Mysteries of running revealed

As fog slammed into the Golden Gate Bridge on a recent Sunday morning, I found myself yelling at a Livermore city official. “Doug!” I shouted to Doug Horner, Livermore’s newest city council member. He was passing within a yard of me, his glasses fogged, his S.F. Giants hat snug on his head. He was running toward Marin as I was running toward San Francisco. He looked up at the sound of his name, but, caught in the flow of more than 4,200 damp humans running the San Francisco Marathon, he didn’t see me.

This was my tenth marathon, Horner’s first, and also my wife’s first.

My wife, Pamela, who is the economic development director for the City of Pleasanton, trained many months for the race, and ended up beating her goal by running it in 4 hours and 15 minutes.

Here's a video clip of her training on a long run:

Scenes along the 26.2-mile route included a runner with hair shaped into foot-high spikes who dashed away from a sprinkler to save his hairdo; a retired Army Ranger carrying a POW / MIA flag and calling cadence; and a runner dressed like a Greek, complete with armor helmet, breastplate, a shield, and a spear.

Of course, creative outfits are part of the San Francisco running culture, mostly associated with Bay to Breakers.

But while Bay to Breakers is reasonable at just over seven miles, the marathon requires many hours of running. And for non-distance runners, this can be a mystery: Why on earth would anyone run for three, four, five, and, for some people, six or seven hours straight?

Bill Radulovich, an elementary school principal in Pleasanton who has completed 60 marathons and ultra-marathons, says that running long distances “is an existentialistic thing” and allows individuals to “ create the meanings of their own lives.”

Radulovich believes that running long races can create personal transformation and growth in life: “You set demanding goals, dedicate yourself toward them, work through adversity and discomfort, and you forge a new self.”

Having achieved his personal goals in racing, these days Radulovich trains and supports his daughter and a few of her college-age friends. This year alone he has run 5 marathons, 3 of which were as a pace setter for the girls.

“Watching them as they forge new selves is the greatest gift that running has given me,” he said.

While the marathon as a race was inspired by the story of a messenger named Phiedippides who ran from Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C. with word of a Greek victory—and then died of exhaustion after delivering the news—some scholars believe that particular run never happened. While Greeks did use couriers to cover distances, this story cannot be found in records of the time, and didn’t appear until 600 years later. Plus, if a courier did run to Athens, it probably wasn’t Phiedippides since even before the battle he’d been dispatched to cover 150 miles to Sparta to seek help as the Persian enemy was gathering in Marathon.

While dedicated runners may feel disappointed learning this, we can take heart that Phiedippides, who ran the 150 miles in two days, was actually an ultra-marathoner.

Another tidbit about the race is that the distance of 26 miles, 385 yards, came about by chance. When the modern Olympics were established in Greece in 1896, the marathon was 24.8 miles, and then varied every four years depending on the venue. When London hosted the Games in 1908, the distance was planned at 26 miles, from Windsor Castle to London. But because the royal family wanted a better view of the finish, the distance was extended 385 yards to the royal box. This set the official distance forever after.

Many aficionados argue that the most prestigious of all marathons is Boston, which has been run every April since 1897. To run Boston, a runner has to qualify by completing a prior sanctioned marathon no slower than a certain time, depending on age and gender.

And speaking of gender, women were not allowed to run the Boston Marathon until 1972, nor the Olympic Marathon until 1984. While it’s often assumed race organizers in those days tended toward male chauvinism, many race officials truly believed they were protecting women from the damage of strenuous running. This mind-set became prevalent after the 1928 Olympics when three women collapsed during an 800-meter run. While the women simply hadn’t trained enough, the world saw this as evidence that women didn’t have the stamina for long distances.

Over time, and with the running boom of the 1970s, women began successfully completing marathons, and in recent years marathon attendance has increased thanks to more women seeking the personal fulfillment that comes with finishing the long race.

It’s this fulfillment that prompted council member Horner to start training. ”My wife has run three marathons, my brother and my brother-in-law have both run one, so in a way, I also wanted to be in that club,” he said. “I wanted to be able to say I’ve run one. After it was over, I was filled with a huge sense of achievement and satisfaction.”

A life etched with courage

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald on July 24, 2007.

She awoke to the rush of night air and a drop of water falling to her face from the wooden awning above the back door. That’s when she realized she was being carried. That’s when, at six years old, Sandra Kay looked up into a man’s face obscured by a light-colored bandana.

"He came in through the back door,” said Kay, 41, whose green eyes flickered as she told her story sitting outside a coffee shop in Pleasanton. “He walked right past my brother sleeping in the living room, past my parents’ bedroom, down the hall to my room where a friend was sleeping over, and lifted me from my bed.”

The man carried Kay’s little body out the back and into the garage. There, he told her to shut up. There, he violated her.

Later that night, after she was let go, Kay stood pounding on her parents’ bedroom door.

The Hayward police investigated, dusted for fingerprints, and identified the man. He turned out to be the nephew of either a friend or neighbor, Kay said. He was on parole, and knew the back door lock was broken because he’d helped move furniture in the house.

But before police could make an arrest, the man’s roommate--a former cellmate--accused him of stealing tools or some other personal items. The roommate drove to the man’s place of work and shot him to death.

Because of her young age and the certainty this man would never bother her again, Kay recovered emotionally from the assault. Yet some years later when Polly Klaas was kidnapped from her bedroom as a friend was sleeping over, Kay’s wounds re-opened. “So many things were similar,” Kay said. “I've always felt a spiritual connection to that beautiful girl.”

Ten years after the assault, when Kay was 16, she went to San Francisco with an older girlfriend to a dance club that welcomed minors 18 and older. Kay had a false identification, and soon found herself dancing with a charming young man named Pierre.

“As a chubby high school girl,” Kay said, “I usually danced alone or with female friends. I was so glad for the male attention.”

After a few dances, Pierre invited Kay to step outside to talk. She was surprised at how much they had in common. When he asked what books and movies she liked, he’d respond, “Me too!”

“It's painfully clear to me now, his strategy,” she said.

After more dancing and after her girlfriend called it a night, Kay accompanied Pierre to a payphone to call around to see if other nightclubs would welcome minors. Expressing frustration with the payphone, Pierre suggested they use the phone in his nearby apartment.

“I thought I’d met someone pretty special, so I went to his apartment,” Kay said. “In an instant, this man went from a dance partner and friend to an angry, mad-looking, violent and evil man. He used physical force, intimidation, and threats to take out his rage by violating my body.”

Eventually, Kay was let go. “He took me back to my car and gave me a rose, if you can stand that,” she said.

On her way home, Kay pulled over to call the friend she’d gone out with: “She told me I’d been raped and not to take a shower. She came and got me.”

Kay and her friend went to the police and identified the man from a folder of photos. He was wanted for raping two other girls. Everything he'd told her was a lie: his age, his occupation, his name.

In court, the defense questioned her clothing that evening, suggested her culpability since she was out after hours, magnified the crime of using a fake ID, and delved into whether or not she was a virgin.

“None of it worked,” Kay said. “He was sentenced to twenty years and deported to his country, which I think was Armenia.”

Fast forward a year. It's October and Sandra Kay is now 17 and she's walking to her boyfriend’s apartment. She hears someone behind her and thinks it's her boyfriend about to surprise her, so she quickly turns to surprise him first. But it's not her boyfriend.

“Some guy in a hood with a gun jams it against my head and tells me to stay quiet.”

