Category Archives: Stories – From Life & Elsewhere

LaRouche & Me, Part II

Then he turned up working for a project financed by Rev. Sun Young Moon’s Unification Church. And that somehow led to him being put in charge of an unofficial “investigation” into lurid charges of a satanic child abuse ring, which was allegedly based in Omaha, Nebraska, but serviced powerful pedophiles as far away as Washington DC.

The Omaha “investigation” was financed by a LaRouche group. But the charges of satanic child abuse were soon thrown out of court, and Bevel left town. But he stayed with LaRouche for some time. When LaRouche ran for president in 1992 from his prison cell, his standard was carried on the outside by his vice-presidential candidate — James Bevel. Apparently Bevel operated from an apartment not far from LaRouche’s estate headquarters in Leesburg. One wonders whether, given the open racism that pervaded LaRouchian rhetoric and ideology, how Bevel fit in with that cadre.

When Bevel called me, he had a declaration and a question: the declaration was that he had reformed his seducing ways, and was atoning for damage done. I wished hm godspeed in that personal work, but inwardly I wasn’t sure I believed him.

The question was: would I ghostwrite his autobiography? He’d pay me, though amounts were not specified.

It didn’t take me long to decline the offer. Surely, somebody should tell his story, in its full complexity and often harrowing detail. And withal, I still admired what he had achieved in Selma and with Dr. King. But what on earth had led him into LaRouche’s orbit?

I was not the one to write this. There was too much else that I knew, or had credibly learned. I had too much baggage, too many scars, from it all. Did I even have the talent or wisdom to do the job? Besides, as queasy as much of what I already knew made me, my gut sensed that this was not the end of the story. I wished him well, and hung up the phone with a trembling hand.

Lyndon La Rouche and me — Part I

Prelude Lyndon La Rouche has died. The stories about him and his uber-weird political career are legion. This is a summary version of mine; it has a lot to do with Quakers. It wasn’t meant to, but that’s how it turned out. I First, though, I need to make what will seem like a pointless … Continue reading Lyndon La Rouche and me — Part I →

A Carolina Lynching, But No Carolina Justice: John Jeffress Remembrance Day, August 25, 1920

In the version of this report published in the Charlotte NC News, additional details were included:

Sheriff Story [sic] and his six assistants started with Jeffress to the courthouse one block away. Arriving at the spot where Ray was killed, a mob formed around the Officers and their prisoner. There was a sudden surge forward and in the twinkling of an eye, according to the sheriff, the prisoner had been taken from the officers and was placed in an automobile and rushed away. There was not a shot fired: not even a gun drawn during the minute scuffle between the mob and officers.

Sheriff Storey said tonight that resistance would have been folly as the mob was made up of between 25 and 50 determined men. There were at least 150 additional men nearby whose sympathies were with the- mob, he stated tonight. Answering a. direct question, Sheriff Story declared that he did not know anyone in the mob. The man who led the mob and took the prisoner away, the sheriff said, must have just moved into the county and was not known to him.

Dog Days True Tales: Vietnam & the Secret Life of Pizza

Still Boston-based, she was coming to Washington to work on a book. It was to be about abortion, now legal everywhere — or rather, the book was about the right-to-life movement, which was determined to make abortion illegal again.

She’d be there in a few days, and wanted to catch up. Which was great, but left me wondering. I was the Washington reporter of the two of us: Washington, the nation’s premier center of media, power and glamour. I wanted to show her something of that, but the truth was I was still a rookie there: I didn’t know any powerful people. I wasn’t invited to the parties the local glitterati kept throwing for the powerful and glamorous, plus some media hangers-on. So I’d have to find something else to show her, something offbeat. What could it be?

The Star, which was on its last legs when I saw the story about General Loan.
The Washington Star came to my rescue. It had recently run a story about area Vietnamese refugees, one of whom was a former general, who had come to America after his army (and ours) lost the war to their Communist enemies. He was, it said, now running a restaurant in northern Virginia called the Three Continents.

The man’s name seemed familiar. So I did some checking– and yes, it was General Ngoc Loan, the one from the world-famous front page execution photo. I got the exact address in the phone book, and drove past it to be sure I knew the way.

Dog Days Tale: Honesty Is the Best Policy – Mostly: A Memorial to Sly Stone

Mike snapped me out of one of my dreams. ”Hey,” he said. “Phone’s for you.” To my inquiring stare he whispered, “Judy Drake. The Phoenix.”

My stomach went cold. “Err, hi Judy,” I croaked.

“Chuck,” she said. “Interesting review. But I’ve got a few questions.”

“Interesting”? I knew that “interesting” was Judy’s word for copy that didn’t qualify for her usual adjective of “great.”

A few questions? My throat went dry. “Okay,” I croaked again. “I mean, Fine! Shoot.”

“Well,” she said, “here’s three: First, what is it you didn’t like about the bass player?”

“Ummm, sure,” I said. “And, uh, the second one?”

“What was it,” she asked, “about Sly’s singing that you said was ‘off-center’?”

“Right. Uh, yeah. Got it. And third?”

“The new song,” she said, “the one they did in the encore. What was the name of it?”

New song? What new song??
“Okay,” I said again. Then cleared my throat. And coughed. I thought maybe I had forgotten how to breathe.

“Chuck? You still there?”

Oh, I was there. And I was so, so busted. ”Um, Judy,” I said slowly, “there’s something I need to explain.”