CHAPTER ONE

 

 

DECEMBER 2006

 

 

Deliberately  Harming  Septuagenarian  Dad’s  Only  Genuine Son

 

 

To My Only Son, Elan Lee Montgomery Schoonover

Date of Birth: June 2, 2006

Tulsa Oklahoma

ssn: 447 21 5386

 

Elan Lee:

 

          You were born right at noon, June 2, 2006.  Your entry into this world was not without complications; but thanks to a quick thinking nurse they were minimized.  Your head had normally passed the cervix and was completely exposed and your airways were cleaned …but you were a large baby and your right shoulder would not enter the birth canal. You were beginning to suffocate as the cervix was contracting around your neck strangling you.  Your mother was pushing as hard as she could to no avail.  It was a crisis: “Get you out and get you out now!” 

 

          A nurse, Lisa was her name, spontaneously jumped up on the delivery table and thrust her fist downward into your mother’s groin midway between the center and left leg with violent energy one would not be surprised to see in a boxing ring.  Contrary to what one expects of a gentle nurse with proper ‘bedside’ manner, it was a quite startling event to witness.  Unconventional as it may be considered, it was a successful move because you ‘popped’ out and almost simultaneously your umbilical cord was severed and you were ventilated and immediately began gasping for air as you were alive and safe. 

 

                   But not undamaged.

 

                                                Your right arm had been broken.

          It seems to be in vogue to sue at the drop of the hat, these days, the TV is crammed with ads by lawyers wanting contacted if a loved one is hurt in a nursing home or hospital.   The largest expense a physician has seems to be insurance premiums to protect from such lawsuits. 

 

          To protect themselves your arm was x-rayed and whatever else was done to you is unknown; “we must keep this incident as quiet as possible.”  “We could get sued for dislocating his shoulder and breaking his arm.” 

 

          I never received copies of the x-rays showing the damage to your shoulder and arm; I only have three pages of the hospital records on which there are small notations that there is ‘a problem’ with it.  I also never gave thought to any kind of suit.  In time it would heal and that would be the end of it.  Your damaged arm was a small expense to pay for you to live as, in my opinion, had Lisa not struck with such force you would have strangled to death in the birth canal by the cervix constricting around your neck as your head  had already turned blue and it was critical to get you out.  Immediately.

 

          As much suing as there is these days I can understand the paranoia of the medical staff at your birth.  What they do not understand is that my gratefulness for the action that saved your life far outweighs any thought to the minor injury that I would call an unavoidable consequence of a necessary act. 

 

          The only way it could have been avoided would have been for a surgeon to have grabbed a scalpel and sliced your mother open from womb to navel.  Not a practical option.

 

         

          You would not use your right arm for quite some time and this little birthing ‘incident’ would play a large part  of wrecking havoc in our lives when you were but months of age  that would affect the rest of our lives.

 

          You were brought home to begin our happy life together June 4, 2006. 

 

          Late evening, June 6, the memory of D day still in the minds of the Normandy invaders and historians and military buffs across the nation, all was quiet and peaceful.  The little tyke, at four days old, had just had a fresh diaper installed by my hand and was waiting for the delivery of another body temperature custom meal from your personal milk factory when there was a pounding on the back door.

 

                   Who at this hour?

 

          Armed guards with automatic weapons were standing just outside the door as an escort for a medium aged middle size woman with a clipboard.  D.H.S had come to “protect” Pamela Wheeler’s child, Elan Lee Montgomery Wheeler.

 

                   Just what does this child need ‘protecting’ from?

 

          This is a large house; albeit there is little furniture and three rooms are used for storage there are two baths and an extra unused bedroom quite sufficient for the extra queen size bed and a bassinette.  Pamela wheeler and I shared the kitchen.

 

          D.H.S. showed no interest in the water supply, which has not been tested, nor the septic system, nor any potential outdoor hazards.  Does the dog bring in fleas or deer ticks that could infect the child?  These were some of the concerns of the Idaho H.E.W. when I was licensed for a total of sixteen foster kids over a ten year period.

 

          For approval of my Idaho Foster Care license I also had to install smoke detectors and change the ‘type’ of electric fence around the yard that kept our bovine out. 

 

          Pamela Wheeler was asked to step outside for an interview.  Was she aware that I had been “involved” in the death of a child six years ago?  Had she been told I spent four years in prison charged with his death?  Does John show any propensity to violence around infant Elan?

