Closure (Enemy of the Lost)

On a spring morning, April 20, 1986, Cindy Zarzycki left her home, telling her dad that she was planning to meet a friend at the Dairy Queen and then go to church. She ate an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen on Nine Mile Road in Eastpointe, Michigan.

She was never seen again.

The missing persons report listed the 13-year-old girl who had lived with her father, brother, and sister in East Detroit as having sandy blonde curly hair, hazel eyes, a light-colored mole above her right eyebrow, and light-colored highlights in her hair. The report said that Cindy loved playing softball, winning a trophy in 1985 as the most valuable player on her team.

Cindy was “reported missing” for 22 years though there were glimmers of hope that she had run away and some reports in the two decades of sightings of grown girls with features like Cindy.

            She was never seen alive or dead until July 9, 2008 when she was found in a shallow grave in rural Macomb Township, led there by the man who admitting kidnapping, raping, and murdering her 22 years earlier. “Twenty-two years is a long time,” Cindy’s brother, Ed Jr., cried to his older sister, Constance. “The main thing is now we get to bury her on her own terms.”

            Arthur Ream, the man finally convicted a month earlier of first-degree murder in Cindy’s death, was taken to the site on 23 Mile Road, his arms and legs shackled, by eight law-enforcement agents. After Ream eventually found the spot and police dug up a young girl’s body, they found Cindy’s tattered jean purse and homemade audio cassettes that her brother said she used to make.

            Ream was convicted in June by Prosecutor Eric Smith’s cold-case unit after Eastpointe Police Detective Derek McLaughlin reexamined the girl’s disappearance. Police testified that Cindy went to the Dairy Queen because Ream said he was planning a surprise party for his son. Ream’s then 14 year-old son, who died in a car accident 8 years later on July 4^th, was Cindy’s desired boyfriend at the time. But because Cindy was apprehensive to meet her friend’s father by herself, she asked a friend to join her but her friend testified that her mom wouldn’t let her go. Her brother, Ed Jr., asked to go instead but his sister told him to go away.

            That moment haunts Ed to this day. When asked what Cindy’s brother would say to his dead sister if he could, he cries, “I’d say I’m sorry I wasn’t there. And I love her.”

            In the 22 years, Cindy’s body was only a few miles away from her family but they never knew. Now, they could move her to be buried in a plot near Lexington, Michigan that they bought two years ago. Maybe they could have a little bit of closure, watching their little girl who would be 35 years old today, buried in her own casket.

            On the same day that Cindy’s body was found, the skeletal remains of Pvt. Byron Fouty and Sgt. Alex Jimenez were found. The next day, military officials came to Gordon Dibler’s home and told him that his stepson, Pvt. Fouty, missing in Iraq for over a year, had been found.

            “Every day that he’s been missing has been a day of ‘what could have been’ but after hearing the news today…I’m still in shock,” said Dibler, who listened with Byron’s stepsister, Sarah.

            Fouty was 19, less than a year removed from his high school days at Walled Lake Central, when he and two other members of the 10^th Mountain Division, disappeared after being ambushed 20 miles outside of Baghdad. The news of Fouty and Sgt. Alex Jimenez’s bodies brought a sigh of finally knowing something and a flood of grief.

            13 days after the bodies of Cindy Zarzycki and Byron Fouty were found, a memorial service was held for Byron Fouty. Byron’s stepsister said that Byron was kind, talented, brave, and ambitious, “unlike anyone I ever knew” and his father, Mick Fouty, told the 200 people gathered how proud he was of him. “He’s a hero and will always be a hero in everybody’s eyes.”

            Keith Maupin, father of Sgt. Matt Maupin, 20, whose remains were found in March after he was captured in 2004 in Iraq, listened to the speeches, as did Linda Racey, former wife of missing U.S. Army Spec. Ahmed Altaie, 43, of Ann Arbor, and Skip Bushart, whose son Army Pfc. Damian Bushart, 22, of Waterford, died in Iraq in 2003.

            “I can only imagine their heartache, not knowing where he was for so long,” Bushart commented. “At least, they have closure.”

            Is closure watching the body of your loved one as the casket closes? We have to wonder if closure is finally knowing where your son or daughter is and praying that their souls have found a better place than here. 

