Tribute in the Making to fallen Windsor, Ontario Constable John Atkinson

10:07 a.m.

I live just outside of Windsor, Ontario -- dour, industrial, incongruous, much-vilified city that is the home of Canada's auto industry. We are located directly across the river from Detroit, Michigan, another oft-derided city with a crime rate straight out of a low budget action movie. Windsor does not share Detroit's massive crime rate. Where Detroit will have a few hundred murders in a year, Windsor may have as many as five. There is one reason for this: the Windsor Police force.

On May 5th of this year the first police officer to be killed in the line of duty in Windsor, Ontario lost his life. His name was Constable John Atkinson, a fourteen year veteran, and life-long resident of Windsor. He was shot to death by a couple of scum bags -- both under twenty years of age; neither looking as though they have begun shaving yet -- who were about to rob a convenience store. John left behind a wife and two young children.

My latest freelance writing assignment is to write a tribute to John Atkinson for The Drive Magazine. Yesterday I met with John's widow, a young woman by the name of Shelly who is the picture strength, grace and dignity. After all of the reporting on the grim details of her husband's death, it's my job to write about the man behind the badge. The weekend before my meeting with Shelly, I found myself unaccountably stressed at the prospect of interviewing her for the piece. Not that I feared she would view me as an intruder or that I might say something to upset her. It's just that this case has really blown my city apart. For as tragic and sad as John Aktinson's death has been, the outpouring of support for his family by fellow citizens and law enforcement agencies around North America -- including the F.B.I. -- has been breathtaking.

I happened to be in downtown Windsor the day of John Atkinson's funeral. Seeing the numerous squad cars from other cities on our streets, driven by officers who were filling in for Windsor police attending John's funeral, was a heartening-heartrending sight. There were police officers driven around in taxi cabs, looking after my city. Such tangible, selfless support for Shelly Atkinson and the city of Windsor brought tears to my eyes.

So, yesterday, Shelly shared some wonderful stories with me. She laughed at times, she teared-up at times, but during every moment of our chat she exuded a kind of human strength that defies my powers of description. She not only made me feel welcome, she made me feel like a friend. Although her feelings of grief surpass words, so does her feeling of gratitude to the support she has received in the last month.

I'm going to head into my living room and try to get started on this tribute on my laptop. I have all the material I need to write it, but feel haunted, hollowed-out by the horror at the sudden, senseless snuffing of John Atkinson's life, a life that touched and aided so many people.

I'll check back in a few hours. In the meantime, I'm going to put on the Beatles' Let it Be and pour some more coffee.

10:58 a.m.

I'm not sure the Beatles' Let it Be album is the best choice right now. I bought the CD in late 1994 mere weeks before a long-term relationship I had been involved in completely imploded. The first song, "Two of Us" is particularly poignant. The girl who had left me back then had been a girlfriend since high school. Of course the relationship was doomed. How could something like that last? Shelly Atkinson had gone to my high school, Assumption College School, graduating a few years ahead of me. John was her first and only boyfriend. They had been together twenty years. Such a startling number to hear from such a young woman. I'm used to my parents speaking in terms of decades -- or multiple decades -- not someone who is a peer of mine. John had attended Herman secondary school. Shelly told me that when the Assumption senior football team played Herman, she was in the stands cheering for John who played for Herman.

Here's what I have so far:

There is an unspoken truism among Windsor police officers: You know you've made the grade among your fellow officers when they give you a nickname. After six years of determinedly applying and reapplying to the Windsor Police, John Atkinson was hired at the age of twenty-three year. His first nickname was "Smiley," which straightforwardly acknowledged his love for his work and his positive outlook on the people with whom he dealt on a daily basis. Maybe it's a sign of how well-liked John Atkinson was among his fellow officers that he received a second nickname while working on the West End Patrol. There he was called "Sparky" for reasons humorous and better revealed on Cable TV.

The pillars of Constable John Atkinson's life were family and friends, his work on the police force, and his love of the city of Windsor. A life-long resident of Windsor, John attended St. Jule's elementary school, Herman Secondary School, St. Clair College, and the University of Windsor. After marrying his wife, Shelly, in 1992, they settled in the neighborhood where John had grown up.

"He loved the river," says Shelly Atkinson of Windsor's waterfront. "He was down there every chance he got -- even during thunderstorms. He loved looking over at Detroit." Sometimes when Shelly was with him they heard gunshots or sirens from across the river. She would ask John how it was that Windsor could be so close to Detroit and not share its crime rate. "Our gun laws," John would say. No question that was part of the story, but a more direct and tangible answer to that question would be: the Windsor Police force.