 

          Pamela Wheeler had taken a terrible risk!  She had brought an innocent helpless infant into the home of an accused child killer!

 

 

          D.H.S. had little regard for the fact that a jury of twelve and five judges had acquitted your father of any wrongdoing.  Their attitude was not that I was innocent, but that I had gotten away with murder.  The final ruling of the Court of Criminal Appeals was that your father had broken no law and had our Constitution’s laws been upheld, I could not have even been charged in the first place! 

 

          With the support of armed guards on either side, D.H.S. sternly warned, “If anything happens to that child you will be held responsible.” 

 

 ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** **

 

          I am your father, John Edward Schoonover.  Born February 3, 1937.  My ssn: 448 34 9309. Pamela Christine Wheeler is your natural mother.  She was born May 25, 1974 in Colorado .  Her ssn is 526 83 9696.  We were not ‘married’ for your conception, which was planned long in advance.  You are not the result of a “one night stand” between two ships passing in the night.  Neither of us was drunk and both of us married…to other spouses, both of whom are infertile.

 

                  

          D.H.S. has no problem making this an issue by publicizing you as “born out of wedlock” and considering you some sort of second class human ignoring the fact that surrogating is a legitimate word in our dictionary and sanctioned by the Christian God of Abraham.

 

          Call that what you will; not neglecting to remember Abraham, Ishmael and Hagar. Sarah could not conceive.  As you may be raised in the “Christian” environment, you must not judge us for what was done to bring you into this world unless you first judge the above three whose acts were sanctified by their God.  Their purpose was the creation of Ishmael and without their sanctified act he would not have existed.  Like Ishmael, you were desperately wanted.  From the Genesis. 

 

          I loved you from the day the EPT strip turned blue. I am writing this beginning December 25, 2006.  I love you dearly.  You are my son.  I will love you to my final breath.

 

          From the day you were born until November 15, 2006, I gave you all the love you wanted.  I fed you, changed your diapers and bathed you.  The first 4 months of your life you could not sleep with me because you were so tiny.  You slept in a standard bassinette beside my bed. But when I did feel safe in placing you in the centre of the bed, you slept with me.  You were a ‘Crowder.’ 

          Now do not think I am complaining.  It was comforting for you to ‘snuggle’ up to me.  After all, you are part of me.  Just as I am part of you.  Our “Selfs” are one in the same. 

 

          If you find that difficult to understand, consider the “Christian” Trinity.  Ask a reputable minister/priest to explain their Trinity to you; it is less difficult to understand how you and I are one in the same.

 

          “Love one another as I have loved you.”  “Love your neighbour as you love yourself.”  With you and I it is simpler still, as we are one in the same, how could I not love you as I love myself? 

 

          I took you with me practically everywhere I went.  You were my companion.  There were a few times I could not take you with me for various reasons; that is when I chose a sitter for you.  There were three different sitters:  My niece, Becky Hinkle, a friend and a hired sitter.  They took care of you when I could not.  You were never with any of them for more than 8 hours at a time.  The rest of the time you were with me. 

 

          I played with you various ways.  You would reach for my mouth and I would grab your hand[s] with my mouth and growl like I was chewing them off.  Same with your feet.  I would also growl and chew on your belly and ribs.  That got the most, and loudest, giggles.  I whiskered your neck and chewed off your ears and nose, too.  Fathers that love their babies do that sort of thing. 

 

          You were just beginning to say “daddy” when, the evening of November 14, 2006, I stepped out of the room just long enough for you to turn over and wiggle off the side of the bed.  I was on my way back to you when you did this; I immediately picked you up and comforted you as best as I could; you were an infant and the fall was, I can imagine, terrifying.    It did not take but a moment for you to stop crying and I laid you in the centre of the bed and gave you your evening bottle.  As was usual, you went to sleep before you finished it.  I will go into detail of this event later, in a document I wrote to your attorney.  I gave this letter to Mikah McCray, of the Pawnee D.H.S. to give to him. 

 

          You slept soundly through the night. You rolled over twice and I got up from our bed in the AM at 0700 hours.  You did not wake for another half hour---perhaps a little more.

 

          When you did wake you were on your back.  I changed your diaper, wet but not muddy, and lifted you to give you your morning bottle.  You cried and with the non-movement of your right arm told me that your arm had been hurt.

