From Grief to Glory: An "Otto"-Biography

© 2011 by Otto Rieke. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 05/14/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4634-0871-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-0870-1 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-0869-5 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011908250

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Section I

Chapter 1

Section II

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Section III

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Section IV

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

SECTION V

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Section VI

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Section VII

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Section VIII

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Section IX

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Section X

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Section XI

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Section XII

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Section XIII

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Section XIV

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Dedication:

"This book is dedicated foremost to my family, immediate, my parents (it’s not their fault), my children, and family extended.

It is also dedicated to both of my friends, whether or not either chooses to be so honored.

Special thanks to my daughter, Catherine, who edit-proofed a fair portion of this book, encouraged me throughout, and did the website: ottorieke.net However, Catherine is not liable for any criminal, civil or uncivil offenses contained herein. I accept full responsibility for the book’s contents."

Website for this book, and for author contact is: ottorieke.net

Note to potential movie rights seekers. You must adhere minimally to these conditions:

—The hero’s role should be played by Brad Pitt, not just because of visual similarities, but Brad has Mid-Missouri roots having attended Missouri University. His Mid-Mo twang is just about perfect. Matt Damon and / or Tom Selleck will also be permitted to audition.

—Ach-villain, Henry should be played by Al Pachino, or just purchase rights to his role in Scent of a Woman. Gary Busey is allowed to audition.

—Daughters: Sara by Angelina Jolie, Catherine by Jennifer Anniston. Visual coincidences are too real.

—Daughter-in-law: Amy by Julia Roberts, twins

—Son Adam by Arnold Schwarzenegger, or the meanest ugliest gorilla at the local zoo

—Joe Culp played by Jack Nicholson, who must add serious weight. Jack is needed in the cast, so that finally we can handle the truth about who first used the line:

You make me want to be a better man.

—Grandkids in movie debuts all play themselves.

FORWARD

I hope that this book is fun and non-controversial. I’ve attempted to accomplish that by staying on topics about which I claim expertise: politics, religion, and sex. If anything I say offends you, then you need to, either:

1. Repent, OR,

2. Sue me

I apologize only to those who were not offended, but who should have been. I do hope that you take the slight as it was intended, and hurt all the more. However, seriously, I do also hope that this book is as entertaining as the exuberant feeling that its writing experience has given me.

Cataclysmic events, some representing life’s most grievous tragedies, have struck my family life. Tragedy and grief, viewed retrospectively, have rendered the subsequent glory of life all the more glorious. Life would have been unlivable, and this book unreadable, were they a mere cosmic pity party. After enduring a full circle along the rim of hell on Earth; and having survived almost in tact, hopefully this book will portray our ascension to the glory that has been most of my family’s, and my own life. My essentially privileged, fulfilling, and competitive existence (prior to the anguishing events of mid-life), is narrated fully from birth with a comedic flair, and did prepare me for the survival of the really tough stuff. We did not just endure it all, but have thrived, and have ascended time and again. Life continues as a search for the ultimate Truth, and for the Glory that is only God’s to possess completely. We live to seek our share of that glory.

Family is who we Riekes are. Family is the root of our society, and the family home is the first and most important school that our children will forever attend. Our parents are the first and the most important teachers that our children will forever have. My stunning, wonderful wife of an earlier twenty five years, and of such unpretentious beauty, Mary Beth, and I raised five absolutely beautiful children, all of whom have encountered life very successfully. They are successful most of all by being good and loving people, as well as in all their spiritual, academic, athletic, personal, and professional endeavors. All of our children graduated from St Peters Catholic grade school, and local high schools, Rockhurst, St Teresa’s, and Notre Dame de Sion, all of which are in Kansas City, Mo. They and their spouses subsequently have graduated from various universities, including Rockhurst University, Central Missouri State University, Tulsa University, Syracuse University School of Journalism, Missouri University Medical School, St Louis University, The Medical School of Washington University in St Louis, Dartmouth College Medical School, and finally a post residency Fellow at the Harvard School of Medicine. Our children, including their respective spouses are blessed beyond what would seem possible all in one family. Tragically, this same family has also endured monumental cosmic catastrophe, transcending what words could ever adequately portray. These calamities, and subsequent grief, have chronologically seemed to coincide with—and maybe have been the genesis of a subsequently inspired inner spiritual strength—indeed an almost supernatural strength to survive. Persistent strings of well earned successes at all personal levels of character, and by all worldly measure, might well be rooted in the strength of our souls to survive. We have been cast to the deepest pits of hell on Earth, and have ascended to new lives with the strength to carry on, to love, and indeed to thrive. This book is that story, which is integral to this Otto Biography. We have suffered the tragedy and the grief, all the while believing in, and seeking, the Glory of God. I know this story to be more fun than its opening chapter, but the chapter can’t be ignored, and is too heavy to weave chronologically into an otherwise entertaining narration. It must be told straight away.

