Tom Frye

One morning, I rushed into juvenile court 10 minutes late for the hearing of one my kids. I slipped quietly into the courtroom, and was surprised when Judge Nuernberger looked up in the middle of the proceedings and said, “I am pleased to see Tom Frye in court this morning. Would you please join us at the table?”

Curious as to why the Judge had summoned me to the table, I looked to 14-year-old, Anthony, a troubled Havelock boy who had obviously been crying his eyes out. Just before I arrived, the Judge had sentenced him to the Youth Development Center in Kearney. However, the Judge had an alternative in mind. He looked at me and smiled as I sat down at the council table.

You see, Judge Nuernberger and I had a history.

As a kid, I had once been in his court myself for running away from home, and he sentenced me to the detention home and six months probation.

As an adult, the Judge’s recommendation letter allowed me to work at the Attention Center as a Juvenile Care Specialist, even though I was 19 and needed to be 20 at the time.

And once after my presentation at a foster care banquet, the Judge asked me for a tape of my music as he was attending a judge’s convention and Johnny Cash was the keynote speaker. I still have the photo of Judge Nuernberger handing Johnny my tape. It hangs on my wall to this day.

There, that day in court, the Judge said, “Mr. Frye, if I allow a 30 day suspended sentence for Anthony here, would you continue to work with him?”

I failed to look in the direction of my supervisor from the Department of Social Services, who earlier had informed me that our time helping Anthony was up. Six months with Anthony as his family support worker and under no circumstances was I to continue. At least not on the dime of DSS.

Ignoring her furious glare, I smiled at Judge Nuernberger and said, “Yes.”

Judge Nuerberger returned my smile and suspended Anthony’s sentence.

I had never seen that done before. Later, I asked Anthony’s PO, Marti Barnhouse, what prompted the Judge to take this route. Marti told me the minute he had sentenced Anthony, the kid broke down and started crying, “Please give me one more chance. Let me work with Tom Frye. He makes me feel so good about myself. Please give me one more chance!”

After receiving a verbal ass-kicking from my DSS supervisor, I set out to keep Anthony out of Kearney. Three nights after the court hearing, Anthony broke into his neighbor’s garage to steal tools. He was caught and ended up back in court. Judge Nuernberger sadly shook his head and lifted the suspension. Anthony ended up going to Kearney.

Second chances meant nothing to this kid.

A year later, while working at the Attention Center, 13-year-old, Rocky informed me that Mike was plotting to lure me to his cell and use a razor blade in an escape attempt. He would have done a considerable amount of damage, too. At 17, he was 6 feet tall and all muscle. As it turned out, Dennis Banks and I confronted Mike, who turned it on himself and stood us off for two hours until giving up the blade.

Two days later, Rocky and his brother attacked our director in another escape attempt. Both boys were sent to Kearney. Remembering that Rocky had told me of the razor blade, I felt obligated to do the kid a favor. So I wrote Judge Nuernberger a letter, asking him to suspend his sentence, and allow him to come back to Lincoln to live with foster parents, Joyce and Ron, who had agreed to accept Rocky in their home.

Judge Nuernberger did another thing I had never seen done before. He ordered Rocky transported back to Lincoln. However, just before court, Joyce and Ron backed out. They didn’t think they could handle Rocky, and so there we sat in juvenile court. Rocky with no placement. The Judge with no home to send him to. And me feeling like a fool for even attempting to help the kid.

Judge Nuernberger looked up at me seated in the back of the courtroom, and asked me to join him at the table. Once again, I did so, and he asked me if I would be willing to become a foster parent to Rocky. I was only 20 at the time, so age was an issue as I needed to be 21, but Judge Nuernberger told me he would issue a letter to the foster care review board to ask them to make an exception in my case. They did so, and Rocky came to live with me for the next 2 years.

And while we had many ups and downs, he turned out to be a decent kid. He had no law violations, went to school regularly, and didn’t use drugs or alcohol. However, 2 months after leaving my home, Rocky assaulted his neighbor lady during a home invasion and ended up being sent to Kearney.

Second chances meant nothing to that kid.

 A year after Rocky left my home, Chad came to live with me. After running away from 47 different placements, Chad came to me at the end-of-the-line. One more run, and the Judge would send him to Kearney. Chad often joked about this arrangement as I lived on Kearney Avenue in Havelock, and he often said, “Kearney, the one place I have been trying to avoid all my life, and here I end up living on Kearney Avenue! Go figure!”

The first week of Chad’s stay, he broke into my gun cabinet, loaded my .22 rifle, and put it to his head, threatening to kill himself. Chad stood there for 45 minutes, with me trying to talk the gun away from him. He said, “You’re just like every other asshole the State sent me to live with, and when you get tired of me you’ll just get rid of me, just like all the other assholes did!”