 

          I did not dress you but went out to the truck and started it; brought in the car-seat and carefully wrapped a blanket around you and put you in the car-seat and took you to the truck that had just begun to warm up.  I took you to the nearest hospital for medical help, in Cleveland , 17 miles away. 

 

          I don’t know what time I arrived at the hospital but I had to wait in the reception area almost an hour before you were seen and taken to X-ray.  I was told your right humerus [upper arm] had been fractured in the fall the previous night.  I was not allowed to see the X-rays.  Nor was I allowed to see and comfort you!

 

          I was instead greeted by two armed officers: Steve Melton of the Pawnee County Sheriff’s department and Dale Howard, a Cleveland policeman.  Also Mikah McCray from the Pawnee Department of Human Services.  She advised me that she had brought a previously prepared “Emergency Protective Order” and was taking custody of you. 

 

          I heard you crying in the next room and was refused permission to go comfort you in your distress.  I was told you were being transported to Tulsa Regional Medical Center and I could see you there.  However, when I got to that hospital I was refused permission to comfort you; Mikah McCray said you had a “radial” fracture and I was not going to be able to see you…period. 

 

  Mikah McCray attempted to get the three physicians that attended you to state that your injury had been “inflicted” and not an accident but none of the three would cooperate with her.  I went to court to contest you being taken from me the first time without an attorney.  I was then and there charged with “depriving” you, “neglecting” you, even “assaulting” you and inflicting the injury to your arm.  This was ridiculous! I lost.  What no one cared about was that you lost, too. The judge ordered you to be put into a foster home…I was not to know where.  I was promised weekly visits with you but weather mandated that it was not safe to take you outside and the first visit was a couple of weeks in coming. 

 

          Your so-called “broken arm” was never put in a cast.  Our first visit you did not have the Ace bandage sling and you moved your arm freely and quite well.  You crawled on both hands and sitting up held your bottle with both hands with no problem. 

 

Also, our first visit you greeted me with your huge smile.

 

Photographs of that visit 10 days after the accident

 

                  

 

          Each visit thereafter you lost notably more of your heretofore extremely good happy nature.  You had been deprived of my virtually constant disbursement of love for you as you were now with strangers.  December 20^th, your aunt Mary’s birthday, you did not greet me with a smile at all; I was becoming a stranger to you. 

 

          I know what is done in foster homes.  You were put in a ‘play pen’ and left for hours at a time.  How much you cried for attention that you had been getting from me but were now deprived of cannot be known; but it is seen in the brightness of your eyes fading with time. 

 

          You were withdrawing as you had no one to truly love you.  Mikah McCray was happy that she had taken you from me and now had total control over you…and was the cause of you being deprived of your father.

 

          I asked her plainly about getting you back and she gave me the “standard” answer that DHS always tries to unite families as quickly as possible…a snake lying through her teeth.

 

          I still had faith that she could be telling the truth…until Friday, December 22, after the offices at the court house were closed and the judges had gone home for the holidays, when Deputy Steve Melton drove to our home and served me with an arrest warrant.  My bond had been set at $10,000.  I had been charged with “Injury To A Minor Child.”

 

          You can thank your aunt Mary Porch for raising the money to bail me out that evening. 

 

          I had not been charged earlier at the hearing to determine the ‘length of time’ you would remain in the custody of DHS…an order for DNA testing had made.  This was nothing but a ‘delay’ tactic as not only had I never hinted that you could not be my son but signed a state document June 9 declaring that you are my son.  Nonetheless, I submitted to it to prove paternity and the hearing had been set for the 9^th of January, 2007.

 

           I hired an attorney, Jon Carter, of Cleveland , and had paid him a $3,500 retainer to represent me in getting you back home with me where you belong.  Where you were needed and loved.   The hearing was unnecessarily delayed to January 23, 2006.

 

          But now I had been charged with causing, deliberately and maliciously inflicting the injury to your arm.   

 

          At this point in time the physical injury to your arm had long since healed.  The emotional trauma that was factually inflicted by DHS by keeping you from me continues.  Each day you withdraw a little more.  Each time I visit you I see this withdrawal. 

 

          As I write this I wonder:  Is this in the best interest of Elan?  Does Elan want his father to go to prison because of an accidental injury?  Does Elan want to live with strangers to be passed from one to another for years to some?  Does Elan want to never know or see his father again?  Elan can not know that his father is in poor health and could not survive in prison a year…much less in jail!

