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Dad Missed Dillinger's Funeral

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By RAYMOND P. BROWN

Special to the Tribune

Published: August 24, 2008

In September 1932, when I was 5 years old, my father was appointed pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Mooresville, Ind. The parsonage, where my parents and I lived, was one block west of the church.

As an only child and in the era before babysitting, I quite often went to visit people with my parents. My father made his pastoral calls by himself, but my mother took me along when she went to pay "social calls," still part of proper etiquette. I took a toy or two and usually spent time on the floor amusing myself but my ears were tuned to the conversation. So I knew something of what people were talking about in town.

The main topic was the failure of the Mooresville State Bank - it took many homes and farms away from their owners. I also knew banks were robbed by a Mooresville man named John Dillinger. The very robbery that first put him in prison was committed on the sidewalk beside the Christian Church, across the street from our home.

In 1924, Dillinger and an older man waited in the large bushes beside the church and mugged a store owner named Frank Morgan, who was taking the Saturday night receipts to the bank.

Years later, my friends Sonny Hundley and Junior Richart and I played in those bushes with our toy guns. I have no memory of ever playing cops and robbers - it was always cowboys and Indians. Dillinger and the other criminals of the 1930s were items of "old people's talk" and our heroes were the cowboys of the Saturday movie serials. My hero was Tom Mix.

But I remember the story my father told. He heard it from the minister who had lived in our home previously, when the shopkeeper was mugged by Dillinger. The minister said the grocer had crawled across the street and onto the steps of our house, where he gave the Masonic distress call. The distress signal caused the minister's whole body to feel electrified, he said.

The shopkeeper survived. As a boy, I often bought candy from him.

After the Mooresville robbery, Dillinger was sent to the Indiana State Reformatory, where he wasn't released until 1933. He became one of the most notorious bank robbers in the country once out of prison but his luck ran out in 1934. This is when my father almost came into the picture.

July 1934 was very hot in Mooresville. My father had to go to Epworth League Camp in Rivervale. Epworth League was a church summer camp and a long drive from Mooresville, all on a gravel road. He would be gone for a week and it was decided my mother and I would stay home.

While my father was gone, my mother and I were sitting under the shade tree in our front yard when we heard the news: Dillinger had been fatally shot by FBI agents in Chicago.

Dillinger's father still lived in Mooresville and was a member of First Methodist Episcopal Church, where my father was the minister. So it would be my father's pastoral duty to preside over Dillinger's funeral.

But my father was in Rivervale, a four- to five-hour trip in our 1929 Chevrolet. If he came home, he would have to spend at least two days away from the camp and miss teaching his class. My father told Friday Harvey, the funeral director in town who was handling Dillinger's funeral, to get another pastor.

The Harvey family would have been all too happy to miss the funeral. Some days after the event, my mother and I paid a visit to Mrs. Harvey. She recounted the problems: So many people wanted to view Dillinger's body that the line stretched around the block.

The crowd pushed and shoved and one person was pushed through the large window of the front door. Once inside, the spectators filed past the casket and through two other rooms before exiting through a side door. Mrs. Harvey said the shuffling of thousands of feet literally wore out their carpets. People were tired after such a long wait and thus were also hard on the chairs and couches.

Dillinger was viewed as a sort of folk hero by some, even though he was a criminal. I believe it's unlikely that many people in the town held his bank-robbing ways against him or would have turned him in, if given the opportunity. The bank failures had made people very bitter.

Meanwhile, my dad always maintained that he was glad he was out of town and didn't have to preside over the funeral of Public Enemy No. 1. But I think deep down, he was a little sorry to have missed out on a footnote of history.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Raymond P. Brown, 81, followed in his father's footsteps and became a Methodist preacher. He graduated from Boston University's School of Theology and later spent 37 years in the ministry, mostly in Indiana. Now retired, he lives in New Port Richey. Brown has two daughters and two granddaughters.

I Remember It Well is a feature of the Prime Time page. Send entries to shemmingway@tampatrib.com or in typewritten form to Susan Hemmingway, The Tampa Tribune, P.O. Box 191, Tampa FL 33601. Submissions cannot be returned. Be sure to include a contact phone number.

Keyword: Dillinger, for an audio slide show in which Raymond P. Brown discusses John Dillinger.

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