Kay was forced into her car and ordered to drive, ending up behind San Leandro High School. The hooded man covered her head and dragged her out of the car.

“And here we go again,” she said, “the rage, the anger, the rape. Only this time, my soul popped out of my body and hovered over to the left. And somehow I knew that this man was taking out his rage on this body, but not on me.”

Then ordered back into the car, Kay drove as the man held the gun to her temple, his hand shaking as he yelled and debated over and over whether he should kill her.

Near train tracks, he had her pull over. “I thought this is it. I'm dead.” But he flipped up the rearview mirror so it pointed to the sky, opened the passenger door, and fled down the tracks into darkness, leaving her with threats that he knew where she lived, knew her boyfriend, would be back if she contacted police.

“And so my post trauma began,” Kay said, “living in a fear so paralyzing I would not move from a sitting position on the couch.”

Kay had to start over to learn how to talk, how to move, how to trust. “It’s a debilitating, chronic, and inescapable fear all the time for a long, long time,” she said. "With post trauma, because it's a neurological and spiritual injury, not a physical one, you can't see it like you can see broken bones, but the same process needs to take place, only internally. It's like being paralyzed physically from the neck down, like being dropped on cement from an airplane."

The lengthy healing process after trauma also involves calming the automatic startle response, dealing with the hypervigilance triggered by any number of stimuli. Kay remembers while working at a Togos being stricken with fear as a man's hand reached for change, a hand that slightly resembled the hand of the hooded rapist.

Today she credits her return to health with realizing that post trauma is a neurological disorder that needs to be treated medically. “Talk therapy can only go so far,” Kay said. She also makes sure to get sufficient sleep with over-the-counter medication, when needed. “Healing cannot take place without proper sleep,” she said.

The mother of two beautiful children, Kay is a courageous survivor who writes a blog at www.shesayswithasmile.blogspot.com. She’s also a published poet and a volunteer with Tri-Valley Haven where she gives her time to assist women in the immediate aftermath of sexual assault.

And just over a year ago, on her cheek, probably somewhere near the spot where that tiny drop of water awakened her when she was six, she walked into a tattoo parlor and celebrated her survival by having a small Japanese character etched onto her cheek.

The tattoo reads courage.

To honor Sandra Kay and join her in making a difference, visit www.trivalleyhaven.org.









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Warm sand and good words

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in July 2007.

For the past 15 years, for the week of the Fourth of July, I've loaded up the car with kids and fishing poles and beach chairs and driven to Twain Harte, a small town in the Sierra north of Sonora.

These annual treks into the mountains often yield moments that find their way into this column.

Faithful readers may recall that I taught my youngest daughter how to fly fish on a trip to Twain Harte, and how, in another column, I was "pitched into a rushing river. In an instant, I was downriver from the raft, abducted by brute force from my wife and daughters, my head dunking under from time to time, my mind flooded with thoughts of drowning."

So as we drove last week through Escalon on our way to the Sierra, I asked my wife and daughters to be on the lookout for ideas for my column: "It's not necessary that one of us encounter a near-death experience," I teased, "but if one of you would like to volunteer, it would be good for the column."

Thankfully, no one had to be airlifted from the edge of a cliff, though things got pretty exciting when my eldest daughter found several great books in a used bookstore, and my youngest daughter found the perfect stroke that earned her a free game of peewee golf.

And what my wife and I found was time. Time to sit and read for many hours on the beach at Twain Harte Lake. No e-mail. No computers. No phones. Just warm sand and good words.

One of the books we read, and enjoyed, was Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, subtitled A Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia.

The book recounts Gilbert's travels as she seeks happiness from life in the aftermath of a difficult divorce. Her writing style is friendly and comfortable.

Gilbert's insights got my wife and me thinking about how great it would be to take a year off, perhaps to travel, to cook more, to write, to rediscover aspects of ourselves we've put on hold.

While we love what we do and the life we have, we know that building a good life means trading away certain freedoms. If only we could clone ourselves and live several lives.

And yet a theme of Gilbert's book is that after the pleasure of food and friendship she enjoys in Italy, and after her spiritual successes in an ashram in India, she discovers love in Indonesia, and, ultimately, the joy of simply living.

Perhaps that's the message from this year's trip to Twain Harte: that good stories need not always be about cliffhangers or near-death experiences.

Sometimes the best story is rediscovering the quiet wisdom of reading, the love of being with family, and simple joy of living the life we have.

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Snapshots of a Georgia Bike Ride

This column was published in June 2007 in the Tri-Valley Herald

I recently took a week off and flew to Atlanta to visit my brother. I brought my bicycle, and we rode with several friends and 1,600 other cyclists in the annual Bicycle Ride Across Georgia, or BRAG.

Picture roads that run for miles alongside farms and fields, past tiny white country churches, through towns whose names are proudly painted on water towers, towns such as Americus, Cordele, and Baxley.

Picture cyclists riding these roads, quietly crossing Georgia, sleeping in tents on the grounds of high schools and colleges, or staying in hotels, each day rising to pedal east nearly 500 miles in seven days from Columbus to Savannah.

Picture these other snapshots:

A little girl in cornrows waves from her porch as her brother rides his Big Wheel in a dirt yard adjacent to a train track.

A police officer holds off traffic and waves us through a stop sign, smiling when we say thank you.

Acres of unfamiliar, leafy plants turn out to be tobacco.

We ride along rows of peanut crops and see a sign pointing the way to Plains, Jimmy Carter’s hometown. We see Billy Carter’s gas station.

A church group of black youngsters in matching aqua shirts reaches out to us to offer icy water bottles as we near another rural town.

On a downhill, a mother and her 14-year-old son—Chylon and Zac Thatcher—pass us on their tandem bicycle as “Strawberry Fields Forever” flows from a speaker above the rear tire. I tuck in behind them for few miles and sing along.

We wake one morning to heavy rain. The forecast is for thunderstorms. I tell my brother I didn’t fly all the way across the United States to sit in a hotel room. So our team sets out to cover the 78 miles planned for that day, and by mid-morning the rains yield to clear skies.

A dead armadillo, the sixth we’ve seen, lies along the side of the road. We’ll see other dead animals as well: two possums, a rattlesnake, two raccoons, and two hawks.

On Wednesday, the layover day when cyclists may rest or choose to ride one of several loops, we opt to ride the longest route, and nine hours later my odometer—which I reset every morning—ticks to 105 miles.

On another day, at a rest stop with morning temperatures beginning to rise, retired school principal Allyn Bell stands with friends. At 69, Bell has ridden BRAG for the past 16 years.

“I’m not a natural athlete,” he says in a thick southern accent, “but I can easily ride a bicycle 50 or 70 miles a day. I hope to ride each year until I’m at least 80.”

After a day’s ride, Rachel Fulton, a 33-year-old tattoo artist from Columbus, tells me this is her first BRAG. She’s riding with friends and enjoys the challenge. I ask about the tattoo that spills along her shoulder and upper arm, and she tells me it’s an Irish and Celtic theme, a tribute to her heritage. “I may get a tattoo related to cycling if I finish the ride,” she adds, “maybe something like a gear.”

At another rest stop, Alabama residents Ed and Melody Scott give water to their 13-year-old pound puppy, a Corgi Sheltie mix named Sadie. The Scotts tow Sadie in a covered carrier, and when I pass them later she seems content to glide along the many hundred miles.

And then there’s Joe Ninke, whose extended bicycle includes a platform with railings for his 5-year-old yellow lab, Luckie. This is Luckie’s and Joe’s second BRAG.

