Also this issue:

Death Takes A Holiday
-Bruce Schimmel

Diablo Domingo
Why did Wharton invite the man who wrecked Argentina’s economy?
-Gerardo Razumney and Mariano Sana

Letters to the Editor

December 12-18, 2002

pretzel logic

Confessions of a Bag Man

by Howard Altman

The overcrowded R7 pulls away from the platform, late as usual, and when it emerges from the tunnel I punch a King of Prussia number into my cell phone.

For more than an hour, the line has been busy, necessitating a call from the train, which is so laden with the miserable and the delayed that it is hard to tell from the hard faces and unhappy looks whether anyone objects.

Not that such objections would stop me, or so I think, as the phone rings and rings.

Finally, there is an answer.

I introduce myself and ask about Daniel Montgomery, the subject of a frenzied phone barrage that I've been making on behalf of The New York Times, whom I serve from time to time as a $15-an-hour Philadelphia bag man.

The woman on the other end of the phone is incredulous.

"Why did you have to do that?" she asks. "Why did you have to tell everyone before we could?"

She is upset that I'm calling her and that I've already called her relatives, delivering bad news to people who had no idea what had happened. I cannot blame her for feeling the way she does.

It's not every day that your son is accused of killing a priest and then setting a church on fire to cover it up.

The image of the reporter shoving a microphone in the face of grieving family members is horrific, no doubt.

And when the reporter's question is "How do you feel?", I cringe like anyone else.

There is another way to handle these moments, one that I long ago learned can actually be of service to those who are queried.

More than a decade ago, when I toiled at a place I have referred to over the years as the Courier ComPost, the city of Camden -- like cities across this nation -- had seen its bloodiest year ever. Fifty-one people, most poor, nearly all black, were killed during the crack epidemic of 1991.

The victims were, to this point, mostly statistics, lucky to see their all-too-short life stories blurbed in newsprint.

That's when I got a crazy idea. Why not reach out to the families of each of the victims and tell a little about their hopes and dreams, hobbies and highlights?

To my great surprise (and lasting gratitude) my usually recalcitrant bosses went for the idea and, with a lot of dogged legwork and the help of my colleagues, we collected enough information to paint brief portraits of all the victims.

What started out as a story turned into a life lesson.

With very few exceptions, the families of those murder victims were not only cooperative, they were happy to talk. They were thrilled that someone cared enough to ask and, more importantly, relieved to be able to share what was good and decent about their lost loved ones.

I learned that's what happens when you don't ask, "How do you feel?" but instead ask, "What can you tell me about your son/daughter/husband/wife/friend/lover? What did they like to do? What did they want to become?"

Those are the questions I try to ask Janice Montgomery as I stand under the luggage rack of the jam-packed SEPTA train.

After her initial, understandable anger subsides, she tells me she has been told not to talk to reporters.

I ask again about her son -- whose existence I have known about for only an hour.

What was he like? What kind of man was he?

Though I catch myself speaking in the past tense and apologize for doing so, Janice Montgomery answers in the past tense, which is not all that surprising when you consider that, even though Daniel is still alive, he will never again be what he once was.

He is no longer training to be a Franciscan monk in Cleveland. Fired from the training program, he is in jail, accused of shooting 68-year-old Rev. William Gulas, pastor of St. Stanislaus Church, and then torching the building to cover his tracks.

"He was a wonderful, wonderful guy," Janice Montgomery says of her 37-year-old son. "He was brilliant, what can I say? He never gave anyone any trouble. All he ever did was good."

Montgomery, who says that news of her son's arrest "was a shock, to put it mildly," adds that she's "hardly" spoken with Daniel since he was locked up.

When she did speak with him, it was difficult, she says.

"He's not in his right mind, obviously," she says, before politely reminding me again that she's been told not to speak to reporters and that she would have no more to say.

I thank her for her time and she has a request.

"Please don't call anyone else from the family," she asks.

It is a request with which I am happy to comply.

There is a line between a query and an inquisition. And there is no service, to the reader and especially the family, if I cross it.