Section I

Grief

Chapter 1

Triumvirate of Tragedies

After being a stay at home mom until all of our children were in school, my blessed wife became employed at my alma mater, Rockhurst University. She and her boss subsequently suffered mid-life conscience crises, left their respective spouses and families of many years (may God grant them mercy and peace), and ran away together to Paris, where they married. In fairness to Mary Beth, after leaving the family home, she did remain in the Kansas City area for eight years, and to the extent possible, she did continue to be instrumental in the raising of our children. Today, and since the year 2000, Mary Beth and her faux husband have run from life together, scuttling along a string residences, from Paris, France, through South Carolina, Alabama, Bloomington, Indiana (ironically the honeymoon home of Mary Beth and I, decades earlier), and finally to their current corner of civilization in Bangor, Maine. I have, through the subsequent years, become less judgmental, and more at peace with this calamitous situation. To judge objectively that an action is wrong, is less serious than accusing a perpetrator of said action to be wrong for doing it. The latter is being judgmental beyond human competence, and is the province of only God. I can’t understand some behaviors of others, but it’s not for me to judge. And it can’t be ignored that so many people, family and both friends, who know me well, call me by a name referencing that particular part of my anatomy, known medically as the anus. I have never enjoyed proximity to perfection, and actually am pretty obnoxious, but now mellowing peacefully about all of the above as I write in 2011.

However, their sorrowful flight from reality, that is, more specifically, MB’s personal departure and journey, was only the beginning of Rieke family tragedies that descended to ever worse depths. A year after Mary Beth’s departure, our blessed sixteen year old son, Gabriel, was killed as a passenger in a freak auto tragedy on October 2, 1993. He was a wonderful, adoring, and universally-adored, young gentleman. My dear, now personally sanctified Archangel, Gabriel, had been successful and beloved at Rockhurst Jesuit High School. Our special confessor and friend, Fr Gerry Waris, beheld the thousands (literally) of people at dear Gabriel’s funeral in, and surrounding St Peters, and proclaimed to the crowd, Gabriel was here on Earth only half as long as Jesus was; and yet behold the outpouring throngs of people. Five high schools dismissed classes the day of Gabriel’s funeral. A locally prominent man in a public declaration later, describing the funeral experience, proclaimed that he had never encountered such a mass mournful multitude, such an orgy of spontaneous, sporadic, thunderous human wailing in any assembly of humanity. A Rockhurst student, unknown to me, presented to our family a book in which each member of the Rockhurst student body had transcribed their sentiments. The last comment seemed to characterize them all, Gabriel was always smiling; AND so was everyone around him. Gabriel was a gifted young man, sharing his mother’s unpretentious beauty, a charismatic gentleman beyond his years, precociously wise, and always at the center of any gathering of people. Typical of Gabriel was a story relayed to me years after his passing. A woman told me that her nephew was very quiet, and a socially inhibited child of ethnic descent at Rockhurst. Her nephew hung on the periphery of crowds, until inevitably Gabriel from the center, would always subtly call him in to be a part of whatever was happening. Gabriel loved as Jesus loved.

I remember distinctly a frail little nun who was at the end of the reception line of 100’s (1000’s) of people at the preceding night’s wake in the Church. The line was so long, winding through the surrounding neighborhood, that it was halted temporarily, for a ceremony that included much praise and near sanctification of dear Gabriel. At the end of such a long night of witnessing the praises accorded to Gabriel, this little nun grabbed my hands, and put her mouth to my ear, and she whispered, It sounds to me like God just couldn’t resist him any longer. A year later at a subsequent memorial Mass by the Jesuits at Rockhurst High School, I was moved to tell those assembled, that your memorials and expressions of grief with our family have reached into, and seemed to grasp to the very core of our hearts, to help lift out some of the grief, and to carry it away from us. Expressing such sentiment provided much needed relief to my grieving heart, and still shocked soul, and was well received by those assembled.

