Author: Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Alan E. Hunter’s column, “Bumps in the Night”, has run on the front page of the Weekly View / Eastside Voice / Eastside Herald newspaper in Irvington on the east side of Indianapolis since 2007. Al’s Pop culture-based articles have been the genesis of several national and local television and radio programs over the years spurring programs on subjects as varied as John Dillinger, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Manson, the ABA Indiana Pacers, and Burger Chef to the mysterious disappearance of ABA star John Brisker and all points in between. Alan E. Hunter is the author of the books “The Petersen House, the Oldroyd Museum and the House Where Lincoln Died“, “Thursdays with Doc. Dr. Wayne C. Temple’s recollections on Springfield and Lincoln“, “Osborn H. Oldroyd: Keeper of the Lincoln Flame“, and has co-authored two books on the Historic Indiana National Road. Al has researched, scripted, and led the Irvington Ghost Walks since 2002. Al’s tours are roughly 75% history and 25 % ghost stories and folklore. These non-profit tours raise much-needed funds for the Eastside Irvington community. In addition, Al has led similar tours in Greenfield and Cambridge City on the Historic National Road. Al is a former Vice-President and board member of the Indiana National Road Association. Al served as the historian and event coordinator for the Dropping Dimes Foundation which aids the former players of the ABA (American Basketball Association). Al also organized both the 30-year reunion of the ABA held at the Hoosier Dome in 1997 and the 50-year reunion of the ABA festivities at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on the campus of Butler University on Saturday, April 7, 2018. Al has co-authored two books on haunted Irvington. In 2013, Al published a compilation of his “Bumps in the Night” articles selected from his column in the Weekly View newspaper. Al also wrote a book on “Haunted Indianapolis” and most recently, a book on the H.H. Holmes relic collection for the benefit of the Irvington Historic Society and the Bona Thompson Memorial Center. The relics detailed in the books were featured in the History Channel 8-part series “American Ripper.” Al and his wife Rhonda appeared in 3 of the segments alongside the Great-great-grandson Jeff Mudgett. Al was featured in the November 21, 2018, episode of Mysteries at the Museum with Don Wildman where he detailed a scalpel used by America’s first serial killer, H.H. Holmes, in Irvington. Al was also featured in the October 9, 2019, episode of Ghost Adventures with Zak Bagans in which he detailed the history of the H.H. Holmes house in Irvington. Over the decade, Al has led talks and programs in Irvington that have collected food and personal care items for the Irvington homeless shelter, gathering well over a ton of food, clothing, and personal care goods for distribution. A former teacher and baseball coach at Westfield High School, Al graduated from Indiana University and has been married to his wife Rhonda since 1989. They have 2 children, Jasmine and Addison.

Abe Lincoln, Art, Museums, Presidents

Abraham Lincoln’s Favorite Poem.

January 22, 2025February 7, 2025 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original publish date October 19, 2023. https://weeklyview.net/2023/10/19/abraham-lincolns-favorite-poem/

This was once displayed in Osborn H. Oldroyd’s museum inside the Lincoln Home in Springfield, Illinois. The poem was read aloud on the 15th anniversary of the President’s death, April 15, 1880, at the first memorial service at Lincoln’s Tomb ceremony by Mrs. Edward S. Johnson (wife of Lincoln Guard of Honor member and second Lincoln Tomb custodian Major Edward S. Johnson). Undoubtedly this leaflet was handed out at that ceremony on that day as a souvenir. It is titled “President Lincoln’s Favorite Poem. Copied by F.B. Carpenter while our Lamented Chief was reciting it.”

During the month of October in Irvington, I am near-constantly surrounded by reminders of the dead. While Irvington celebrates Halloween with little door-knocking ghosties and goblins gliding from door to door in search of treats, it does nothing to dispel the fact that Halloween revolves around the spirits of the dearly departed. I write often about Abraham Lincoln, but seldom about Lincoln and Halloween. I thought it might be a good time to examine a mysterious poem that fits the season and has often been referred to as Lincoln’s favorite.

Lincoln developed his lifelong love of poetry while a boy in Southern Indiana. Although by his own admission, Lincoln got his education “by littles” and the total time spent in a classroom by the young rail-splitter amounted to less than a year, he devoured the poetry found in the four school readers historians attribute to his early years in the Hoosier state. Many of those poems were about death. John Goldsmith’s 1766 poem, An Elegy On The Death Of A Mad Dog, Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 poem The Raven, Oliver Wendell Holmes’ 1831 poem The Last Leaf, and Thomas Gray’s 1751 poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. And of course, Lincoln’s love of William Shakespeare is widely known.