            Think of what Cindy and Byron will never know: graduations, turning 21, the touch of a girlfriend or boyfriend, the celebration of marriage, having children themselves. They will never know the joy of seeing their loved ones again; they will never know what their lives could have become.

            All that’s left to do is share the grieving of the families and imagine greater penalties than prison for a brutal man who let so many suffer for so long. All we can do is imagine death, the ultimate closure, for the men who destroyed Byron Fouty and Cindy Zarzycki.

 

1. “Remains from 1986 slaying are found in Macomb Township,” Amber Hunt, Detroit Free Press, July 10, 2008
2. “Family remembers Fouty’s bravery, spirit in tribute,” Korie Wilkins, Detroit Free Pres, July 23, 2008

           

Deadly Inspiration

A few hours before presidential candidate Barack Obama’s first night in Israel, a city bus and three cars were rammed suddenly by a construction vehicle. The terror of fear and panic reigned in downtown Jerusalem a few hundred yards from the King David hotel where Obama was scheduled to sleep in just a few hours.

            Ghassan Abu Tir, a Palestinian man from east Jerusalem wearing a large, white skullcap, slammed into the side of the bus and then plowed the construction vehicle’s shovel into the bus windows, nearly killing the bus driver. According to witness Moshe Shimshi, the driver then sped away and “kept ramming into cars…and rammed them with all his might,” overturning one car and injuring sixteen people, including a mother and her baby.

            This vicious attack was very similar to one earlier in the month when another Palestinian from east Jerusalem plowed a large front-loading truck into a string of vehicles and pedestrians on a busy Jerusalem street about 3 miles away from the King David Hotel, killing three and injuring dozens of others before being killed by an off-duty soldier.

            This time, a civilian driving nearby saw what was happening, jumped out of his car, and shot the driver, before border policemen arrived on the scene. We are left to wonder how many people might have been saved by civilian Yaakov Asa-El, a father of nine. And we are left to gasp at another new method of terror.

Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski rushed over to the commotion and commented, “They keep on inventing ways to attack us. Every work tool has become a weapon.”
            The question becomes, how many Palestinians will become inspired by such atrocities? I have to wonder if this attack was inspired by the release of Samir Kuntar from Israel on July 16th. Kuntar, who received four life sentences in 1979 for murdering an Israeli policeman, a 31-year-old civilian, and his 4-year-old daughter, was greeted in Beirut to a hero’s welcome by the Hizballah leader and his huge crowd.

Kuntar was officially received by the Lebanese president and prime minister, members of the Lebanese parliament, as Hassan Nasrallah gave a welcoming speech to a thunderous ovation.

“Samir! Samir!” the crowd yelled, for this “man convicted of smashing a child’s head into pieces.” Mitch Albom writes in his excellent essay, (“Israel-Hizballah trade reveals much about both sides,” Detroit Free Press, July 20, 2008), “What God would have a child’s murder on anyone’s hands? How do people celebrate such a killer?”

Albom continues, “The total disregard for life of anyone who does not believe what Hizballah believes stands in stark contrast to the value of life—and even of its demise—that Israel demonstrated in bringing those two bodies (the two captured and killed soldiers, Goldwasser and Regev) back.”

“To men like Kuntar,” Albom simply concedes, “Israel does not exist and should never exist.”

So in a part of the world that desperately wants “a world in which Israel has no place,” the constant killing makes logical sense. In a perpetual war to destroy Israel, all murder is justified. Everyone who kills any Israeli of any age is a hero. Even if that means destroying an innocent child by smashing her head against a rifle butt. Even if that means taking a construction vehicle and ramming its shovel against a bus driver’s window.

In this honorary culture of horror, every blood-stained act is condoned and praised by thousands. Every murder is another deadly inspiration.

What must keep Jews in Israel and in the United States from despair is the thought of prayers recited amidst the candles for Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. What must keep us hopeful is the simple and noble courage of a civilian ready to stop such madness.

We must never tolerate the deliberate destruction of the innocent. Instead, let’s celebrate the miraculous moments when an unsuspecting father of nine suddenly appears from the rubble and becomes a desperately needed hero.  

