26 SECONDS IN DALLAS
Thank you for reading this far. It is at this point that I've officially run out of original material from my dad, Pastor Tim, who died in 1996. What you've read so far is all his, except for Pastor Dale's letter (which you have read). I suppose every daughter has said the same thing - dad passed way, way, too soon. He had incredible stories to tell, which will now remain untold. I love my mom dearly, but she is not what you would call 'in shape' these days - and she's never wanted to recount our family's history, not really, esp. Not of the time before Argentina.
So it is from this vantage point, it falls to me.
Like Alexandra Zapruder, who I mentioned, neither I nor my dad made actual history. Not a history outside of personal and family reminiscences. Zapruder and my dad were witnesses to it. In spades.
Now that dad is gone, it falls to me. Mom does not have dementia, per se. But I'm stuck to know what to call it.
I made the decision to write a book about dad after attending a 2014 speaking tour of Alexandra Zapruder, as she talked about her own upcoming book. "Twenty-six Seconds in Dallas," the account of how her grandfather, a Dallas dress maker in 1963, took out his movie camera in Dealey Plaza to make perhaps the most famous film in history. A 26 second recording of John F. Kennedy's brutal assassination.
As Zapruder spoke about, her book was not to be about that day. She'd not even been alive, but she was born into a family irredeemably juxtaposed with the horrible killing. The book was going to be about the effect it had had on her family throughout the years. How her formerly anonymous clan had been caught up in decades of conspiracy. To be part-biography, part-family history, part-grand historical narrative - she wanted to write about how her own father, Abraham Zapruder's son, had become obsessed with the family legacy which had been forced upon him.
Two years older than her - me now with two daughters of my own - there's no time to spare for me to get writing.
STAN BEEMAN
"Are they monsters? I don't know. But what they did to their daughter I'd have to call monstrous. I've seen sexual abuse. I've seen affairs, but nothing I've seen compares to what P.J. has been through." - my dad, Pastor Tim (diary 1984)
FORMER FBI Agent Stan Beeman, 2014
It took me a few years to either get my hands on all or even decipher most of my dad's diaries, diaries he kept while in pastoral ministry in the United States. Those diaries differ in important facts to what he had written above, which I have edited for length.
I am still working from PDF versions of his handwritten accounts of pastoral life at The Reed Street Church, in Alexandria, Virginia, near Falls Church. (He had continued his reminiscences for the 10 years we'd subsequently been in Argentina, as well as more sporadically upon our return to the United States in 1994 when I was 10.)
My dad in those days was affectionately known as "Pastor Tim", married to Alice, my mom. I was born in Alexandria, only months before my dad took a position in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There, he served in an administrative position with the World Council of Churches. My sister was born there, and our family relocated back to the States when I was 10, in 1994.
When I was 30 and with children of my own, I was contacted by a retired FBI agent, Stanley Beeman. He had known my parents back in Alexandria, and we met for a long breakfast which stretched well past lunch. Mr Beeman originally struck me as one of those straightlaced, anti-Obama, straight-arrow Republicans. He seemed like a typical old, white, entitled hetereosexual cis-male so intimidated by the changes in America these past years.
Note I had written: "seemed". He never told me his age, but he looked like one of those healthy 75 year-olds who could swing a tennis racket, wear a wet-suit and who knew how to enjoy retirement. Yes, he was conservative, but he was also very thoughtful - and insightful. I'd not expected that. I got the feeling he had been terribly weighed down by his work (and contact with my parents) in those days.
We met two other times that week. He'd been filled with stories and questions about my parents, but also seemingly and subtly circling back to one particular family at that Reed Street Church in those days. Ok, ok, it was me grilling him. I confess. I'd already had the idea for my book. Mr. Beeman's call was serendipity.
My father, Pastor Tim, passed away way too soon. Had just got back to America, and was shopping around for a pastorate. A sequel to Reed Street Church, but without the Cold War intrigue. My sister and I had always thought that mom would go first, but neither at such a young age. Since her late 50s and not too far after our American return, mom had been deteriorating mentally. Dad's passing was the worst of what could have happened to them; if mom had died surely dad would have had a time of severe mourning, but he'd have found his centre again, I am sure of that. Mom now just doesn't have one.