These poets in particular capture the gloomy, melancholic poetry of which Lincoln was so fond of as a young man. Lincoln, a capable amateur poet himself, memorized the poems he cherished, reciting them to friends and inserting them in conversations and speeches throughout his life. His favorite poem, which he recited so often that people suspected he was its author, was William Knox’s “Mortality,” alternately known as “O, Why should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud!” Lincoln often opined to friends (and at least once in a letter) that he, “would give all I am worth, and go in debt, to be able to write so fine a piece as I think that is.”

The poem was cut from a newspaper and given to Lincoln by Dr. Jason Duncan in New Salem, Illinois. At the time, its author was anonymous, and attribution was unknown. On at least a few occasions, having committed it to memory, Lincoln wrote the Mortality poem out longhand and sent it to friends, always noting that “I am not the author.” He would spend twenty years searching for the poet. Aptly for the season, one stormy night in the White House, Lincoln recited the poem for a small group of friends including a congressman, an army chaplain, and an actor, noting that the “poem was his constant companion” and that it crossed his mind whenever he sought “relief from his almost constant anxiety.”

**General James Grant Wilson (1832-1914)**

When the group departed, Lincoln requested that his guests help to discover who had written it. “Its author has been greatly my benefactor, and I would be glad to name him when I speak of the poem…that I may treasure it as a memorial of a dear friend.” Union General James Grant Wilson (1832-1914) would ultimately inform the President that the poem was written by an obscure Scottish poet named William Knox (1789-1825). The poem was first published in his 1824 book Songs of Israel. After Lincoln’s death, the poem experienced a resurgence in popularity.

On April 15, 1880, on the 15th anniversary of the President’s death, the poem was read aloud by Mrs. Edward S. Johnson (wife of Lincoln Guard of Honor member and second Lincoln tomb custodian Major Edward S. Johnson) during a ceremony at the tomb in Springfield. A leaflet, handed out at that ceremony and found in my collection, was saved by Lincoln collector and personal muse Osborn H. Oldroyd and displayed in his collection in the Lincoln home for years. It remains important to the Oldroyd story as the impetus for his personal resolve to build a Lincoln Museum of his own.

**Lincoln Tomb Guard of Honor. John Carroll Power seated front row second from left.**

At that time the tomb’s Memorial Hall housed a small exhibit of Lincoln artifacts gathered by custodian John Carroll Power (a subject of my past columns). At that event, Oldroyd decided that his collection might be a bigger deal than he thought it was. “As I gazed on the…resting place of him whom I had learned to love in my boyhood years, I fell to wondering whether it might not be possible for me to contribute my might toward adding luster to the fame of this great product of American institutions,” wrote Oldroyd. It was after gazing upon those priceless Lincoln relics at the tomb that Oldroyd resolved to build a Memorial Hall in Springfield to display his own collection of Lincoln memorabilia. For a decade (1883 to 1893) that museum occupied the front parlors of the only home Abraham Lincoln ever owned at 8th and Jackson. The divider between those two rooms was adorned by a shield-shaped, flag-draped wooden motif adorned with the title “O, Why should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud!” Oldroyd made sure that every visitor to his museum was aware of the poem’s significance in the Lincoln chronology while surreptitiously causing each visitor to cast their eyes towards the heavens to receive the message.

**A stanza from the poem fashioned into a plaque hangs above the door in the above photo.**

The poem is written in Quatrain form with an A-A-B-B rhyme scheme, or clerihew, with all of the dominant words highlighted by the rhyme. The poem resounded in Lincoln’s mind like an echo, its pauses, and connotations framing the beat of the poem. The poem causes its reader to reflect on the inevitable continuity of life; Life is short so why sweat the small stuff? We are but insignificant players in a much grander scheme, so do all you can while you’re here. Here, submitted for your approval in the spirit of Halloween, is Abraham Lincoln’s favorite poem in its entirety.

“O why should the spirit of mortal be proud! Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave-He passes from life to his rest in the grave. The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, Be scattered around and together be laid; As the young and the old, and the low and the high, Shall moulder to dust, and together shall lie. The child that a mother attended and loved, The mother that infant’s affection that proved, The husband that mother and infant that blest, Each-all are away to their dwelling of rest. The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye, Shone beauty and pleasure-her triumphs are by: And the memory of those that beloved her and praised, And alike from the minds of the living erased. The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne, The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn, The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave, Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.”

