Innocence Lost

Sometimes people will ask if you remember what you were doing when a certain occasion occurred in history. Some events considered pivotal include, when President Kennedy was assassinated, John Lennon was killed, the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded, and September 11^th, 2001.

I don’t remember what I was doing on October22, 1989, but I do know I started to look at things differently after that day. Twenty-seven years ago an evil man abducted an eleven-year-old boy near his home in St. Joseph, Minnesota. His mother and father, his family, his friends, and almost everyone else in Minnesota waited for him to come home safe and reasonably sound. Tragically, he never did.

Back in 1989 I was a young father with two little kids to watch over, and the memories of my time as a boy were still very fresh in my mind. I wanted to give my kids the opportunity to have similar (but not identical) experiences.

Belle Plaine, like St. Joseph, was and still remains a small town. As a kid growing up there I probably walked to school a couple thousand times, first to the Catholic school a few blocks down the street and then to the public school about a mile away. Sometimes I was with my brothers and sisters, occasionally with my friends, but often I was alone.

In the summer I biked around town and hiked in the woods for hours with no word as to my whereabouts. I made my way to the swimming pool on the other side of town and back again for several summers. I played down by the river and along the railroad tracks. There was an old brewery cave in the woods below the hill that I explored with other boys.

I spent hundreds of hours traipsing through the ravines that wove like ribbons through and around town. One day, a friend of mine and I came upon a clubhouse suspended in the trees deep in one of the ravines. An older boy, the builder and rightful owner of the clubhouse, found us there and threatened to hurt us if he ever caught us there again. We never were, so he never did. Parks, pastures and creeks were my playground.

Mom had warned me about bad men doing unspeakable things to children, but other than being aware of the darkness that lurked in the shadows, I roamed freely. It was a good way to grow up in a time and place long since gone.

Things changed when that little boy from St. Joseph, riding his bike with his brother and a friend, was taken. Jacob did nothing wrong, nor did his brother and his friend, and certainly not his parents, but evil prevailed over innocence that day.  I honestly don’t know how Jacob’s parents were able to function after that.

As a father, I have worried and my imagination has run wild ahead of reason.  Many times I have been accused of being over-protective. The other day someone asked me if the kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling affected me in any way. I don’t remember what I was doing that day, but it changed the way I looked at all the days after it.