The Child Buyer (5 page)

Senator MANSFIELD. Please stand to be sworn, Mr. Owing.

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will give in the matter pending before the Standing Committee on Education, Welfare, and Public Morality of the State Senate will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Mr. OWING. I do.

TESTIMONY OF WBLLAKD OWING, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, TOWN OF PEQUOT

Mr. BROADBENT. Please identify yourself, sir.

Mr. OWING. It is a pleasure to be here, gentlemen. It is rare enough for the educator and the legislator to sit face to face.

Mr. BROADBENT. The record will show that you are Mr. Willard Owing, Superintendent of Schools in the township of Pequot, if you have no objection.

Mr. OWING. Glad to be here. Eager to help.

Friday, October 25

Mr. BROADBENT. We understand that you were the first person the man Wissey Jones came to see in Pequot.

Mr. OWING. Gentlemen, I hope you lawmakers will come down and visit us, come back to school, teach us about democracy.

Mr. BROADBENT. Mr. Jones put his proposition to you?

Mr. OWING. He was most congenial, sir. We had a pleasant talk about provisions for the gifted.

Mr. BROADBENT. He outlined the deal he wanted to make?

Mr. OWING. Under most circumstances, I told him, enrichment in the ordinary classroom, in the heterogeneous group-Mr. BROADBENT. I put this question to you: Did he tell you what he wanted?

Mr. OWING. He seemed rather ill-informed on our recent thinking about the developmental process. On the other hand, he was friendly, distinctly friendly. A constructive approach.

Mr. BROADBENT. Mr. Chairman, I—

Senator MANSFIELD. Please try to answer the questions, Mr. Owing.

Mr. OWING. Of course. Willingly, Senator. Anything.

Mr. BROADBENT. Did Mr. Wissey Jones tell you he wanted to buy a young boy?

Mr. OWING. I want to help in any way I can.

Mr. BROADBENT. Mr. Owing, sir, would you kindly tell us your understanding of the man Wissey Jones's plan?

Mr. OWING. He seems bitterly opposed to enrichment. I couldn't get at the reason. It seemed to be a matter of emotion, like so many parents we have coming in. Mind you, we have an exceptionally fine type of parent in my little bailiwick.

Mr. BROADBENT. Sir—

Senator SKYPACK. Listen, Owing, answer the man!

Mr. OWING. My dear Senator, I am most eager to help.

Mr. BROADBENT. The man Wissey Jones, under oath before

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this committee, testified that you were the first person he saw in Pequot, and that he outlined to you his plan to buy a child, and that you turned him over to Mr. Cleary. Is this—?

Mr. OWING. Mr. Cleary is a strong believer in enrichment, if I'm not mistaken; dead set against acceleration. . . .

Senator SKYPACK. Look here, Owing, we understand Cleary's a schemer.

Mr. OWING. He's a planner, if that's what you mean, sir. No one in the town school system, including me, can take on a complex problem of curriculum or budget or transportation and effect a tidier schedule of operations, combining practical foresight with an unerring avoidance of criticism from taxpayers. He can see pitfalls from a year's distance. Oh, I bank on him.

Mr. BROADBENT. You talked to Cleary shortly after your interview with Mr. Jones? You made a special trip to Lincoln Elementary for this purpose. Is that correct? You hurried over there—

Mr. OWING. I'd like to ask my Board to promote Mr. Cleary to Assistant Superintendent; he has the qualities—agressive, superlative organizer, respected by the teachers. On the other hand, of course, what holds me back is that I sometimes feel a slight undertow there, a troublemaking tendency.

Senator SKYPACK. You mean he's one of the hotheads that are stirring the whole thing up? He might be responsible for the violence?

Mr. OWING. I didn't mean quite that.

Mr. BROADBENT. I think you did. That's what you suggested.

Mr. OWING. No, really, that's your implication. Or do I mean inference? Goodness, sometimes I wonder.

Senator SKYPACK. You called him a troublemaker.

Mr. OWING. Not exactly.

Senator SKYPACK. Did you or didn't you call him a troublemaker?

Mr. OWING. The point is, the violence, as you call it, is quite outside the authority of the school system. If we asked our schools to take on matters that properly belong in the home, the church, the town hall—

Mr. BROADBENT. Do you have any idea who was behind the assault on the Rudd home?