“The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap, The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the steep, The beggar that wandered in search of his bread, Have faded away like the grass that we tread. The saint that enjoyed the communion of Heaven, The sinner that dared to remain unforgiven, The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just, Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust. So the multitude goes-like the flower and the weed, That wither away to let others succeed; So the multitude comes-even those we behold, To repeat every tale that hath often been told. For we are the same things that our fathers have been, We see the same sights that our fathers have seen, We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun, And we run the same course that our fathers have run.”

“The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think, From the death we are shrinking from they too would shrink, To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling-But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing. They loved-but their story we cannot unfold; They scorned-but the heart of the haughty is cold; They grieved-but no wail from their slumbers may come; They joyed-but the voice of their gladness is dumb. They died-ay, they died! and we, things that are now, Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow, Who make in their dwellings a transient abode, Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road. Yea, hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain, Are mingled together like sunshine and rain: And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge, Still follow each other like surge upon surge. ‘Tis the twink of an eye, ’tis the draught of a breath, From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud-O why should the spirit of mortal be proud!”

**Memento homo (remember you are only a man).**

So what is the takeaway? Why should you be so proud of what you have, when all you have is so little in the bigger picture? The theme is one of life and death. A bleak and somber contrast reminds us that life is short, and in Lincoln’s case, fame is fleeting. Auriga, the slave charged with accompanying Roman Generals and Emperors through the streets of Rome after triumph in battle, often whispered the phrase Memento homo (remember you are only a man) while holding the golden crown inches above their heads. From a young age, Lincoln was well acquainted with the idea of mortality. So it comes as no surprise that he adored that poem. But it isn’t all gloom and doom. Within its stanzas are found muted messages of hope and the promise that it is not too late for society to change its ways by following in the footsteps of our ancestors. Reading this poem, one experiences the same feeling of reflection as Lincoln did. It explains how, during his entire lifetime, The Great Emancipator remained penitent and humble by simply following the lessons of this poem.

Abe Lincoln

LincolnConspirators.com podcast.

January 21, 2025 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

An Interview with Alan E. Hunter: Keeper of the Oldroyd Flame

Civil War, Uncategorized

Where did you go Ambrose Bierce?

January 21, 2025February 7, 2025 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original publish date September 26, 2024. https://weeklyview.net/2024/09/26/where-did-you-go-ambrose-bierce/

110 years ago last week, one of the most famous journalists you’ve never heard of disappeared from the face of the earth. Sometime between September 18-24, 1914, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was reported missing. And of course, he had Hoosier ties. Less than two weeks after the start of the Civil War, Bierce enlisted with the 9th Indiana on April 24, 1861, in Elkhart, Indiana. Bierce was born in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio, on June 24, 1842. Horse Cave Creek, “a religious settlement” southeast of Columbus, Ohio, is long gone. Bierce was the tenth of thirteen children, all of whom were given names by their father beginning with the letter “A”. As a child, Bierce moved from the Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio to the lake country of northern Indiana. His parents were a poor but literary couple who instilled in him a deep love for books and writing. Bierce grew up in Kosciusko County, Indiana, attending high school at the county seat in Warsaw. He left home in 1857 at age 15 to become a “printer’s devil” at a small abolitionist newspaper in Warsaw: the Northern Indianan. A printer’s devil was an indentured servant who performed many thankless tasks, including mixing tubs of ink and fetching type. Bierce was in good company: Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain were all printer’s devils.

While with the 9th Indiana, Bierce served in Western Virginia and was present at the Battle of Philippi (the first organized land action of the war in June of 1861). Bierce received his first media attention for his daring rescue, under fire, of a gravely wounded comrade at the Battle of Rich Mountain. Later, he fought at the Battle of Shiloh (April 1862), which he would write about in the memoir “What I Saw of Shiloh”. Within two years Bierce was serving on the staff of General Wm. Hazen. Here he became known to leading generals such as George H. Thomas and Oliver O. Howard, both of whom recommended him for admission to West Point in May 1864. General William T. Sherman also endorsed his application for admission. In June 1864, Bierce sustained a traumatic brain injury at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain and spent the rest of the summer on furlough. By the end of the war, Bierce rejoined Gen. Hazen to inspect military outposts across the Great Plains, ending in San Francisco, where he was awarded the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army.

Bierce remained in San Francisco for many years, becoming famous as a contributor or editor of newspapers and periodicals. He eventually graduated to the historical novels he is most remembered for today. His book The Devil’s Dictionary was named one of “The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature” by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. The book first took form as a serialized newspaper column before being published as a book. The book contains satirical definitions of English words that lampoon political double-talk. The book was volume seven of a twelve-volume set called “The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce” published from 1909 to 1912. Bierce was a pioneer in realist fiction, his horror writing prowess rivaled Edgar Allan Poe, and his satire equals his peer, Mark Twain. Bierce’s sharp tongue and penchant for biting social criticism and satire often placed him at odds with his publisher William Randolph Hearst. His poetry could be equally caustic as when one of his poems about the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 sparked a national outcry.

