Lawrence was born Monday, August 10, 2009, the feast of St. Lawrence. When we found out that we were expecting, we decided to name him Lawrence, after Sue's guardian angel. John Patrick had suggested a year and a half earlier that Sue ask her guardian angel to let her know his name. A short time later she found that it was Lawrence. This was coincidental because Sue and her cousins would call their friend Larry Hilmert "the Guardian Angel."

Grandfather is William Lafayette Andrews, Jr.

New Baby – July 2009
From: 3025475191@@VTEXT.COM [mailto:3025475191@@VTEXT.COM]
Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 10:56 AM
To: Andrews, John (DC)
Subject: What's the exciting news dad

From: Andrews, John (DC)
Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 10:57 AM
To: '3025475191@@VTEXT.COM'
Subject: RE: Whats the exciting news dad

Can't tell you till you home. That's how important it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The kids and Mom are at 6 Flags today with the Lademans. Today (8:00 am) is Bre's operation so be sure to pray for her. Uncle Bill, Aunt Claudia and Glennon were up last weekend to see Grandmama.

From: 3025475191@@VTEXT.COM [mailto:3025475191@@VTEXT.COM](Joseph)
Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 11:33 AM
To: Andrews, John (DC)
Subject: Am I gonna have another

Am I gonna have another little sister or brother

Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 11:33 AM
Subject: RE: Am I gonna have another

Joseph! No guessing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From: "susan andrews"
Subject: Re: Am I gonna have another

Hi Joseph,

You guessed right but Daddy shouldn't have blabbed so quickly. We're kind of worried about the baby. This past Thursday, the doctor wasn't able to find a heartbeat which could just mean that the baby is pretty little yet or it could be bad, so we'll hopefully know pretty soon. But of course, that dear little eternal soul will be with us forever, one way or another. We're just praying for the best, and of course, God's will.

What's up with you anyway? Let us know!

Love,
Mom

From: Susan Andrews
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 11:38 AM
To: [email protected]

Today is the feast of St Lawrence and the 8th anniversary of losing our Lawrence. Can you get to Mass?

His brother John had wanted to become a priest since he was about 3 1/2 or 4 years old. The only time he had other thoughts was once when we were coming in from the parking lot of our apartment in Mountain View-there was a man working on the carport roof. I asked him to throw down a ball we had lost up there & he threw down several. John then said that instead of being a priest who teaches other kids to be priests, "I think I'll be a guy that works on the roof.

LAWRENCE'S AUNT JOAN:

LETTER DATED 5 NOVEMBER 1981 FROM JOAN ANDREWS TO HER BROTHER JOHN:

"It's strange. This lonliness only draws me to a desire to be more removed. To go further away from everybody. I know these feelings won't last forever. And I don't even really mind, though it makes me restless and sad. I do wish I could be free of the sit-ins here in St. Louis so I could take off. Somewhere beautiful and fresh and close to nature and winter. Somewhere alone, with a cabin and a fireplace I keep thinking. I want to enjoy the solitude. Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe deep down I know why you stay in Saudi Arabia and won't be coming home at Christmas, not til June-or maybe not even then."

LETTER DATED 19 NOVEMBER 1981 FROM JOAN ANDREWS TO HER BROTHER JOHN:

"Today a dear friend, Fr. Jim Danis was buried.... I knew Fr. Danis was dying for a long time, but just seeing him in the coffin, slender and black-haired...I suddenly recalled the warmth and dedication of the man I had seen so often at the clinics. I was so moved I guess because I have been in a strange mood for several months now, feeling lost and lonely....And Fr. Danis was healthy when they discovered my cancer, which they thought at the time was terminal. (Dr. Hoy, you know, thought the remission of my cancer contrary to prognosis, and bluntly told me, as if he thought it slightly shocking, that it was 'uncanny,' and 'unfathomable')....Life is really strange. I recall that the main sorrow and regret I felt when I knew I had cancer and the doctors warned me that it was very likely terminal, was that I had never been in love yet. Never known what it was to be held by a man I loved, and who loved me. And then two months later....And what developed from that I thought was real...but it was not. But at least I have known love, and I have been held. And maybe that's enough....But I want to have my own children so very badly, and I am getting older and older. Please pray God sends me someone whom I will fall in love with, and he with me!!...God bless you, John. I love you so very much. Take care of yourself. You are always in my prayers. Please keep me in yours.

LETTER DATED JUNE 19, 1998 TO JOAN FROM MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA (Nobel Peace Prize winner):

Dear Joan Andrews,This brings you my prayer and blessing that you may be only all for Jesus through Mary. You have offered all to God and accepted all suffering for the love of him - because you know that whatever you do to the least or for the least you do it to Jesus - because Jesus has clearly said If you receive a little child in my name you receive me. We are all praying for you - do not be afraid. All this suffering is but the kiss of Jesus - a sign that you have come so close to Jesus on the cross-so that He can kiss you. Be not afraid - Jesus loves you-you are precious to Him - He loves you. My prayer is always near you & for you.

God bless you
les Teresoi me

SUNSHINE, THE MAGAZINE OF SOUTH FLORIDA, APRIL 19, 1987, by Scott Eyman:

When she was a child, she dreamt of Adolph Hitler. Some old movie had started the dreams: lurid scenes of helpless women being trussed up and whipped by jackbooted storm troopers. Joanie was fascinated by it and began reading about Nazi Germany. How could this have happened in a Christian counrty? The dreams started. She would confront Hitler, hitting him with her balled-up fists. She would awake frightened, her stomach aching with emotion. By the time she was 18, she had arrived at the conclusion that the Nazis were monsters in human form. It was a sign-post pointing toward the mission that has consumed her life.

The dreams of Hitler have long since ended, replaced by more immediate atrocities. Now Joan Elizabeth Andrews sits in solitary confinement at Broward Correctional Institution, under a five-year sentence for burglary, criminal mischief and resisting arrest without violence at a Pensacola abortion clinic. It was a harsh sentence, twice as long as the maximun indicated under Florida Sentencing Guidelines. Joan Andrews has refused to cooperate, either at her trial or during her incarceration. While being sentenced, she sat cross-legged on the floor. When she was imprisoned at the medium-security women's facility in Lowell, Fla., she refused to be processed. So she was transferred to the maximum security of Broward Correctional, where, 29 or 30 days out of every month, she is in solitary confinement. She is permitted no visit, no phone calls, no writing letters. The highlight of her day is an hour-long walk in the courtyard. After her term in solitary, she is released and once more refuses to go to orientation, and the process begins all over again.

