My First Exposure
to Evil

Jim Loehr

I came face-to-face with evil at the impressionable age of 16. It was my second summer working for a cemetery and crematorium, a job that would help me earn the $200 I needed to buy my first car, a used 1949 Ford Coupe with well over 100,000 miles.

My first summer of cemetery work was tough but manageable. I watered the grass for large plots filled with every conceivable type of gravestone--small to large, simple to ornate, cheap to very expensive.

The cemetery was lush, with endless lines of old trees that often provided inviting cool shade for me as I worked. I came to know every inch of the lots I maintained.

Reading the inscriptions on the gravestones helped fill the time. The size and ornamental detail of the monument were always far less moving to me than the words etched on them: kind ... loving ... faithful ...integrity.

Even at 16, I couldn't help but wonder what words I would like inscribed on my grave, to represent who I had been while I was here. Though I made all of 90 cents an hour, I found working in and among graves to be strangely rewarding--until the following summer.

At the start of my second stint, my boss approached me with an offer I couldn't refuse --an opportunity to earn a 20-cent hourly boost to $1.10 per hour! It was a dream come true. With the extra money, I could definitely buy my car by summer's end, maybe even before.

"Do you have the stomach for hard work, son?" my boss asked. "Absolutely!" I responded without hesitation, though I wondered if he thought what I had done the previous summer didn't qualify as hard work. "What would I be doing?"

It was labor of a different order - far different. I would complete a four-man grave-digging repair crew. "When graves start sinking in," explained my boss, "it can mean that the top of the casket collapsed. So it's got to be repaired and sealed.

"Your crew removes the grass and dirt so the grave can be examined and the necessary repairs can be made. If the top cracks and collapses, we bring in a rig to lift a new top into place."

He paused, then smiled, as if preparing me for the real message. "If there's considerable damage, you may find yourself looking directly into caskets. You'll see decaying bodies. Are you okay with that?"

The only thing on my mind was the $1.10 per hour, and just which week in August-- maybe even July--I would finally have enough to purchase my Ford Coupe. "I think so," I said, unperturbed by his cautioning words.

Kentucky

The boss took me to meet my crew. To this day, they remain perhaps the three scariest human beings I have ever met.

The crew chief was named Kentucky. His face terrified me. His piercing eyes burned right through me--so withering and frightening that I had to look away. I simply could not look at him directly. Many years later when I saw pictures of Charles Manson I realized Kentucky had the same eyes.

I'm sure I appeared to him as if I had seen a ghost. When my boss left, Kentucky grabbed me by the T-shirt sleeve and yanked me away from the other two men. "Who the fuck are you!?" he demanded in a broken, raspy voice. It was not a question I believed I could answer.

I said nothing; I couldn't. It felt as if my breathing had shut down. Kentucky jerked me close, inches from his face.

"Look at me, boy! Let me tell you who I am. I've killed eleven people in my life, so far. I've buried them all so no one will ever find them. If you ever speak about what you're going to see, you'll be number 12. Got it?!"

I still couldn't manage a sound. "Got it?!" he screamed in my face. I nodded. After we cleared the first gravesite, the three men jumped in and began looting everything of value: rings, jewelry, even a belt buckle.

The Corpse

The corpse was floating in water that had seeped in through the damaged casket. I was in a state of near-shock, beyond horrified.

The three grave robbers picked the casket and corpse clean of any remnant of monetary value. They hopped up and out, and once again Kentucky yanked me right up to his face. "One word and you're number 12!" he hissed.

We broke for lunch, and I excused myself. I found my boss and told him the work was too hard for me. I wanted my old job back, and would happily take the pay cut. I had nightmares for months. I didn't tell my parents what happened because I was sure that Kentucky would somehow find out.

The moment I witnessed those three ghoulish characters robbing that grave, I understood that evil existed in the world. My eyes had been opened.

I also felt ashamed because, at least in this virgin test case, I did nothing to stop it, and knew I never would take any steps to stop it. I was too afraid.

Throughout the summer, a day did not go by that I didn't count in my head how many graves I imagined they were robbing that I might have prevented, had I possessed the courage to report it. Thus began my lifelong quest to explore the world of character.

I don't know, of course, if you've ever come face to face with evil as I did, or whether you will ever look back on an episode in your life and deeply regret, as I still do, what you did--or didn't do--about it.

Not an Outlier

From other incidents in my life, I realized that the evil I witnessed at the cemetery that summer was not a one-time thing. I learned, sadly, that evil was not as much an outlier as I had once thought.

Fortunately, I can also say, even more forcefully, that despite the deeply troubling behaviors I have witnessed, they are dwarfed in number by the many, many acts of goodness, selflessness, and even heroism that I have witnessed.

It is this behavior that stands out for me as the more enduring, salient expression of human nature. Yes, the forces of corruption, greed, hypocrisy, immorality, and evil are real and formidable. They are unavoidable.

If one is not careful, these forces can beat you down, corrupt you, seduce you, damage you, depress you. They can change you.

Yet there are so many pivotal moments in life where the decision you make determines which forces triumph: immorality, meanness, unfairness, criminality-lack of character; or morality, kind-heartedness, generosity, justice- noble character.

More on this in the upcoming articles—and even how it relates to tennis.