After each day’s ride, we record our mileage and take afternoon naps in our hotel rooms and call home and watch the Braves and Tiger Woods and the Weather Channel.

In the evenings we play a card game called nine-hole golf with Gene Zurik, Deborah Kalish, Parks Avery, and his daughter Jessy, who just graduated from Georgia State University and will attend law school in the fall. Each day Jessy drives our luggage to the next hotel and checks us in.

Her dad, Parks, has a quick wit and a knack for telling stories. He’s funny and grew up in the south and is an expert at mimicking a Scottish accent.

My brother takes to calling him Angus, after Angus Hisloop, a Scotsman Parks met ten years ago on a business trip to London. Parks and my brother banter with Scottish accents about sporting events and the names of dogs, and as the cards are dealt for another hand, I take a sip of sweet tea and marvel at this snapshot of life deep in rural Georgia.

It’s no wonder Bicycling Magazine named BRAG one of best 50 bike rides in the United States.

Chylon and Zac Thatcher

Joe Ninke and Luckie

Sadie

With Bill, my brother, in a small town called Fitzgerald deep in southern Georgia

Watching TV with Dad

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in 2007 just before Father's Day

When I was a teenager, one of my favorite things to do on a Saturday afternoon was to settle into a comfy chair in the living room and watch a movie on TV with my dad.

The movies were always in black and white because my parents didn’t see any compelling reason to buy a color TV. As long as Walter Cronkite and Ed Sullivan and Sunday football games found their way into our home through the antennae of our Zenith, not even the invention of the remote control could prompt my dad to buy a new TV set.

My sister enjoys telling the story of going off to college and sitting down one evening in a dorm room with friends to watch The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, only to jump up in amazement when Dorothy landed in munchkin land and everything turned to color.

"I had no idea," she said.

Of course, these were the days before VCRs and personal computers. The only cell phone we’d ever seen was in the shoe of Maxwell Smart. So in those years—the early 1970s—my family did things such as go to the library on Thursday evenings, drive out every so often on a Sunday after church to watch planes take off and land at the airport, and gather on occasion in our living room to listen to my dad read a poem by Longfellow or Poe.

I know this sounds nostalgic, but it really was like that.

And then there were those Saturday afternoon movies.

I’m sure my brother and sister occasionally came downstairs or from outside to watch TV with us, but what I mostly remember is just me and my dad watching films where the hero was always fighting some adversary or injustice, films like the 1963 version of Jason and the Argonauts or the 1940 Henry Fonda classic, The Grapes of Wrath.

Born in 1930, my dad, whose name is Bill, spent his childhood in a rough and blue-collar neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. His mother died when he was three, and his father worked in a steel mill.

After high school, my dad enlisted in the Air Force and then went to college. He became a high school history and English teacher, and later a guidance counselor at a community college.

Not unlike the characters in those movies, my dad emerged a hero for our family, a role model whose choices in life were as instructive as his words.

As a teenager, I remember feeling fortunate that my dad liked watching those movies, as it gave me an excuse to spend time with him.

These memories came back on a recent Saturday afternoon as I sat with my 15-year-old daughter in our living room watching a movie we’d picked up at the video store: the black and white 1962 classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.

My daughter, a voracious reader, read the book on her own last year, and will read it again next year as a sophomore. But she hadn’t seen the movie, and I hadn’t seen it in many years.

As we watched Gregory Peck play the father of Scout and Jem, the hero who stands up to social injustice, I thought of my dad, the depression-era boy who finally did buy a new TV with a remote control and now, at 77, watches movies in color with my mom in the same living room in Los Gatos where we all grew up.

I thought of him as I sat with my daughter on that Saturday, our faces turned toward the television on an afternoon that has already begun to fade into a black and white past to which I hope she’ll look back, one day, and remember.

Teen fathers find a new path

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald on May 29, 2007.

Two years ago, Wilmer Callejas was a 16-year-old gang member in East Oakland. He stole cars. He beat up rival gang members. He rode in cars involved in drive-by shootings.

Though he attended school, Callejas didn’t listen to adults or even his parents who warned him about the possible consequences of his behavior.

“What they said went in one ear and out the other,” he said.

In fact, with five arrests to his name, he’d spent time in juvenile detention, once serving as long as five months.

But that all changed when his 15-year-old girlfriend sat him down one day and told him she was pregnant.

"When she told me, my heart stopped,” Callejas said. “I was scared and didn’t know what to say.”

His girlfriend’s parents encouraged their daughter to have the baby, but they were skeptical about Callejas as a father.

“They thought I was a bad person,” he said, “and I was. But I decided I would do whatever it took to turn my life around.”

Callejas did what few teens in his situation ever manage to do. He found a way to leave the gang. “It was really hard to get out,” he said.

Dressed in jeans and a white In-N-Out Burger shirt, Callejas sat down with classmate Miguel Morales for an interview at Horizon High School to talk about their lives and hopes since becoming fathers.

The school, located in Pleasanton, is open to Tri-Valley school-aged parents, and provides high school curriculum, pre-natal and parenting skills training, counseling and therapy services, personal finance and budgeting, employability skills, and even an on-site childcare facility that doubles as a laboratory for soon-to-be parents.

Most of the 50 students enrolled at Horizon are mothers.

In fact, Callejas and Morales attend the school with their girlfriends—their babies’ mothers. And the couples bring their babies with them.

“We all go to school here,” said Callejas, smiling.

Unlike Callejas who is a junior, Morales, 19, will graduate this June. “I’d dropped out of school in Livermore and was starting to affiliate with gang members when my girlfriend got pregnant,” Morales said, crediting both his girlfriend with encouraging him to go back to school and the low student-to-teacher ratio at the school for helping him be successful academically.

Since enrolling at Horizon, Morales has earned all the credits needed for a diploma. He’s passed the high school exit exam, interned at the City of Pleasanton, gotten a job at Mervyns Department Store, and now supports a son—14-month-old Gabriel.

Both fathers live with their girlfriends and babies. Morales lives in Livermore at the home of his girlfriend’s parents, and Callejas lives in Oakland in his parents’ home.

“I pay rent to my parents for a room for the three of us,” said Callejas, who works at In-N-Out Burger near the Oakland Airport. Callejas said he also pays for car insurance and gas.

Both young fathers have hopes after high school. Callejas wants to become an auto mechanic or work in auto body repair and Morales plans to attend a trade school in Hayward to learn glass cutting.

As for other plans, when asked about marriage, the young men shifted in their chairs and smiled, and seemed a little embarrassed. In retrospect the question was premature.

What isn’t premature, though, is the devotion and commitment and the love in Callejas’ eyes whenever he steps into the daycare center and lifts his 18-month old daughter Analicia into his arms.

“My daughter has changed my life,” he said.














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Gifts from Janet

This column was published on May 15, 2007 in the Tri-Valley Herald.

Last year for Mother’s Day, I introduced readers to my mother, Janet. I shared how my mom’s enjoyment of writing poetry inspired me to become a writer.

I received many responses to the column, especially about the short, one-page stories she’s written in recent years to her grandchildren about her childhood memories in Minnesota and southern California.

Along with the stories, she’s written two books of poetry, and all of her works—given as Christmas gifts over the past few years—are contained in slim volumes simply bound with the assistance of Kinko’s.

My mom, who was born in 1933 and never went to college, has a straightforward writing style. Her poetry is never flowery, and her prose doesn’t try to be clever. While some of her stories recall tender and funny and memorable scenes, some simply depict a moment in time that captures who my mother was as a girl, moments that would otherwise be lost forever.

