Medford mail tribune., May 22, 1960, Image 39

Family WeeJcly May a. iseo
By RAY KERRISON
I
It was 2 a.m. when the
phone rang. Father Charles
Clark, a Jesuit priest of St.
Louis, Mo., struggled out of
bed, pulled on a robe, and
" i fy i i s,ro(Je tne phone.
IV "ThiS 'S Fathef Clark" he
I said sleepily.
I 1 " T: i f .. .1 "
Willi IIC1 C, X'CILIICl, lame
a young voice. "Me and a
buddy, Randy, have got a
supermarket all set up.
We're going to hit' it tomorrow. If we score, we're
in the chips. Pray for us, Father."
"This is a big job, Jim," replied the priest in
alarm. "Who's this guy Randy? Is he any good?
Is he jumpy with a gun?"
"No, Father," said Jim, uncertainly. "We've
cased the place and got it all figured out."
"Has Randy done any 'jobs' before? Has he
pushed over a gas station? Supermarkets are a lot
tougher than gas stations. You'd better bring him
over to see me."
An hour later, two young pistol-toting kids
walked into Father Clark's office.
"I don't know you, son," Father Clark told .
Randy. "Done any jobs before?"
Randy swung on his pal. "Are we going to stand
here all night listenin' to this guy yack?"
Jim smashed a fist into Randy's mouth. "Nobody
talks to Father Clark like that," he yelled.
The 58-year-old priest jumped between the
youths. "Step outside, Jim," he said. "I want to
talk to Randy."
He sized up the lad quickly. Then he spoke.
"You'll never make a gunman. I can tell that by
your fingers. They're too small."
Then, abruptly, the priest asked, "Where does
your mother live?"
"My father shot her," mumbled Randy in tears.
"I'll get you a job, son. And a good place to live."
Soon, Jim and Randy had abandoned their plans
for the stick-up. They went out into the night and
have not been in trouble since.
Father Clark went back to bed. It was all part
of the day's and night's work.
For 25 years, the lean, strawberry-haired priest
has made the cruel underworld his parish. His
flock is made up of murderers, arsonists, hijackers,
forgers, and burglars.
From Alcatraz to Sing Sing and all the prisons
in between, he is known to thousands inside and
outside the law as the hoodlums' priest.
Fired by a consuming compassion for criminals
and a matching horror of crime, he has dedicated
his life to helping lawbreakers. He has saved 10
men from the gas chamber and has sponsored more
than 2,000 convicts for parole. He has found jobs
and homes for hundreds of hardened thugs once
bankrupt of hope. Scores have been saved from
imprisonment by his intercession.
Father Clark, wired in on the underworld
grapevine, is one of the best-informed men in
the "business." He has long lost count of the num
ber of wrongdoers who have surrendered to him.
Those steered to security and peace by the priest
come close to worshiping him.
One convict, released last year after 18 years in
the penitentiary for armed robbery, declared ear
nestly, "I would willingly die for Father Clark.
And I know a hundred more who would, too."
His success in rehabilitating ex-convicts is im
pressive. Of the thousands helped by his unfailing
kindness, an astonishing 98 percent have since
maintained an unblemished record!
A judge once told the priest: "Sometimes I hate
you and sometimes I love you."
Sitting in his study one night, the priest heard
over the radio that two men had been slain in a
hotel holdup. The culprits had been caught
Father Clark rushed to the jail where he found
a snarling, blood-smeared hood named Sammy in
a cell. He knew him slightly.
The precocious son of a lawyer and an actress,
Sammy had been adopted by a woman incapable
of managing him. At 17, he had been put away for
two years for a $19 robbery. Now he was arrested
for murder.
Policemen could not get near Sammy in the cell.
When they approached, he pulled a razor blade as
though from thin air and slashed viciously at them.
Father Clark went inside Sammy's cell. "What's
wrong, Sammy?" he asked. Within a minute, the
young hoodlum began sobbing, then he collapsed.
For the murder trial, Sammy had a battery of
six of the best lawyers in St. Louis, recruited by
Father Clark. But he was found guilty and sen
tenced to death. His partner got 10 years.