 

           

           

Amnesia

I wrote this blog last August 2, 2007. It’s coming truer as we approach the fall of 2008.

Amnesia

 

The world spins so fast these days that I really don’t know if I’m coming or going, don’t know what side of the moon or sun we’re on. I know the moon was full two days ago but I’ve been too busy to worry about the cycle of the sun.

            GM and Ford announced profitable quarters which made us temporarily forget that both companies and their suppliers have been hurting for the last few years. We can’t forget the housing market has been awful in Michigan which has spread throughout the United States and that fear for the credit markets after the subprime debacle has intensified. The stock market has taken a beating in the last few weeks after rising consistently but when American Home Mortgage, “the Internet’s leading mortgage lender, announced that lenders cut off their credit line, panic took over Wall Street.

            Credit problems, large home builders losing millions, and financial institutions watching their stocks plummeting: it’s enough to bring back memories of the 1987 crash and the Nasdaq bubble bursting in 2000 and 2001. We had begun to have amnesia in the last four years as the Dow rose to record levels and the S&P reached new highs, far from the lows of 2002. We forgot that this happened even with billions that we have mortgaged on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the U.S. government continues to pile on record debt while the U.S. dollar has plummeted to a multi-year low.   

            Maybe it’s fitting that the Bourne Ultimatum, the 3^rd movie in the series of spy thrillers, is being released this weekend. In the frenetic pace of the last two movies, we learned that Bourne was an assassin working for the CIA who was trained to be a lethal killing machine, whether he remembered his past or not. Now is the time for him to learn who he really is and why everyone wants to kill him. The days of amnesia may finally be over.

            It’s not over for us.

            We forget about the wars and overwhelming debt levels and the hurricanes of the last years, hoping like hell it’s all behind us. We forgot about bubbles of the past as people mortgaged and refinanced and bought and sold houses and condos as the prices continued to escalate. Now, I wonder if Rock Financial, the biggest lender in Michigan and the primary sponsor of the Detroit Pistons, will make it in one piece. Will it suffer the fate of American Home Mortgage?

            My wife and I have bought three homes in 22 years and refinanced countless times. We had an adjustable mortgage years ago when our payments were smaller and when it went up a full 2% in a year, we refinanced again and fixed it. We were lucky to refinance two years ago when rates were at an all time low and locked it for 15 years.

            So many others are not so fortunate, caught into exploding adjustable mortgages or large fixed loans on expensive homes that are falling in value while their property taxes continue to rise.

            Fear is rising, the high levels of the stock market may be over, while the war is still going strong with 160,000 American soldiers far from home, fearful that their lives may end with the next IED bombing.

            An election is coming next year and a change may be coming. But by then, it may be too late. Like Bourne, we may begin to remember our past but unlike him, we might be much happier, waiting for the unknown to come, lost in the pleasant fog of amnesia.

Soothing the Psyche

Written after the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup…

 

The Detroit area finally got a strong dose of medicine for the last six years of high unemployment, rising foreclosures, surging gas and food prices, a declining automobile market, and the continuing saga of Kwame Kilpatrick.

After six long years, we finally won the Stanley Cup.

We in Detroit had almost forgotten what good news felt like. When the Pittsburgh Penguins tied the fifth game of the championship series and won in the middle of the third overtime, many fans thought, “Not again.” And when they scored with less than two minutes to go and almost tied the Red Wings with three seconds left in the sixth game, the relief in Detroit was palpable.

We could finally take a breath and celebrate: Detroit was a winner again. The Stanley Cup was ours.

Forget for a moment whether Israel will attack Iran or if and when we will get out of Iraq. Forget that Ford and GM are selling fewer and fewer trucks and SUVs and that gas prices keep rising. We don’t need imaginary superheroes Iron Man, the Hulk or Batman. Instead, we are fortunate to share a group of international hockey players from Sweden, Canada, Finland, Russia, the Czech Republic, and the United States, all playing for us, the long-suffering city of Detroit.  Past heroes Chris Osgood, Nick Lidstrom, and Darren McCarty, joined by new superstars Zetterberg, Datsyk, and Franzen, showed perseverance and poise as they marched toward the sixteen wins necessary to win the NHL Championship.