One example is her story about how my grandmother made clothes for my mother and uncle in the 1940s. With neither time nor money to sew pockets or zippers into pants, my grandmother instead inserted elastic into the waistbands.

But when my mom turned ten, shortly after moving to California, she got “a pair of blue denim pedal pushers with a zipper and pockets,” she writes. “I think it was Christmas. I put on the new pants and my roller skates.

"Out I went to skate up and down the sidewalk in my neighborhood. I stopped in front of the houses where my friends lived. Slowly I took something out of my pocket, looked at it, then put it back and skated on. I made several trips up and down the sidewalk that day. I was so proud of those pockets and was hoping someone would notice.”

Similar to her stories, my mom’s poetry speaks in a voice all her own. It doesn’t pretend to be Wordsworth or Dickinson. She simply writes from her heart, giving her readers a gift of herself.

And so, before this Mother’s Day fades from memory, here are a few stanzas from a poem by my mother. The verse is appropriate for Mother’s Day.

In sharing these words, I hope you’ll be inspired to pick up a pen or sit before a computer and simply start writing. Don’t worry about your style or whether the poetry or stories are dramatic. What’s important is that you capture your memories and write down what you’ve learned and know about life. Your children and grandchildren, though busy with their busy lives, are counting on you to preserve those memories.

Stanzas From “Contentment,” by Janet Ott

You cannot know before you have
one of your own how a child can burrow
into all the spaces of your heart, can fill
every vacancy.

You cannot know before you hold
your child and look into those soft eyes,
see the sweet smile and touch the softness
that you could fall so hard in love.

You can never know contentment, the long
lasting kind of contentment that fills your
soul, until a little child puts a tiny hand on one
cheek and with sweet lips, kisses the other.







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Deceased loved ones bring comfort

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald on May 1, 2007.

Eight years ago, my mother stepped into a room at Children’s Hospital in Oakland where she was helping to care for my three-year-old daughter who was recovering from heart surgery. She saw an elderly man sitting beside the bed with his legs crossed and his hand on my daughter’s arm.

The man was my grandfather who’d passed away in 1982.

“I clearly saw my dad comforting Kelsey,” she said. “Then he began to fade and was gone.”

Somewhat like my mother’s experience, Ron Hyde, of Pleasanton, encountered his grandmother’s presence in 1977 as he sat on a beach at sunset with friends in Tahiti.

“I want to say it was like a light, but I’m not sure,” he said. “But it was a presence, and I knew it was my grandmother and that she’d passed away.”

After returning home, Hyde said his mother started to tell him about his grandmother’s death. “I told her I already knew,” he said.

What prompted the topic of today’s column was my recent interview with psychologist Jean Shinoda Bolen, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of several bestselling books, including “Close to the Bone,” subtitled “Life-Threatening Illness as a Soul Journey.” I interviewed Bolen on the set of the "In A Word," the regional television show about books and authors on Channel 30 that I co-host with Kathy Cordova.

Bolen believes we’re not so much humans on a spiritual path as spiritual beings on a human path. In her book, she recounts how her own son, Andy, contacted her in the hospital upon his death from a rare disease at the age of 29.

“I was awakened from sleep in the dark early hours of morning by hearing Andy call ‘Mom’ in his old familiar voice,” she writes. “He was waking me to let me know that he was leaving his body.”

Bolen’s son hadn’t been able to speak above a whisper in his final days, and as she went to his bedside after he woke her, he was asleep and didn’t respond to her voice.

“In the moment that it took me to turn on the lights,” she writes, “he took his last breath.”

After his death, Bolen’s son contacted his father, Jim, on several occasions to let him know that he was okay and was “very much alive.”

One touching visit from Andy occurred the day after his memorial service, when Bolen’s husband chose not to accompany his son’s body to the crematorium because he reasoned he’d already said his goodbyes. Jim was feeling sad and had second thoughts when Andy spoke to him: “It’s okay, Dad, I’m not there either,” he said.

According to Bolen, incidents such as hearing a deceased loved one’s voice or encountering a presence is not all that uncommon.

Irma Slage, author of “Phases of Life After Death,” agrees. “People appear when there’s an emotional reason for it,” she said. “They feel the emotions of their loved ones and feel sad. They feel they need to be there to help them.”

Slage, who lives in Livermore, said that although most of us aren’t aware of it, loved ones are always with us in spirit and are only able to show themselves when using a lot of energy.

“Mostly they come through as an odor, as my husband well knows,” she said. “After his brother died and visited us, my husband always smelled the distinct odor of the brand of cigarettes that he used.”

Slage, though, has the ability to see deceased individuals and hear their voices as if they were in the physical world.

In fact, they seek her out because they know she can see them.

Slage first learned she had this rare ability in her twenties when she was cleaning her upstairs bathroom one day in 1977. Her friend, Rose, was suddenly standing in front of her.

“I couldn’t understand why Rose was there,” Slage said. “Then she told me I needed to call her husband.”

Slage walked into her bedroom, picked up the phone, but then hung up.

“I wondered if I was crazy,” she said.

Slage soon learned that Rose had died from breast cancer—an illness she had oncealed—on the day of the visit.

“That day was a turning point,” she said. “I finally realized that the voices I had been speaking with all my life were spirits. Until then, I’d thought everyone could hear voices in their minds.”

Today Slage conducts psychic readings and relays communications from deceased loved ones.

For skeptical customers, she recounts specific information that could only come from the loved one.

But visitations need not always come through a psychic. Dublin resident Bill Graham encountered a presence about five years ago that appeared as sparkles—a presence he sensed was the stepmother of his life and business partner, Trena Caskey.

“I asked out loud if it was Trena’s stepmom,” said Graham, who heard her say that it was. Then, as he felt a very cold kiss appear on his cheek, he clearly heard the stepmother say, “Tell Trena I love her and I’m okay.”

For more about Jean Shinoda Bolen and Irma Slage, visit www.jeanbolen.com and www.irmaslage.blogspot.com.

100 times in a boy's childhood

This column was published in April 2007 in the Tri-Valley Herald.

His eyes are blue, his hair is short. He’s 29 years old and lives in the Tri-Valley. Along with reading and chess, he enjoys, ironically, playing basketball.

Here’s his story.

“Toward the end of my dad’s life,” he said, “my dad moved out and my mother began going to a therapist, whose name was Bill.”

The young man, then nine, also began seeing the therapist, who took an interest in the boy and began spending personal time with his young patient, as did Bill’s roommate. “I spent weekends at their house and they took me places and on vacation,” he said.

Although the two men were lovers, “they were always appropriate with me,” he said. “But they were inappropriate professionally with how they manipulated our family.”

In the absence of the father, the men disciplined the boy and his younger brother. They choose which friends the boys could spend time with. They set strict rules of behavior and took away the family’s television.

After three years, a family friend, who happened to be the boy’s basketball coach, stepped forward and persuaded the mother to stop the therapist and his partner from “brainwashing” the family.

The coach’s intervention freed the family of three, and led to a successful malpractice suit against the therapist. But the new freedom soon turned into nightmares.

First, his father died from cirrhosis of the liver. Then, after the boy turned 13, the basketball coach who had rescued the family began to spend a lot of time at the family’s home.

“My mom always had him over and even had me spend the night at his house,” the young man said. “But he began abusing me.”

It happened at night, he said. “I always pretended I was asleep.”

