Before the storm:

.....

And after:

("Emmett Till's mother sent photographs of her brutalized son around the world."  

                                                                       - Reynolds and Kendi, Stamped) 

In memory of Gene Gallagher-Rowan we have reached out to Lakewood Ohio'sMayor, Meghan George, for clearance to set a stumblestone outside the former law office of the late lawyer, Ronald L. McLaughlin, one of the dirtiest guardians in Ohio history.

The suffering he caused Gene is documented at The Last Report on the Mistreatment of Genevieve Rowan. (And it bears mentioning that leaders of the Cleveland Catholic Worker, among many others, turned their backs on her for the duration of her ordeal.)

- A stumblestone of the sort Elizabeth Kolbert so poignantly describes in The New Yorker.

Lakewood's ADA chief, John Storey, (a lawyer,) has been handing out earplugs to Mayor George and her aides. Refuses to share that report linked above with his ADA committee; keeps members’ contact info secret. And he is Lakewood's disability rights watchdog, sure. 

Or has Mayor George been leading with wise indirection, as good leaders may, because a stumblestone is too meek a remedy? 

McLaughlin was as careless as he was cruel. Left a paper trail showing he was on the same spectrum as the late Ariel Castro, former school bus driver by day, serial-kidnapper and dungeon-master by night; same spectrum as the Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk who resurfaced in Cleveland as an autoworker, at Ford. 

Castro's house was demolished, and arguably that’s one way (but not the best) to go with McLaughlin's former office at 14516 Detroit Ave.

Some background: Gene was often disabled by and very narrowly survived childhood traumas of the sort the Catholic church is notorious for (and continues to minimize.) Her three brothers were harmed too - it drove the eldest, Jack Neal Gallagher, a dear man, to an early, alcoholic grave. (He was gay, at a time when the church said gays go to hell. (Does the pope still teach that?) Jack's last, bleak years were a sorrowed study in complete despair.)

Despite her childhood trauma Gene graduated with honors from Chestnut Hill College in Philly, a Catholic institution, whose adminis-trators Do. Not. Want. To. Hear. what happened to her in the church, and then in the nursing homes under the absolute control of a guardian from hell.

And such potential she had: oft seen in her younger years at the public library on Coventry. After college, reported for the local paper in Cleveland Heights. She sought to serve in the Ohio senate. Raised three kids. Was an avid reader, learning of The New Yorker while babysitting.

But “When the conversation turns to elder abuse, we as a nation are wearing earplugs," MacArthur Fellow and former DOJ attorney Marie T. Connolly told a WashPo reporter a few years back. "It's time we remove them."

(Photo: Under chemical restraint after McLaughlin bullied his way into her life. It is a sheer misery; can be fatal as AARP has reported. It is illegal in most states, though rarely prosecuted.)

At her urging her younger son offered to serve as her co-guardian.

McLaughlin, and Cuyahoga County's Probate Court, refused.

“Few forms of inequality are as shocking and inhumane as those we see in health care.” - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Medical Committee for Human Rights, Chicago, 1966.

Send Mayor George a postcard? Encourage her to greenlight the stumblestone?

> Mayor Meghan George, 12650 Detroit Ave, Lakewood, OH  44107 <

 (And for you movers and shakers who would answer Dr. King's call to serve as the non-violent gadfly, please post photos of your postcard, both sides, on your facebook, and tag Gene's son Hayes Rowan.)

Get Up, Stand up?

Excerpt from press notice announcing what Gene hoped to do in the Ohio senate.