Did we need this?

We needed it more than anyone can imagine. If you think that it’s just a sport, just high-paid athletes who happen to play for Mike Ilitch and not some other owner in some other city, think again.

Remember 40 years ago, a year after the riots ripped through the heart of Detroit, burning building after building, block by block. I remember my father coming home from his place of employment, on Grand River, next to Wonder Bread, wondering if the building would be torched, seeing much of Detroit in flames, worried whether Detroit would survive. I remember more the miraculous comeback of the 1968 World Series, Detroit down three games to one, rising finally to beat the St. Louis Cardinals and its ace pitcher, Bob Gibson.

A city, still reeling from riots, went wild with joy. I was only 11 but I will never forget the honking horns, the utter exhilaration of our city winning the ultimate baseball trophy.

We lived in the heroics of Kaline, Horton, McLain, and Lolich. When they won it all, against great odds, so did we. We were at last winners.

Who knows how long the feeling of winning lasted? I believe that our collective psyches are indelibly affected by the world, our country, our cities. We haven’t had much to celebrate in a news world filled with Iraq, Iran, Hamas, Afghanistan, wondering why the U.S. economy pales next to China and India.  And the news has been more dismal in Detroit, where the auto industry struggles and the local economy is still mired in the mud of softening sales and higher costs.

There has been almost nothing to celebrate. Until now.

40 years ago, the world thought Detroit was simply a city filled with hate and fire, and after the World Series, we didn’t care. We felt okay with ourselves.

Today, the world thinks Detroit is a ghost town filled with large cars and trucks that don’t sell and plenty of crime and murder. This may be true but we also have one of the oldest and greatest hockey teams, one of the original six, a team that has now won 11 championships in 82 years, our 4^th in 11 years. We have a group of good guys from all over the world, showing great camaraderie and sportsmanship, and they play for us.

            Sports can be a powerful tonic, an imaginary world that can help sustain us in difficult times. We are no longer strangers when we share the dreams and goals of our sports teams. We can swap stories about not sleeping after three overtimes and of happier moments when we can almost taste the champagne flowing from our HDTVs.

For awhile, we can feel good about ourselves. We can feel good about Detroit. Even if it’s just fantasy and escapism, it is still soothing for our injured psyches.

            And that makes all the difference.

 

Straight Talk

 

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating…
…and you finish off as an orgasm.”

George Carlin—1937-2008

 

June 2008, the month George Carlin died, featured all this and more: GM’s stock plummeted to its lowest in 54 years, just under $10 a share. Ford’s stock price sunk close to $4 a share. Gas was about $4.25 a gallon, food prices had risen 50-300% in the last year. Business Week published an article, “Michigan: Epicenter of Unemployment,” (Business Week, David Kiley, June 24, 2008) documenting the personal pain in a state that leads the country in joblessness.

            You might wonder what George Carlin would say if you could ask him about gas prices over $4.00 a gallon,  a shrinking economy, a dying domestic auto industry, or a banking system that is reeling from losses, while two political candidates toss out changing platitudes that seem to originate in a lost world. He would probably smirk with an I-told-you-so look and make some comment using one of his “seven dirty words” about the U.S. If he hadn’t died from heart failure last month, he might have quoted himself, “Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that…”

            Carlin was one of the few public celebrities who actually talked straight. Whether you loved him or hated him, he said what others were afraid to say. He analyzed words and their usage, he disparaged all types of politicians and every form of religion, and wasn’t afraid to rail on the United States when he felt like it. Very little escaped his sarcasm or wrath and even if you cringed, you could laugh or at least sense some bit of truth in his words.

            First, we lost Tim Russert, another straight talker who was respectful and polite when he tried to keep politicians honest. With the death of George Carlin, who are we going to turn to when we want the truth? Not the “straight talker,” John McCain or his opponent, Barack Obama, who both sound like standard cutout politicians.

            We are left with a void. Now, it’s time to fill it.