I failed to mention that he had actually ran away from most of those other “assholes,” and that he had never given them the chance to get rid of him. But I didn’t. I simply talked him down, all the while he stood there with a cocked rifle held under his chin, his finger on the trigger.

At the end of that ordeal, Chad finally lowered the gun and allowed me to unload it. He ended up staying with me for 3 years after that, and while at times, he considered me the biggest asshole he’d ever met in all of his 47 different placements, he opted to stick it out with me until the Judge determined he needed to be reunited with his family.

Two months after he turned 17, Chad broke into a tavern in a small town. He got busted and ended up in small town court. The Judge there was lenient and was in the middle of sentencing him to three months of jail time, with work release at Chad’s dad’s during week days. An easy sentence, right? Well, right in the middle of the Judge’s sentencing, Chad shouted, “F you!”

He then ran out of the courtroom, and ended up with a felony charge that automatically carried one year in the State Pen. Chad ended up there. Twice so far in this lifetime.

Second chances meant nothing to that kid.

Another kid I worked with, Bryce, and his three friends skipped school one day. They stole a car and went for a wild joy ride. They ended up flipping the car off of the I-80 overpass out on 27^th Street. Two of Bryce’s friends were crushed and killed. Bryce, however, lived and ended up in juvenile court half a dozen times after that, until he was sent to Kearney, because he just never realized how lucky he was.

Second chances meant nothing to that kid.

I first met Phil when he was 7. Two days before that meeting, Phil, temporarily blinded by his shaggy black hair forced down into his eyes by the baseball cap he was wearing, had a bad crash on his bike. He had broken his left arm and he wore a cast. To add insult to injury, Phil was searching all over Havelock for his lost dog, Barney. We found his dog out at the pound, and Phil and Barney were reunited. Phil became my shadow after that.

At 9, Phil smoked his first joint. At 11, he started dropping acid and taking speed. At 14, he found himself in trouble at juvenile court. At 16, he was confined to the Attention Center. While there, he and another boy I had been working with, Dearle Alexander, had a clash one night over who knew me better. Dearle, at 14, had recently murdered an old man over on Lake Street, and since being confined, he had read several of my manuscripts and became my friend. Dearle called Phil a liar for saying that I was his uncle, and the fight was on.

After their slug-fest, Dearle ended up in solitary confinement. And Phil ended up being restrained and placed in his room, where he  climbed up onto his desk and starte hissing like a scalded cat. I got a call from fellow staff who asked me to come in before they were forced to send Phil to the Regional Center. I could hear Phil in the background, meowing at the top of his lungs.

The moment I walked into his room, Phil climbed down off his desk and sheepishly said, “Hello, Tom. What are you doing here?”

I said, “Trying to keep you from being sent to the Regional Center, Phil.”

“The nuthouse?” Phil said, incredulously. “Why? They only send loons to the looney bin! And I ain’t no loon!”

And this coming from a kid who had just freaked out the staff by turning into a rabid cat?

It turned out to be a long night, as I first settled Phil down, and then ended up talking to Dearle to settle him down. Before stepping out of Dearle’s cell, he bid me good-night, saying, “See you later, Uncle Tom.”

Which was how the fight started in the first place.

A week later, Phil was sentenced to Kearney, and I had to be the staff member at AC who sent him on his way in leg shackles and handcuffs. It was a sad day.

One year later, Phil ended up putting a shotgun to his chest, and doing a stand-off with his girl friend. She managed to pull it away from him several times, but Phil put the gun to his chest one more, and this time, it went off. I will never forget Phil or the impact his tragic death had on my life.

I often wonder what would have become of Phil if he had taken advantage of all the second chances he’d had, or how life might have turned out for him. I often wonder about all the others who were given second chances, and foolishly blew them off.

Like Kamikaze pilots, these kids have managed to send themselves careening out of control, until at last they crashed. Even though I was willing to reach out and help them, they were hell-bent and determined to throw it all away on their self-absorbed suicide missions.

Why? What drives them? What motivates them to destroy themselves and to be so foolishly ignorant or so stubbornly stupid?

Anyone who can answer that, please do so, because I have been searching for an answer to that question for over 35 years.

Perhaps, I will never know.

One day, while serving as a foster parent to two challenging kids, I came to a crossroads. I needed to end my services to one of the kids, as they did not play nice together. So I went to their teacher to ask her opinion in regards to which one should go and which one should stay.