Gabriel passed away on October 2, 1993. In early December, 1993, I went to a religious book store attempting to buy some figurines of the Archangel Gabriel, to be fitting Christmas gifts for many of Gabriel’s most special girlfriends. I knew all of them, and perceived that such a gift from Gabriel’s father would be suitably appreciated. I was looking for said charm, when the owner of the store approached me, and asked if he could help me. I said, Yes, maybe you could find for me a little statue or a figurine of an angel. He replied, You would not want the angel, Gabriel, would you? I replied, Yes, that’s exactly the one I would want. He put his hand to his lowered forehead, and bemoaned to me that he could not keep anything Gabriel in stock that Christmas. He continued, Apparently some beloved young gentleman named, Gabriel, was killed a few months ago, and everybody seems to want a remembrance of him. That young man, Gabriel, must have been quite a beautiful young gentleman. Did you know of him? I was stunned into a speechless trance, and finally mumbled to him, Yes, I know him still, I thanked him, and I hurried from the store not wanting to identify myself so as to hurt the man. I sat in my car and cried, until I could drive, upon which time I drove to dear Gabriel’s grave, lay on the cold December grass, and did weep uncontrollably for awhile. Such a practice was the necessary emotional enema severally repeated for relief of overpowering grief. Now I felt alone, lonely, sad, a single working dad, missing a child, and with four more children also heavy with grief. It was my challenge to hold them together physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

As a remembrance tribute to Gabriel, the public was notified that there would be a trust fund set up in his name, to which they could donate, in order to help fund an annual scholarship to be presented in Gabriel’s name. Father Pesci, S.J., (Yes, actor Joe’s first cousin), the brilliant (redundant for a Jesuit?) president of Rockhurst High School, was to become a very beloved friend of the Riekes. Fr Pesci was instrumental in comforting us, and in aiding us to set up this fund, sensitively and lovingly handling everything, and satisfying the legalese for this scholarship to be awarded annually in Gabriel’s name. Though Mary Beth and I no longer personally present the scholarship, it is still awarded every year, and we always receive a very moving and appreciative letter from the recipient Rockhurst student. That annual letter means a lot to us. Thanks, Rock.

Especially challenged by this tragedy was Gabriel’s best friend, his brother two years behind him, our dear Michael. I literally held Michael in my arms to guide him through high school, where he academically performed well, and starred as a baseball pitcher. Michael proceeded from Rockhurst to St Louis University, where he also performed well academically. And in his freshman year he was a walk on (no baseball scholarship) rousing success, making the team, and pitching for the varsity Division I Billikens. In a game on the road against the University of Arkansas, the bases were loaded with no outs, when the manager summoned Michael to the mound for his first varsity participation. The manager said, Rieke, we need a miracle; and handed him the ball. Michael, featuring a fearsome, split fingered fastball, that danced, dove, and buzzed past bewildered batters, struck out the next three batters. He struck out 2 more in a no-hit ninth, to close the game perfectly, while fanning 5 of the 6 batters he faced. Such successes continued, and he was hailed by St Louis newspapers and media, as the Freshman Sensation at St Louis University.

Meanwhile, my other children were also thriving at life’s endeavors, and I wasn’t too proud of dear Michael, whose arm I had harnessed and coached to pitch baseball, a decade earlier. Oh no, I wasn’t too proud. Michael subsequently suffered a baseball season ending hamstring pull his sophomore year. Michael was becoming quite a polished and well educated young man, as he came home for the Christmas break his junior year. Michael’s future seemed bright. He had survived and was thriving. And then it happened. The unthinkable incomprehensible occurred. Michael too was killed in a freak auto accident on January 5th, 2000… Life can never ever be the same again. I am too numb to feel anymore even as I write this in 2011. I have had to run from grief until time might render it palatable. Then I still steer clear, and just drive onward searching for God, His Glory, and further meaning in life.

Michael’s funeral was a rerun of mass grief beyond words. Michael’s name was added to the Gabriel Rieke Memorial Scholarship. A busload of classmates and teammates from St Louis, were among the wailing throngs of people at the wake and again at the funeral Mass. Can you be sentenced to hell twice? I can’t bring myself to the repeat of all the accolades of those assembled. It was and still is all too much. An editorial tribute to our family in St Louis said as much, as it expressed wonderment at the amount of grief suffered by one family. Included among the people who lined long blocks around the Church at the wake on a frigid January night preceding the next day’s funeral, were crowds of the Rockhurst family, St Louis and Kansas City Jesuits, the governor of Missouri, and the family of a St Louis Rams coach, whose team was about to play in the Super Bowl. Michael had participated in baseball with their son when their family lived in KC, and their father had coached with the Kansas City Chiefs. The Super bowl preparations were put on hold for Michael. The state of Missouri had a Michael Rieke Day early in 2000 (Sen. Harry Wiggins, personal family friend—God rest his soul—facilitated that, unbeknownst to us) as dear Archangel, Michael, loving son, my beloved Golden Rooster, beloved brother, profound scholar, and star baseball pitcher, joined his older brother, dear Archangel Gabriel, and our Heavenly Father at home in eternity. My life has continued, but I can’t continue writing here, and must just barely conclude this chapter.