 

          Does Elan want his father to die in jail or prison?  Isn’t this somewhat severe punishment for an accident that has left no lingering scars or pain?  Is it in the best interest of Elan to make Elan an orphan?  Won’t doing so create a lifetime of deprivation of what Elan is factually entitled to:  Love and education from knowledge of his natural father who is 70 years of age and has significant insight into things not taught in common public schools?  There are so many things Elan will never know if he is deprived of his father’s knowledge. 

 

           One small example is “Anger Management.”  Without his father, Elan will be taught how to ‘manage’ his anger.  His father, on the other hand, can teach Elan not to have anger that needs ‘management.’  His father can teach Elan how anger is the most damaging of emotions.  How not to have anger at all. 

 

 

          Your father, Elan, has the desire to raise an intelligent child with skills and experiences that are foreign to the mainstream of public schooling.  Your father, Elan, desires to teach you how to think!  How to use your brain to its greatest potential.  How to ask the right ‘why.’

 

          You were created and brought into this world to be an extension of your father’s life into the future.  You are physically ‘made up’ of me.  You are a physical extension of me.  What I implant; teach you, of my being would be the extension of my consciousness in you.  Just as I am an extension of my long physically deceased father.

 

 

December 26, 2006

 

          My son, I am not a “Christian” in the contemporary definition of the word.  I have, however, been accused of being more of a Christian than others professing to be Christians. I am a Taoist. 

 

          This country was founded by Christians…who took it away from what is called, to be politically correct, Native Americans.  For a long while our ancestral Christians called them barbaric, heathens, ignorant and a variety of other names indicating they were a little lower on the food chain than the then contemporary Christians.  They were called “Indians.”

 

 

          You must be part barbaric because your great grandmother, my grandmother, was Creek. By blood, that makes you a little less barbaric than me.  This is factious; I do hope you see a little humor in this paragraph.   

 

          The contemporary “Christian” believes in a virgin birth and only one “God” that claimed, by the way, when speaking to Moses and laying down the law, that “Thou shall have no other Gods before Me!”  Christians have many explanations that justify contradicting that statement into meaning what they want it to mean.  Personally, I never met Moses; I simply take the “law” at face value as it was written, according to Moses, by God’s own finger. 

 

          It would give justification to the “heathen Indians” belief in their ‘Sun God,’ ‘Moon God,’ ‘Earth God’ and a variety of other Gods…just as long as they are held in a lower esteem than Moses’ God.   

 

          Moslems have their “Allah” that is their ‘true’ God.   They are uncircumcised heathens just as the Indians but Christians are doomed because Christians, according to the Moslems, are circumcised unbelievers in the truth.

 

          I don’t believe the Indians ever condemned our good ancestral Christians for being “different.”  They had a quality called tolerance.  That tolerance and unselfishness played a part in their demise as stewards over this land that was once theirs.  But we, as Christians, sure condemned them, as Christians, like Moslems, have no tolerance for a belief that is different. 

 

          I was raised a Catholic.  Only Catholics have a chance to make it to Heaven.  If you don’t believe that, just ask my mother. 

 

          My father was raised as a protestant.  When he died, though he attended Catholic services regularly, he was not allowed to have his funeral service in a Catholic Church. 

 

          My next older brother, Perry, was raised a Catholic but married a Baptist who, even worse, had been divorced.  He died at age 44.

 

          I married a Baptist in 1955.  That marriage lasted five years.  She was only 16.  I was excommunicated.

 

          I lost my next brother just a few months ago.  He remained a Catholic with no tolerance for any other belief…especially mine…to the bitter end and much of his offspring retain his bitterness. 

 

          I still have my oldest brother.  Nearing the end of his life, and a Catholic, but with a difference:  His family holds love above intolerance.  They do not condemn.

 

 

          You have two half-sisters.  Both with different beliefs.  Neither follow the contemporary Christian belief.  Both are different from one another and both are different from me.  The three of us do not condemn one another because we are different in our convictions.  Why should we?  Of what benefit is it?  Shall I condemn the Moslems for praying to the East?  The Christians for believing in a virgin birth?  The Indians for believing in Kachinas? 

 

          “Love one another, as I have loved you.”  Jesus,  The Christ.  I accept that title.  The Enlightened One.  The Teacher of The Way.  I think Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, later known as Sakyamuni (Sage of the Sakyas), also an “Enlightened One,” taught the same thing 500 years earlier.  Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, K'ung Fu-Tzu (Confucius) Plato and the Stoics taught the same thing.