Bierce’s most notable work came at the close of the Gilded Age. From 1888 to 1891 he wrote a rapid succession of short stories centering around the inscrutability of the universe and the absurdity of death. Many of those realistic themes came from the terrible things Bierce had seen on the battlefield. His collection of 25 war stories including “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, “A Horseman in the Sky”, “One of the Missing”, and “Chickamauga” has been called “the greatest anti-war document in American literature”. Nothing infuriated Bierce more than hearing grandiose accounts of honor and glory of war from people who’d never seen or experienced it personally. His psychological horror story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” has been described as “one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature”, and his book “Tales of Soldiers and Civilians” was named by the Grolier Club one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900. Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King were among the many he influenced.

BIerce’s “Fantastic Fables” book and his many ghost stories were the precursors of the grotesquerie that became a more common genre in the 20th century. Bierce liked nothing better than to shock his audience by challenging their minds on the way to a surprise ending. No better example can be found than his “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. Written in 1890 and set during the Civil War, the short story climaxes when Peyton Farquhar, a wealthy Alabama planter and slave owner, is about to be executed by hanging from a railroad bridge as a company of Union infantrymen guards the bridge to carry out the sentence. In his final moments, Farquhar thinks of his wife and children but is suddenly distracted by an unbearably loud clanging. It is the ticking of his watch. He ponders the possibility of unfreeing his hands and jumping from the bridge to swim to safety, but the soldiers drop him off the bridge before he can act on the idea.

**A scene from “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”**

Farquhar flashes back to a time when he and his wife are relaxing at home one evening as a Rebel soldier rides up to the gate and tells Farquhar that Union troops have seized the Owl Creek railroad bridge. The soldier suggests that Farquhar might be able to burn the bridge down if he can slip past its guards. The soldier is in reality a Union scout setting a trap for Farquhar knowing that any civilian caught committing such an act will be hanged as a spy. Farquhar snaps back to the present and falls into the creek after the rope around his neck breaks. He frees his hands, pulls the noose off, and rises to the surface to begin his escape. He dodges, dives, and swims downstream to avoid rifle and cannon fire. Once out of range, he begins the frantic 30-mile journey back home. While Farquhar walks through endless forests day and night, he begins to hallucinate, seeing strange constellations and hearing whispered voices in an unknown language. He trudges on, driven by the thought of his wife and children despite the pain of his ordeal. The next morning he arrives at the gate to his plantation and rushes forward to embrace his wife, but before he touches her, he feels a heavy blow upon the back of his neck. There is a loud noise and a flash of white and “then all is darkness and silence!” Bierce reveals that Farquhar never escaped at all. His escape was an imagination, his journey home a momentary ripple in time experienced during the moment between his drop from the bridge and the noose breaking his neck.

Bierce continued writing and pushing the outside of the envelope for the rest of his life. Since much of Bierce’s writing centered on the Civil War, about a decade ago I asked National Parks Historian Emeritus Ed Bearrs about Bierce. I was sharing a beer with Mr. Bearrs in a hotel bar just after touring the Stone’s River battlefield between Murfreesboro and Nashville, Tennessee. Mr. Bearrs, who passed in 2020, was a man of few words. In this instance, he paused before answering, taking a pull from his bottle of Budweiser beer, and said, “What do I think of Ambrose Bierce? I think he was a grade-A Bull-sh_ _ artist.” Which elicited laughter from me and the few others at the table.

In 1913, at age seventy-one, he left Washington, D.C. to tour his old familiar Civil War battlefields. Within a short time, Bierce changed his mind and decided to chase Pancho Villa’s army to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. Bierce traveled to Mexico to witness (and some say become a part of) the revolution. By December he had passed through Louisiana and Texas, entering Mexico via El Paso. In Ciudad Juárez he joined Pancho Villa’s army as an observer, and in that role, he witnessed the Battle of Tierra Blanca. It was reported that Bierce accompanied Villa’s army as far as the city of Chihuahua. His last known communication with the world was a letter he wrote there to Blanche Partington, a close friend, dated December 26, 1913. After closing this letter by saying, “As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.” And that was the last anyone ever heard of Ambrose Bierce. He vanished without a trace, one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history. No one knows where, when, or under what circumstances he met his end.