The deaths of two of my sons leave me broken and numb. A part of me is no longer here. I often recalled Jesus’ words on the cross, My God, My God, why have you abandoned Me? But astonishingly I have never really felt abandoned. I have not been angry with God, but have felt His Love, and Power evermore intensely. This is due to no personal virtue on my part; it’s just what spiritually occurred. It happens to be my soul’s response. Seemingly a portion of my eternal soul has accompanied my departed beloved sons to join our Heavenly Father in eternity. I can no longer visit the cemetery where the former bodily hosts of my dear sons’ souls are buried together. God doesn’t give us more than we can handle? Sometimes I think God might be too generous in judging my strength. The veil that separates me from eternity now is very thin. But mortality’s pain is diminished by such events.

However, life had to continue here on Earth, until it is my turn to fully return. And how did this legend (yes, I said legend), this whole trauma of life’s agony, glory, and enduring triumphs, this whole From Grief to Glory story begin?

Section II

Early Life

Chapter 2

Never Had a Chance

Sometime in March, 1946, a certain Dr. Julian Ossman, in Jefferson City, Missouri, decided that he needed some time off. He planned for a two week vacation, circumstances of which are irrelevant except that it was to begin on April 2d of that year.

This was unfortunate timing because on July 4th of the previous year a certain Jeff City dentist had an off day while shooting his fireworks in celebration of our nation’s birthday. As a result his misfire, his wife, a patient of Dr Ossman’s, was expecting to give birth to a baby on April 4th, which would be during the good doctor’s previously mentioned vacation. Thus, a decision was made by the dentist’s wife, Rosemary Rieke, to induce labor, and to give birth on April 1st. So, on April 1, 1946, in Jefferson City, Mo, a young April Fool began his Earthly mission. All witnesses to behold this young fool (no one dared actually ‘hold’ such a miscreant, likely the genesis of his lifelong psychosis) were appalled at his ugliness. His kindly grandfather, Rosemary’s dad (an eventual State Supreme Court Justice, and thus nimble of word) perhaps stated it best, Well, Rosemary, he can only get better.

So, what happened next to this newly born ugly fool? The young dentist, and Rosemary, together decided, I know! Let’s name this ugly fool, Otto. My nickname, my shield from Otto, which was the only name I ever knew about until high school, was, and remains, Rusty". And so you can readily see from this beginning, that I never really had a chance. However, I should note here that I do have a birth certificate, authenticated by all political parties, and I might well run for president in 2016. April Fool indeed. We’ll see.

This book is the simple story of overcoming a colossal triumvirate of tragedies, repeated resurrection from the depths of hell on Earth, to the triumph of a blessed, happy, and fulfilling life, including the splendor of love relationships with supernaturally blessed children, children-in-law, and grandchildren. Our family heroically continues participation in, and contributions to, the journey of mankind’s fleeting and precarious occupation of planet, Earth. This is also is my story, my battles within myself, and with a challenging and challenged world, including digressive ranting, at times seemingly mad raving from my previously published proclamations. They reveal fresh insights into the way things are, but more importantly, they suggest the way things could be. I think that the world would be better for this.

My father was a free-spirited, good, and loving man, a would-be opera singer, an entertainer, and a theologian supreme. However, he had to support a family of nine children, so he also qualified and posed as a dentist. My maternal grandfather, the Chief Justice on the Missouri Supreme Court, was a role model supreme and significant parental figure in my life. My mother clearly outranked, outclassed, and consistently outwitted them both. The judge’s daughter consumed most of her energies doing the important stuff in life, loving, nurturing, and raising us nine children. My father, a passionate, wild man from the woods of southeast Missouri was the unlikely successful suitor of the leading daughter in such a proper and religious family. My mother’s family included sibling nuns, and a Catholic priest, all raised in a religious atmosphere, and a structured upbringing befitting the order expected by a most properly respected Supreme Court Justice. Sensing the challenges of this apparent mismatch in which he was intimately involved, my devout Catholic father received the Holy Communion with Jesus every single day of his married life to his death. For all his frailties his Faith prevailed to the final moment when he asked that prayers for his continued earthly existence cease because he was ready to meet Jesus, and Jesus was ready to meet me. I’m struggling to rise to my father’s example of such a deep, well self-nurtured gift of Faith. After graduating from St Louis University, my father moved to Jefferson City, Mo, the state capital, because ever mindful of what the depression had inflicted upon so many during his childhood, he remembered that only government would always have money. He worked at St Mary’s hospital, where he met my mother who was a classy classic beauty, employed as a lab technician there. He began courting Rosie, but he was not satisfied with his employment. He knew that their relationship was serious, and that he might be called upon to raise many children. So, he returned to his good Jesuits at St Louis University, and enrolled in dental school, during which period of time he and my mother married, on December 27, 1943.

