Chaplain asks
that Americans
forgive McVeigh
OAK BLUFFS, Mass. (AP)
- With President Clinton pay
ing rapt attention in the audi
ence, a prison chaplain asked
Sunday that Americans per
form a difficult act of faith:
Forgive Oklahoma City
bomber Timothy McVeigh.
“Considering what he did,
that may be a formidable task.
But it is the one that we as
Christians are asked to do,” the
Rev. John Miller said in a ser
mon during a nondenomina
tional service at an open-air
tabernacle.
The Protestant chaplain for
the Rhode Island Department
of Corrections said McVeigh’s
case prompted him to reassess
his own stance against the
death penalty and made him
realize that rejecting capital
punishment is hard because it
JANnSVILLIi, Wis. (AP) - Joe
Murphy fought red tape for two years to
get more than $40,000 in federal dis
ability benefits owed him for being
mildly mentally retarded. He needed
only a few weeks to blow it all gam
bling.
“I was going to the moon,” he
recalls. “Gambling, gambling, gam
bling, all the way from video poker to
the blackjack table.”
The Social Security Administration
hadn’t intended to give the money
directly to Murphy, a manic depressive
with an IQ of about 70 who admits to a
gambling problem.
It was supposed to go to a “repre
sentative payee,” a relative, friend or
other party who helps a beneficiary
manage funds.
One in 10 people getting Social
Security have payees, mostly minor
children. One in four people on
Supplementary Social Security, such as
the disabled or those 65 or older, have
payees. The two groups total more than
6 million people.
Now Murphy’s case has prompted
regional officials to re-evaluate their
use of the payee system.
Murphy learned after his father died
in 1992 that he was entitled to disabled
adult child benefits dating back to 1984,
when he was 18. By the time Social
Security agreed to award the benefits,
he was due $40,945.
It was an enormous amount of
money for a man who’d never held a job
for more than a few weeks, who’d
earned just $6,210 from 1984 to 1992
“requires that we forgive the
murderer.” •
“When the state supports
execution, it invites an ongoing
cycle of violence,” Miller said.
“I invite you to look at a picture
of Timothy McVeigh and for
give him. I have.”
Clinton, seated in front
with first lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton, did not react to
Miller’s comments. He also
didn’t answer reporters’ ques
tions about it as he and the first
lady strolled to the nearby
Sweet Life Cafe for brunch
with Miller and his wife. There
was no word what the couples
discussed during the meal.
McVeigh was convicted
and sentenced to die for setting
a truck bomb that blew up the
Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in April 1995. The
explosion killed 168 people,
including 19 children at a day
care center.
Before McVeigh’s arrest,
Clinton and Attorney General
Janet Reno vowed to seek the
death penalty for those respon
sible for the bombing. Clinton
has not commented specifical
ly about McVeigh’s sentence.
(AP) - Still fuming over a deci
sion to lease the State Fair
Coliseum to the city’s new hockey
team, horse owners at the Nebraska
State Fair are literally hot under the
collar because of an air-condition
ing problem caused by the need to
make ice for hockey.
The coliseum’s climate control
crunch came to a boil over the
weekend as temperatures climbed
into the mid-90s.
As many as 2,000 horses will be
shown inside the building over the
11 days of the fair, and strained
relations between some of the horse
owners and the state fair board are
heating up.
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Addict gambles away $40,000
Social Security benefit check
working factory or kitchen jobs. The
manic depression took its toll, and he
says he was suicidal for years. At the
same time, he was raising three children
with his live-in girlfriend.
Social Security recommended the
benefits go to a payee, according to a
July 22, 1996, memo filed at the
agency’s Chicago regional center. The
memo cited a report from Murphy’s
therapist, passed along by his attorney,
saying Murphy acknowledged a gam
bling problem and needed help with
financial matters.
Two days later, Social Security dis
trict manager John Burr sent Murphy a
letter telling him to “bring someone
with you who can serve as your payee
for benefits, as the evidence in file
strongly suggests that you need help
managing your benefits.”