The U.S. consular opened an official investigation into the disappearance of one of its citizens. Some of Villa’s men were questioned but they all gave contradictory accounts. Local legend, documented by priest James Lienert, states that Bierce was executed by firing squad in the cemetery of the town of Sierra Mojada, Coahuila. Bierce’s ultimate fate remains a mystery. He wrote in one of his final letters: “Good-bye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico–ah, that is euthanasia!” His body was never recovered.

Indianapolis, Music, Pop Culture

“Louie Louie”

January 21, 2025February 7, 2025 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

This column first appeared in August 2013. https://weeklyview.net/2024/08/01/louie-louie-2/

**“Louie, Louie” by the Kingsman 1963.**

Fifty years ago this week, a song was released by an obscure Portland, Oregon, garage band that would change the face of rock ‘n’ roll history forever and ultimately resonate through the halls of the Indiana Statehouse. “Louie Louie” was written by Richard Berry in 1955 and was originally performed in the style of a Jamaican reggae ballad. The original version tells the first-person story of a Jamaican sailor returning to the island to see his lady love. Berry released his version in April 1957 with his band, the Pharaohs, and scored a regional hit on the West Coast, particularly in San Francisco. When the group toured the Pacific Northwest, local garage bands picked up the song, increasing its popularity.

**Richard Berry’s Original 1957 release on Jasmine Records.**

On August 8th, 1963, a relatively unknown band called The Kingsmen released their version and it swept across the airwaves from the West Coast like a musical tsunami. The band recorded the song for $50 at Northwestern, Inc., Motion Pictures and Recording studio in Portland. The band split the cost of the session. The session was produced by Ken Chase, a local radio personality on radio station KISN 91-AM. He also owned a teen nightclub that hosted the Kingsmen as his house band. The Kingsmen’s studio version was recorded in one take. They also recorded a “B” side song called “Haunted Castle.”

**Berry’s version of the song on Flip Records.**

The Kingsmen turned Berry’s syrupy sweet ballad into a raucous romp, backed by a twangy guitar, party chatter, and mostly unintelligible lyrics by lead singer Jack Ely. The song hit the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in December and would remain there for 16 weeks. “Louie Louie” reached number one on both the Cashbox pop and R&B charts. The version quickly became a standard at teen parties in the U.S. during the 1960s, even reappearing on the charts in 1966.

**Louie Louie & Haunted Castle 45 Record.**

However, it was the urban legend about the indecipherable lyrics that gave the song lasting fame — or infamy, depending on your point of view. Rumors claimed that the band intentionally slurred the lyrics to hide the profanity contained therein, in particular, graphic sex between a sailor and his lady. Soon, crumpled pieces of paper containing “the real lyrics” to “Louie Louie” circulated among giggling, red-faced teens. In time, the adults got involved in the form of unamused parents and distraught teachers who demanded action against this supposed pornography sweeping the airwaves. Keep in mind, singles by The Singing Nun and Bobby Vinton monopolized the top slot on the charts during the song’s run.

Eventually, the song was banned on many radio stations across the United States, including Indiana, where it was personally prohibited by Governor Matthew Welsh himself. Yes Indiana, our state officially banned the song “Louie, Louie” on Tuesday, January 21, 1964. The unprecedented involvement between state government and a rock ‘n’ roll song began when Governor Welsh of Indiana received a complaint from a Frankfort teenager, claiming that the lyrics to the song were obscene. The teenager included a handwritten copy of the obscene lyrics as evidence.

Allegedly, Governor Welsh’s executive secretary Jack New went to a nearby music store to buy a copy of the record. Then, in what must’ve been a Monty Pythonesque moment, New and the Governor listened to it inside his Statehouse office. New told the Indianapolis Star “We slowed it down and we thought we could hear the words.” Billboard reported that the Governor said his ears “tingled.” The Governor’s press secretary, James McManus, said that the words were “indistinct, but plain if you listen carefully.”

**WISH-Radio’s Reid “Chuckles” Chapman.**

Governor Welsh snapped off a letter to Fort Wayne radio and TV personality and President of the Indiana Broadcasters Association Reid Chapman urging that the lyrics to the song be “examined.” Welsh said in 1991, “My position with respect to the whole matter was never that the record should be banned. At no time did I ever pressure anybody to take the song off the air. I suggested to him [Chapman] that it might be simpler all around if it wasn’t played.” The Governor had written to Chapman because he “was a friend of mine. I knew him; we weren’t close.”