They attended together, my mother being nine months pregnant with my older sister, Susie, the Streetcar Series, i.e., the all St Louis World Series of 1944, featuring the Cardinals and the Browns. I still don’t like you, Susie, for getting to go to that World Series. The love of baseball permeates their descendants, as we’ll discover. My father, ever able to be wonderful commanding center stage, used to sing his own public recitals, where we Rieke children used to troop in to occupy the first few rows, and listen to him sing songs that we had heard practiced in our home for months. He had a natural flare for being a larger than life character. My mother used to chide him that people who needed dental care would not be looking for an entertaining town clown. He submitted to a professional decorum most of the time, and performed dental work just enough that we were all very comfortable. Our home was always the center of very lively activity and of theological and political debates. Catholic priests were often part of the festivities, in the home of America’s leading lay theologian.

The following tidbit typifies the way my father went about the business of his life, spontaneously, as a charismatic fun-loving character. The good LaSalette Catholic priests ran a local seminary, and several of their priests were among the priestly friends of the family, and visited the house regularly. Among those was model handsome, body building, athlete superb, Father Frank Nally, dubbed by my father, Bishop Biceps. My father would regularly drive to the seminary to meet with his confessor, Bishop Biceps. One day, the good father was out, and a very young priest answering the door, asked my father if he could help. Well, my father told him that he sought the more matured Fr Nally for confession. The young priest offered to hear said confession. My father said that he was far too great a sinner for such a young priest, and that he would require several of them at his experience level. The obliging young priest gathered two of his priestly colleagues, and my father dutifully went to confession to this assembled trinity of priests.

Though somewhat geographically separated today, we children of this strangely loving marriage, remain a very closely bonded, supportive family still. Many of us have suffered the scourge of the Catholic disease, alcoholism. Alcoholism is a misunderstood and confusing label for emotionally struggling, intense people. Alcoholics are cursed with emotional extremes of peaks and valleys, anxiety filled, and sanity challenged. Many alcoholics happen to self medicate for their psychotically disturbed existence with the street drug called alcohol. If drunk to excess, they are then noticed as unusual, and labeled an alcoholic. The alcoholism curse is not cured simply by the cessation of swallowing alcohol. Understanding the totality of this, and working to endure and thrive with this condition is a lifelong effort. I stopped swallowing alcohol on September 14, 1988 at the age of forty two, but I have continued to work on the underlying conditions everyday of my life since that time. I’ve endured many tragedies since, but all of them would have been cataclysmically worse had I not previously stopped drinking alcohol.

Typical behavior of an alcoholic is manifested in this tidbit about my father: Otto Sr. was cutting the grass at our first home in our moderately sized yard. Back then the only lawn mowers were the old rotary blades kind, whose blades were people powered on a horizontal axis, rubbing close against another sharp blade thereby cutting the grass, as a person pushing said implement supplied the power. No motors. Rather simple. So, on this particular day while cutting the grass, my father pronounced our lawn mower to be broken. So simple was its design, that a normal person usually would get a pair of pliers and a screwdriver, and fixed the supposed malfunctioning lawn mower. There was no motor to further complicate the matter. If a person was a klutz, then they might ask a neighbor possessing the required IQ over 50 to help fix it. Last case scenario, there were fix it and used lawn mower shops all around. But what is an alcoholic’s solution to so simple a problem? My father charged into our house and called Jake Hobbs, a realtor, and told him to come out and to sell our house. Then he announced to the family that we were all moving to his hometown of Ironton, Mo, where he remembered a simpler life that did not include cutting grass. By the next day when Jake Hobbs did appear, and my father was away masquerading as a dentist, my mother told Jake to never take Otto seriously unless she had personally approved it. Not to be deterred, my father and we children worked many a weekend transporting large flat rocks to our front yard from local creek beds until our yard was completely covered. My father then painted it green, and announced that the back yard could go to hell. This pronouncement presented a theological dilemma for his oldest son, Otto Jr., trying to understand that my father could with such a simple damning pronouncement, actually transform the landscape of hell to include our back yard; that somehow our turf and our grass would henceforth occupy a place in hell?