As it is, I have taken possession of mom and dad's things. Mom's still in the house they'd moved into in 1994; finally finding a place for all the stuff from Alexandria and Buenos Aires. More has accumulated in the last decades. It's an archeological dig! It's been years since a car has fit in their garage!
Dad's diaries said that in 1989, Carlos Menem became president, and reversed the former president's reforms. Five good years for us turned into five tense years when the WCC once again found official suspicion. Even so, WCC staff had escaped the arrests when anti-government protests broke out, which Menem deemed as "riots". Buenos Aires had been hit hard.
Dad had written that when in 1994 Menem had pushed through a Constitutional reform allowing him to have a second term as president, that it became time for left-leaning and moderate foreigners to get out. So we moved back to the States.
But this is not about that. This is about Reed Street Church, FBI agent Stanley Beeman, the Jennings, and my dad. Full disclosure: like I wrote, my eventual intent is to write a book. Just last week I heard Alexandra Zapruder speak, the granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder. Hearing her cemented my resolve. Ms. Zapruder herself similarly says she intends to write a book about how that 26-second home-movie had altered her family's life trajectory, even before she'd been born.
My own life trajectory, it seems, had been similarly altered, mostly by one family. Even before I'd been born. My sister's, too. Significantly, I have reason to believe that if things in Alexandria had worked out differently, maybe neither of us would ever have been born. Much less become fluent in Spanish!
There are two keys to this - talking with Stan Beeman, and finding Paige Jennings.
WHO? WASN'T SHE JUST A BABY-SITTER?
Paige Jennings, Philip and Elizabeth's then 16 year-old daughter, was my first baby-sitter. This had been in the winter/spring of early 1984. I had told Mr. Beeman in e-mail that it would be no good going to my mom about any of this, between her deterioration and the fact she always hated talking about those days, his best source was me - and to a lesser extent my sister. My sister was not as obsessed with it all compared to me. She mainly rolls her eyes.
Mr. Beeman's goal, as he told me, was to eventually make his way to Russia. His other goal was to find Paige Jennings. Mine, too. I still remember what it was like to think of my parents, my birth and relocation to Argentina, without thinking of Russia. I mean, what did Putin-land have to do with my family?
Mr. Beeman, well…. he became my Oracle at Delphi. The few times I had broached those days with my mom, she'd always wave it off in a manner I'd had seen 100s of times when I'd asked about her and dad's early years, even on other matters.
But this day with Mr. Beeman, it all made sense - for the first time. I had to re-read my dad's diaries again in total, such was the impact of Stanley Beeman. As such, as far as I am aware, Mr. Beeman never did contact my mother.
What he said he was doing was preparing for a trip to Russia himself, to see if he could locate Elizabeth and Philip Jennings. As far as I could ever tell, the Jennings had defected to Russia in 1987.
And thus, enter my dad's pastoral diaries. It turns out that they had not "defected". Mr. Beeman insisted on clarity on that concept. It was no defection. Far, far from it. Thus, my hoped-for book.
In the lead-up to our breakfast, I had e-mailed to Mr. Beeman some of my dad's old stuff I thought might interest him. Particularly I sent him my dad's words which appear at the top of this: "Are they monsters?"
That comment about some random parishioner(s) of dad's intrigued me, but frankly I'd quickly put it aside, as there had been so many other revelations in those diaries. Mom wouldn't talk about it. Also, initially I'd read through dad's stuff looking for gossip. Although he'd never strayed, I'd wondered if dad had ever crossed a sexual boundary in ministry - I'd had a campus chaplain some years ago who I'd been close to be accused of sleeping with female students. He'd never tried anything with me, but it got me wondering if that kind of deep, dark secret lurked in our family.
It hadn't. Not that I'd found, anyway. Our life trajectory had been altered in ways even more hidden than my dad's confidential diaries.
So it was that Mr. Stan Beeman was to enlighten me. Holy cow.