            Onward and upward with the adventures of Aggman…

 

Lessons of a Catholic Mensch

 

It was not a typical Father’s Day in America. Sunday, June 15, 2008 became a day of mournful celebration. The morning began for me and millions of others viewing NBC and its’ Today Show, not normally shown on Sunday. This was followed by a Meet the Press that started by displaying an empty desk, the desk that Tim Russert had occupied for the last seventeen years. America’s preeminent “ television newsman” and writer of two best-selling books about fathers died on Friday the 13^th, two days before Father’s Day.

            Once the three bells and distinctive brass instruments of the theme song from Today sounded on CNBC on my XM radio in my work office on Friday afternoon, I went home and watched TV news coverage on MSNBC, CNN, and NBC, transfixed by the recurring images of Russert from Meet the Press, his election day assignments, from his cable talk show, as well as photos of Tim’s wife and son, Luke, and his father, “Big Russ,” in a constant loop. His handwritten words, “Florida, Florida, Florida,” written on a white chalkboard on Election Night 2000, was shown at least a dozen times.

            When a public figure that we spend more time with than our extended family dies, we feel a sudden chilling loss. When that someone is a person as exuberant, passionate,   influential, and memorable as Tim Russert, the loss seems so much harder.

            I myself could hardly budge from my chair over the weekend. On Father’s Day, I hardly felt like celebrating. My father’s health has been slowly weakening in the last two years; my father-in-law has Parkinson’s disease and has had insomnia for months, and this week is discussing his funeral. I am 51 years old, have gained 20 pounds in the last year, have high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure. Over the Father’s Day weekend, my mood was exceptionally low.

            Tim died at work when a cholesterol plaque dislodged and ruptured, causing an occlusive coronary thrombus in his left anterior descending artery. He had turned 58 five weeks and two days earlier.

            Tim was one of my heroes, honest, hard-working, passionate, devoted to his family, country, and Catholic religion. He laughed and joked and cared about kids. He wanted Americans to know the truth about our politicians, our candidates. He grilled them on Meet the Press each week, always “taking the other side.” He may have been friendly and respectful but he made each guest accountable for their own words and actions, past and present.

            He was the ultimate son and father, loving, proud, always striving to communicate honestly and simply. What we thought, Tim said; what we felt inside, Tim showed outside on his face and with his tongue. Now, it’s too late for any more of his interviews and words. We are left to watch TV footage and read his books to get a dose of his exuberance and joy.

            On Father’s Day, we realized that we had lost one of the fathers of television news. He was like a father to many of his viewers and we trusted him to help take care of our country like a father should.

            Now, we can wander aimlessly, trying to learn from his life. “Go get ‘em,” he would tell his news reporters in the Washington Bureau that he managed. Now, we have to imagine him saying, “Go get ‘em” to us. Can we strive to be courageous, honest, passionate, and still believe in our country? One of Tim’s favorite phrases was “What a country!” Will we in America strive like Tim to prepare every day for work, for life, to believe that if we give every thing we have, we might reach a higher level?     

The old catchphrase when Michael Jordan was winning championships for the Chicago Bulls was, “Be Like Mike.” Today, the mantra spinning in my mind is, “Be like Russ.” Not the Big Russ who was Tim’s dad, the man who inspired him by taking care of four kids by working two jobs, just quietly being a good father who worked and lived with honor. Russ to me and so many more is Tim Russert, and what I remember so clearly is his big smile, the way he cajoled the people he talked with to come clean and be honest about themselves.

Tim Russert was a devout Catholic but I can’t think of any public or private figure who radiated the definition of menschkeit more than Tim. He was “admired, respected, and trusted because of a sense of ethics, fairness, and nobility;” he was just a fundamentally decent and good person.

 Without ever meeting him, I can still relate to Tim as a mentor. His passionate enthusiasm for America, families, and life was contagious. His smile was broad, his excited intelligence was exhilarating, and his caring for so many others was inspiring. If I can live the next seven years aspiring to the legacy of Russert, I would be satisfied to drop dead at 58. If I can live with the passion, love, and joy of “Little Russ,” I will count my life as a “noble” success.

Welcome to my First Weblog

This is my first weblog. I will post some of my older essays that haven’t been seen and then I will print some newer pieces. I hope to make this site inviting and interesting. Hope you enjoy it.