Normally, Joan Andrews would be paroled after two years, but at this rate, she will have to serve the full five-year sentence. We cannot know what Henry David Thoreau would have thought of Joan Elizabeth Andrews' cause, but he would certainly respect her steadfast refusal to capitulate to the norm. It's not that she is obstreperous or abusive in any way; by her actions, she simply announces, with a chilling clarity and confidence, that she "would prefer not to." "Would that I could crawl back into that violated sanctuary of the womb and be them..." -From a letter by Joan Andrews.

She was a sensitive child. "If anybody else got a spanking, it was Joanie who cried," remembers her younger sister Susan. "And she was always the first one to give her money away to anybody who seemed to need it more than she did. We did most of our shopping at Goodwill or at house-sales, and you can get very nice things there for five or ten dollars. But whenever we'd give Joan a coat, she'd give it away to some lady on the street. I always thought she was going to be a nun, because she was so spiritual."

The Andrews family was serious and God-fearing. William Andrews was a lawyer, then a schoolmaster in rural Tennessee. His wife was a nurse. There were six children, three boys, three girls. They had little money, but there was 230 acres, the family worked together. Joan began to draw, and her earnest, naive representations of small children became the pride of the family. Once, when Joan's mother Elizabeth Andrews was three months pregnant, she miscarried. The baby was born alive, perfectly shaped, in the family kitchen, and 12-year-old Joan and 11 year old Susan saw the baby and held him. They baptized the baby, named him Joel, and at the funeral, each family member put a lock of hair in the coffin.

Three months later, Joan was playing with a 10-year-old cousin in Duck River which runs near the family farm. The cousin was cought by a current and began screaming, lashing at the water in panic. Joan was paralyzed. She thought: "She's a better swimmer than I am; if I go in, we'll both drown." She went in anyway, more afraid of doing nothing than of dying. The current carried her and her cousin to safety on the river's shore. From that, she learned that attempts have to be made, ever if the task seems impossible.

Joanie got a schlorship. At St. Louis University, she became involved in the anti-war movement. As always, it was a total commitment. Susan remembers Joan begging for money to go to Viet Nam. But there was a gradual disillusionment with the self-rightousness and incipient hostility of the movement; the break came after a rally in which some of her cohorts spat at a speaker they didn't agree with. After two semisters, she left school. Then, in 1973, the Supreme Court's landmark Roe vs. Wade decision legalized abortion. And Joan Andrews had a new mission, one that completely replaced her long-standing ambition to write and illustrate children's books. She dropped out of college and adopted an itinerant life-style, traveling around the country to attend pro-life rallies, working as a domestic or exercising horses. She made no more than $1,000 in any given year. She mostly lived with her sister Susan Bindle and her husband, babysitting for their growing brood. And, like the other women in the family, she began doing what she referred to as "rescues."

Joan Andrews' raids on abortion clinics were fairly ritualistic. She walked in the front or back door and told the waiting women that they were making a terrible mistake. And sometimes she attempted to unplug surgical equipment, with the idea of rendering the clinic incapable of operating for the rest of the day. Sometimes the rescues worked and Andrews would convince a woman to forego the abortion. At one time, Susan Brindle had three such girls living with her.

It was on one of those rescues that Joan Andrews came to the Ladies Center in Pensacola in March 1986. This is the same Pensacola that remains rather jumpy on the subject of abortion. It was only 2 1/2 years ago, on Christmas Day, 1984, that four young blue-collar Pensacolans blew up three abortion clinics-including the Ladies Center-as a "gift to the baby Jesus on his birthday." The back door of the Ladies Center was open when Andrews, followed by several other protesters, walked into a vacant procedure room and began pulling out the plug of the suction machine. A policeman who had followed the group said, "Lady, stop it or I'll have to arrest you." In response, Andrews begged him to help her. "As long as I'm here, no children will be killed," she said, kicking at the medical equipment. The cop pulled her away while she was still yanking at the cord, and arrested her for conspiracy to burglarize.

Court records indicate that $1,978 worth of damage was done to the premises. It was something like the hundredth time Joan Andrews had been arrested. Three days later she was released on bond. On April 25, 1986, she was arrested for picketing outside the same clinic. This time, requests for bond were refused.

A non-jury trial presided over by Judge William H. Anderson found Andrews guilty of burglary, criminal mischief and resisting arrest without violence. In August, when Anderson asked for verbal assurance that she would cease her harrassment of abortion clinics in return for bond, Andrews replied, "I couldn't promise I wouldn't try to save a child's life." Bond was again denied. In late September, with the judge calling her "unrepentant," Joan Andrews was sentenced to five years in prison. The sentence provoked widespread anger in the anti-abortion community. "The same judge sentenced two men to four years for being accessories to murder on the same day he sentenced my sister," Susan Brindle points out. "Where's the justice in that?" But while the hand-wringing and legal maneuvering continue, Joan Andrews sits in solitary confinement, secure in her beliefs. "The souls of the just are in the hands of the Lord." (Wisdon 3:1)

She could be a pretty woman, but she is beginning to look worn and old beyond her 38 years. She bears her afflictions with a joyful grace. Jail does not seem to be such a bad place, although she misses her family terrably. She admits with something of a girlish giggle, that from the time she was 11, all she wanted to do was get married and have children - and yet she never kissed a man until she was 33. She lost her right eye to cancer six years ago and has a glass replacement, giving half her face the unblinking, baleful stare of a stuffed animal. She dismisses the difficulity it causes her: "I have to be careful going down stairs."

To look at her is to see someone rare, someone who has willfully chosen to mortify, not merely her flesh, but her entire life. The unspoken logic is crushingly simple: If the babies with whom she identifies so strongly are unable to have a life, then neither will Joan Andrews. "If abortion had been legalized earlier than it was, I would have devoted myself to that, rather than to anti-war activitiesm" she says. "But there's a difference between injustice and murder. I have drawn only one line for myself: I will not ever do violence to any human being." The basis of Andrews' non-cooperation is her feeling that, by sentencing her, the judicial system announced that the lives of unborn children were not worth defending - and that, were she to cooperate with her jailers, she would be implicitly agreeing with that evaluation. To cooperate with her sentence would, in effect, be to admit her guilt. She is a glowing, articlulate presence; her words rush out, her fingers skittering nerviously through the air. Her religious feeling is intense, but she lacks the holier-than-thou arrogance of so many pro-lifers. "There is a spiritual side to non-cooperation" she says. "I believe that all humans are as valuable as I am. I believe that if we murder one age group, it can be escalated to others. And even if I had been sentenced to 30 days instead of five years, I wouldn't have cooperated."