But Murphy showed up at the
Janesville office alone, demanding his
money.
“I said, ‘Just gimme the money,
gimme the money, gimme the money,”'
Murphy said.
So the local office agreed to send
him the money directly.
Janesville officials refused to com
ment on the meeting, but Johr
Trollinger, press officer at SSA’s
Baltimore headquarters, said he was
informed Murphy was “incensed” al
the Janesville office.
“He was outraged that we would
even consider paying benefits to anyone
other than him. He said he could handle
his own income. He said he had beer
receiving benefits for his children foi
66
“I said, 'Just gimme the money, gimme
the money, gimme the money’”
Joe Murphy
Social Security Recipient
many years and had no problem,”
Trollinger said.
Murphy’s demeanor can obscure his
limitations. With intense aqua eyes,
neatly combed brown hair, clean,
pressed clothing and a persuasive
vocabulary, psychiatric reports say he
“presents well” but his ability to com
prehend is well below average.
Soon the money was flowing
through Murphy’s hands and into the
Ho-Chunk Nation’s casino at Baraboo.
“I was just like a roller coaster with
out brakes. I would do anything I could
just to feel good for an hour,” Murphy
said.
He said he would tell his girlfriend
he was going to the store, then vanish
for days on a gambling spree. She final
ly kicked him out, and they remain
apart.
“He blew it. A week or two later he
was broke,” said Murphy’s sister, Janet
Gelacio of Janesville, who has since
been named Murphy’s payee.
“Social Security let him have it and
they shouldn’t have. It was like nothing
for him to get it. He asked for it.”
Murphy found himself penniless
and living month-to-month in a board
ing house. He sold all his furniture and
couldn’t fix his broken-down car. He
says he had intended all that money to
go toward buying a house and setting up
savings accounts for his children, ages
6,5 and 2.
“What they did was give me a
loaded gun and said ‘shoot (yourself),’”
Murphy said.
After his experience, the Chicago
office, which oversees Janesville,
reviewed its interviewing procedures,
focusing on how to determine whether
someone with mental disabilities is
capable of handling his or her own ben
efits.
“It’s very unusual for Social
Security to pay benefits to someone
when it’s clear they have a problem with
money,” Trollinger said. “It clearly
would not be appropriate for the agency
to pay large retroactive benefits to
someone where that history was known.
“At the time the local office in
Janesville talked to him, there was no
record of his being incapable from a
medical source. He presented a con
vincing argument that he was quite
capable of managing his own affairs,”
Trollinger said.
Coliseum climate control laces summer dilemmas
The same air-conditioning sys
tem that pumps cool air through
overhead ducts also activates
ground-level coils that freeze water
into ice during the hockey season,
said John Skold, state fair director.
One part of the system cannot
operate independently of the other,
he said.
“It’s true that there’s no air con
ditioning in the arena part because
of the system that makes the ice in
the floor cools the arena,” Skold
said. “Obviously, we don’t want a
frozen-dirt surface for the horses to
run on.”
Complicating matters is that the
1996 remodeling of the coliseum
for hockey use left the building
without the windows tljat used to
provide some ventilation.
The problem accents a decision
last year by the fair board to lease
the coliseum - site of horse shows
for many years - to the Lincoln
Stars semi-professional hockey
team. The lease was not a popular
one among those who care more
about Arabians and Appaloosas
than hockey pucks.
“The horse people have been
jerked around by John (Skold) and
the state fair board, and I would
have to say that this is nothing more
than icing on the cake for us,” said
Kipp Scott, a Lincoln farrier and
horse lover, who was upset Saturday
over the air-conditioning problem.
Scott said it would be hard to
hold an audience if the seating area
gets hot this week. The climate-con
trol problems should have been
worked out before the state fair, he
said.
“This is the first year and it’s a
major change,” Skold said. “Tell
them to give the facility a fair
chance.”
Using the same building as both
a hockey arena and a horse arena is
a compromise, Skold said.
“It’s not perfect for hockey. It’s
not perfect for horses, but we make
it work,” he said.
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