In response to the Governor’s letter, Chapman sent telegrams to Hoosier radio stations asking them to stop playing the record. The Kingsmen, who were ready to embark on a Midwestern concert tour (including an appearance at the Indiana State Fair), objected to any attempt to take their song off the air. These “hidden lyric” denials by the Kingsmen did little to stop the controversy but did much to boost sales of the record among curious teens and investigative adults.

In a January 24, 1964, editorial page article titled “Young Singers Dismiss As Hooey Obscenity Charge in ‘Louie Louie.’”, a reporter for the Indianapolis Star interviewed Lynn Easton, leader of the band, who “somewhat angrily” denied that the band sang obscene lyrics. “We took the words from the original version by Richard Berry and recorded them faithfully. There was no clowning around,” Easton said. To the Star’s credit, the conclusion of the editorial was against government censorship in any form. Lead singer Jack Ely explained the garbled lyrics were a result of the studio’s 19-foot ceiling which had a microphone suspended from it.

Despite the band’s protestations, LeRoy New, Chief Marion County deputy prosecutor, assigned two investigators to look into the obscenity charges. After listening to the record at three speeds, the investigators found nothing obscene, though they admitted the words were garbled. New said, “The record is an abomination of out-of-tune guitars, an overbearing jungle rhythm and clanging cymbals.” But New stopped short of saying the lyrics were obscene, and the obscenity laws of the day “just didn’t reckon with dirty sounds.”

Although Governor Welsh’s “woofing” about the record was not the cause, soon after the Indiana banning, it fell off the charts. Ironically, by the time the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” had achieved national popularity, the band had split up. In February 1964, an outraged parent wrote to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, alleging the song lyrics were obscene. Subsequently, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI began a 31-month investigation into the matter that concluded the song was “unintelligible at any speed,” and they were “unable to interpret any of the wording in the record.” But by then, “Louie, Louie” was a footnote in rock history.

Maybe it was the controversy about the obscene (or not obscene) lyrics that killed the song — who knows? But two weeks after the swan song, on Sunday, February 9, The Beatles appeared for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show. The British Invasion had begun and the American garage band sound soon faded from the scene.

The song would not re-emerge until it was featured in the 1978 film Animal House. According to Kenny Vance, the musical director of the movie, a pre-Saturday Night Live John Belushi sang in a garage band that used to perform this song at frat parties. Belushi sang his version of the dirty lyrics in the studio while recording his vocals for the movie. Sadly, the tape of Belushi‘s version was lost in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy wiped out Kenny’s home in Queens.

As for this reporter, I admired Governor Matt Welsh. He was one of my first interviews back in the early 1980s. But make no mistake about it, regardless of his posturing after the fact, Matt Welsh had the record banned. When I asked the Governor about the song, although polite, he expressed his frustration that “Louie Louie” is all he’s remembered for by “today’s” generation. Welsh did not mention the matter in his personal memoir but did say, “I thought the whole thing was a tempest in a teapot, and not worth any extended pursuit. I have no interest in it either way.”

Everyone knows the chorus: “Louie, Louie, oh no. Me gotta go. Aye-yi-yi, I said. Louie Louie, oh baby. Me gotta go.” But once and for all, here are the lyrics: “Fine little girl waits for me. Catch a ship across the sea. Sail that ship about, all alone. Never know if I make it home. Three nights and days, I sail the sea. Think of girl, constantly. Oh that ship, I dream she’s there. I smell the rose in her hair. See Jamaica, the moon above. It won’t be long, me see my love. Take her in my arms again. Tell her I’ll never leave again.” The supposed “lewd” version can be easily found on the Web, but I’ll leave that to your own devices.

Assassinations, Creepy history, Criminals, Politics

Charlotte Corday

January 21, 2025February 7, 2025 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original publish date July 18, 2024. https://weeklyview.net/2024/07/18/charlotte-corday/

**The Death of Marat, 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David**.

This 24-hour news cycle world can be exhausting. As I write this article, we stand at 120 days and counting until our next Presidential election. We are constantly reminded that this will be the most important election in the history of our country and that the end of Democracy is on the line. Since I spend most of my time buried in history of one sort or another, a phrase from the ancients runs on a loop in my head; “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” My idiomatic paraphrase is a Biblical verse: Ecclesiastes 1:9, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

This is the story of Charlotte Corday. It is complicated, shocking, and gory, and does not end well. Her act is immortalized in one of the most famous images from the French Revolution: The Death of Marat, a 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David. The painting depicts Jean-Paul Marat lying dead in his bathtub after his assassination by Corday on July 13, 1793. It is considered a masterpiece of the highest order and the first modernist work to express just how bad politics can be. The original painting is at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium with a replica on display at the Louvre.

Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d’Armont (July 27, 1768 – 17 July 1793) was born to an aristocratic family in Normandy, France. Corday held Marat responsible for the September Massacres of 1792, a series of executions of prisoners in Paris during the French Revolution. Over 1600 people, most of whom were non-violent political prisoners, were dragged from their cells and killed by guillotine at the hands of the “Committee of Surveillance of the Commune” led by the Montagnards, who advocated a more radical approach to the revolution. As The French Revolution radicalized further and headed towards terror, Corday began to sympathize with the Girondins. The Girondins supported democratic reforms and a strong legislative branch at the expense of much weaker executive and judiciary branches. She regarded the Girondins as a movement that would ultimately save France and that the Revolution was in jeopardy due to the radical course taken by Marat and the Montagnards.

On July 13, 1793, Corday traveled to Paris to assassinate Marat. He was not hard to find. Marat was suffering from a debilitating skin disease that left him nearly constantly confined to a bathtub to ease his suffering. Marat had always been a sickly man whom contemporaries described as “short in stature, deformed in person, and hideous in face.” The nature of his skin disease has been debated for centuries, some claimed it was syphilis, though most experts have identified it as “Dermatitis herpetiformis” a chronic, intensely itchy, blistering skin manifestation commonly known as celiac disease, a rash affecting about 10 percent of the population. Marat’s condition, which he had been suffering from for three years, was exacerbated by extreme weight loss, emaciation, and diminished strength. Marat stewed in a soup of various minerals and medicines with a bandana soaked in vinegar wrapped around his head. Marat sat upon a linen sheet for modesty, with the dry corners covering his back and bare shoulders, a board straddled the tub from rim to rim which served as a writing desk.

Corday is described on her passport as “five feet and one inch…curly auburn hair, eyes gray, forehead high, mouth medium size, chin dimpled, and an oval face”. Based solely on her appearance, Corday was the unlikeliest of assassins. On July 9, 1793, Corday arrived in Paris and took a room at the Hôtel de Providence. She bought a kitchen knife with a 6-inch blade. During the next few days, she wrote a detailed manifesto explaining her motives for assassinating Marat. At noon on July 13, she arrived at Marat’s home claiming to know about a planned Girondist uprising but was turned away. She returned that evening and was admitted. Their interview lasted fifteen minutes. From his bathtub, Marat wrote down the names of the Girondins as Corday crept ever closer to him. As he busily wrote out the list, Marat said, “Their heads will fall within a fortnight.”

**Paul-Jacques-Aime Baudry *L’Assassinat de Marat* 1861**

Now within striking distance, Corday pulled the knife from her corset and plunged it deep into his chest, just under his right clavicle, opening the brachiocephalic artery, close to the heart. Marat, still clutching the list of names, slumped into the tub as he called out his last words: “Aidez-moi, ma chère amie!” (“Help me, my dear friend!”). The wound was fatal. In response to Marat’s cries, his wife Simonne Evrard, and two others rushed into the room and seized Corday. Two neighbors, a military surgeon and a dentist, attempted to revive Marat to no avail. Officials arrived to interrogate Corday and to calm a hysterical crowd who appeared ready to lynch her.

**Jean-Joseph Weerts – *Marat assassiné* – 1880.**

**Jules-Charles Aviat-*Charlotte Corday et Marat* -1880.**

Corday’s manifesto claimed: “I have avenged many innocent victims, I have prevented many other disasters. The people, one day disillusioned, will rejoice in being delivered from a tyrant…I rejoice in my fate, the cause is good…I alone conceived the plan and executed it. Crime is shame, not the scaffold!” Corday credited her single-blow knifing of Marat not to skill or practice but to luck. Arrested on the spot, she was tried and convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal and sentenced to death by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution. On July 17, 1793, four days after Marat was killed, Corday was led to the guillotine via the tumbril, an open cart used to transport its load of condemned prisoners to the guillotine amid the shouts and jeers of bystanders. Corday stood calmly facing the crowd, suddenly, the heavens opened the thousands of curious on-lookers were drenched by a sudden summer rainfall. Corday never flinched.