He told no one and wouldn’t acknowledge the sexual encounters, even to the coach.

The abuse continued, and over a period of two years the bedroom door opened and closed over 100 times. Then, just before he turned 15, the boy put an end to it.

"I was bigger and stronger and finally confident enough,” he said.

Still, he kept the nightmares a secret for another two years because he didn’t think his mother would believe him.

And, in fact, she didn’t believe him at first. “My mom and I had been fighting a lot because I had refused to stay at his house,” he said. “He was such a close family friend and I knew that my mom had a strong connection with him.”

Eventually, after being persuaded of the truth by a neighbor and another friend, she came to the boy’s room.

“She held me for about 30 minutes,” he said. “We cried in each others arms. She must have said she was sorry 100 times. Then we called the police.”

Wearing a wire, the 17-year-old met the coach in a restaurant and tried to get him to confess, telling him that his counselor was legally required to report what the coach had done.

“He asked what it was he did,” he said. When the young man told him, the man said nothing like that ever happened. “He said he couldn't understand why I was saying it.”

Because the coach didn’t confess initially, police taped subsequent phone conversations. Finally, they got what they needed, and the case went to court.

“He was charged with 21 counts,” he said. “He pleaded no contest to two counts and served 18 months.”

Though free again, the boy, still in high school, now lost his mother to rheumatory arthritis.

“It got into her lungs and she was put on a ventilator,” he said. “I believe the actual cause was heart failure.”

After her death, the young man found journals that were supposed to have been thrown away: “She wrote about how in love with the coach she was. That’s why she always had him over and had me spend the night at his house. She wanted to have a relationship with him.”

In the years that followed, and in spite of the abuses, betrayals, and the loss of his parents, the young man found an inner strength. He went to John F. Kennedy University and earned a bachelor’s degree, and he found the courage to enter therapy.

“My therapist was amazing,” he said. “I personally wouldn’t change any situation I’ve gone through. I’m very happy with who I am today.”

Today the young man with short hair and blue eyes—undeterred by his past—is pursuing a master’s degree.

And yes, he even enjoys playing basketball.

“Each experience teaches us something,” he said, “and each should be valued regardless of how difficult it was.”







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30 scars and a lost childhood

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in March 2007.

Thirty scars cover her forearm. All through her childhood, while girls her age were playing with friends, she was alone.

“I used to daydream about what my first sleep-over would be like,” she said, “all of us girls sitting around on warm couches swapping stories and giggling about our secret crushes.”

A good student growing up in the Tri-Valley, this young woman enjoyed her studies, but longed to play after school with friends. But her father wouldn’t let her.

“My dad didn't allow me to leave the house under any circumstances,” she said. When he came home every day around four o'clock, he would always interrupt her homework so they could “play.”

At first, she enjoyed the attention that had started when she was very little. “My dad and I would play until my mom pulled into the driveway,” she said.

Her father even insisted they have playtime before she went to sleep, so her mother left the two of them alone. Before he left the room each night, her father would thank her for being such a good girl and say the reason he played with her is because he loved her.

As she grew older, she knew something was wrong. And by 8th grade she worked up the courage to challenge her father and one day told him, “I don’t want to play with you anymore. I want to have friends and my own life. I am sick of school and I am sick of you."

Amazingly, he was kind and said he supported her decision.

She reveled in her new-found freedom, but almost before she knew it, her father led her into the garage and hit her hand and arm 36 times with a hammer.

As a doctor put a cast on her arm, she realized she would need to keep silent if she hoped to live.

“After that day, if I so much as flinched while my father played with me, he would scar my arm with the end of his cigarette.”

As she entered high school, the young girl started acting out. She began to swear and do drugs and one day in defiance lit a cigarette and stubbed it out on a school administrator’s desk.

In spite of her unacceptable behavior, her teachers truly cared about her, she said, and reached out to do everything they could.

Finally, thirty scars, nine casts, and countless tears later, she realized she needed out, and shared her story with a trusted adult. She learned that the special attention she’d received from her father was called incest, and only then—contrary to her understanding—she learned this molestation was illegal.




“I lived in four different foster homes before I was permanently placed into a group home with 29 other girls,” she said.

Soon she began working with a lawyer to prepare for trial against her father. She remembers it was a Monday when, at 14, she walked into the courtroom.

“My eyes connected with his,” she said. She quickly looked away and caught a glimpse of her mother who sat beside her father, gripping his hand, still in love with him, angry and frustrated with her daughter.

Tugging on her attorney’s case file, she told him she couldn’t go through with it. “The fire that haunted me in my nightmares burned deeper and brighter that day,” she said.

Over time, as her mother realized the truth and filed for divorce, the young woman wrestled with her father’s actions through years of therapy.

Now at 21, she still struggles to pull her life together, and sometimes wonders if it would have been easier to keep silent and wait for the end of high school when she could have quietly escaped the nightmare that was her home.

Against her sea of troubles, she has taken steps, and because she’s certain she wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for the teachers who reached out to help, she has a dream of one day becoming a teacher herself.

“Half of the blood I carry inside of me belongs to a monster,” said the young woman, who works part-time and attends college. “But I don’t care about him and I don’t care to know what he’s doing.”

What she does know is that he has never been punished for stealing her childhood and nearly destroying her life.

Lessons learned in prison

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in February 2007.

In 2001 and 2002, Donna Miranda Perez lived with a secret she dared not tell anyone, a secret she would live to regret.

A legal assistant with a good salary, Perez had attended high school in San Francisco and earned a 4.0 grade point average. Though at 18 her talent as a singer landed her a job in Los Angeles, she soon found her way home to the Bay Area and enrolled at San Francisco State University, where she earned a degree in Accounting.

But by 2001, her oldest daughter, just ten years old, was suffering from cerebral tumors, and in spite of Perez’s education and the income she and her husband earned, it wasn’t enough to pay for the medical expenses and make ends meet.

So she secretly started to embezzle from her employer.

“I was working for a high-powered attorney,” Perez said, “but this was still not enough, so in a two-year period I managed to steal $66,475.”

Arrested in November 2002, Perez spent 16 months in county jail at Santa Rita. Then she was sentenced to prison.

“Prison was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “Try to imagine never laughing, smiling or feeling any type of happiness. It’s a completely different world.”

During her first week at Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, Perez shared a cell with another woman: “She was quite the crazy one. She woke me up in the middle of the night standing naked in front of me. Then she attacked me. She was a very large girl and hurt me pretty badly for no reason.”

Perez said you have to become a fighter in prison, otherwise inmates “will destroy whatever life you have.”

Soon, Perez was sharing a cell with seven other women, and was degraded on a daily basis. Some of the women were not so bad, she said, but some, incarcerated for life, “ran the prison.”

After six weeks, Perez was assigned to go outside the prison to work in the almond fields making eight cents an hour. Still, there were moments she wanted to die: “I hated every moment I spent there and told myself nothing is worth this, nothing.”

During her incarceration, she rarely saw her son and youngest daughter, and no one brought her older daughter to visit. Her marriage suffered, and she received no letters.

To help handle the emotional stress, Perez started writing, including poetry. One poem to her older daughter includes this line: “Please keep my words close to your heart, no matter where I am, in my memories we are never apart.”

But writing could not change the consequences of Perez’s incarceration.

“When I was arrested we lost everything: our house, furniture, cars, everything,” she said. “My husband and our daughters moved in with his sister and her family.”

Perez said her oldest daughter’s health suffered further, and at one point she weighed only 28 pounds. “It was like a knife stabbed me.”