Joan has not always been the Happy Warrier of the pro-life movement. In 1978 and '79, the constant living out of a sleeping bag, traveling on buses ("You can get shoes at Goodwill for 10 cents; nice ones..."), rooming for a few weeks at a time with other pro-lifers in the network, seeing her family for only five or six days a month, began dragging her down. "I hit a crisis. The burden, the pain was too much. I would do my job at the racetrack during the day and I'd just come home and cry all night long. I couldn't handle the anguish." Her zeal had been renewed by the time her eye, initially damaged when a horse kicked it, developed a malignant melanoma. The eye was removed on a Wednesday and she was back disrupting an abortion clinic on Saturday, telling her sister, "What's my eye compared to the lives of children?" Andrews has elaborated on her theories of passive resistance in a series of letters to family and supporters. "This conduct, if multiplied by numbers, can make it impossible to send life savers to jail," she wrote. "I'm told if I persist, Lowell prison won't be able to keep me and they'll send me to B.C.I. in South Florida, the maximum security prison. That's fine...I cannot be seen as a regular inmate. They must deal with me as someone who is saying by her actions that she loves the preborn babies." But is her civil disobedience having any effect on the world beyond her immediate circle of anti-abortion activists? "Is anybody listening? No. Not really. Not in the world at large," Andrews says. "I think people think I'm a radical or nuts. But if 2-year-olds were dying instead of babies everybody would be up in arms." The Rev. Daniel Kubala is director of the Respect Life Ministry for the Archdiocese of Miami. He struggles to come to grips with her apparently limitless gift for self-sacrifice. "I neither condemn nor bless what she is doing," Kubala says. "Part of our theology is that God reveals himself to different people in different ways. Outside of the early martyrs, there's not much to compare this to." Is she the 20th century's answer to Joan of Arc, or is she just another religious militant with a private theology impenetrable to outsiders? In short, is she a fool, a fanatic, a saint, or some entirely original combination of all three? "I don't know if that question will be answered in our lifetime," Kubala sighs. There is no end to it, of course. Barring a reduction in her sentence from a friendly Florida Attorney General's office, or a pardon, she will serve her full sentence. Upon her release, she vows, she will "go right out and do a rescue." "In all honesty, I don't know what's going to happen; the holocaust could go on for 10 years or a hundred. When I was having such a hard time, back in 1979, one of the things that brought me out of it was something Mother Teresa said: 'We are not called to be successful, we are called to be faithful.' "I realize the truth of that; I just want to be able to say that, when all is said and done, I've done what I could." And then this intelligent, passionate - perhaps too passionate - woman who has yielded to the temptation of martyrdom, goes back to her cell. The private Calvary of Joan Andrews begins all over again.
#
Joan, like her mother, is a completely selfless, kind and saintly person. She would give a person in need the shirt off her own back (and literally has). Her brother John recalls her taking off her coat in the bitter cold and giving it to a homeless person. This trait has been obvious in Joan almost from the day she was born. Joan, like her brother John, was extremely shy as a child. Her parents permitted her to wait a year and start first grade with her sister Susan at St. Catherine's in Columbia. Her father skipped Joan to 8th Grade from 6th Grade as he had done for her brother Bill. In 1980, when having her eye removed at St. Louis U. hospital, Joan refused meals because she did not have insurance, couldn't pay and did not want to be any more of a burden on anyone than she had to be. Her father had just bought a new car and was embarassed to be seen at the hospital in it for the same reason.

In the late 1980s, Joan's father was watching the nationally televised program "The McLaughlin Report" and, to his surprise, Pat Buchanan (the future Presidential candidate who also mentioned Joan in one of his books) predicted at the end of the program that Governer Martinez of Florida would release Joan Andrews from prison in Florida within a short period of time. Joan's brother, John, bumped into and spoke with John McLaughlin several times in the elevator to the building where they both worked in Washington, D.C. When John was visiting his parents he answered the phone only to find that it was former Governer of California, Jerry Brown, who Mother Teresa had asked to call Joan's sister Susan to ask how he might help in efforts to get her out of jail. He spoke with Susan for about an hour. Jerry Brown had spent time in Calcutta, India with Mother Teresa after he left office. Joan told of the ABC network television program 20/20 coming down to Broward prision to do a segment on her. During the interview, the interviewer constantly rolled his eyes as Joan was answering his questions. The program never ran. Amnisty International got in touch with Joan's brother John just before she was released from prison to determine how they could help in her release effort. Joan's mother and brother John drove down to Lowell prision in Florida to visit Joan, but the prison would not let her mother see her even though she had driving all the way from Lewisburg. Only John saw her for about an hour because he received prior clearance as one of her lawyers. Joan's brother John recalls the demeanor Joan displayed ever toward her accusors. During a court session in Philadelphia, Joan was informed that the lunch break was to be longer than announced in court. As Joan saw the people from the abortion clinic walking back into the courtroom, she kindly with a smile on her face told them of the delay, to which she got a harsh look and cold shoulder. Joan, at about age nine or so, saved her cousin Cindy Watt's life by rescuing her from drowing in the Duck River in Marshall County, Tennessee. Joan said she just knew she would drown herself, but she could not just stand by and do nothing. She swam down and grabbed Cindy, put her on her shoulders and, with her own head under water, walked her to the shore while standing on the bottom of the river. Joan's brothers, John and Bill, were standing on a sand bar about 100 feet from Cindy. John recalls being frozen and unable to do anything other than shove a log down toward Joan. In June 1969, Joan was visiting John at Ft. Carson Colorado at the time Bobby Kennedy was shot. John left for manuvers in the field when there was still hope that Kennedy might live. When John returned from the field Sunday afternoon, he drove straight to the guest quarters next to the hospital to see Joan and became aware for the first time that Robert Kennedy had died. Joan was visiting John at Ft. Riley Kansas when former president Dwight D. Eisenhower died in January 1969. Joan was staying at the guest quarters along the railroad tracks and John, on his way to see Joan, saw the black-draped funeral train slowly travel through Ft. Riley and past the guest house early in the morning of the burial. Joan attend the burial in Abelene, Kansas with the priests with whom her brother worked. John was serving mass in the chapel of the oldest church in Kansas at noon when President Richard Nixon's helicopter landed and he could hear the 21-gun salute.

FROM A JAIL CELL early 1980s:

The third month of my seven-and-a-half month jail sentence is drawing to a close for me. I was sentenced along with three other pro-lifers for repeated rescue attempts at the death's doors of an abortion chamber in St. Louis.

My experiences in jail have been many and varied, but I'd rather just say a word or two about them and go on to plead for continued efforts of those who are carrying on the struggle on the outside. In any jail, it is the people more than the system that leave the lasting impressions.

