It’s very difficult for me to put into words the pain the death of my brother brings to me; it’s easier for me to illustrate how he lived his life.

Lum, although very troubled in his later years, was a very loving and caring individual who would have easily given everything of himself to help a person in need.  I remember once many years ago talking with him about joining the military, we were in our uncle’s backyard in St. Louis Missouri. I was very young and, naturally, I thought that joining the army meant that I would have to go to war and maybe die. In my discussion with him I conveyed my concern about this fear, and my brother, Lum, looked at me and said, “You don’t have to worry, I’m the oldest brother, I’ll be the one to go, so you won’t have to…” This made me feel great, it made me feel protected. That was Lum to me, that will always be Lum to me, and nothing could ever change that for me.

In September of 1995, I lost my older brother to a tragic accident. That was almost sixteen years ago, and it seems like it was both a lifetime ago, and just yesterday. However, it was long before his death that something inside my brother changed. Though he was never a bad person, he was a person that had lost a little of himself with every passing year.

Early in my brother’s life there was a man that took it upon himself to abuse him. He used his status as a school vice principal to molest Lum. This man, Roger Stowell, had a history of abusing boys, but he always managed to be swept around and allowed to do it again and again.

It was different back then; back then it was easier to ignore the child or the [parents] and just make the problem disappear. But in these situations the problem just doesn’t go away, it manifests itself in the child’s behavior and emotional well being. What happened to my brother in the years after his abuse proved to me that his abuser, Roger Stowell, was an evil man —

— My brother, Lum, was three years older than me and he was the one person in this world that I always looked up to. He was a small guy, but he walked tall, he carried himself with more pride and happiness than I know he ever actually felt.

I wanted to be him when I was a child. I wanted to have all the girls pay attention to me the way they did him. I wanted to be able to run as fast as him and climb as high as him. I wanted to be as tough as him. He was my connection to growing up, he is my memories of growing up, and he was always there, even when things weren’t going well for him.

I smile every time I think of us as kids fighting neighborhood kids right after moving into a new place — I guess we had to prove ourselves or something, I don’t know, I think I just did it because he did — and I smile every time I think of Lum and me sneaking around the playground in our Superman and Spiderman underwear acting like superheroes.

We got brought home by the police for the first time when I was seven or eight for climbing on top of the shopping center near our apartment and leading the military police on a foot chase across two buildings…imagine the APB on that call. I always tell people it’s not our fault that they left a ladder leaning on the building, but the truth is we loved to get into trouble together when we were young; we did it all the time.

He and I had fun all the time, there wasn’t much we were scared to try and the only thing we were scared of was Pops…other than that it was fair game. We were best friends that got to share a bunk bed and spend our nights talking until neither could manage to stay awake any longer. This is the innocence of childhood that Roger Stowell wanted; this is what he took from my brother.

Even as a teenager Lum took care of me. My brother began abusing drugs and alcohol very soon after being molested. I remember a time, while living in Germany, he was admitted to the hospital with blood alcohol poisoning after a day of partying with friends. That’s who he became, he wasn’t the guy who could have a fun time with only a couple of drinks…he was the guy that had to see how many he could have.

But even with his pain and his abuse he would steer me clear of things he would do. My first recollection was in Germany; he sat me down and told me that if he ever caught me doing acid (LSD) he’d kick my ass. He told me it’ll make me go crazy and I needed to stay away from people doing it. We had many of these talks through the next few years…my brother had no problems doing it himself.

Later, when we had moved to Virginia, I had a very hard time making friends my first few years, I was teased by other students on a daily basis for my first two years of school there. My brother, once again, became my best friend during those years…though I’m not sure I ever told him.

One night, when we had just moved, I remember hearing him sneaking out of a window in our rental house on the lake. I decided I was going to follow him and see where he was going. I didn’t have to go far…he was sitting at the end of the dock. I sat down next to him and noticed he was smoking a cigarette so I asked him for one…he refused to give me one.

We spent many nights on that dock talking about how much we hated being in Virginia and how we wanted to go back to Germany. We talked about the friends we missed, and he gave me advice for dealing with the people in school that messed with me. I eventually bought my own cigarettes and joined in on the bad habit…it was something we could do together.

Years later, when I was living in my first apartment with my, then, girlfriend, I turned my back on my brother for the first time I can remember.

Lum had served in the U.S Army for a few years before getting kicked out for alcohol abuse, when he returned home he managed to get into a lot of trouble with my parents and pretty much everyone else. He hadn’t changed as a person; he had just begun to make more and more bad decisions. He had begun living on the streets of Fredericksburg after losing his apartment that he had shared with his girlfriend.

I remember waking up one morning to the sound of knocking on my apartment door; it must have been 6am. We had one of those ground floor entrances to our second floor apartment, so I looked down to see who was at the door. I saw Lum standing there staring at the door waiting for it to open.

