Let's Keep The Violence To A Minimum

Please let me begin this column by thanking the late syndicated columnist and author Sydney J. Harris for sharing with readers “Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other Things.”

For those not familiar with Harris, his columns appeared in more than 200 newspapers, including the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. He died Dec. 8, 1986, after heart by-pass surgery. He was 69.

I looked up Fort Dix, N.J. (now Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst) for my Christmas memories column. I wanted to check out the name change. What I came across enroute to the information I was looking for brought back sad memories:

Natravien Landry, an Army National Guard soldier has been charged with murder after a Nov. 14 shooting in the Fort Eisenhower (formerly Fort Gordon) residence of a woman with whom he shares a child.

Landry, 25, of Abbeville, La., is charged with the murder of U.S. Army Sgt. Andre S. Stewart Jr., who was with the mother of Landry’s child at the Fort Eisenhower residence.

Landry is accused of assaulting and shooting Stewart and then leaving Fort Eisenhower, according to the United States Attorney’s Office Southern District of Georgia.

“Landry was arrested about three hours later south of Atlanta on Interstate 85 during a traffic stop by the Meriwether County, Ga., Sheriff’s Office, and deputies recovered a 9 mm pistol during the stop,” the United States Attorney’s Office reported.

The U.S. Marshals Service took Landry into custody and transported him to the Lincoln County Jail.

Only equilateral triangles have three straight sides of equal length. I was still in elementary school when I first learned — though I may not have fully comprehended it back then — that love triangles are almost always anything but equilateral.

At the time we were living in Mount Holly, N.J., about 11 miles from Fort Dix, N.J. Just about everyone who lived in the complex was connected to the military. And when husbands (it was mostly a man’s world back then) were sent on assignments that didn’t include families, their wives and children remained in Mount Holly.

My father was stationed at Fort Dix, but several of our neighboring families consisted of a woman and her children. And so, it was with this certain young teen boy. I’ve forgotten his name; but I do recall that he was an only child and he looked sad and lonely most of the times I saw him.

He and his mother lived one building over from us. I always saw him riding his bike or sitting astride his bike with both feet flat on the ground. But always that sad look. He was kind of cute, but “cute” meant absolutely nothing to me back then.

I understand there was quite a commotion in their building one night. Police cars, screaming and cries for help. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I was sound asleep.

Having heard what took place the night before, I deliberately rode my bike to Cute Boy’s apartment the next day. There was no police tape cordoning off the crime scene. Maybe the husband or someone else confessed and there was no need. I never found out. Back in the day, if one kid couldn’t find out from other kids what happened, they didn’t dare ask an adult.

What I did learn was that the husband was a paratrooper, and it seems he dropped in to surprise his wife and son, but he got the big surprise — his wife had a male visitor.

There was cursing and swearing. Blows were struck. Now the husband was armed, so at some point bullets started flying. I don’t know who got shot, but when I looked into the apartment (the door was wide open) I saw a long blood smear on the wall of the laundry room that ended at what we called the back door.

Then there were big spatters of blood on the sidewalk that led from the back door to the parking spaces, which were visible from the laundry room. And there was lots of blood in this one parking space. 

I do not know who got shot or who painstakingly left to seek shelter under one of the parked cars that night. I do know I never saw the sad boy again.

Fast forward to my 18^th year. My father was again stationed at Fort Dix, but this time we were living in post housing. And I was nowhere near the scene of the crime, which this time was a mobile home.

I don’t know if the husband and wife lived there, or if the husband was tipped off (and remember we didn’t have cell phones in 1965).

Anyway, the husband supposedly went to the mobile home park and saw that one trailer was moving rhythmically. He entered the trailer with his pistol in his hand. He saw his wife with another man and threatened to kill the man. At this point, the wife raised up and said, “If you kill him, kill me, too.”

So, he did.