Praying together with fellow inmates, discussing abortion with them, passing out hand-made rosaries sent by a dear Blue Army friend, agonizing during frequent disruptions in the form of verbal hatred and violent fights among the inmates, witnessing cruelty and a constant flow of foul language: this is all part of the burden and joy of sharing and suffering with those around me.

But despite the evidence of so much pain in such a place as this, the burden of knowing that legalized, technological, manicured killing is being carried out upon innocent, defenseless babies outside these bars and guard towers, out there in so-called civilized society, brings down the heaviest burden on my soul.

I have known deep frustration from being physically restrained from trying to rescue the babies who are even at this moment dying at area abortion death chambers. Prayer has held me together amid the strain of this unjust interference and restraint that physically prohibits my response to God's calling to reach out to His children in need. Doing penance will sustain me till this incarceration is all over, though I doubt this will be my last jail sentence as long as the baby-killing continues.

This is my fervent prayer and my constant plea to my fellow pro-lifers: Please God, help us all to respond urgently to the realty of the killing. Help us to forsake the legalistic game-playing at which the courts and secular society are so adept.

May our dear Lord Jesus bless you each one, and guide you through the burning love found in His Most Sacred Heart. May Mary, our Queen and our Mother, be your constant companion, your consolation, and your source of joy. Keep up the good fight.

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR EDITORIAL FEBRUARY 1, 1998

The high cost of bearing the cross - For many Catholics, news that pro-lifer Joan Andrews is going away to jail for as long as three years provokes as much consernation as admiration. The mother of young children, Joan Andrews, many might think, has responsibilities that go beyond principles. While they may admire her for her valiant pro-life work - silent witness and prayer outside abortion clinics, "rescues" on behalf of the unborn - they may also secretly think that the kind of witness that leads to prison is best left to the young or the graybeards, to priest and nuns - those with less to lose or fewer people depending on them. Joan Andrews does not agree. In fact, when faced Jan. 15 with an indeterminate jail sentence intended to force her to accept probation and thus - in her mind - acquiesce to a system that imprisons the rescuers and protects the killers, Joan Andrews refused to accept the solice of family or the excuse that her family's needs come first: "I will die in jail," she told the court, "before I place even my family before God." Joan Andrews - like others before her in the pro-life, anti-war and civil-rights movements - embodies the kind of stubborn heroism that seems at once saintly and slightly insane. Such holy activists dedicate their actions to God, and act out of an acute sence of God's love and their own responsibility to protect His creation and witness to His moral law. Many of us who are Catholic mothers and fathers may feel strongly about the state's approval of abortion, or about the use of tax dollars for weapons of mass destruction. Yet we are uncomfortable with action that would make it difficult to provide for our family's welfare. For many of us who make our way through the compromises, and challenges of daily life, radical action, and the equally radical - some might say foolhardy - trust that God will protect us and our families, seems hard to justify, and harder to do. So we flinch when we hear Joan Andrews say: "If anyone puts God first, can he ever doubt God's protection over his family? No, never! Regardless of what happens, my husband and children are in God's hands. I worry not." Yet Jesus himself asks of all of us an equally radical commitment: "whoever loves father or mother more than me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. (Mt 10:37) Not everyone may be called to make the sacrifice of a Joan Andrews, but we are all called to be saints. We are all challenged to respond with our whole heart and mind to God's call. The example of people like Joan Andrews reminds us that Christians are not called to the comfortable life, but to the cross. Symbol of worldly shame and heavenly glory, the cross can embarrass and discomfort us. Too often we flee from its weight rather than embrace it. But it is Jesus himself who challenged us to prayer, do penance and, on occasion, go beyond the comfortable and the routine in order to bear witness to His love for us and our trust in Him.

YOU REJECT THEM, YOU REJECT ME - RICHARD COWDEN-GUIDO, Trinity Communications, Manassas, Virginia:

There has been something missing from the pro-life movement from the beginning. The enormity of what abortion is has always demanded something more than magazine articles and politicians, though no one denies the vital necessity of those things as well. But for all the unsung, amazing willingness to sacrifice on the part of so many pro-lifers across the country, and world, there has been missing from that sacrifice an element Joan Andrews has now introduced.

This book is a collection mostly of clips from Joan's prison letters, but some others as well, along with a few articles and anecdotes relating to her story. They tell it vividly, and I believe those who read them will come away with the same eerie impression that struck me as I read them.

It is this: The abortion culture cannot long endure the witness of a Joan Andrews. Either it will kill her, or she, by the grace of God, will destroy it. If you think I exaggerate, read on. The end of the abortion culture may be at hand.

NATIONALLY SYNDICATED COLUMN BY JOSEPH SOBRAN: MARCH 10, 1988

Our whole society has done a series of flip-flops on what we now call "issues" but which used to be matters of consensus, abortion being the most crucial of them. Many politicians decided abortion was a right rather than a crime about the time the Supreme Court said so....

As I watch [Richard] Gephardt's star rise, I am reminded of a woman named Joan Andrews. Andrews is serving a five-year prison sentence-more than some hardened criminals get-for slightly damaging a machine used to abort unborn children.

You can say what you like about her, but Andrews did what public opinion says Kurt Waldheim should have done. She refused to go along with what she saw as an aberration from civilized life. She couldn't join the general flip-flop.

If Andrews is a "fanatic," Waldheim must be a "moderate" - a reasonable man who goes along with change when it occurs, even if he wasn't on the cutting edge. A chameleon. Naturally he is against Nazism now. He knows when to flip and when to flop.

Gephardt is an embarassing reminder that most of us are closer to Waldheim than to Andrews. Andrews goes to prison. Gephardt may yet go to the White House. That's how our system works.

LETTER DATED MAY 2, 1986 FROM JOAN TO HER PARENTS:

I sure love and miss you... I'm doing fine and friends in other areas are trying to help out with this Pensacola case. Whatever happens, I am at peace and am happy to leave it in God's hands....

As far as my own life is concerned, I have come to the conclusion that I am meant to stay single.... I must be called to the single life... there is one man I knew I even loved right from the beginning, but... God has called him to... the Holy Priesthood (Sean Mahoney), the highest vocation of all. How deeply God loves him! What a great priest he will make!...

