June 12, 2005
Woman grapples with loss of father
By Billy Watkins
The Clairon Ledger
MERIDIAN — This is what the little girl inside Angela Lewis still begs for: To sit on her daddy's lap when she's skinned her elbow. A hug. A bedtime story told with his voice, his inflections. A trip for ice cream.
This is what the grown-up Angela Lewis constantly pictures in her mind: Murderers sitting down to dinner with their families, saying grace beforehand. Their wives washing their clothes, fixing their meals, laying beside them in bed every night, thousands of nights, as if nothing happened. Businessmen carrying on relationships with known killers. Friends shaking their hands, realizing they're covered with blood.
This is what the spiritual Angela Lewis has reconciled in her heart: "God requires I love everybody, so I'm not angry at them. I pray for them, and I pray for their families. But I would like them to know that I think they're cowards. Nothing but cowards. . . ."
Lewis, who rarely grants interviews, will attend Monday's trial of 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen, accused of plotting the killings.
"Every time I think about it, I get a knot in my stomach," she says. "I'm told there were 21 men involved, eight are still living, and this one man is going on trial. I asked my uncle not long ago, 'What are we really accomplishing here?' But when it's all over, no matter how it turns out, I think I'm going to understand my father a little better, add another piece of flesh to this man who is still forming in my mind. . . ."
She begged people to stop informing her what a hero he was. Tell her something that would make him real.
"It was like going to funerals and listening to the eulogies. It always sounds like they're burying St. Peter," Lewis says.
"I remember my grandmother told me she used to make his lunch for him to take to school, but he would stop and eat it on the way," she says, laughing. "Now, that's the kind of thing I wanted to know. . . ."
Lewis aches for her grandmother, Fannie Chaney, now living in New Jersey, who has had a series of strokes.
"My fear is I'm going to lose her before I find out everything I want to know about my dad," she says. "She came down last summer, went to his grave and told me, 'This will probably be my last trip here. But I want you to know that I love you and I love your kids.'
"I would like some closure for her. Maybe this trial will do it. The pain is so consuming. She told me, 'They treated my son like he was a dog in the street. . . .' "
Lewis works as a nurse/counselor with abused children ages 12-17, at The Crossings, a 60-bed facility that is part of the Alliance Health Center. Her students are violent. They spit on her and even hit her. She responds with words she never heard as a child while her mom and stepfather worked endless shifts as waiters. "I tell them, 'You can be great. All you have to do is have a passion for something and do it with all your heart.'"
(Read the whole thing.)
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