Shelly Atkinson was recently approached by a man whom she had never met. The man had known John. "He saved my life," the man explained. Mired in a life of drugs and petty crime, the man said that John was the only person who treated him with respect. "And I wasn't worth anybody's respect at that time," the man said. John gave his card to the man, saying, "Call me if you ever need anything. You're worth saving." Those few words impacted the man more than any amount of lecturing or sermonizing. And the man cleaned up, got his life back together, and states without ambiguity that had it not been for John Atkinson's intervention in his life, he would have been dead years ago.

Shelly Atkinson met her husband-to-be, John, at a Glass Tiger concert in the summer of 1986. Shelly was seventeen and John had just turned eighteen. Four years later they would be engaged.

"He proposed to me at Cedar Pointe," Shelly says, smiling. "I remember that he kept fumbling with something in his pocket, and I didn't know why he was so adamant about going over to the ferris wheel when we hadn't even gone on the Demon Drop yet." John finally got Shelly over to the ferris wheel, but the operator there said the rules of the ride wouldn't allow them to go up by themselves -- each car had to be occupied by four passengers. Shelly couldn't understand why John didn't want a couple of kids to be seated with them on the ferris wheel. "We were arguing as our car went going around to the top. Then John just looked at me and said, 'What are you doing for the rest of your life?' For a split second I didn't know what he was talking about, then it hit me -- he was proposing." As the ferris wheel car made its way back down, one of the bewildered kids in their car asked Shelly, "Did you just get married?" To which Shelly replied, laughing through tears, "No! I just got engaged!" True to his devious sense of humor, John later revealed that he had originally thought to propose to Shelly on the Demon Drop.

12:09 p.m.

Opted to listen to a Johnny Rivers mixed CD. I first heard his music back in the 1980's when I started writing. I was in high school and stayed up late on weekends working on a horrid DOS-driven IBM clone. Next to me was my radio tuned to Detroit's 102.7 oldies station. "Memphis, Tennessee" was the first Johnny Rivers song I ever heard. Most of his other songs had a tinge of Muzak to them, but rather than putting me off, this quality strangely lured me to his music. Johnny Rivers' only Top 10 hit was "Poorside of Town", which was released in 1966. That was the year my hero Lenny Bruce died, and the year my parents were married. In 1959 my father -- who was attending summer school in Toronto -- went with a friend to a midnight performance of Lenny Bruce held at a tent in the middle of nowhere of rural Ontario. So many years later, Dad still recalls Lenny's performance. I've often thought that for a birthday present to myself I would have my father hypnotized so that he could recount word-for-word Lenny's act from that night.

On the mixed Johnny Rivers CD I have his cover versions of Richie Valens' "Do You Want to Dance," which Johnny recorded as a wonderful melancholy ballad. Even the unabashedly hokey "Mountain of Love" is tinged with sadness, and his rendition of "Hey Joe" and "A Whiter Shade of Pale" are heartbreaking. Some writers I know listen to music that pumps them up. For whatever reason, sad or contemplative music greases the creative wheels for me.

Rivers' version of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" is playing right now. I forgot that was on this CD. Certainly apt for today's assignment.

Shelly and John returned to Cedar Point last October, making the rounds of all the rides. There were only two they missed: The Ultimate Dragster Racer and the Milliennium. Shelly revisted Cedar Point a few days. "It was hard being there again," she said. She made sure to ride the Ultimate Dragstar Racer and the Millennium in honor of John.

When asked how old John was when he decided he wanted to become a police officer, Shelly says, "When he was three years old." At the age of eighteen John began the process of applying to become a police officer, sending applications to departments across the country. During the six years it took to be hired, John worked as a security guard at the Devonshire Mall and for the legendary security company, Pinkertons. He also attended the Law and Security course at St. Clair College and took Criminology courses at the University of Windsor. John excelled in all of his jobs.

As a police officer, John had an uncanny knack for spotting stolen cars. It was not even his department, but he naturally spotted tell-tale signs that a car was stolen -- damage to door locks, damage to ignition consoles -- which he saw while driving in traffic with his family. His memory for license plates from department "hot sheets" was remarkable, recalling tags of stolen vehicles from six months previous. Even while on bike patrol -- John was the first police officer to take on this duty -- he was spotting and retrieving stolen vehicles.