AFFIDAVIT OF JOAN ANDREWS BELL, DECEMBER 22, 1998

This is my statement of conscience. This is why I cannot accept probation. Human life begins at the moment of conception. This is an undisputed fact of medical science. It is confirmed in every human biology and physiology book. It is confirmed in the fields of embryology and fetology. Dr. Jerome Lejeune, Dr. Liley, and all the expertsof medical science I have read confirm this fact. The research does not need further defense. It stands on its own uncontested merit. Even the "Supreme" Court in Roe and Doe could not refute this fact. The Court, acting in a cowardly manner, pretended the fact did not exist by refusing to address it. The court lied by claiming that it is unknown when human life begins. The court ignored documentation in legal briefs which contained undisputed scientific and medical proof that life begins at conception. The court preferred, instead, to enshrine social reasons as the "impecable" basis for launching a brutal holocaust against the most defenseless in our society, the preborn. All proponents of abortion maintain the same intellectually dishonest position that recites hollow rhetoric that preborn children are "blobs of tissue," and that this "developing tissue" must be destroyed for social reasons. Scientific fact and inalienable rights of those deprived of their lives are ignored. Not surprising. Every holocaust in history has stood on the same corrupt and faukty premise which claims that certain categories of people must die under the guise of social necessity, proclaimed emotionally in an effort to mislead. In my 24 years in this sorrowful struggle, i have never met an abortionist yet, nor any proponents of the "choice to kill" position, who, when willing to discuss the facts instead of spouting falsehoods, did not admit that abortion is the act of killing a human child. However, the facade gone, they maintain that killing is necessary for social reasons. It's a shame. Truth and reason have been rejected and Trust has been stomped underfoot. Distorted logic is maintained through an act of will. We in America know we are killing children! God help us, we are a people who condone or ignore the brutal distruction of human life for a myriad of shallow and baseless reasons. We have made destruction of children our one true god. It cmes down to a matteer of false values and conscience. Do we value human life or do we uphold falsehood and personal selfishness? Indeed, the "choice people" have manufactured their own private laws depending on neither a morally based legal tradition nor moral norms of human conduct and moral behavior. Tragically and shamefully, government power and legal sanction has been given to this slaughter of the innocent, this corrupting and undermining of our whole system of law and order. The courts of our land have unleashed anarchy against its most vulnerable members. America now stands under judgment of history, and the just hand of God. It is not surprising that after World War II, not only were the doctors of Nazi Germany held accountable for the murder of the innocent, but also the judges who had followed laws of corrput legislatures which legislated Jews to be non-persons and "enemies of the State." We mock justice today and show ourselves to be the greatest of hypocrites. God is Truth. Because God is Trust, all correct knowledge, judgment, understanding, wisdom, and science come from God and have their sole validity in the relationship they have to eternal laws of Truth, proceeding from the Universal law-giver, the Creator of the Universe. Human life is sacred because mankind is made in the image and likeness of God. Abortion is not only a crime against humanity, in that individual human beings are denied due process of law, but it is a crime against God! Without measure or limitation, all human life is sacred because we belong to god, and we shall one day return to Him. By our merits and our choice, we will either gain eternal happiness with god or lose God forever. To declare that certain human life is not sacred, is to declare that no human life is sacred, that no one is to be universally cherished and protected. In essence, it is to say there is no God, and all reality is anarchym that truth is meaningless, justice is non-existant, and love is outlawed. From earliest childhood, I was taught my Roman Catholic faith by word and example. First by my parents, then by the good priests and nuns whom God placed in my life. Catholic doctrine is clear and must be universally accepted. It is infallible trust. Dissenters from Divine truth have excommunicated themselves from the Catholic faith.

The Catholic Church teaches with the force of infallible doctrine that abortion is a heninous sin, the act of killing an innocent child.. No Catholic can approve such crime. Neither can he give consent, support or cooperation nor any participation with the murder of the innocent, defenseless child in the womb. Pope John Paul II clearly spells this out in his recent encyclical, Evangelium Vitae. My Catholic faith also teaches that the Catholic faithful must inform their conscience according to the teachings of the CHurch. Once onnhas an informed, correct conscience, one must follow his conscience, regardlewss of the consequences. It is my humble privelege to follow my conscience and my Catholic faith in defense of the innocent and the just. I will not cooperate with immoral, unjust laws corruptly and cowardly imposed on the American people for the sake of pretending to solve social and economic problems by murdering innocent children. I will not accept probation. To accept probation would be to accept the lie that I harmed society by trying to peacefully, prayerfully and non-violently save children from a brutal death by abortion, and that I therefore need to be rehabilitated. To accept probation demands that I sign my name to a paper which says I will obey unjust laws. Indeed, I will not obey unjust laws nor consent to cooperate with the murder of the sacred lives of God's precious children. I could no more adhere to the unjust laws of this land, or in any way give credence to evil enshrined in law, than deny God Himself. With God's help, I will with trembling and shame for my own sins and weaknesses, accept and defend the Laws of God.

Finally, the United States, like all of Western Civilation, has a legal and moral tradition that accepts the fact that abortion is a crime against human life. This great evil was illegal up until the Un-Supreme Court decided to reject the facts of science and the legal and moral traditions of this country. Against all moral norms the Judiciary falsely "legalized" child killing. Abraham Lincoln said, in response to the argument that Blacks were not fully human because slavery was legal, "It is never right to do wrong, even when sancttioned by law." Law becomes anarchy when it discriminates against or dehumanizes a segment of humanity, and furthermore murders the innocent under pretext of law. Human laws which are unjust are null and void, wrote the master theologian Thomas Aquinas, when they violate ultimate Truth, God's law. Thomas Jefferson wrote that the first and most basic duty of government and of law is the protection of human life, not its destruction. He maintained that if government violates this most basic right, which is its primary purpose for existing, then it forfeits its authority to rule. In essence, such a government and its law unleashes anarchy upon the governed and, indeed, the world order. "Sometimes we must interfere," said the Nazi Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel, as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. "When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy--whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views, that place must--at that monent--become the center of the universe." When anarchy reigns under the tyranny of law, the prople must re-establish law and order by giving no credence to false authority. Rather they should re-establish legitimate authority. Unjust laws and decerrs will cease to have power when just men refuse to cooperate with the evil. Recognizing that in the United States of AMerica today so-called "unwanted" preborn children do not have protection under the law, it is only fitting that those of us who love them, and align ourselves with them, be denied freedon, and be condemned to jails and prisons. Preborn children, denied legal protection, often find the womb a tomb. We, the born, who struggle on behalf of these abandoned children, can find our tomb of reparation in a jail cell or prison dungeon. An yet, the deepest and darkest tomb and dungeon of all is the human heart in a nation gone murderous. When a child can be coldly dismembered alive in-utero, with national approval and brutal sanction of law, there is no hope for such a nation without Divine Intervention. My only prayer is for God's will to be done in all things, and may repentence come so that no immortal soul is lost. In summary, there are three platforms to my continued decision to serve God and refuse to cooperate with the Abortion Holocaust in America:

1) Science. The undisputed medical, scientific fact that human life begins at conception. I accept that fact.
2) My faith. The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is a hedonistic crime against an innocent human life, and that this evil must be opposed by all the faithful at every opportunity and by every moral means. The Church also teaches that conscience is primany, that one must have an informed, correct conscience. I understand and accept this fact about my religious teaching as a Roman Catholic and I affirm it.
3) America's true legal and moral tradition brands abortion as a crime against humanity. I accept this fact as an American citizen.

