Return to the White House Boys

No blog I’ve ever written has received more attention than one I posted after reading an upsetting book about “The White House Boys.”
by Charlie Leck

Now the New York Times gives front page attention to the diggings going on at the old Florida State Reform School for boys!

I had dozens of responses to my blog called The White House Boys. It’s a blog I posted over three years ago. It began as a review of the very depressing book written by Roger Dean Kiser You can find the blog here. I was unable to post most of those comments for a number of reasons. Some were vile and the language was too tough and harsh for me to handle; and I certainly wasn’t going to subject my readers to it. Most were so anonymous and made such serious charges against people that I couldn’t post them in fairness. I had no way to fact-check these comments and therefore I couldn’t attest to their accuracy. Now don’t think I wasn’t troubled that I couldn’t post the comments. I was. The comment process leaves me no way to contact the people who made the statements and charges. That’s why I prefer, in most cases, to hear from people by email.

Now, I’m hoping those people who sent me so many comments will take note of the NY Times story this morning (Sunday, February 10, 2013) about the anthropological dig that is going on at the old reform school in an attempt to understand better what happened in that awful place.

This is not an easy story – a Sunday morning blog, so to speak. That original blog is one of the most difficult I ever wrote and the people who sent in comments about it were obviously still suffering from the pain, torment and anger which the place caused for them or their family members.

This little snippet from the NY Times story will give you an idea of the horrors we’re dealing with here…

“Almost from the moment it opened as the Florida State Reform School, there was a steady stream of reports of abuse, indentured servitude, crowding and neglect. So many children — among them incorrigibles and runaways — were sent to the institution that it became the largest in the country.

“Accounts surfaced early on of children as young as 6 chained to walls. Fierce whippings were common. Children were forced to pick crops, make bricks and print paper, all to profit the prison and other businesses, records show. A fire in 1914 killed eight boys who had been locked in a room. Flu epidemics killed others. Some runaways were shot.”

This is not a subject I really want to write about; however, I’m posting this blog in hopes that some of those angry, angry people who sent me comments over the last few years about The White House Boys and their connection to that story will read this and go to the New York Times story.

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THE WHITE HOUSE BOYS

You probably don’t want to know about this book or about this true account of man’s unbelievable and insane cruelty to man!
by Charlie Leck

About the time I was graduating from high school, Roger Kiser was just arriving at the Florida Industrial School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. A friend recently told me that Roger had written a book, The White House Boys, and that I ought to read it.

“Read the Prologue,” he said, “and you won’t put it down.”

So, yesterday I read the Prologue of the book. Three hours later, shaken and overwhelmed by a sense of the unbelievable, I put the book down, finished with it and madder than hell.

Unless you are up to facing the reality of man’s incredible “inhumanity to man,” you are not going to want to read this book.

There are a couple of ways to learn quickly what the book is about. One is to visit this web site: The White House Boys Survivor’s Organization Corp. Watch the video there, but be careful; for you may not be able to keep your last meal down.

The other way to learn quickly what was going on here is to read Roger Kiser’s speech at a ceremony in 2008 that acknowledged what had happened there. Four men, who as boys had lived at the reformed school, were invited to speak, without being censored, about what happened there. Roger was one of those speakers. Here’s what he said:

As I stand here before you today, the White House Torture Chamber less than four feet behind me, it is strange that the only word that comes to my mind is the word “masturbate.” Between Matron Mother Winters at the orphanage and Dr. Robert Curry, the psychologist you hired to straighten we boys out, that was the only word I ever heard come from these two individuals’ mouths. During the first twelve years of my life that seemed to be the most important thing the State of Florida wanted to know about me. It was bad enough never having had a real mother, but to have to sit through that type of degrading language was scary and disgusting. Governor, I have always wanted to say those words to you.

The term ‘reform school’ is supposed to be a positive place not a negative. You, the State of Florida, became my parents by an order of the court and placed me in a Jacksonville, Florida, orphanage. You, not I, chose to make that decision. I, being only four or five years old, had not choice in the matter. You had a responsibility to teach and prepare me for a life outside the orphanage. For seven years, you are the one who allowed me to sit on the end of my bed with only a single broken roller skate wheel to play with. For seven years, I sat there rocking back and forth on the end of my bed, my mind wasting away while I spun that single roller skate wheel around and around more then [sic] one-hundred million times. When I was not spinning that wheel I was over at Mother Winter’s room laying naked, my little head on her bare chest while she had me masturbate her.

But because I took one of the girl’s bicycles from the dormitory, climbed a tree now and then, and went to the bathroom or got a drink of water without asking permission, you sent me to this ungodly place. Whatever goodness might have been left of me at the age of twelve, you finally destroyed by beating the pure living hell out of me. You almost killed me. When I exited this damn building I was so bloody than no one could recognize me. I walked into the bathroom in Mr. Hatton’s office and I screamed in horror when I saw nothing more than a bloody monster in the mirror. Shaking and screaming, I begged Matron Mother Winters to please come and save me from you bastards. ‘I’ll help you masturbate Mother Winters, really I will and I won’t complain ever again.’ YOU CAUSED ME TO BEG FOR MY MOLESTER TO COME AND SAVE ME! THAT’S WHAT YOU DID TO ME!

Gentlemen, today, almost fifty years later, I now stand before you and I am still not sure if this building will allow me to smile. But that’s not the worse [sic] of it all. A secret inner hatred of society and a fear of my fellowman will forever be instilled and kept secretly hidden deep inside me because of this White House building, the Florida Industrial School for Boys at Marianna, Dr. Robert Curry, Mr. Hatton, and Mr. Troy Tidwell.

Was my secretly riding one of the girl’s bikes without the orphanage matron’s permission, or climbing up a thin tall pine tree, or stealing candy bar from the Patio restaurant because I was hungry worth the price the State of Florida made me pay?

I was not a murderer, a rapist, or a burglar. I was a danger to no one, other than maybe myself. As a child, I had never hurt anyone, not even under the slightest of terrible circumstances. I was just an innocent, confused, incorrigible, hungry, unwanted and unloved young boy who needed someone to let him know that he had a value to someone, somewhere in the world.

My entire adult life, those two horrendous beatings at the White House have been very difficult battles to deal with – one moment loving children, animals and most of humanity; the next moment a temper exploding into a fit of rage trying to protect myself from those who probably do not wish to harm me, but I cannot afford to take such a chance ever again.

I stand here today in remembrance of all the boys who were beaten, raped, and abused by this facility. But one that I will remember the most will be the boy who had his skin whipped off his back in one chunk from his shoulders to his knees.

I don’t know how many boys were killed here, and I don’t know if that we ever be known. But I do know this: Many a good little boy walked into this damn torture building but a lot more little Charlie Mansons walked back out than did good little boys. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

I can only pray that things have changed for the children of today.

Mr. Kiser’s book catalogs and details the events of his life while living in the Florida Industrial School for Boys. You probably don’t want to know about them.

You can visit Roger Dean Kiser’s own personal web site and learn more about him.