Artists Registry

Why I wrote ‘Pause to Pray’.

I was in the middle of teaching my class of recovering addicts when the first aircraft crashed into one of the ‘Twin Towers’. One of the counselors interrupted my class and told me to turn on our television…and why. Hearing that an aircraft had flown into a tall building in New York City brought back memories of a B-25 flying into The Empire State Building in 1945, an accident created when the plane flew through dense fog. I turned the television on, all the time thinking the incident was some kind of error brought about by bad weather conditions or a malfunction of the aircraft…not a deliberate act of terrorism.

Everyone in the classroom watched while the second aircraft hit the second tower…and only then did I realize we were not witnessing a couple of horrible accidents. We continued to watch for hours, overwhelmed by the carnage and viciousness of everything we saw.

Yes, I was horrified by what I was witnessing, but my mental response didn't limit itself to the news on the television. The horror I saw opened memories I’d tried to push to the recesses of my mind for years – memories of gruesome incidents I’d been exposed to.

The first occurred when I was 17. Recovering from an injury from a bicycle accident, I was on my way to spend a quiet day with some friends. While waiting for a streetcar in a poorer part of St. Louis I witnessed a man being shot and killed. I saw the person who shot him…less than a hundred feet from me...shooting the victim from across the street so deliberately I was able to count every shot he fired. What was dismal was, the victims wife…and his girlfriend, seemed more concerned about his wallet and car keys than they did about his death.

Then, there was the time I saw a paperboy standing on a sidewalk, getting ready to sell his papers in 1965. I was on the same sidewalk about 50 yards away from him when a car full of teens drove past him and someone in the back seat stuck a rifle barrel out of the window and shot the boy several times. He died before the ambulance arrived.

While a policeman I recall the revenge of an abused wife…sewing her drunk husband in his bed sheet and then beating him with an iron skillet which resulted in a bloody mess not easy to forget. Still an officer I handled a couple of auto accidents where 4 out of 6 people died in head-on collisions brought about by stupid choices made by two of the drivers.

Then there was the case when I was first on the scene of a double shooting. Both victims had been shot in the head by two men who were robbing small stores for small amounts of cash. I went to the hospital with the victims and while the other one was in the operating room I was told to guard the other one…and watched her die. The shooters excuse for killing 8 people in 8 holdups was that the penalty for homicide at that time was the same as armed robbery. They were just getting rid of the witnesses.

One fourth of July I was assigned to patrol the park where the annual fireworks display was held. Towards the end of the show, a row of aerial bombs fell horizontal and shot across the park lake at the audience instead of skyward. I called for two ambulances for the victims, and the worst I saw was a pregnant woman who got hit by an exploding aerial bomb on the inside of her leg…and she lost the child.

During the Hippy era, there was the teen girl who played with drugs, and her parents all but ignored what she was doing. Then, one day they reported her missing but didn’t seem overly concerned about it. Our attempts to locate her were fruitless but, many months later one of our officers pulled a traffic violator over near some railroad tracks. He ignored writing the traffic ticket when he discovered human bones covered in girls’ clothing near the tracks. A pistol was found next to the girl which matched a bullet found inside the skull. The pistol belonged to the girl’s father who never even noticed the gun was missing.

I often recall the woman who was living in a house owned by her son. She had a poor paying job and most of her salary went to her son for her ‘rent’. A neighbor called us to her house one day where I found the woman in the middle of the street with little control of her mind. After sending her to the hospital, the neighbor who called us showed me evidence of how the woman had been mal-treated by her son…all plumbing in the house, except one cold-water faucet in the kitchen, not functioning. The only food was a plate of raw meat in the refrigerator. Skins from stray dogs under the back porch told me where the meat came from.

9/11 opened all those and other memories to the point where I knew I had to admit to myself…in writing…just what my feelings were. I could not add more negative memories to those which had been unlocked. Being openly honest with myself was the only solution.

I couldn’t put anything on paper for two days. It took that long to allow the old memories to calm down, but finally I did. It took a while…almost an entire day as I recall. When I was finished I read it over quite a few times just to make sure I’d said enough to ease my internal pain. Then I put it away never intending to share it with anyone. It wasn’t until the anniversary of 9/11 in 2018 that I came across the poem in a stack of writings from my past. Something told me to share it with my two daughters, which I did. They asked me to put it on Facebook and share it with others. I was reluctant at first but, between my posting it, and them re-posting it a couple of times, the poem was shared with friends and acquaintances. Then, someone asked me to send the poem to The National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City. After giving it a lot of thought I mailed them a copy of the poem and they requested that I officially post the poem and my résumé on their web site. I asked a couple of people very close to me read the poem and the résumé. I wanted their opinions as to whether if it is actually suitable. What you are seeing is what those friends thought to be right and proper.

Leeman Hackworth Jr.