Therefore, regardless of the consequences, I cannot deny trust, nor violate my conscience by cooperating with unjust laws, nor commit treason by betraying the founding principles and moral truths upon which our nation was built. I know I must act in a way which will help re-establish true law and order in America. I pray that our nation's self-destructive course can be reversed. It is a deep privilege to suffer imprisonment for the love of God and for the sake of innocent children. I surely have enough sins of my own to warrant long and hard reparation behind bars, but I pray God will use any time of separation from my family to also atone for the sin of abortion, even in the smallest way. It is a fitting thing to suffer imprisonment when one's nation has shown contempt for life and for the laws of God. As this holocaust of the Culture of Death has shown time and again, this whole struggle goes far beyond unjust laws and a government gone bad; it is a war between good and evil. That is why the Court is not putting me in jail to serve a fixed sentence. instead, there may be an effort to coerce me to violate my conscience under the cruel pressure of jail and the suffering caused to my family by an indeterminate incarceration. With God's grace, I will die in jail before I place even my family before God. If anyone puts God first, can he ever doubt God's protection over his family? No, never! Regardless of what happens, my husband and children are in God's hands. I worry not. Any pain is joy when offered to the Just and Merciful God of us all. thank you, dear, sweet Jesus, for this opportunity to draw closer to You!

Joan Andrews Bell
December 22, 1998

PRO-LIFERS RALLY TO SUPPORT JOAN ANDREWS BELL - THE "WANDERER":

PITTSBURG - With a short time remaining before Joan Andrews Bell's January 15th appearance in Allegheny County Court here, pro-lifers across America are writing letters to Judge Robert Novak on her behalf in hope that she will not be imprisoned for violating probation - something that dates back ten years. Bell, who is returning to Judge Novak's Pittsburg court voluntarily, now is a mother of a five-year-old daughter, mary Louise. She and her husband Christopher are in the process of adopting a handicapped eight-year-old Mexican boym Emiliano. Should Judge Novak decide to punish the defendant severly, Joan could be imprisoned for as long as two or three years. the case dates back to 1988 when Joan, after serving more than two years of a stiff five-year sentence in Florida for blocking abortion site entrances, was transferred from Florida to Pittsburg to answer charges there. At the time, Judge Novak released her on probation. At 7:30 p.m., jan. 14th, the night before Joan's court appearance, a large pro-life rally will be held in St. Paul's Cathedral Auditorium, on Fifth Avenue at Craig Street, in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh... At deadline, The Wanderer heard that New York's John Cardinal O'Connor is one of a number of faithful Catholics who praised Joan's "goodness of character" in a recent letter to judge Novak urging clemency. While incarcerated in Florida's Broward Correctional Institution, Joan Andrews served most of her time in solitary confinement, as some 30,000 letters were sent to Florida officials protesting such harsh treatment for a "prisoner of conscience." Among those interceding for Joan with Florida's Gov. Robert Martinez at the time were syndicated columnists Patrick j. Buchanan abd William F. Buckley, jr.; attorney Robert McMillan, who ran for U.S. Senate in New York; Robert K. Dornan and 28 other congressmen who signed petitions urging Joan's release; as well as Cardinal O'Connor, Bishop Austin B. Vaughn, and Archbishop John L. May, then head of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

(Note: At the time, Amnesty International in Amhurst, Massachusetts contacted Joan's brother John in Washington, D.C. for information so that they could also petition on Joan's behalf. The press probably wasn't aware of their involvement, or chose not to report it.)

ANTI-ABORTION ACTIVIST GETS 23 MONTHS IN JAIL

...interfere with their process," Novak said. Novak said she had to obey the law, and Bell said she's rather lose her freedon. "Go ahead, put me on jail, she told the judge. "It will affect my residence, but it won't affect my thinking." The defendant's husband is Chris Bell, who runs the Good Counsel home for Single Mothers and Children in Hoboken. Reached in Pittsburgh, he said he was proud of his wife's decision. "I know many women who suffer the loss of their child. And Joan's pro-life work in front of the abortion mills is to pray and counsel and dissuade mothers, some of whom are very determined to kill their chid," he said. "We want to offer them a real alternative, because we know that in five years or 10 years or 15 years, they will regret the day they walked into that abortion mill." The couple have a 5-year-okd daughter and have just adopted a 9-year-old son. In an affidavit filed with Novak's court, Mrs. Bell said it is her "deep privilege to suffer imprisonment for the love of God and for the sake of innocent children." ... Mr. Bell said reports in the Jersey Journey last September that the FBI had detained his wife as a fugitive from justice were incorrect. that incident occurred after an open warrant for Mrs. Bell's failure to appear in court turned up during a background check for the couple's proceedings, he said. "We lived an open life," Mr. Bell said. "That warrant was issued without her ever being properly notified. In fact, in court yesterday, the judge noted he had a returned letter in his files and that she was never properly notified of her required appearance, which dates back to 1990." That warrant was for her to appear in court on the probation violation that was the subject of Thursday's proceedings in Pennsylvania.

YOU REJECT THE, YOU REJECT ME - RICHARD COWDEN-GUIDO, Trinity Communications, Manassas, Virginia:

In March 1986 Joan Andrews entered a Pensacola, Florida abortion center, tries unsuccessfully to pull th plug from a suction machine, and offered passive resistance to her arrest for seeking to block the commerce described above. Instead of trespassing, Andrews was charged with burglary, malicious mischief, resisting arrest and assult - which latter charge in Florida carries a life sentence. When she refused not to engage even in legal actions against abortion ("I couldn't promise not to save a child's life, " she told the Judge, "to me, that's scandalous."), bail was denied. For four months she remained in prison under the prospect of a life sentence until the assult charges were dropped because they were false.

After conviction in a non-jury trial by Judge William Anderson in July, Andrews announced that "the only way I can protest for unborn children now is by non-cooperation in jail" - whereupon she sat in the middle of the courtroom and had to be carried back to Escamnia County Jail. Because of her "noncooperation" policy (as she calls it), Andrews was put in solitary confinement; and in an interpretation of the First Amendment Nat Hentoff (among others) finds curious, Andrews was denied the right to attend Mass as part of the punishment.