 

          All teachers of the Way and there are others, all heathens because they don’t believe in the Virgin Birth!  That includes the Jews who are still patiently waiting for the “second coming.”  It also includes me. 

 

          Life is extremely complicated, but only because we make it so for ourselves.  Greed, lust, desire, Santa Claus and Rudolf the red nosed reindeer.  Christians seem to hold these things even higher than the Virgin Birth.  The ‘Virgin Birth’ foundation, Jesus, does not sell toys. 

 

          I love you, son of mine.  In a few days I will be 70 years old.  Quite old, by today’s standards, to be raising a child.  By the time you are able to be taught things like canoeing I will be too old to get in a canoe.  By the time you are old enough to be taught how to drive a vehicle I will be too old to take you for your driver’s license.  By the time you have the strength to master a chain saw I will be too old to lift one and show you the way.  By the time you are old enough to build a home I will be too old to lift a hammer.

 

          But I am not too old to expand your mind.  I am not too old to teach you how to read.  I am not too old to teach you how to think.  I am not too old to teach you morals.  I am not too old to teach you tolerance and patience.  Reason and understanding.  How to learn.  Values. 

 

          All these things take great amounts of time.  Time Foster Parents do not have.  Especially with the meager payments they receive from DHS to ‘baby sit’ you and watch you grow up physically.  “Go to your room and watch TV.”  What that really means is “Go away, you bother me.  I’m not your dad and I’m not paid enough to give you what you need.” 

 

 

          I was a licensed Foster Parent for ten years.  When I applied, in 1975, I had an unusual thought:  They need foster parents, what is this going to cost me?  Can I afford it?  Do I have enough to give a child what a child needs?  I have the time; I’m retired.  I have the patience and I have the education…and agree to take extra courses at Idaho State University to expand my knowledge of child care and training.  My only problem, I thought, might be that I could not afford what it would take to feed and clothe a child.  I decided I could afford it …and then learned that H.E.W. actually pays people for foster care.   That people do it for money!!  Was I ever naive! (In Idaho D.H.S. was called Department of Health, Education and Welfare, or “H.E.W.”)

 

 

          What meager funds DHS did pay me fell far short of what the children needed.  DHS’ definition of the word “need” is significantly inadequate when compared to my definition of the word “need.”

 

 

          DHS:  A child needs $5. for their birthday present.  A child needs $10 for a Christmas present.  A child does not need to go to an opera.  A child does not need a musical instrument to play in the school orchestra.  A child does not need a bicycle.  A child does not need a sled.  A child does not need good/new coat for winter.  A child does not need to go on water-skiing trips.  A child does not need to have a pair of snow skis.  A child does not need a fishing rod and tackle.  A child does not need to be taught how to swim.  A child does not need …Bull shit!  A child needs all these things and more.  But DHS does not agree.

 

 

          One thing I did not buy for those in my care 20 plus years ago was a computer.  They didn’t have computers back then.  I think one would be necessary now but DHS will not dole the funds to buy one.  Just one more expense I would have had I continued my Child Care License beyond ten years and still had it to date.  You will need one as soon as you know the alphabet.  Will you get it?  Highly unlikely, unless it comes from me and DHS wants to put me in prison where I won’t be able to even afford to buy toothpaste!

 

          When you cry you are put in your cage.  You will quit crying when you get tired.  When you get too big for your cage you will be sent to your room where you won’t bother anyone.  You will probably have your own TV and a few video games to keep you occupied…to baby sit you.  No one is paid enough to take the place of a father who loves his son as I love you. 

 

          “Age discrimination.”  A factor that enters the picture.  Federal law says I cannot be discriminated against because of my age.  But I was young enough to create you; I am young enough to raise you to, I think, the age of reason.  My time is short and our lives together needs to be a ‘crash course’ in life for me to teach as much and for you to learn as much as possible in what little time there is left for the both of us to be together in this life.  The learning can, and would, be as enjoyable as the teaching. 

 

          I once wrote “A child’s mind is like a sponge.  Eagerly waiting to soak in whatever is available for it.”  Pick my brain, son.  Pick it to pieces.  That is what it is for.  If DHS does not send me to prison and deprive you of it by farming you out to strangers.  Strangers who are told by DHS, “Don’t get attached.”