First of all, Gelb fudges the title of his book (Dutton, 1990) a bit. Wyley Gates, he says, could "expect" to be salutatorian and voted "most likely to succeed" but this did not happen, since Wyley was in jail for most of his senior year at East Chatham High School, accused of killing his father, his father's live-in companion, his nineteen-year-old brother and his three-year-old orphaned nephew. Wyley was acquitted of the murders but sentenced, along with Damian Rossney, to 8-to-25 years for conspiracy in 1987. Wyley was released in 2003.
The acquittal, in 1987, shocked many of the residents of Columbia County (120 miles up the Hudson River from New York City) but did not shock me, who lived there from fourth grade until I left for prep school in 1962, a beneficiary of a full scholarship. I knew full well that it was only a matter of luck and circumstance whether a "hood" became a criminal or a policeman in his lust for power and authority in Hudson(where the trial was) and Columbia County. My father would bring in one of his policeman friends to lecture me whenever I complained about his arbitrary authority and I would just mock the threats to send me to reform school. The police made little or no effort to collect any physical evidence that Wyley had committed the crime and only had the dubious claim that Wyley had confessed to the man who was hired to give him a lie detector test, though Wyley's lawyer had been excluded from the testing room and, in fact, the test was never actually given.
Gelb had a summer place on the same street where Wyley lived, though his primary residence was New York City. His description of the crime and the trial is concise and accurate but he seems to have little understanding of what life in Columbia County was like for most residents. Wyley liked to read and use a computer, PC's just starting in the late 80's to be popular. Wyley's father Bob, however, felt differently. Bob had a machine and equipment repair business out of his garage and, according to Gelb, had "a concern about it being 'unatural' for the boy to stay in his room so much and would make an effort to get him outside and put him to work on gears and camshafts so that he would have some 'real' knowledge of the 'real' world." My father, who loved antique motorcars, never got his children interested in them. The closest I came was entering the local soap box derby: I hated working on the actual coasters but I did like that all the entrants got to go on trips to Yankee Stadium and the movies. And my father hated the time I spent reading, insisting it was bad for the eyes. Bob would make Wyley work in the garage in the summer, without pay and when I turned 12 my father cut off my measly allowance, since now I could get a paper route.
Hudson, which had neither a library nor a bookstore when I was growing up, was an anti-intellectual town in a blue-collar county. I spent a year at Hudson High before leaving for prep school and during that year parents complained bitterly about their children being required to read entire books (Death Be Not Proud, The Microbe Hunters): this was oppressive. When the guidance counselor saw what classes I was going to take at Exeter --Latin, English, Science, History -- he couldn't understand why I wanted to go away to school, since Hudson High offered the same courses! Wyley, of course, was accused of being a "sissy" and a "homo," just as I and anyone else who had cultural interests was. Wyley played trumpet in the high school band but never seems to have had the chance to hear a concert at near-by Tanglewood or even New York City, only two hours away by train.
Wyley found solace in religion for a time, when he was young. He was confirmed in the Episcopal Church and for a time was an acolyte and then, at thirteen, he totally rejected the church's teaching as "garbage." Perhaps he was subjected to what I was as an acolyte: since one could not have breakfast before communion and we had to kneel on unsupported pillows at least one of us would faint or throw up during the service, something our minister did not like, considering it a sign of "weakness." Gelb claims that Wyley's father, Bob, was not upset about his rejection of the church since Bob never showed up there. This may be true; on the other hand Bob might have been like my father, who insisted his children go to church even though he never did. My father said, with no irony, that I should do as he says, not as he does. He said he would go to church if there was ever an issue of the weekly church bulletin that did not ask for donations and when I would bring him examples of such bulletins he would just laugh them off.
Wyley's parents were divorced when he was young and his mother lived in California. Wyley lived with her from the ages of eight to ten, when he moved back in with his father. Apparently his mother left him alone all day to watch television while she was out with different men. My parents fought all the time and my father terrorized my mother as much as he did his children, usually punishing us when he came home for things we did during the day. The absence of a nurturing mother can make a big difference. I feel fortunate in many ways that I escaped Columbia County when I did, when the factories were closing and more people were moving in from the city. The radical changes and gentrification were setting in when Gelb published his book in 1990 and continue apace, for better or worse, the locals and the city people having little to do with one another.
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