I was the 2d born child, oldest male, to Dr Otto and St Rosemary Westhues Rieke. There were eventually nine of us children, about each more later. My first real attempt at saving planet, Earth, occurred when this young ugly fool, named Otto, had to survive an assassination attempt on my life in my back driveway at the age of one. This would be only the first of many thus far unsuccessful attempts on my life. Said unknown, would-be assassin snuck up on this ever alert, with quick reflexes, baby, and launched me off of a high wall supporting our driveway. I suffered a broken femur bone in two places, and was put in a body cast for a year. Thus, this unfortunate, young, ugly, fool, named Otto, whose cast was not aroma friendly, was not held nor cuddled for at least another year. This only deepened his doom to being sanity challenged and love starved forever.

My mind has blocked out that first assassination attempt, and so my first real memory on this Earth was about my half brother, Henry. I say ‘half brother’ because while St Rosemary would never compromise marriage fidelity, there are diabolical suspicions surrounding Henry’s conception. It has been surmised that Beelzebub, on about July 20, 1947, was depressed (typical of residents of hell I’ve heard) about how good and moral was a world that had just saved itself from Adolph Hitler, a world that the devil was sworn to corrupt. So, the ever clever Beelzebub began to think, You know, that thing God did 1,947 years ago, the whole Jesus thing, worked out real well for God; but real bad for me. Maybe I could do the same. Maybe I could have a son, and become incarnate on Earth, just like God did. There was suddenly cosmic trembling, and on planet Earth dear Rosemary experienced an almost seizure shocking jolt to her whole being, and with it a sick feeling never experienced before. Thus begot Henry Rieke, Beelzebub’s only begotten son, the devil himself loosed on Earth. Henry was subsequently born, appropriately enough, on Adolph Hitler’s birthday, April 20th, and thus began Beelzebub’s next attempt to destroy the world with evil. I’m not sure it’s going to work out for Lucifer, because as I write, dear Henry, ever sanity challenged, might be losing his mind altogether. However, remember that while Beelzebub was God’s fallen angel, he maintained supernatural powers nonetheless. So while Henry’s body miraculously survives, his mind is often incapable of supporting a coherent conversation during his counseling sessions from his older brother. Henry’s IQ barely approaches fifty, and that inhibits his mission to destroy the planet. Henry does take solace though in the fact that though he was born an unwanted child, he is now wanted in five states.

Henry was front and center in my first memory on Earth. Baby Henry from his highchair was repeatedly snarling at St Rosemary as he flung his cereal bowl, milk and all contents, at his mother, with a guttural growling gushing forth, Mothers are #%#%, I hate this kind of cereal In this tome, Henry will tag along haunting me like the old 1960’s, James Bond 007, movies’ arch-villain, the never ending nemesis of James Bond. So, there will be repeatedly more about dear Henry as this story evolves, and as he slithers through it like his dad’s reptilian cameo appearance in the Garden of Eden. Henry is almost co-starring in this tome not just because I love him in spite of himself, but because mention of him in this book will exceedingly irritate him. Irritating the ever diabolical and competitive Henry is the fulfillment of one of the more entertaining parts of my mission on Earth.

Memories of my childhood before school are scant, notwithstanding enduring the above diabolical incarnation that was my brother Henry, and his early war on the world. I do remember sitting at the kitchen table crying in the fall of 1950 because mom had told me that dad was going to have to go away for awhile, because he had been drafted by the Army to help with the Korean war. What? He was the father of now five children, and a demented dentist. What was he going to contribute to a war effort? What could a dentist do? He certainly was not fit to be a Drill Sergeant. Sadly, he did go away for months until he was made a captain as a dentist at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., merely sixty miles from our home in Jefferson City. I’d see him in his uniform and presumed my father was a war hero. Later I was told that his military effort was not very serious. Every morning all the soldiers had to file out of the barracks and stand at attention for the raising of the flag at sun break, the military tradition of Reveille. One morning my father was missing in action at said call, but was observed on the back of the parade grounds flying a kite. Flaunting his disdain for the conformity of military regimen was my first memory of my father being a lovable ‘nut case’—about which more later in this book. By the next spring my mother gave birth to our sixth child, Terry. The Defense Department apparently took note that a man could not support a family of six children on a Captain’s salary. My father was offered a promotion to the rank of Major (so proficient was he at flying kites?), or a hardship ‘Honorable Discharge’. He was in Jefferson City that afternoon. Who could have known then that his namesake, Otto Jr., would some day be a war hero during the Vietnam War for his efforts playing basketball at this same Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.