Perez, on the other hand, weighed almost 400 pounds when she was first incarcerated. “I know, terrible,” she said. “But then I began working on not only my inner self, but on my outer self.” Perez began walking six to eight miles every chance she could and eventually lost 160 pounds.

“I left prison weighing 240 pounds,” she said. “My youngest daughter didn’t recognize me.”

Released from the Chowchilla facility after seven months, Perez spent just under two years behind bars: “I learned more in prison than the past 44 years of my life.”

Perez said her life before her arrest was a mess. Prison gave her the opportunity to stop blaming others and start working on finding her own happiness. “I woke up and I didn’t want to feel angry any longer.”

Today Perez pays restitution at $50 a month. She met all the requirements of her 13-month parole and is no longer required to check in with authorities. Her oldest daughter, now 15, requires constant medical care.

Perez works as a part-time legal assistant for a friend—the only person who would hire her—but is looking for full time work.

“I’ve applied for so many jobs in the past two years, but I’m turned down every time,” she said. “I wish someone would let me get my foot in the door and let me prove how different I am today.”

Looking back on lessons she could share with readers, Perez encourages anyone who is blaming others to begin taking responsibility for their own actions. And committing any crime for whatever reason, she said, is never worth it.

“What I did was wrong, so wrong,” she said. “When they say crime doesn’t pay, it’s the best statement to remember in life. I am living proof.”

Great literature is not always "good" writing

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in January 2007.

In a few weeks I’ll be greeting a classroom of new faces for my evening English class at Las Positas College. I’ve been teaching part-time for more than a decade, and I love it.

Problem is, teaching people to write is no easy task. Take the idea of delving into passages from great literature for examples of good writing. It may sound funny, but this doesn’t always work since great authors aren’t always good writers.

I remember years ago handing my students a page from William Faulkner’s short story “The Bear.” As we read aloud a lengthy passage—festooned with semi-colons and dashes that defy the rules of punctuation—I stopped to explain that Faulkner’s writing often consists of long, hypnotic sentences, or stream of consciousness writing. I also noted that Faulkner, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, never received a college degree and, in fact, never graduated from high school.


“As you might guess,” I said as we finished the difficult text, “Billy Faulkner probably wouldn’t get an A for this passage in many English classes.”

Marcel Proust is another great author from whom we can learn how not to write. This turn-of-the-century French author once wrote a sentence in his most famous work, “In Search of Lost Time,” that goes on for more than 13 feet.


Of course, Proust spent his days as a shut-in, often sleeping away the day, and waking only long enough to read the newspaper. Not the best example for college students.

This isn’t to say that these great authors haven’t made a significant contribution to art and literature. Their genius is in their ability to push to new heights the limits of literature and ideas, much as Picasso did for visual arts or E. E. Cummings did for poetry.

But a student emulating the actual writing of many great authors would likely see red ink flow from the pen of his or her English teacher.

Certainly authors who lived long ago wrote by a different set of expectations than we have today. Though we can learn a great deal about human nature by studying Shakespeare, we wouldn’t read him to copy his writing style.

But what’s ironic is the number of modern authors whose style we shouldn’t try to imitate.

Take James Joyce. This Irish man of letters is considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Yet his 1933 “Finnegans Wake” consists of crytpic and nearly inscrutable prose.



Here’s part of a sentence by Joyce in a passage referencing the wake itself: “in the Nichtian glossery which purveys aprioric roots for aposteriorious tongues this is nat language in any sinse of the world.”



I dare any student to write like that in an essay.

Fortunately, many contemporary writers can help us learn the craft of writing, and in my class we read a number of stories and non-fiction pieces to discover tips to good writing.

One trait common to all good writing is the ability to say more with less. Because writers use words as their medium, many students assume the more words we use the better.

In fact, using fewer words that say exactly what is meant is more effective. We should leave our readers with crisp images and ideas, not with a pile of words to pick through.But that’s hard work for a writer because writing well takes time.

Mark Twain, whose Victorian style we wouldn’t imitate today, said it well when he wrote, “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

A Voice Calls from Africa

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in March 2006.

When Cathy Ayelevi Forson Sjogreen was growing up in Ghana, her parents couldn't afford to send her to high school, so she earned money for her education by selling produce in an open-air market from a tray atop her head.

“I love learning,” said Sjogreen, 40, who speaks ten languages and whose first memory of school is sitting under a tree with other students. “We were taught according to the old British system.”

Today, Sjogreen, who lives in Livermore with her Swedish mathematician husband and their two young sons, hopes to one day return to her country of birth.

“When my husband first got his job with Lawrence Livermore Lab,” Sjogreen said, “my boys and I stayed in Sweden so I could finish my degree at Stockholm University.”

But the boys missed their father so much that Sjogreen moved the family to Livermore six months later, arriving in 2004 with her degree unfinished.

The oldest of seven children, Sjogreen has a special talent for learning languages. While a young woman in Ghana, Sjogreen used her language skills to land a job. Then, over time, her aptitude—and the generosity of a supervisor who paid her air fare—opened the door for Sjogreen to move to France, where she initially lived with an uncle.

"I admire everything about France,” she said, “its language, history, literature, and culture.”

Sjogreen lived in several French cities and worked as an interpreter and bilingual secretary. She also volunteered as a translator in hospitals, airports, train stations, and churches.

Always eager to enhance her language proficiency, Sjogreen was taking an advanced course in French in the early 1990s when she met her future husband, Bjorn.

“He was working on his post doctorate project,” she said. “It took me almost a year to agree to move to Sweden, because I still had my job, my relatives, and my good friends in France.”

Love, of course, won out, and Sjogreen moved to Sweden in 1994.

Now, 12 years and two children later, she hopes to finish her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley. In the meantime, she is attending Las Positas College.

“My intended major is French Literature,” she said, “but I’m curious about languages and wish to do more research in the field.”

While Sjogreen’s near-term goal is to complete her formal education, her eyes soften when she talks about Ghana and the 120 children her parents care for in the orphanage she helped them start in 1992.

“Each child is clothed, nurtured, loved and educated in English and native languages,” she said. “The joy in their faces makes me feel so proud.”

Called Mother’s Voice, the orphanage grew out of the compassion Sjogreen’s mother has always felt for little children, even when Sjogreen was a girl.

"Some mornings we’d wake up and there would be a new face in our house,” she said.

Because Sjogreen’s father worked in nursing, he was able to arrange for free pediatric care, though sometimes the doctors assumed the youngsters were his children.

Sjogreen said over the years the family had to make some sacrifices for the orphans they took in, and, as a teenager, she questioned her mother about taking on the burden.

“My mother just has so much love in her heart,” Sjogreen said, “she had to reach out to these children.”

Since inception, Mother’s Voice has operated with no government support. Some of its revenue is generated by also serving as a day care center, but additional funds are needed to properly care for the orphans.

Sjogreen and her husband, along with her siblings, support the orphanage by wiring money—even small amounts—whenever they can.

One sister, Sarah, works at the orphanage, and even the Sjogreen boys, 10 and 8, express concern about the children. The boys got to see the orphanage 16 months ago when the family visited Ghana.

Though Sjogreen worries about funding, her greater concern is for the future of Mother’s Voice. Her father is 73 and her mother is developing glaucoma, so Sjogreen has plans, as the oldest child, to one day take the knowledge she’ll gain from her college degree and move back to Africa to run the orphanage.

