Visit My Vistagraphs
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
From a Dime a Dozen to Priceless An Orphan’s 70 year Quest for a Family The Autobiography of Steve A. Mizera Copyright 2011 2 This book is dedicated to my extended family: Nick and Marina Klimov and their wonderful children: Yelena, Sergey, Slava and Valeriy. Each brought their special brand of love into my empty and wayward life. Yelena, who with her warm and loving husband Stas, added the immense and intense pleasure by allowing me to observe Benjamin, Nelly and Timothy become the center of their family. It has been pure joy. My close association with both families is the vicarious fulfillment of my life. This autobiography is also dedicated to those leaders and to my brothers and sisters of Grace Family Church, Carmichael California, who try daily to keep the second greatest commandment as inspired by God in the bible: to love one another. They have taught me about love. Warning Some readers may find the subject matter and language in this autobiography to be objectionable, especially those readers who have been brought up in a Christian family. Nevertheless, reading this book may be beneficial to society whose experts claim they do not have the answer to the two very important questions this autobiography raises. It will also be especially valuable to most Christians as the author relates his personal experiences of being raised in two different Catholic orphanages whose administrators had an excellent opportunity spread the word of God and to keep His commandments but failed. Where the author ends up and how he gets there may surprise you. Forward 3 Steve Mizera would not have chosen the childhood he was forced to endure. Nobody would. News reports pop up all the time about figures in positions of leadership using their superiority and power to abuse trusting young children. Boy Scout leaders, Catholic Priests, and even more recently, Penn State coaches have all been stigmatized for their role in the suffering of children under their watch. Unfortunately for Steve, the institution he lived in as a young boy included the stereotypical pedophiliac activity making headlines today. His journey starts in a very dark place, and brings the reader through his adolescence to his adulthood, including details of the horror he inflicted on victims of his own, eventually finding a new life in Christ, with a loving family that he had been robbed of as a boy. Along the way, the author describes his own theories and insights regarding the choices of those around him, as well as his own. When the opportunity arose for me to help proofread and edit his initial writings, I found myself intrigued, hoping his words will help reach others and possibly assist them to seek help and/or enlightenment of their own. As it is often said, if this book helps stop one child from being abused, or steers one offender toward rehabilitation, then his goal will have been fulfilled. Elizabeth McCrory, Citrus Heights, California TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 Part One St. Francis Orphan Asylum - 1940 St. Joseph's House for Homeless and Industrious Boys - 1952 Living on the Streets of Philadelphia - 1955 A Dime A Dozen - 1957 Part Two Patriotism and Politics - 1960 Conductor and Law Student - 1970 Publisher and Failure - 1980 Part Three Crime, Folsom State Prison and Punishment - 1982 Public Service: Secretary to Analyst - 1988 Adopted by Immigrants - 1998 Retirement - 2004 Return to Grace - 2006 Priceless - 2011 Return to top Part One 5 Chapter One Saint Francis Orphan Asylum - 1940 You are standing in a line in your underwear. You are a boy of about eight years of age. It is evening. You are scared. This happens every night. You are awaiting your turn. Along with a dozen or more kids your age, you are focused on a pink butt staring at you. Screams permeate the air. Your butt will soon become pink or red and, you too will soon scream. This is not my imagination: it was a significant part of my childhood: a sadistic ritual that still haunts me more than sixty years later. In the 1940s this butt-beating was called “discipline”. Each Catholic nun at Saint Francis Orphan Asylum in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania routinely carried a note pad and recorded every act that she perceived to be worthy of the nightly punishment. Called “discipline” then, today it would be called “criminal”. (Child abuse and child endangerment are new terms to the twenty-first century: they were non-existent in my childhood. Nevertheless, the discipline (or abuse) had a profound affect on me, and may very well be one of the reasons I lived my life the way I did. I will relive highlights of my journey through this autobiography. Perhaps you will be both entertained and educated on how my life ultimately turned out. Along the way, you may discover why it went this way: something I have yet to completely understand myself. Herein lies the need to write this autobiography.) The oldest boys - about twelve years of age - had the task (or pleasure) of administering the punishment dictated by the nuns. A two foot long, puke green, hickory stick – ½ inch thick and 1½ inch wide - was the instrument of terror. At least one whack for every deed the nuns deemed “bad behavior” was awarded to any child who failed to perform to the nuns’ standard during the day. I often wondered as childless virgins, what could the nuns possibly know about normal versus abnormal child behavior? Some of the young male administrators of the punishment enjoyed their power, perhaps as much as the nuns enjoyed watching and listening to the whacks and screams. But the older boys were only following orders…where has that excuse been used before? 6 It seems to me now that I was always standing in that line. No matter what I did or didn't do I was enrolled in Sister Frances' note book. Numerous times throughout the day I became part of her record-keeping statistics. Was my conduct normal, or outrageous? I think I would still remember if I was behaving irrationally or irresponsibly. But what child knows what either word means at that age. What child can diagnose his or her own behavior at that age? What child deserves this kind of discipline? I simply accepted my evening destiny. Today what I remember most is the blood that sometimes materialized or oozed from the welts from the butts I watched while awaiting my turn. This did not occur if a child received only one or two or even three whacks. But often a dozen punishing blows turned a child's ass from pink to red to purple before the swelling erupted and the blood appeared. I never got to see mine bleed, but lived it vicariously through the others as I viewed the butts of my young peers. Later in the evening the other boys would describe my welts to me. Screaming mitigated the pain and fear, a little like it does on a roller-coaster ride. I was always determined to not scream. Although I bottled-up my rage and my pain, I was defenseless against the flow of my tears. Eventually I learned to hold back the tears, too…for almost 50 years. Although the asylum housed less than two hundred and fifty boys ranging in age from 2 to 12, the nightly discipline line consisted of a mere twenty kids. Slightly less than ten percent of the orphans needed to be disciplined. The rest were probably too scared to misbehave. I was among the repeat offenders. My recidivism rate was one hundred percent. The fear of the discipline did not outweigh the joy of being a child, so I suffered the consequences the effects of which lasted for more than half a century. The nuns were of a German order. The United States was at war with Germany during my first three years in the orphan asylum. Was this fact significant as a contributing factor for the harsh discipline meted out? Nahhh. Many years later I would reflect on these facts and assumed the ladies in black were just doing their part for their Fatherland's war effort. Clearly, all the nuns’ activities (abuse included) were motivated by religion. It had to be so, because after the nightly beatings, we all gathered around to pray! I never understood the connection. I suppose this lack of comprehension precluded me from being a Christian, and planted the seed of anti-religion. 7 My father was born Nicholas Stefan Mizera on January 4, 1896. At the age of 10, he arrived at Ellis Island in 1905 from Russia via Slovakia. By the time he was 47, due to his job situation and unmarried status, he brought my brother Nick and me to the orphanage. I only recently learned his name and date of birth while doing research. This information was found on his draft registration card signed in 1942 when he was 47 years of age. I suppose he was exempt from World War II because of his age and his employment as a coal miner. "Mom" (who I do not remember at all) had eleven legitimate children that were older than Nick and me. I was her thirteenth! Nick and I were bastards! The word “bastard” had a serious stigma in the forties. Today that has been softened somewhat. In fact, there is apparent pride now from being a single “mom”; a position many teenage girls focus on as a goal. Of course I don't remember at the tender age of 4 and 2, Nick and I stayed in dad's car while he worked his twelve hour shift in the St.