Mr. OWING. I will say this to you: I think Mr. Cleary may have caused some trouble by short-cutting things, by going directly to the Rudd family after my briefing without waiting to talk with the child buyer. I mean, on the basis of the information I was able to give him—

Mr. BROADBENT. And that this may have had some connection with the night attack by a gang of hoodlums on the Rudd family home?

Mr. OWING. No, no, I didn't say that.

Mr. BROADBENT. Can you give us an account of the attack?

Mr. OWING. All I meant was that Mr. Cleary was hasty. Or may have been.

Mr. BROADBENT. You don't believe he was behind the assault?

Mr. OWING. As I understand it, all or most of the windows were broken. Some sort of ordure or slop was poured down the chimney. I was telephoned by the police at nigh onto midnight, I was dead to the world, I thank God for the talent for sound sleep even after a parlous day. Let's see, it must have taken place at about eight, nine. The police had succeeded in capturing only one person—running away down the street; and you'll never guess who that was.

Mr. BROADBENT. We know, sir, who it was.

Mr. OWING. Barry Rudd.

Mr. BROADBENT. Yes, we knew that. On another point: We understand that Miss Perrin, the Rudd boy's teacher, has been strongly opposed to Mr. Jones's purchase of this boy. Why would that be, sir?

Mr. OWING. Imagine my astonishment when I heard that that

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young genius, with his enigmatic face, was in jail like a common criminal! But I thought, you never can tell with these precocious ones— Mr. BROADBENT. Why are some people fighting this excellent

proposition?

Mr. OWING. She's a fine, patriotic lady. She has the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights tacked on the underside of every desk top in her room.

Senator SKYPACK. That second thing you mentioned there, Bill of Rights, isn't that where they have all those amendments? The Fifth Amendment's in that, isn't it, Broadbent? Mr. BROADBENT. The first ten amendments, I believe— Senator SKYPACK. You call that patriotic, Owing? Holding up the Fifth Amendment to every kid?

Mr. BROADBENT. Mr. Owing, do you call what she is alleged to have done in fomenting and leading a teachers' strike, some years back—a strike, in effect, against taxpayers and little children—you call that patriotic, sir? But on another point, Mr. Owing, about this bomb that was thrown— Senator MANSFIELD. Mr. Broadbent!

Mr. BROADBENT. About this stink bomb that was thrown, could you tell us—

Mr. OWING. Miss Perrin has always— Senator MANSFIELD. I must say, Mr. Owing-Mr. OWING. It came in a window. As near as we can make out, it was lobbed in one of the auditorium windows from the asphalt playground outside. It landed about four feet in front of the apron of the stage, and it made a yellow cloud. Phui! I never!

Mr. BROADBENT. Have you any theory as to who might have— Mr. OWING. You were asking about Mr. Wissey Jones and enrichment—

Mr. BROADBENT. Mr. Chairman, I give up. Uncle.

Senator MANSFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Owing, you may be excused. We appreciate your coming up here to testify.

Mr. OWING. Enrichment—

Senator SKYPACK. Is there a bailiff? Could we have a bailiff?

Senator MANSFIELD. Mr. Broadbent, kindly escort Mr. Owing . . . Yes. That's it. Thank you.

Senator VOYOLKO. Who was that fella?

Senator MANSFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Broadbent. And now.

Mr. BROADBENT. We will hear Mr. Sean Cleary.

Senator MANSFIELD. Please be sworn, Mr. Cleary.

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will offer will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Mr. CLEARY. Yes, I do.

TESTIMONY OF MR. SEAN CLEARY, DIRECTOR OF GUIDANCE, TOWN OF PEQUOT

Mr. BROADBENT. Please identify yourself for the record as to name, residence, and occupation, sir.

Mr. CLEARY. I'm Sean Cleary, 221 Second Street, Pequot, and I'm Director of Guidance for the public schools of that community.

Mr. BROADBENT. You call yourself Director of Guidance. Exactly what does that mean, sir?

Mr. CLEARY. Well, I was trained as a vocational-guidance counsellor, I got my M.A. in education at Perkins State Teachers, studied under Professor Sender, head of the vocational-guidance department, and I met the State requirements in vocational guidance by holding a job as a stamp-press operator in the Northeastern States Bottle Cap Corporation in

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Treehampstead for six months. In other words, I was an expert in how to help high-school students decide what career to follow, how to train for it, how to get a job. So then I was hired into the Pcquot system, and I was assigned not only vocational guidance but also psychological guidance for the high school, as well as psychological guidance at Lincoln Elementary, where my office is situated, in a former coat closet. I have seven hundred twenty students. I am also in charge of audio-visual and driver training. I coach basketball. I monitor the library study

hall. I—

Mr. BROADBENT. What exactly do you do in what you call psychological guidance?