“My desire to save the orphans of Ghana is like an earthquake,” said Sjogreen, her eyes pooling with compassion. “It’s as if I hear my mother’s voice inside me.”

. . .


. . .


. . .
Cathy Sjogreen holds a photo of orphans at Mother’s Voice, an orphanage she helped her parents start in Ghana in 1992.

A river of tears and blessings

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald five days after Thanksgiving, 2006.

Last week on Thanksgiving, I shared with my parents and in-laws a story my 11-year-old daughter recently wrote about a rafting trip we took along the Stanislaus River this past summer. For Kelsey, it’s a tale she needed to write about to get beyond the experience. For me, it’s a narrative brimming with thankfulness.

Kelsey enjoys writing, and has knack for suspense: “Walking over the bridge to go river rafting for my second year, my heart pounded. I could hear Mother Nature’s birds chirping, but what I couldn’t know was that after this journey, I would never dare to even think about rafting.”

She then describes getting instructions from the 20-year-old “radical instructor” who calls everyone dude. She notes the difficulty of climbing into the raft because “I am twice as small as I should be.”

Kelsey is small for her age, having battled several medical challenges and a leaky heart when she was very young. She had open-heart surgery when she was three, and underwent scoliosis surgery after our summer vacation.

Once in the raft, but before launching, she writes how she “bounced around on the sponginess” and sung repeatedly, “I love river rafting!”

Kelsey conjures brief sketches of the family members on the trip. She writes about her stepmother, Pam, saying, “She is always happy. I have never once seen her mad.”

She describes her 14-year-old sister, Melissa, as having blonde hair and blue eyes, and looking just like her mom.

I appear in the story wearing a hat with my fishing license clipped to it, important details later in the tale.

Having set up the scene and characters, Kelsey now builds to the critical moment: “After we got in the river and under a bridge, it happened. We came to it. There was the rapid.”

Below an illustration of a huge blue wave going over the raft, in which a tiny Kelsey with a red life vest is seated on the bottom, she portrays the chaos that follows our plunge “right down the middle” of the rapid.

It’s worth noting that this section of the Stanislaus River, which starts at Knights Ferry, is about as gentle as any river can be. Last year we rafted the same stretch and glided easily through every rapid. This past summer, though, rains caused the river to swell.

“Kelsey, hold on to the boat!” Pam shouts, and a moment later when Kelsey realizes I’ve fallen off the back of the raft, she screams “Dad!!!”

Picture me being pitched into a rushing river. In an instant, I was downriver from the raft, abducted by brute force from my wife and daughters, my head dunking under from time to time, my hat still atop my head, my mind panicked and flooded with thoughts of drowning or breaking a leg or arm.

During all this, 14-year-old Melissa remained calm, certainly frightened, but able to focus on working with her step mom to paddle with strength to catch up to me, to then help pull me from the fast-flowing water. Kelsey’s succinct “after four tries, we got him” understates their heroic success in rescuing me.

The last page of Kelsey’s story describes her tears, how in the aftermath of my rescue she “cried and cried,” how the rest of the trip “was torture.” She also notes that I’d lost my hat in the ordeal, and that my fishing license had been swept away.

Indeed, as we continued down river, Kelsey was almost inconsolable in spite of our efforts to calm her fears. As we coasted smoothly along several long stretches, as Kelsey snuggled next to me, my own silent terror began to give way to a profound joy and thankfulness for life.

Then something magical happened, a sign that all would be well. Kelsey writes how we came upon my hat, just beginning to sink as Melissa snatched it from the river. Then, a moment later, there was my fishing license, floating along in its plastic case, waiting for us to rescue it.

Soon, Kelsey felt better. She even sat near the front of the raft and trailed her hands through the water. When we stopped for a picnic along the shore, she tried her hand at casting and fishing.

And while at the end of the trip we were thankful to be finished and safe, Kelsey says it best as she ends her tale with the perspective of fifth-grader who has gained wisdom: “The only good thing was it makes a good story, and next year we’ll be doing pottery.”













Feeling better after the trip...

Life in France under Nazi rule

This story appeared in a somewhat shorter version and as two columns in the Tri-Valley Herald, published in late October and early November 2006.

On June 14, 1940, 11-year-old Leon Vermont stood on the Boulevard Diderot and watched as German troops marched into Paris. Like most little boys at the time, Vermont was impressed by the good-looking soldiers, their apparent invincibility, even the height of the Nazis, each of whom looked at least six feet tall. Marching to the precise rhythm of a military band, the soldiers were, in Vermont’s young eyes, “a magnificent vision of a powerful and victorious army.”

Vermont, who today lives in Livermore and whose French accent graces his words, sat in a downtown restaurant with his son, Phillip, and recounted his years as a Jewish boy in occupied France.

Vermont’s story is a tale of loss, kindness, sadness, and luck.

“I don’t recall anything tragic happening in the early days of the occupation,” he said. “On the contrary, I recall people saying the Germans were not as bad as we had been led to believe.”

Vermont remembers attending a concert by a German band a few days after the occupation: “The musicians gave the children chocolate.”

As much of France fell under the spell of propaganda, even prompting some citizens to look favorably on the Nazis, the German high command was making plans for its “Final Solution,” the extermination of all Jews.

Today we know that over six million people—two-thirds of European Jews—were killed in the Holocaust, but the world was different then, Vermont said. No one could imagine calculated mass murder.

The first Jews were arrested in May 1941, almost a year after the occupation. The Nazi strategy was to move gradually, first to round up immigrant Jews whom many French natives were persuaded to think of as a nuisance. “Men like my dad, a cabinet maker, and a Polish Jew,” Vermont said.

In fact, Vermont’s father was among the first to be deported to Auschwitz, the death camp from which he would never return.

Careful not to upset the French and their sense of human rights, the Germans waited yet another year before arresting—with the willing assistance of the French police—20,000 Jewish men, women, and children on July 16, 1942.

Though doors were kicked in all over Paris that day, the officer who called at the apartment where Vermont’s family lived must have been “a real human being,” Vermont said. As the children hid under beds, another policeman approached to break down the door, but was stopped by the first policeman. “They walked to another door to arrest another family who opened their door.”

Vermont’s 44-year-old mother, who spoke Yiddish and little French, soon arranged for an escape. She would take her two older daughters and Vermont with her, leaving behind for the time being her two youngest children in the loving care of the apartment concierge.

During the dangerous train trip, the four family members passed themselves off as native Parisians. Babette, the oldest daughter, did most of the talking since she spoke perfect French.

Arriving at the border between occupied France and the southern portion of the country known as the “Zone libre,” they spent a frightening night walking through a forest to cross the border into relative safety, though this didn’t mean they were completely free. “We were immediately arrested and sent to a detention camp,” Vermont said.

After three weeks, Vermont joined a home, or “chateau,” in Chabannes with 60 children. He was allowed to stay in touch with his mother and sisters by mail.

Vermont explained that because the French government had proven itself to be pro-German, a number of homes supporting Jewish children were initially tolerated in the Zone libre.

Soon a letter arrived from his mother, written by one of his sisters, asking if the 13-year-old Vermont would gain permission from the director of the home to be away for a few days.

The director was Mr. Chevrier, a French catholic who years after the war was awarded the Medal of Righteous Gentile, an honor from the State of Israel. This award was granted for his dedication to saving Jewish children under his protection under difficult conditions.

Vermont was being asked by his mother to retrace the treacherous train journey back into occupied France, through heavily-guarded checkpoints, and into Nazi-controlled Paris to retrieve 5-year-old Felix and 10-year-old Regine.