**Charlotte Corday, in prison. Charles Louis Lucien Muller, artist. [1900-1912].**

**“La toilette des morts, Charlotte Corday” (The last toilet of Charlotte Corday) by Edward Matthew Ward The Illustrated London News, volume XLIII, July 25, 1863.**

**“Charlotte Conducted to the Scaffold” Arturo Michelena July 17, 1893.**

Corday strode confidently to the guillotine, curtseyed to the crowd, leaned against the Bascule, and was lowered face down horizontally, her head placed into the Lunette. The Declic (handle) was pulled by the hooded executioner, releasing the heavy Mouton (weight) and blade from the crossbar. A silent swish swept the crowd as Corday’s head tumbled into the basket below. The Bascule, a sort of table, was hinged to make it easier to push the headless body into a larger side basket immediately after the execution. Moments after Corday’s decapitation, a carpenter named Legros leaped from the crowd and lifted her head from the basket. He turned towards the crowd and slapped it on the cheek. Horrified witnesses reported an expression of “unequivocal indignation” on her face when her cheek was slapped and that “Charlotte Corday’s severed head blushed under the executioner’s slap.” Ever since, the incident has fueled the suggestion that victims of the guillotine retain consciousness for a short while after decapitation. For that offense, Legros the carpenter was imprisoned for three months. To make matters worse, believing that there had to be a man sharing her bed who masterminded the assassination plan, officials had her body autopsied after her death to determine if she was a virgin. To their dismay, their non-scientific examination revealed that she was a virgin. Her body was buried in the Madeleine Cemetery, alongside the decapitated corpses of of King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, and three thousand other guillotine victims. Legend claims that Corday’s skull was saved and passed from Parisian to Parisian (friend and foe alike) for generations after her execution.

**Execution Of Charlotte Corday. Published In 1871.**

Corday’s crime did not have the expected outcome and Marat’s assassination did not stop the reign of Terror. Instead, Marat became a martyr. Although the killing of Marat was considered vile, there is no doubt that the murder changed the political role and position of women during the French Revolution. Corday’s action aided in restructuring the private versus public role of women in society at the time. The idea of women as second-class citizens was challenged, and Corday was considered a hero. As the revolution progressed, the Girondins became progressively more opposed to the radical, violent views of the Montagnards espoused by Marat, Robespierre, and others.

**Jean-Jacques Hauer – *Meurtre de Marat, le 13 juillet 1793, par Charlotte Corday* – 1793-94.**

However, Corday’s critics quickly elevated Marat to the level of the immortals. His heart was embalmed separately and placed in an urn on an altar erected to his memory. His remains were transferred to the Panthéon where his near messianic role in the Revolution was gaslighted in a eulogy delivered by the Marquis de Sade, who compared Marat to Jesus Christ and idealized him as a man who loved only the people of France. Marat was transformed into a quasi-saint, his bust often replacing crucifixes in the churches of Paris. After the ousting of Maximilien Robespierre a year later, Marat’s reputation plummeted. His busts were knocked off their pedestals, carried away, and dragged through the streets by local children to the chants of ‘Marat, voilà ton Panthéon!’ (Marat, here is your Panthéon) before being dumped into the sewers. The few remaining statues of Marat were melted down during the Nazi occupation of Paris in World War II. Strangely, he continued to be held in high regard in the Soviet Union with many citizens, streets, and even a battleship sharing the name Marat.

**Santiago Rebbull – *La muerte de Marat* – 1875.**

Europeans remain split on the legacy of Corday. Some place her alongside Joan of Arc, the patron saint of France, who died 350 years prior, and others dismiss her as an idealistic radical. Corday lives on in popular memory through numerous works of art, poetry, plays, and literature including works by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Oscar Wilde, and her story is referenced variously in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Les Misérables. Marat’s wife peddled his bathtub to the highest bidder but not very successfully. Reportedly, interested parties included Madame Tussaud’s wax museum and P.T. Barnum, but it ultimately landed in the Musée Grévin, a Paris wax museum, where it remains today. The tub is in the shape of an old-fashioned high-buttoned shoe with a copper lining. However, the most tangible reminder of Marat’s death is Jacques-Louis David’s painting. David was not only the painter but also the man who organized Marat’s funeral. Marat’s disorder accelerated decomposition, making any realistic depiction of the scene impossible. The result was that David’s work beautified the skin that in reality had been discolored and scabbed from his chronic skin disease. The resulting painting was widely criticized as glorifying Marat’s death.

**Charlotte Corday the “Angel of Assassination”**

As for Corday’s reputation, history recalls her as the “Angel of Assassination” and lauds her as an early pioneer in the annals of women’s rights. After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the April 29, 1865, Harper’s Weekly mentioned Corday in a series of articles analyzing the assassination as the “one assassin whom history mentions with toleration and even applause”, but goes on to conclude that her assassination of Marat was a mistake in that she became Marat’s last victim rather than vindicating his thousands of victims. Proving that violence in the interest of “small d” democracy is, was, and always will be, futile and unacceptable.