So it continued until her sentencing on 24 September. Florida guidelines recommend a year to thirty months maximum for convicted burglars. Judge Anderson. however, was not pleased that Andrews' political position of noncooperation hadn't even been broken by-illegally, according to hentoff-denying her right to a Catholic Mass. He warned her in open court that prison officials have "their ways" of ensuring cooperation; and then he sentenced her to five years in prison. Later that day he gave four-year sentences to two men convicted of accessory to murder.

Judge Anderson's confidence, however, was ill-founded. Prison officials and State authority did indeed have "ways" to ensure cooperation; but none of them moved Andrews. She would not sign papers or participate in prison activities. When solitary confinement and denying her Mass didn't break her, she was transferred first to medium security at Lowell, then to Broward Correctional Institute in Miama, the maximum security prison for Florida's most dangerous female inmates. She was then placed among Broward's most dangerous, those who were in diciplinary confinement because they had committed further crimes while in prison. One of her letters describes the initiation.

"Broward," she writes, "certainly looks more like one's idea of a 'real prison' than Lowell did...you should see the landscape in which Broward is set. It's all surrounded by desolate brush and land and the prison is isolated by itself in the barren wasteland. The buildings are two and three-storey buildings grouped together. One interesting point is that the buildings are all painted white with blue (Blessed Mother blue) markings. However, inside the close custody building, everything looks most stark and brutal. Death Row and the Reception and Orientation (R&O) quarters occupy one wing, and then behind two locked doors is the confinement lock-up of Disciplinary Confinement and Administrative Confinement (DC & AC) inmates.

"When I informed the R&O sergeant that I could not cooperate, things got a little ruffled for awhile. A crew of staff came in. Finally the Lieutenant in charge gave me a tour of the confinement wing to scare me into changing my mind. He kept saying, 'You'll be behind these locks for five years, ' and 'This is a maximum security prison, not a jail. You'll never see anything like this!' and, 'I have my roughest inmates in here and this prison only takes close custodyinmates, and do you think I'm going to waste one of my limited confinement cells on you?' I told him he had to handle the situation the way he saw best, but that I had to do also what I had to do. I told him I could not cooperate, that if he wanted me in R&O or anywhere, he'd have to carry me....

"Finally they had a big conference, while I waited out near the death row cells. Then the Lieutenant and a Sergeant took me to the medical building to be checked out by a psychiatrist to see if I was crazy...he turned to the two officers and answered their questions about my sanity by saying: "No, she's not crazy nor mentally ill. She simply has very strongly held beliefs. She's perfectly ormal.' And that was that."

It was not her only description of prison life, however. About Lowell, she wrote the following a month previous to the letter above.

"I am doing well. My cell is a regular single cell, breccia block and concrete and steel. My area is called West Confinement, and it houses twenty-five solitary confinement cells for disciplinary problems (like me!). We are allowed two free letters a week to send out. While in diciplinary lock-up, we cannot receive commissary (thus I can't buy stamps). nor have visitors, nor have any books except religious ones (that's fine!). We do get out in a small exercise yard, where we stand around, or, better yet, walk through the yard while praying the rosary. It's just for Disciplinary Prisoners, but since we must undergo a strip search after every yard-out, I don't plan to go often. It's one hour each day, except Saturday and Sunday. At any rate, I get enough exercise walking in my cell during the rosaries and mercy of God devotionals.

"Across the corridor from my cell is a window which is partially open, so it's really great to get the fresh air after none at Escambia. The view is of grass and trees and part of the other buildings of the compound, and the usual: barbed wire fences, et al. Still, a scenic view compared to Escambia County Jail. There are no TV's here, a real blessing, but the inmates 'go off' often, and there is often screaming and crying, cursing and violent tantrums. It's so sad. The place exagerates the fears and hostilities and linliness of prison because these feelings become concentrated during the long periods of solitary confinement unless you rely on God.

"The first night I was here, October 1st, one lady made strange animal noises all night-they were different animal cries of pain, and so were beyond the animal and were grippingly scary, as though she had broken mentally. After hours of wailing, very loudly, then very low, a decent officer went in and, I think, must held her, because the cries slowed down and became much subdued. I think they sent her to Chattahoochie, the state mental hospital, a dreadful place with the most horrific reputation. Pray for her. I hope she is all right."

At Escambia, where Andrews lived from April to October, "it was rumored that I had been strip searched in the most objecable way-with cavity searches. The latter is incorrect. I was strip searched, but there were no cavity searches. The reason I refused further visits was that the searches were done at night in a large, brightly lit holding tank facing large out-door windows [in full view of correctional] officers, male and female---Two inmates would be stripped together at a time, thus affording no privacy on any score. I refused to cooperate in the way it was being done, and I was subsequently forcibly stripped. I went limp and was handcuffed, dragged across the cell to the bars, and stripped and searched by two female officers."

The reader should recall that Miss Andrews need not have undergone any of this, could have stopped it at any time, simply by abandoning her position of noncooperation. Indeed, had she accepted a plea bargain, or conditional probation, or made virtually any gesture at all acknowledging the State's right to defend the abortion industry, she would have been freed from jail altogether. This is, for eminently comprehensible reasons, in fact the route chosen by the two other women and one man who were arrested with Andrews for the March 1966 sit-in (one of whom, 20-year-old Karissa Epperly, was nursing her two-month old child at the time of the arrest). Epperly was released in July, the other two in August 1986; that is, just at the time Andrews began what is now her eighteen-month sojourn-the entire time illegally denied her First Amendment right to a Catholic Mass-in solitary confinement among the most dangerous female prisoners in Florida.

Leaving aside the breakdown Andrews' witness has provoked in the American legal system, the human question necessarily arises-why doesn't she just give in? It is one thing to talk about conscience, but what prevents her from making some simple compromises of the kind for which no one would blame her, and which would have saved her all the suffering this collection of letters will reveal? The answer to that question, and the formidable nature of the threat she poses to the abortion culture, is arguably provided in a letter she wrote on 15 July 1986, a week before Judge Anderson convicted her of burglary.

"The closer we are to the preborn children," she wrote at that time, "the more faithful we are, then the more identically aligned we become with them. This is our aim, and goal, to wipe out the line of distinction between the preborn and their born friends, becoming ourselves discriminated against. Good! This is necessary. Why should we be treated any differently?