Mr. Chevrier agreed, and so did Vermont. “No doubt, no analysis, no hesitation,” he said. “It was not until years later I realized the enormity of what I had done.”

With Felix and Regine reunited with their mother, Vermont settled into life in Chabannes. Unaware of the fate of his father or the death of so many Jews, Vermont found a way to laugh with his new friends, to play, to enjoy and study classical music performed on a piano and violin, and to read many books. The counselors at the home were professors, musicians, and engineers who fled Germany when Hitler came to power. “I recall many lively discussions on literature, philosophy, theater, art, and social studies,” he said.

Soon Vermont learned of plans to send as many Jewish children as possible to the United States. Because he was not born in France and younger than 15, he was among the first children selected. With his mother’s permission, he was assigned a date to sail from Marseilles for New York on November 7, 1942.

But after a tearful goodbye the day before his departure, the children woke to shouting. The German army had just invaded the south of France. “My life changed instantly,” Vermont said.

Soon the French national police—the Gendarmes—began making visits, and one day three gendarmes arrived to arrest the home’s head counselor, Ernst Jablonski. “He was a brilliant scholar with a Ph.D. in philosophy,” said Vermont, “a warm human being, funny and very kind.”

As Jablonski was escorted to the gate, 25 teenaged boys walked alongside him. “We gradually formed a chain around the three gendarmes,” Vermont said. Then, on a wordless cue, the boys grabbed the three policemen as Jablonski sprinted 50 yards to the forest and disappeared.

As the boys released their grip, the police slapped and screamed at two of the oldest boys. “Had they been German soldiers, they might have shot us on the spot,” Vermont said. “But they were Frenchmen, and weren’t conditioned like the Germans to shoot defenseless women and children.”

It was only a matter of time before everyone would be rounded up. “And we knew we had to do something,” Vermont said. “What to do was the question.”

To avoid arrest, the counselors and older children established a 24-hour watch. The chateau was in the country, so anyone approaching could be immediately spotted from the roof.

“And that’s exactly what happened,” said Vermont. “The gendarmes came back in the middle of the night.” Hearing the signal, the children dropped from the second story window and ran into the forest. “The same operation took place two or three times until the gendarmes threatened to close the chateau and arrest the director.”

In light of increasing pressure, the children—with the help of the French Underground—were given instructions to escape to other locations. Vermont was to go to Grenoble in the Italian-occupied section of France, and was given a false identity and a story that he was going to visit his grandparents.

The trip by train took three days, and he encountered both German soldiers and French police. “I had the easiest time with the Germans,” said Vermont, explaining that they couldn’t tell he was from Paris, and therefore out of place. “To this day I firmly believe that the French cops who interrogated me immediately knew my story was phony.”

Like most teenage boys, Vermont was constantly hungry, and to avoid starving he had to steal food from stores where fruits and vegetables were displayed out front. With the few francs he was given for the trip, he would occasionally purchase half a baguette without the mandatory rationing coupons. “I would wait for the bakery to be empty, then with my most convincing voice and sweetest smile—or saddest eyes—I’d ask the baker to sell me a piece of bread.”

Arriving in Grenoble on a rainy April day in 1943, Vermont was exhausted and hungry as he made his way to a convent. During his two-week stay, no one tried to convert him to Catholicism, yet he enjoyed attending services and reading books about religious and spiritual ideas.

From Grenoble, Vermont traveled by bus to a remote mountain village called La Compote where he lived for five months with a married couple who were peasant farmers. He rose at five every morning to feed farm animals, haul manure, chop wood, and do other chores. Like most teens, he resented the work, and was scolded when he neglected his duties.

On Sundays, Vermont took a sponge bath to clean off the week’s accumulated dirt. Then he accompanied the couple to church, where he enjoyed the music and met other children.

In fact, one Sunday after church Vermont noticed two girls walking along a street. As the adults talked, he ran over to meet the girls, and could tell, after a few words, they were from Paris.

“On the spot I did what I was strictly not supposed to do,” he said. “I told them I was from Paris, I was Jewish, and hiding in this village.” The girls confessed they were also Jewish and hiding with their parents. The three teens immediately became friends.

“I soon found out I was attracted to the younger girl,” said Vermont, adding that like him, she was 14. “But I didn’t know what to do.”

Eventually resolving to put his arm around her, Vermont couldn’t find the courage. But one day the sister brought a camera and said, “Let me take a picture of you two birds.” Vermont was in heaven. Then she added, “Leon, put your arm around her.”

To this day, Vermont has the picture.

A few weeks later he was relocated by the underground and never got to say goodbye. “I only hope with all my heart they survived the war.”

Happy to leave the difficult life at La Compote, Vermont found himself reunited with his mother, his oldest sister (Babette), and his two youngest siblings in a detention camp in Italian-occupied France, in a town called Annecy. (His other sister, Agnes, was being hidden in a convent.) The five family members shared a single room, and the children attended school. Life felt somewhat normal.

Still, Vermont said, “All we wanted was an end to the war and a return to Paris to be reunited with our father.”

They didn’t know, of course, that Jews were being exterminated and that their father, who was among the first to be arrested in Paris and deported to Auschwitz, was likely already dead.

Then, on a sunny fall day in November 1943, a truck full of Germans with machine guns arrived. “My sister Babette had been authorized to go into town, and I was outside in the backyard,” Vermont said. “The Germans surrounded the building, but not before I jumped over the fence and ran a hundred yards.”

Vermont hid among bushes and watched helplessly. Then it happened. His mother and his 6-year old brother Felix and 11-year-old sister Regine were forced with the other women and children into a second truck.

He would never see them again.

“For me, this is the most striking memory of the war, and a nightmarish symbol of man’s worst inhumanity to man,” he said.

Now alone, Vermont set off for the address he was taught should this happen. He walked for two days to Chambery, 40 miles away. He was given a Christian identity and attended a Catholic school for six months in Pont de Beauvoisin.

Then in April 1944, an underground worker came to the school. Vermont was excited to learn he would be crossing the border into Switzerland. What the worker didn’t say was that many people had been shot trying to cross the same border.

In spite of the risk, an underground guide, around midnight, quietly led Vermont and nine other children into Alps. After two hours, the man gave directions to the older boys, and turned back. “On we went and not a single word was spoken,” said Vermont, “until we reached a river.”

As they entered the freezing water, some fell in, including Vermont. “We started laughing as if this was the funniest thing that ever happened to us.”

Shivering, the children pressed on until a searchlight and a German “halt” stopped them. Three Germans in their distinctive helmets approached. “I thought this was it, “ said Vermont.

But the soldiers turned out to be Swiss from the German-speaking part of Switzerland. “At six in the morning our adventure was over, “ Vermont said. “A new life was about to begin for us.”

Vermont kept this story private for more than five decades until ten years ago when his sons began asking many questions about his younger years. As he sat in the downtown restaurant, he shared pictures, his own writings about the events, and copies of historical documents. He also drew maps to describe the distances he traveled and the location of various French cities.

Vermont said he respects the German people, and appreciates their great contributions to music, philosophy, and literature.

But about the Nazis and those who supported their evil campaign, he has a different feeling. He was happy, of course, to learn after the war that his sisters Babette and Agnes had survived. But with the loss of so many innocent lives, including the deaths of his mother, father, and his little brother and sister, Vermont experiences to this day an intensity of emotion and anger that makes him want to scream.