She had taught behaviorally challenged kids all of her life and I thought she might put the whole thing in perspective for me. However, she told me something so terrible that I couldn’t believe she’d said it. “Stick with Matt,” she said, “for he is salvageable. The best thing that could happen to John is he walk out into a street and get hit by a speeding car. Because he is going to be institutionalized for the rest of his life.”

I walked away from that meeting, shaking my head and muttering, “That was harsh.” The next morning, I called John’s caseworker and told her about the incident that happened days before which resulted in me making my decision in regards to Matt and John.

We had been driving my Mazda King Cab truck down a side street. Matt was in front with me, John and my biker friend, Tom, were seated in the back of the cab. My two dogs, Sam and Bummer, were riding in the open-ended bed of the small truck.

John got mad at Matt for some reason and demanded to sit in the bed with the dogs. All I said was, “No, because you have to have a seat belt on.”

And John went absolutely ape!

He reached around the seat, grabbed me by my hair, kicked me in the face, and bit my hand before I put him in a restraint hold. Still trying to bite me, he began frothing at the mouth. My big, brave biker friend simply sat there, watching the scene in total fascination. When I finally shouted, “Grab his arms!” Tom grabbed onto John’s arms.

However, John kicked me one last time in the face. My feet came off the clutch and brake and we proceeded to shoot out onto busy Randolph Street. Quick-thinking Matt reached over and turned the truck off, and fortunately we screeched to a halt before shooting out into heavy traffic.

To top it off, some lady pulled up behind our stalled truck and began honking her horn so that she could get through the intersection. As if on cue, John began shouting, “Help, lady! Call the police! I am being kidnaped!”

Matt gasped, “Oh my God, John! Shut your mouth! What if she does call the cops?”

John shouted back, “Help! I am being kidnaped! Just call the police, lady! Call the police!”

It ended with the lady driving out around us and John being held by Tom all the way home. Three hours later, with still no cops showing up at my house, we breathed a sigh of relief figuring we were in the clear. John had stormed off to his room, slammed the door, and went right to sleep, drained from his ordeal.

At the end of the night, Matt came trudging into my room, carrying his sleeping bag and a baseball bat. “I’m sleeping in here on the floor with the dogs,” Matt said. “Because I am not sleeping in there with that nut-case! I also hid all the steak knives in the kitchen so he doesn’t knife us in our sleep!”

So as I shared with John’s caseworker the tragic story, she agreed with me that removing John from my home would be the best thing to do under the circumstances. She even stepped up to the plate to take the blame so John would not blame me. She and I both remembered what John had said when he’d first moved in. He had looked at me with his big brown eyes and sweetly said, “I really love you for taking me into your home but . . . if you ever get rid of me, I will take a knife to you and RIP YOUR HEART OUT!”

This last part he said in a demonic, harsh, guttural whisper that sent chills up and down my spine. And I firmly believed him, remembering he had also threatened to burn my house down, too. So it was a relief to have this caseworker, a rare breed at HHS, take full responsibility for removing John from my home.

Two months later, John having been placed with another foster family, showed up at my door, shirtless, out of breath, and bloody from a dozen or more scratches all over his chest. I asked him what was wrong, and John said, “Been jogging! Fell in a rose bush!”

I invited him in, and gave him a glass of pop and a shirt to slip on. Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang. It was John’s frantic foster mom telling me John had wigged out while she and her husband had been driving. The exact same MO! Only this time, some concerned citizen saw John kick the back window out of their blazer, saw the husband trying to restrain John, and promptly called the police!

The cop was there at their house, threatening to give the husband an assault ticket, and so I put John on the phone to talk to the gruff cop. By the time the whole affair was over, the cop drove over to pick John up, take him back home, straighten out the situation, and he left there not giving anyone a ticket. But shaking his head, I am sure.

Two years later, John robbed a small town bank and sped away with state troopers shooting at his car with shotguns. They eventually arrested him. While in jail awaiting trial, John called me and asked me to go speak with his brother. He was furious with him as he did not follow through with his orders. John said, “I am so pissed at him, because he won’t drive out and shoot the bank president! He was the only eye-witness to my robbery! If only he was dead, they couldn’t convict me!”

I simply said, “John, do you realize these jail phone calls are recorded?”

Click! is all I heard and then dead silence on the line.

Later in court, the judge sentenced him to 10 years on the robbery charge, and John blurted, “10 years? Hell, I can do 10 years standing on my head!”

To which the judge replied, “Fine, I will add an additional 5 years, so 15 years in all, and maybe by then you will be back on your feet!”

I kid you not, those were his exact words.

Which brings me back to what John’s teacher said about him walking out in the street to get hit by a speeding car. So while her words were harsh and terrible, she had been absolutely dead-on about where he would end up at for the rest of his tragic life.