Mr. CLEARY. I give psychological tests, I.Q. tests, so on. Then I also have to do a great deal of nursemaiding of both children and mothers, and I give parents what we call parent-teacher therapy. Among students I am supposed to solve and cure insubordination, gold-bricking, dullness of mind, smoking, drinking, sexual promiscuity, law fracture, money madness, suicidal selfishness, aggression, contempt for property, want of moral anchorage, fear of failure and of fear.

Mr. BROADBENT. Have you had psychological training?

Mr. CLEARY. There hasn't been time for that as yet. Or money—the taxpayers are rather hostile to the idea of guidance. ... I hope to get an in-service credit in play therapy this next semester, and after that, who knows? Of course I have tried to read whatever I could. I have had to become an unwilling student of abnormal psychology, and I may say, Mr. Chairman, I am constantly on the alert for signs of lunacy in everyone with whom I come into contact. This very minute ...

Senator MANSFIELD. I see. Yes. Very interesting. Are you—

Mr. CLEARY. Sometimes, I must confess, I feel a sort of whirl of vertigo, and I have a thrust of suspicion that I myself am bats

Friday, October 25

and that what seems to be madness in the people with whom I am conversing—

Senator MANSFIELD. Yes, yes, fascinating, yes.

Mr. CLEARY. —is only my own insanity which I project onto them.

Senator MANSFIELD. I see. Yes. Surely. Dear me. Senator Voyolko, do you have any questions?

Senator VOYOLKO. Huh?

Mr. BROADBENT. Now, Mr. Cleary.

Senator MANSFIELD. There was something I wanted to say. . . . Oh, yes. Mr. Broadbent, I suppose that after our last witness even you will welcome some consecutive testimony. I mean, something in a straight line.

Mr. BROADBENT. I was just going . . . Now, Mr. Cleary, would you search your memory and begin with the very first thing that happened on the morning of the day you met the man Wissey Jones?

Mr. CLEARY. Hmm. Dr. Gozar. Yes. Before school I had a talk with Dr. Gozar, our principal at Lincoln. We were standing out on the grounds, waiting for the first bell. It was one of those October days we have around here when the sky's like a thin plastic balloon; the maple trees were turning to gold and the dogwoods were already bronze. We were lounging against the jungle gym on the playlot, and we had to speak up to hear each other, because some of the older boys' voices over next the blank auditorium wall were like bugles. Dr. Gozar stood with her back to the steel-pipe frame, her arms raised and spread, gripping two high pipes with her hands. She's in her late sixties, but she made a picture of health and confidence, I tell you. She has the shape of a thirty-year-old woman, and with her arms pulled back that way . . . She has an oval head set on a strong neck. White teeth—her own, I believe.

Mr. BROADBENT. And you and she were having a discussion.

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Mr. CLEARY. We were talking about the talent search I had been conducting, which had in fact been my idea to begin with. Now, to give you the background on my own point of view, I think I should tell you I flatter myself that I'm a realist. I think the worst I can call anyone is 'na'ive' or 'emotional.' This is a tough world, and I've come to regard all gentle and soft feelings, my own more than anyone else's, as slop, bushwa, naivete, sentimentality, and what confounds people who don't agree with me, like Dr. Gozar, is that I'm so often right. I won't say always. It's a jungle world, and I'm dedicated to being as tough as I can, or seeming so, anyway. I'm not afraid of anything except blushing. Quite frankly, the decisive things in this world are position and money, and of these two the former is by far the more important, because money, though it may help with appearances, can never buy prestige or a real power to manipulate. Money power is bogus; that's why so many rich people are unhappy, Command is the only really satisfying wealth.

Mr. BROADBENT. You mentioned that you were discussing the talent search with Dr. Gozar.

Mr. CLEARY. I assume that you want me to be frank with you, so I'll simply say that Dr. Gozar was getting nosey about it. She wanted to know how I ever got the School Board to fall for it, and I explained that I had, on my own initiative, dug up support for the project from a foundation, so it wouldn't cost the taxpayers a cent; that appealed to Mr. Wairy, the chairman of our Board, in a big way. My original idea was to identify the neurotic youngsters, so we could open a parent-child clinic, but the Foundation for National Superiority in Education, which sponsors the project, felt that there should be a slightly different emphasis, and since it was providing the cash—