As I went to go down the stairs to get him, my girlfriend stopped me and told me that I couldn’t let him in. I let her talk me out of letting my own brother in because we were afraid he wouldn’t leave. He knocked on my door for more than five minutes that morning and every echo through that stairwell was a pain in my heart.

I turned my back on the one person in this world that should have been able to come to me for anything. To this day it’s the worst memory I have of who I was back then.

I remember the day my brother died. My mother called me and told me that he was missing. She said that he had been out drinking with some friends and they had said they think he fell from a cliff. My mother told me that they had not found him and the searchers were still looking.

I convinced myself that he was fine and was probably just trying to find his way back…I didn’t know to where. My mother’s voice, though she tried to sound strong, told me a much different story. That day I went to a church near my home and I prayed that he was alive. That day I cried in church…

The last time I had talked to my brother we had fought. We lived on different sides of the country, he was in Arizona and I was in Delaware. I had gone to Arizona because Lum was getting married after having a beautiful baby girl.

After his ceremony we fought because I wouldn’t go to his reception party. I told him I couldn’t go because I couldn’t be around a group of underage kids drinking since I held a clearance for my Air Force job. He told me I was being snobby — I was  —

— I’ve learned many things from my brother. Some from his life and some from his death. I’ve learned to never again allow someone to take control of my life and the relationships in them. I learned that no matter how bad I feel like things are for me; there are so many others that are suffering as well.

I learned that you can’t just shut the door on abuse. Talking about being molested or abused is still considered a taboo subject. Parents don’t want to put their children through any more than they’ve already gone through, kids don’t want to talk about what happened, and people who have never experienced the abuse don’t recognize the cry for help.

I learned it is better to take the time to address the problem and to talk about the effects of abuse. And I learned that my brother had no reason to be ashamed of what happened to him.

In 2007 Roger Stowell was arrested at the Tampa Airport returning from South America, he had been carrying child pornography. It was his wife and son that had finally turned him in to authorities after finding the stuff on his computer.

My mother finally got to see justice served to the man that was responsible for abusing her son. She sat in the courtroom with her son’s ashes on her lap as Roger Stowell was sentenced to prison. Roger died only months later at the age of 72; he became proof of years of immoral living surfacing only before death to stand as a testament to his life.

Some years later his son wrote my mother asking for her forgiveness and he talked of his own life living with this monster. He shared his personal struggle with alcohol and drugs and seemed to feel that he was somehow responsible for his father’s actions.

I took the time to write him back trying to explain how I, as Lum’s brother, felt he should handle dealing with his father’s immoral life. I told him that he had important choices to make in his life; I asked him if he would use Roger Stowell’s evil deeds to bury himself under regret and sorrow or if he would continue to question whether he could have done more sooner. I tried to convince him to try not to hide his misgivings with drugs and alcohol and reminded him that he could make the choice to change the course of his life.

I told him that I’d like to believe that maybe he could do what my brother was never able to do, by living his life as well as he could and as long as he could. I wanted to let him know that what he does with his life now is a direct reflection of how he lived and how he will be remembered.

I in no way wanted him to let the actions of his father burden him in his life and who he could very well become. I told him that the abuse was perpetrated by Roger, and there is nothing he could have done to change what happened. I wanted him to begin the healing process for himself and his family. I told him he had the chance to make a difference in the lives of everyone around him every day, but for him to do it, he must be certain of his desire for wellness of self.

I told him to be a father to his children — the kind of father he never had — to treat them well and hold them dear, so that they may never struggle as he had. I asked him to instill upon them the intrinsic worth he will have to learn on his own. I asked him not to become another victim of Roger Stowell.

I guess in a way, when I wrote the letter I was writing to my own brother and asking him to save himself. I wanted this man to be able to live a normal life; a life that my brother never had.

I wanted to move forward myself with my brother’s death and part of that was dealing with his life, all of his life, and recognizing that my brother was truly the child I remember. He was the boy with the shaggy red hair and big front teeth. He was that little boy jumping on my father’s back while Pops tickled me on the ground. He was the boy that raced me to the bottom of the pool. He was the boy that stood beside me on the playground when other kids would pick on me. He was the boy that told me as a child that he would surely go to war and die before he allowed it to happen to me.

My brother never got to see his daughter’s first birthday, he died at the hands of abuse, be it drugs and alcohol, Roger Stowell’s actions, or the echoes of past criticisms from peers, family or even his own, all of which he never seemed to dismiss. These abuses controlled and steered Lum into his final years with is family and friends, many will say it took over his life and some will say it changed who he was before passing. I can’t say for sure if it was either, all, or none; all I can attest to is how I remember him now.

I remember his presence, up until his death, as exuberant to say the least. He had a way of getting your undivided attention and making the best of your company, and through our hard times he never failed to bring a smile to my face. This is how I deal with not having him here with me today, and I believe that is who he was and how he would want us all to remember him. Therefore, I chose to forget his abuses and only carry with me the lessons I have learned from them, as I think my brother would have done given the time and opportunity.

 

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