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Anonymous Hate Mongers
I hadn’t thought about Harold Messler for some time. He died approximately twenty years ago. He lived in a small three room home in the North End. It didn’t have a foundation, the wooden floor joists sitting right on the earth. It was covered in brown tar paper shingles that had seen better days. Like Harold, it leaned a little to the right and creaked a little in the wind.
It was one of the original hardscrabble homes that popped up on the edge of town during the Great Depression. They were built by the families who needed them out of whatever material was at hand. They weren’t much to look at, but they had a character all their own and sheltered many a family through those hard times.
Back then, as today, the people who lived in the North End helped each other. I remember talking to a woman whose father used to write-off some of the mounting charges at his grocery, to help people make it through. In later years this sense of community manifest itself in the formation of the North End Association, which raised money to help people with utility bills or food baskets when someone was laid off or sick.
When my wife and I were dating, she was going to college and rented a small apartment in the North End. Everyday the neighbor across the street, an elderly gentleman by the name of Mr. Burkhardt, would wave and tell her the news of day of the neighborhood. He knew the comings and goings, the births, the deaths and anything else you wanted or had time to hear. People in the North End knew their neighbors and watched out for them.
This area of our community has seen many changes over the years and the overall standard of living has improved. New homes are now being built on empty lots as substandard structures are torn down. The trailers and small homes that hugged the river are gone now, bought out and converted to park land with the help of Federal grants. New businesses are being built. The Fifth Street Extension is under construction and engineering is moving forward on a round-a-bout where Tecumseh, North Third and North Fourth meet.
New people are moving in, but the old family names survive, carried on by second and third generations. Some trace their families back even further and a sprinkling of French surnames hint at their ancestors being some of the first settlers in St. Charles. I won’t do justice to all the fine North End families I’ve gotten to know over the years, but among them are such names as Wright, Kristiansen, Bales, Shelton, Regot, House, Conrey, Pallardy, Civy, Morris, Aubochon, Burkhardt, Johnson and, of course, Messler. I apologize for those I failed to mention here in the press for time of writing my column.
What made me think of Harold Messler after all these years was an anonymous letter I was sent this week. The Council routinely receives threatening letters, always mailed from St. Louis and bearing fictitious names and addresses. I’ve gotten in the habit of simply throwing them away, but this latest one included a print out of a chat room page or blog from a web site set up to make attacks on Council members. Like the letters, the posted messages are anonymous.
Here is a taste of what these people sit around and write to each other and I will warn you that it is somewhat graphic:
“Rory has a history of surrounding himself with people from the dark side and thugs. Some may remember a man from the north end that would come to the Council meetings to harass staff and other members of the council on Rory’s behalf. The man’s name was Harold Messler. According to the newspapers at the time, Messler was murdered by his girlfriend, who apparently was a prostitute, and her boyfriend. Messler had his throat slashed from ear to ear. So it does not surprise me the caliber of people with whom Rory associates.”
Wow. Attacking dead people. That takes a lot of class. Harold Messler never belonged to a Country Club. He didn’t associate with all the movers and shakers. He was a senior citizen with a little too much time on his hands, who liked to call me up once a week because I would listen. I remember when his wife passed away and how lonely he was.
He liked to follow what went on at City Hall, just like people do today. He probably would have loved reading The First Capitol News. This so-called “thug” was probably seventy-eight years old when I knew him and he was no more threatening than the man in the moon. He was probably killed because he took in a stray. Speculation at the time was the attacker was looking for money for drugs.
Harold Messler wasn’t an evil person and he didn’t deserve to be murdered. I remember going to his funeral. It was a sunny day as we drove to the graveyard. I didn’t talk much to anyone. I just couldn’t get the words to come out.
Harold Messler spoke up for his neighbors and other residents of the North End to make sure they weren’t treated like second class citizens. I was proud to stand up for them as well. If “harassing staff” means asking for what is right…for your fair share, then I guess we were all guilty of “harassing staff”. But remember there was a time when the North End didn’t have paved streets, or sidewalks, or sewers or street lights. They do now.
And I just want to say that all the people I have known through the years from that neighborhood, have had more substance and more character than any of the nameless idiots who make up lies by the pale glow of a computer monitor. Those who hide behind the unsigned letters and the anonymous web site posts are people whose own lives must not have mattered for very much. I pity them.
ttt