At a preschool age there are several pictures of me from the Jefferson City newspaper in my ‘baby book’ that our mother kept for each of us. In December of 1947 in my highchair, looking nowhere near the ‘ugly baby’ that had been described. Another newspaper picture showed me with Santa Claus on the radio in December of 1948. Was I warning the world about my newborn younger brother, Henry? And still another picture of me on a ride at the local county fair in July, 1953. And then still another in the newspaper, this time with all my siblings in November, 1953. Why was the Paparazzi so interested in this supposed ugly baby? If I was so ugly, why was I the subject of so much public visual attention in the local newspaper? Were we Riekes a privileged people, or were these just cruel freak show exploitations?

My mother was a veritable mommy machine, simultaneously washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning, bathing, and running the whole show. A poignant memory of childhood is triggered with current news today about the torturous horror of something called water boarding. That torture was a nightly ritual in the Rieke household, as my mother would whip us in and out of the bathtub surrounding a good scrub on each of us. The time in the tub culminated with the rinsing of our hair, during which we were slammed onto our back, and tilted backward, head back and down, under the bath faucet for rinsing. The simulation and fear of being drowned was real if we dared to wiggle, squeal, or in any way resist the mighty vice grip on our whole being. Our father’s drying towel felt like a warm welcoming resurrection back to life on Earth.

Chapter 3

School Begins / Values Formed

My memory is vivid as it involved the beginning of school in the first grade at Immaculate Conception Catholic School, in September, 1952. Once again the newspaper made a front page story out of the event. Standing over my sister Susie and I as we were seated at school desks, were my first grade teacher, Sister Steven Marie, and my mother. Maybe I should presume that all the public attention to me, warranting such newsworthiness, was because that I must have been perceived as a prodigy very early. I had not gone to preschool, nor attended kindergarten. Yet I remember from the beginning that I was more than prepared, and indeed excelled above all others, for the challenges of learning. However, my social skill deficits were manifests early, and continue today to keep me socially challenged. Having never associated with anyone beyond my siblings, I was socially comfortable only within same. Thus, for the first three years of elementary school, I ate lunch with, and played with my sister Susie and her friends. I must have seemed weird, but so comfortable in my own skin that it bothered me not. I can attribute my social obliviousness, immunity from peer pressure, and early precociousness, not to an especially high IQ, but more to the family environment in which I was being raised. My mother and father totally loved each other, and it manifests itself in children being confident about who we were, bonded to each other, and properly raised.

It was about this time that I can pick as the genesis of my life-long struggle to find wrong and try to make it right. Once, as a second grader, I overheard my parents discussing a national political issue (the time, place, and issue are permanently instilled, but irrelevant here). I asked them about the issue; I seriously pondered it; and then I lay awake most of several subsequent nights agonizing over how I, a seven year old, could resolve that national problem. I now realize that I was cursed from an early age to care passionately about humanity, life, things that mattered, and about making a difference. My own personal beatitude was born: Blessed are they that hunger for justice; but be wary of those blowhard bastards that glutton for it.

Later in life during the 1960’s John and Bobby Kennedy became heroes to me, rumors about some of their personal indiscretions notwithstanding. The Kennedys inspired Americans (at least this one) that we could and that we should each make a difference. Even a small ripple that we might cause, could meet expedient circumstances, and become a tsunami for right. The country was made to feel that America should act to help starving peoples, not just because the Communist might be doing it, or because we seek their favor, but because it is right. Truly God’s work on this Earth must really be our own. And of course, the famous, Ask not… In a political campaign, or following publication of some new battle I’d embarked upon, a new windmill with which to tilt, I’ve often been asked, Why? The answer is that I need to sleep at night; and however futile an effort might seem, I am compelled to attempt to at least try to do something. Where there is wrong, I’m addicted to trying to make it right. I can do no other, or I can’t live with myself.

Instilled in me at an early age, if only subconsciously, were an appreciation for traditional family values, fundamental to my existence still today. These values have inspired my continued outspoken advocacy for same. The following few of many publications by me attests to that. It is a compilation of several published articles running together, but with the recurrent theme, for which I make no apologies for redundancy, so important are traditional family values. The rants commence:

With the past tragedies and violence in places like Columbine, Colorado, Santee, Cal., etc, that continue today, and with a proliferation of drug use and violence in the next generation, we hear a lot in the media about the problems in our schools… what’s wrong with the American schools? The problems are not intrinsically in the American education process, it simply is there that society’s real problems become manifest. The first and the most important school that our children will ever attend is the family home. But what’s happening there? The breakdown of the American family is the moral crisis of our times.