For Father Clark, the fight had just begun. He
and the lawyers, who offered their services free,
worked doggedly to save Sammy.
For two-and-a-half years, they shuttled to
and from the State Supreme Court, presenting
briefs and motions. Finally, the court ruled that
Sammy had been tried for the murder of two hotel
employees. (You can only face one murder charge
at a time.) It granted a new trial.
At this, Sammy pleaded guilty and was sen
tenced to life imprisonment He owes his life to
Father Clark.
One of the priest's most sensational cases in
volved a nurse, whom we will call Jean. Father
Clark knew her as a respectable, hard-working
woman. He also knew her husband as a brute who
drank heavily and often beat her.
After one spree, Jean's husband came home
swinging. For self-defense, she grabbed a carving
knife and, in the scuffle, plunged the knife into her
husband's back.
In court, a friend tipped off Father Clark that
Jean, in the judge's chamber with her lawyer, was
ready to plead guilty in exchange for having the
charge reduced from first-degree to second-degree
murder. The priest sprang to his feet and burst
into the chamber.
"Jean," he pleaded, "don't plead guilty. When
all the evidence comes out, no jury in the land
could possibly convict you."
She looked helplessly at her lawyer and the
judge. They told her to ignore the priest Following
their counsel, she would get 10 years. Following
the priest's, she would risk her life.
Jean decided to follow Father Clark's advice.
After the trial, the jury didn't even bother to take
a vote. Its verdict of acquittal was unanimous.
Profoundly grateful, Jean threw her arms
around the priest and cried, "I love you." Then
she dashed to the nearest beauty parlor where she
had her hair dyed red the color of Father Clark's.
The Jesuit priest confesses to one bad mistake.
One night he sat in a drugstore, chatting with
the owner, when a youth walked in.
"One glance was enough to see he was going
to stick up the store," recalled the priest. "You
can always tell when a hood is on a job. He's
jumpy and his skin turns greenish-white. This kid
also had a hand in his pocket, obviously on a gun."
Father Clark said to him, "Look son, forget
about this job. This man has done a lot for guys
like you."
Then, jokingly, he added, "If you want to stick
up something, try the bar down the road."
Inside a half-hour, the priest heard the wail of
police sirens. "That dam kid took me at my word,"
he said. "Sure enough, he held up the bar!"
Since most cons consider an alias almost as im
portant as a gun, Father Clark took one himself
Dismas. St. Dismas was one of the thieves who
died on Calvary alongside Christ.
"To hoodlums, Dismas is the best con in his
tory," says Father Clark. "He stuck by Christ
when He was in trouble.
"So when people sometimes dismiss a certain
hood as hopeless, I point out that a thief was the
only one ever canonized personally by our Lord.
It' is a great consolation to hoodlums that they will
one day be judged by such a compassionate God."
Father Clark began his mission to criminals be
fore World War II. The youngest of 13 children
of an Illinois coal miner, he was, he says, headed
for the penitentiary himself.
"I was a wild kid," he said. "The cops in De
catur spent half their time chasing me, and hardly
a day passed that I wasn't mixed up in a brawl
or rolling dice."
But at 17 he met a Jesuit priest
"He changed my life. He was devoted to people.
He liked me and took an interest in me. We wrote
to each other. By his example, I decided to become
a Jesuit too."
Judge David Fitzgibbon, a prominent St Louis
jurist, one day invited Father Clark to visit his
court From there he visited jails and took ciga
rettes to inmates. He interviewed their families
and helped arrange paroles.
After the war, the priest studied criminology
and dedicated his life to helping criminals. Oper
ating virtually from a phone booth, he launched
the work that was to take him to prisons in every
state in the country.
Last October, with Judge Fitzgibbon and Mor
ris A. Shenker, an- Orthodox Jew and one of
the nation's leading criminal lawyers, Father Clark
opened a "halfway house" to help cons make
the transition from prison to freedom.
(Continued J
family Werkly, May 22, IXC 1