time I brought her to Lafayette, and it happened to be the day my barber came by. When
that was finished, she said, ‘Let’s go.’ She sat me down, pulled out the electric razor, and
zzzzzzt.”
Combover. Gone.
That was January 2013. Later that year Keady and former Indiana coach Bob Knight
spoke before a crowd of 800 at the annual Indiana Society of Chicago Foundation’s
dinner. When it was Knight’s turn at the podium, he asked, “Would Mrs. Keady stand
up?”
Kathleen stood. And then Knight said:
“Mrs. Keady, I want to thank you for making your husband get rid of that hideous
combover.”
Well, it was love. Before they were married, Gene Keady took Kathleen to a Nike camp
in Hawaii. Every time someone asked for their wedding date, Kathleen had to say she
didn’t know, her minister was out of town a lot. Finally one of the Nike officials said,
“You’re getting married tomorrow.”
“And so we did!” Kathleen screams at me over the phone, laughing at the impetuousness
of it all. “Gene wore a Nike shirt, Nike shorts, Nike sneakers. I wore white pajama
bottoms and a shirt I got at the gift shop. And flip-flops.”
Adds Gene Keady: “Tubby Smith gave the bride away. The best man was Bruce Weber.
He was the flower girl, too.”
A few months earlier, Kathleen Keady had sat down her husband and sheared off his
combover. Guess what she found underneath?
“Squamous cell carcinoma,” Kathleen says, naming the fairly common (700,000 new
cases in the United States annually), occasionally fatal (almost 9,000 deaths) form of skin
cancer. “It’s possible he wouldn’t be here today if he’d kept that hair.”
No kidding, I started to tell Kathleen Keady, who interrupts –
“Plus it was ugly,” she says.
Aww, is Gene sitting there listening? He can hear you!
“I don’t care,” she says. “Coach thought it was pretty dapper. I think it was horrible. I
mean, it was really weird looking.”
OK, I tell Kathleen. Got it.
“I mean, it was scary,” she says. “And he’s already so stern looking. But with that hairdo,
it was like Halloween or something, and …”