"The rougher it gets for us, " she continued, "the more we can rejoice that we are succeeding; no longer are we being treated so much as the privileged born, but as the discriminated against preborn. We must become aligned with them completely and totally or else the double standard separating the preborn from the rest of humanity will never be eliminated. I don't want to be treated any differently than my brother, my sister. You reject them, you reject me.

" We do not expect justice in the courts. Furthermore we do not seek it for ourselves when it is being denied our beloved preborn brothers and sisters. Thus I plead a case for complete and total vulnerability in court by refusing self defense and all legal argumentation for self protection. We should in truth tell the court that we, as defenders and friends of the preborn, expect no justice and no compassion, as the true defendants, the preborn children, receive none and were killed without due process on the day of the rescue attempt. We only stand here in their stead, being substitute defendants by a compelling and painful logic. They died for the crimes of being preborn and unwanted. We expect no justice from a judical system which decrees such savagery and a government which allows it. If it is a crime punishable by death to be unwanted, maybe it should a crime, punishable by death, to love the unwanted and to act to protect them."

LETTER DATED JUNE 18, 1986 FROM JOAN, ESCAMBIA COUNTY JAIL, TO JOE WALL:

Joe, would you ... [p]oint out that there would be no problem for officers opposed to abortion-killing to protect abortionists from being harmed, any more than it would be to protect KKKers or Nazis or any other group ... but where the problem comes in as Catholics, is the difference between protecting abortionists and protecting their killing. When the abortionists are killing children, no Catholic officers has the moral right to protect this, even if the state has deprived them of their God-given rights . . .

LETTER DATED OCTOBER 22, 1986 FROM JOAN, LOWELL FLORIDA PRISON, TO JOE WALL:

In Diciplinary Confinement, I cannot have commissary use, nor phone use, nor visits (except attorney), nor rescue books, etc. So you see, that's how it is. Please let people know so they don't waste time and money mailing me something like a book, or try to visit. The prison will not allow it. In fact, my mother came to see me, but it was not allowed, despite the fact that she had driven from Tennessee, over a thousand miles away. Luckily, I got to see my brother, John, because he's a lawyer....

LETTER DATED OCTOBER 24, 1986 FROM JOAN TO HER PARENTS:

I am sorry that I was not allowed to have a visit with you, Mama, when you came to the prison with John. But I did have a wonderful visit with John. John and I are so very close and I am so very grateful for this. I hated to see the visit have to end.

When I was being brought back to my quarters, I tried to look for you, Mama. I was able to see part of the parking lot from the walkway the officer took while escorting me back, but I didn't see the family car, nor you... However... to think of you being only a few yeard away. So close. I said my rosary when I got back to my cell and asked God to give you and John a safe trip home.

LETTER OF FEBRUARY 13, 1987 FROM JOAN TO PETER LENNOX:

When I was a child we attended a little country public school called Belfast. Bill, John, Susan and I were the only Catholics at the school. We transferred there when Daddy got a teaching position and became principal. I was in the 4th grade at the time, though I was ten years old. I did not start school til I was 7 because I wouldn't go without Susan. How my parents let me get away with this, I don't know. Even though Susan was younger than I, she appeared more like an older sister. I was extremely cowardly and shy, to an abnormal degree. (Note: Joan tells the story of how Daddy would drop her off at St. Bernard's during her first year of high school and she would turn around and walk home.) To some extent, in the same areas, this is still true to this day. I relyed on Susan for everything as a child. I always had her speak for me...

For weeks prior to my transfer from Lowell to Broward, knowing I was scheduled to go, I would time and again wake up in the dark with my heart frantically beating, feeling a strange panic.... I kept wanting to get it over with, but when I thought the transfer was immenient, dread would grip me. I cringed at the prospect of the scene I would face at Broward when I revealed I would not be cooperating. People always got a little bent out of shape when informed of this, no matter how nicely and politely you'd say it....

Anyway, the kids at Belfast school had a deep prejudice against Catholics. They believed us all to be liars, cheaters, and, to put it in general terms, just no good. There seemed to be two main aspects to my personality. On the one hand, there was the cowardice and shyness, which forced silence upon me while the teacher would rant against Catholics and Catholicism, a favorate topic of hers; and on the other a strong loyalty and protectiveness for family, friends, and especially the Faith.

Though this latter trait did not overcome my cowardice in front of an adult, it displayed itself with no problem in regards to other kids. Thus I ended up spending my recesses, and often the before and after school periods, in dirt fighting the boys. I rarely fought with the girls as they all wore dresses and I didn't know how to deal with their taunts. A boy, you could wrestle with, or hit. Susan and I were the only tomboys in school and therefore the only girls to wear slacks. Only once did I hit a girl and that was because she made Susan cry....

I can clearly relate to your telling me how you would hide real tears, for I do not cry often, especially not in front of anyone, but even when alone tears are rare....in school, no matter what was ever said or done to me, or no matter how hurt I felt, I refused to let myself cry. When I was in the 5th grade, several of the big boys from the high school who hung around the elementary school while waiting on their school buses, decided they were going to make me cry. It became a nightly ordeal after school each day. They met me out back of the school, alone with Susan, and they'd punch me in the stomach. I, of course, had to prove that Catholics don't cry, nor snitch, so this went on for weeks probably, though at the time I thought it was most of the year before the boys got tired of it and quit. They never did make me cry. However, I recall feeling sick to my stomach with dread each morning and not wanting to go to school...If one of them had dared lay a hand on Susan...I'd have attacked them with all my might, as well as reported them, probably. (Joan and Susan ran away from school one day and Daddy and many other seached for them most of the day. This broght things to light a little.) Certainly if it happened more than once. As it was, they seemed satisfied to concentrate on me, and I'd just stand there and look at them trying not to show any emotion at all as they'd give me a good half dozen or so punches each day. I don't know if this explains why to this day I have such a problem being able to cry. Sometimes I feel tears coming on and then something inside clamps down. I regret it, but I seem to have no ability to counter this. It makes me feel like I'm being cold around people because I can't cry freely. And I've been accused of this a few times. In recent years it has bothered me so much that I prayed asking the Blessed Mother to teach me how to cry.

Well, it doesn't really matter anymore. Inside, I can cry, and maybe do it more than I should these days. What matters is that God knows how each and every one of us feels, and whether we can cry or not, He cries for us. What a God we have!... By the way, I have mostly good memories about Belfast school and the children and teachers there. In time, after the first couple of years, many good friendships were forged. As it ended up, we all started getting along beautifully, and there wasn't anyone I didn't like. The one particularly hostile teacher never changed, but then she probably couldn't help it. Most likely she was raised on the prejudice she so vehemently expressed..