The United States ranks Number #1 among all world societies in the history of humanity in our material productivity, and we enjoy its accompanying highest standard of living ever. We also rank Number #1 among all world societies in the history of humanity in sad statistics about broken love relationships, broken homes, and in the welfare of our children: abandoned children with precious little time with parents, drugs, pregnancies among teens, single and no parent homes, etc. The coincidence of these two dubious Number #1 exalted distinctions is too obvious to not suspect a cause—effect relationship.

As a world religious leader proclaimed to the General Assembly of the United Nations several years ago, the human creature is meant to be more than a mere pawn of productivity. Our children don’t need more money, more material luxuries, more things, more STUFF; our children need more us. Quality time with our children has become a euphemism for not enough time for our children.

The solution to this crisis cannot simply be resolved by preaching at the United Nations, or prominence as a presidential campaign issue, or so called family friendly legislation. The solution is best resolved at the grass roots level with a change of our hearts’ priorities becoming more respecting of home and family values, rather than being victimized as we’re diminished to being mere pawns of corporate productivity.

There are, of course, times when an extra effort is appropriate: if an extra hour would keep a company from going belly up, it’s an easy decision. The tough decisions are the everyday decisions where we decide if on just this one day, an extra effort will be somewhat profitable—and my kids can wait. It is too tempting to believe that a company, whose workers perform extra time working, all the time, will be evermore profitable. That ignores the reality that in the long run, workers from a happy healthy home environment will contribute more to profitability. And spending the time nurturing a healthy home life is the right thing to do.

What of the trite threatening rejoinder that, Won’t your family will be better off with your money than if you were unemployed? That sounds like a mugger pleading to a judge, I know it’s not good that I took the victim’s money; but, Your Honor, I could have killed him, but did not. I spent 33 years at a Social Expression company, and I think that Hallmark Cards should project a better public image and be much nobler than a common street mugger. I am compelled to write this because I feel that this point of view, however expressed, is not respectfully considered when many decisions are made involving workers’ forced overtime.

I’m fully cognizant that this published writing is not beneficial to my employment, nor to my corporate social acceptance. I was fully cognizant that I would be viewed as naïve, self righteous, generally obnoxious, and subjected to mocking and ridicule. It’s already happened to me through the years as a result of my various expressions of this perspective in meetings. It hurts some, and I hate that. However, I can’t do otherwise. This was difficult to write, and I derive no self righteous glory in doing it. I’m constitutionally incapable of not speaking out about the sacredness of the family. It is the moral crisis of our times.

It also manifests itself in our government:

The federal government annually allocates more and more funds for aid to homes for the elderly, aid for more school counselors, aid to fight increasing violence in schools, aid to public day care centers, etc. The government in each of these circumstances claims to be responding to our needs and to be alleviating our problems in modern living.

Unfortunately, all of these types of governmental actions are only superficial stabs at symptoms of one basic problem with our society, a problem made even worse by these government activities: The decline of the family as the basic unit or foundation upon which our whole social structure rests. The root of any healthy society is the family; and to the extent that these roots decay, so our society erodes and self destructs.

These government intrusions into what should be family oriented responsibilities are merely reflections of our perverted priorities, as the government cooperates in our self-destruction of the family and thus society itself. Young people learn self discipline, love and respect for others, and a value system recognizing life’s first priorities not through federal sharing, but through more family caring.

Tragically, however, as more parents are working more hours for more money for more material luxuries seeking more social status, they are all the while assuming that more government spending can somehow pick up the void left in their family responsibilities. Our children don’t need more money, they need more us.

Our federal tax system could specifically encourage healthy family life, and stop discouraging it. Currently, fathers are discouraged from living with mothers who might be seeking increased welfare payments; a parent is discouraged from caring fulltime for her own children, as the government subsidizes daycare centers, and then awards tax credits to a parent who abandons her child to these big brother wards; a fulltime parent can be legally dragged from her babies just to sit on a jury, while teachers, doctors, dentists, etc., are exempt from such liabilities for merely doing what they do.

Is motherhood no more noble a calling or profession than being a mere tooth mechanic? I don’t intend to drill dentists. Indeed, my father was a dentist, and one of my brothers is a dentist also; but my mother’s fulltime commitment to us, her children, was at least as important as my father’s contributions to society. Was the dentist filling teeth with amalgam so much more important a calling than her filling our souls with love each day? The current laws and tax incentives (day care centers, jury duty exemptions, as just two examples) abhorrently