Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Sunday, June 13, 2004
Gordy did not deserve this ending
You want to believe a lot of things about Gordon Stumlin Jr. You want to believe "Gordy" was supposed to have a perfect childhood. You want to believe he was supposed to be healthy. You want to believe he was supposed to have a long and fruitful existence.
Instead, his body was found in the Mississippi River a week ago Saturday. He was just 37.
You want to believe about anything besides what happened.
No one is quite sure, though, what happened to Gordy after he called Belva White from a local Laundromat to say he was in trouble about 6 p.m. Dec. 5. No one heard from him again. It was thought that he'd driven to Las Vegas.
An aunt finally reported him missing four days later.
They put him in the ground Friday. His friends were there. The family members he loved. The family members he didn't talk to anymore. They were all there.
"It's tragic," said
La Crosse Police Sgt. Rick Mix on Friday morning. "His funeral is at 2 p.m. I hope it goes well."
It did go well, if you can use such language to describe a graveside service. No one yelled at anyone else. There was no confrontation. Finally, there was peace at the end of Gordy's life.
He grew up near Melrose, Wis., with parents who would soon split from each other, and for the most part, from him. He was placed in a foster home. Later on, he would tell his biological brothers and mother they were no longer part of his family.
A woman he'd known for years, who'd helped take care of him, Belva White, was now his mother, he said. Her son, and his best friend, James Burks III, was now his brother.
And there was good in Gordy.
"He was a good guy," says his uncle, Lester Stumlin. "Even when he was on drugs, he wasn't mean."
For years, he did take drugs. He drank too much. Substance abuse is a common problem among people with schizophrenia. And it's a disease that Gordy had, a disease that drove him to the edge of sanity. He would go for days without sleep, sitting in his chair all night, holding one of his several baseball bats, waiting for the people who were following him to burst through the door.
He heard voices and thought people in a white van were trying to kill him. In October 2002, housing authority employees found him unconscious on the tile floor of his low-income housing apartment. The trail of blood showed he had crawled from the bedroom to the bathroom.
Belva White believes someone broke in and hit him with one of those baseball bats. Police say it didn't happen, there was nothing taken, no way anyone could have gotten in; that he either had a seizure, or fell and hit his head on a piece of furniture.
He was in a coma for a week. It seemed unlikely that he would ever wake up, but somehow he did, not that he could remember anything about what had happened.
Then they had to tell him that his father, Gordon Sr. — a man he liked very much — had died while he was in the coma. Belva told him he had died after a car crash in Las Vegas. Whether there was a car crash is unclear. Others say he died in a nursing home in Texas.
"That could be," Belva says. "I'm not sure."
After that, Gordy lived in the Harmony Home for awhile, where he made a friend named Dan. Later, he desperately tried to convince people that Dan was going to jump from Grandad Bluff. On Dec. 5 2002, Dan died. They found him on the side of Grandad Bluff.
One year later — to the day — Gordy disappeared.
In the months that have passed, there have been squabbles. A partially cast off family and an adopted one are naturally going to clash and for a while it looked like he might not even get a funeral service of any kind.
The whole thing is a shame. There was so much good in him.
"He used to watch me," says little James Burks IV, who will turn 4 years old this week.
Gordy did watch him. He once jumped a banister and grabbed James as he ran toward traffic. He took James trick-or-treating and wore a mask, even though the whole thing scared Gordy.
Police are still investigating Gordy's death. They are not jumping to any conclusions. The toxicology report won't be back for a month.
But after he disappeared, when Belva went to his apartment to put his things in storage, she found pills spread all over the apartment. He used to take so many in order to control the schizophrenia. He had overcome so much, beaten drugs and alcohol and was happier than most ever remember him.
"It's not gonna be the same," Belva says.
They will set a place for him at holidays. He will never be there again.
"Now he's gone, and they're calling it a suicide," his uncle Lester says.
"Gordy didn't deserve that. He didn't deserve it one bit."
He didn't deserve a lot of things.
Matt James appears at 10 p.m. Sundays on WKBT-TV Ch. 8. He can be reached at mjames@lacrossetribune.com.
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