And Matt? Matt grew up to be a biker, who rides with a motorcycle club. But he’s never had any law violations and has never done any time. In fact, the biker gang he rides with recently donated some of their profits from one of their rallies to help delinquent kids.

About a year ago, I came home late one night and before stepping into my house, I heard a voice from the yard next door: “Hey, Tom? Come over here and have a beer! Bring your guitar and sing us some songs!”

I was amazed. There sat Matt with my biker chick neighbor. He was dressed from head to toe in black leathers, a beer raised in his hand, and grinning fiercely.

I took my guitar over and played them songs late into the night.

Later, my biker chick neighbor shared with me something Matt had told her: “Living with Tom was a blessing in disguise. If it wasn’t for him I would have gotten myself into a whole helluva lot of trouble.”

So, in the long run, I made the right decision back in the day, getting rid of one so that I had a better chance at helping the other.

I guess I made the right decision after all.

Jeff called me at three in the morning, saying he wanted to shoot himself with the shotgun he claimed he had beside his bed. He was just 14. I’d had a long day, transporting kids to school, to juvenile court, to drug treatment, and when I got home, I fed my three dogs and my 11-year-old foster son, read him a story, and put him (and the dogs) to bed.

So when the phone rang at 3 AM, I was dead-tired. But I hung in there with Jeff as he shared with me the reasons why he wanted to shoot himself. Those reasons centered around his severe mood swings and his constant turmoil of being depressed.

All the time he was talking he kept working the pump of his gun, so as the talk continued, I thought he was playing me just to get attention. When none of my soft-talk got through to Jeff, I tried a hard-line approach and told him if he was scamming me, to just knock it off. Jeff went silent for long moments, and I thought I was going to hear a thunderous blast. 

Several seconds later, Jeff came back to the phone, his mom trailing behind him. I heard her gasp and Jeff came back on, saying, “Talk to my mom. She will tell you I really do have a shotgun!”

She did, and then asked me what the hell was going on. I told her he had wanted to shoot himself. After she talked to him for a few minutes, she came back on and told me that Jeff was going to sleep, that she was taking the shotgun with her when she left his room.

She called me the next morning, and asked if I would come over and help them unload the gun because neither one could figure out how to eject the shell he had pumped into the magazine. I drove over, removed the shell, and had a long talk with Jeff.

Later, I learned that Jeff was diagnosed with depression and Bi-polar disorder, and he was placed on meds. I didn’t hear from him again until 9 years later. Jeff called to say he was doing fine. He asked me to meet him at Barnes and Noble so that I could give him a CD of my music. So we met there, chit-chatting at the door.

Jeff asked me a loaded question: “Do you still speak for groups like you used to do at Camp Kitaki? That magic you did back then was really cool!”

The magic he spoke of was my flash string, flash paper, and sparkle additive that I loaded my swords with to perform my knight and dragon stories. So I got to telling him one of the strangest stories of my career: The day I set the pool table on fire at the Regional Center.

Sandi Delano, the principal of Morton School had a grant to have me as a Guest Artist for several weeks with her students. She said, “What we need is 10 kids who will sign up for your writing class. So really wow them when you first perform one of your stories.”

I really wowed them all right. I flicked my lighter taped to the hilt of my sword, the flame crawled up the flash string on the blade, ignited the flash packet I had taped on the tip of the sword, and the whole sparkling, flammable contraption flew off, sailed over my head, and landed directly in the side pocket of the pool table behind me!

Soon the 50 kids in front of me began pointing and saying, “There’s a fire!” I calmly said, “No, it went out.” But when I glanced back behind me, I discovered some kid had stuffed his homework assignment into that very pocket, and the whole wad of paper caught on fire! One of the teachers ran over and blew on the six-inch high flame, and caused it to leap even higher! So finally Mister Lyford, a Walter Matthau look-alike, ran over and dumped his can of Mountain Dew into the flaming pool table pocket, and the fire went out.

Sandi Delano rushed out of her office, and the students gaped at her, wondering what her reaction was going to be my flaming accident, and without missing a beat, Sandi made a dramatic flourish with her hands and said, “Goodness gracious! Great balls of fire!”

Afterwards, 30 kids signed up for my writing class to see what I was going to burn next.

Now as I stood there 8 years later, telling Jeff that story about the pool table fire, I heard the theme to the Twilight Zone inside my head, because in the door walked Mister Lyford, the hero of that day! I shared with him that I had been just telling that story, and we all three stood there amazed to think that Fate had us standing there at that moment in time.

On any given day, I stumble my way through this life, not knowing where I am going or what I should be doing next, but on that day, I felt like God was letting me know I was on track and exactly where I was supposed to be.

And it felt pretty good.