John's career was filled with firsts: first officer on bike patrol, first on ATV (four-wheeler) patrol, and sadly, tragically, the first Windsor police officer to be killed in the line of duty.

"He died doing what he loved," says Shelly. "John always said, 'You know you love your job when you can do the Monday Morning Test: Do you wake on Monday morning, and get a knot of anxiety in your stomach when you think of going into work, or do you feel excited about going in?'" Shelly says, "John got excited on Sunday night about going into work on Monday morning."

From the beginning of their relationship, Shelly understood that she was "a cop's wife." She says, "I supported him all the way because I believed in his ability. John was a cop 24/7, but that's not to say he was always tense and suspicious. He was just very aware of his surroundings. No matter where we went, he always had an escape route. He always had a game-plan."

Before he and Shelly had children, John would joke that if they had twins, he wanted them to be named "Smith and Wesson."

7:27 p.m.

Struggled the rest of the afternoon to follow the narrative of my tribute to John Atkinson where it was leading me, but just could not pick up the threads. My relationship with the muses is acrimonious, both of us living by the credo: "Treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen." Listening to Sinead O'Connor's "I Am Stretched Out on Your Grave." Took a 10 KM bike ride to the library to pick up a book I had on hold there, Frank DeFelitta's The Entity, from which the masterful horror film of the same name, starring Barbara Hershey, was made. Swallowed my sleeping pill early this evening, looking forward to the slow-creeping lethargy as it takes hold. Not since St. Patrick's Day 1999 have I been able to enjoy a good drunk. I'll never forget standing in the Gingerman Pub in Merrion Square in Dublin, Ireland's city centre when "spontaneous remission" took hold of me. I had half a pint in my hand and two others on the bar counter waiting for, bought by friends, and suddenly the thrist-inside-the-thirst vanished with not so much as a flutter of wings. Since then, booze goes rancid in my stomach after two drinks. A harrowing state of affairs for someone who had a genuine lust for being drunk. So, it's either I now turn to opium or exercise. Exercise seems to fit best in my lifestyle these days.

Received email earlier from the daughter of a former professor and good friend who died last month. I had missed his funeral. In truth, I couldn't face the prospect of seeing my friend dead, so I opted for the coward's way and simply wrote a tribute to him on my blog. His daughter's note comes at a very opportune time, as I wrestle with my tribute to Constable John Atkinson. She wrote:

I shared your post with my mother. She was very touched. She said she felt so bad that she didn't know how to contact you when my Dad died. I hope you can forgive us for missing you in our haste and confusion. Your blog posting is probably the nicest tribute anyone could have paid my father. We are eternally grateful.

I'm a crumb causing my friend's wife a moment's distress in the days after her husband's death.

While interviewing Shelly Atkinson about her husband, the publisher of The Drive Magazine stopped at her house with a surprise from the fundraiser conducted for the family the previous day. He arrived with a bank draft for a donation made by a young girl who had saved up her allowance and donated it to the family: $2.00. Looking at the bank draft after Shelly handed it to me was one of those wonderful weighty moments that is inexplicably greater than the sum of its parts. Aside from all of the obvious emotions sweeping up Shelly Atkinson since her husband's passing, the most palpable sense was that of intense gratitude. She expressed this to me, saying, "'Thank you' just doesn't seem to be enough to say how I feel about all of the support I've received." Then she showed me a calendar created by her neighbors showing who in the neighborhood was cooking for the Atkinson family on each day. In the bottom right-hand corner was a small note typed in Arial font from the neighbors saying how much they loved Shelly and her kids, and how sorry they were for her loss, and how they hoped this small gesture would help them. Shelly looked at me when I handed the calendar back to her and I saw how overwhelmed she was by the outpouring of support from the community.

Then there were the innumerable cards and letters and posters made my school children. Shelly said she had received condolences from as far away as Japan and Rio De janeiro and countless other countries. Whenever possible, Shelly called people on the telephone to thank them personally for their wishes.

Our interview lasted two hours. I didn't want to leave. Shelly spoke with such potent and vivid memory and enthusiasm I could have listened to her stories about John all day long. But I wondered what the unseen toll of our chat might be taking on her. I have no idea how to approach grief. At the door, on my way out, I gave Shelly a hug. The last thing she told me before I closed my laptop was that she and her children were going to get through this time. They were sad, they were shattered, but they were strong. There was no question she was speaking the truth. Selfish as it might sound, I hoped that some of that strength rubbed off on me.

Now, to return to my laptop and search for the tribute's narrative thread.