Tinderbox
Page 27
Overhearing the conversation, Michael Scarborough exclaimed, “Is it true? Is he dead?”
“Yes,” Forest answered.
“That is the one that set the Up Stairs Lounge [fire], you know,” Scarborough said, before sharing his own story about a perished lover: Glenn Green.57
Pressured by several Up Stairs Lounge survivors gathered at the Post Office that day, Forest admitted that Roger had confessed to him about setting the fire, on multiple occasions. Phil Esteve later called the state fire marshal’s office, which sought Forest for questioning.58 The New Orleans Police Department never took the same step.
Rodger Dale Nunez—his legal name was restored in the end—received a Catholic funeral service, well attended by friends and locals, at the countryside St. Anne Church. Blood relations in Abbeville, it seems, emerged to reclaim their own, and the parish priest received special thanks from the family afterwards: “We will always remember your thoughtfulness in our time of need.” Roger was buried with military honors (a courtesy denied World War II vet Ferris LeBlanc, who had seen battlefield time) in the Nunez family plot at Harrington Cemetery in Forked Island, Louisiana. His remains were interred in an elegant marble cairn beside the grave of his uncle Shelton. His gravestone, recognizing his Specialist 4th Class status during the Vietnam War, received a regular setting of fresh flowers.59
Roger died as he lived—in a state of obscurity, concealment, and confusion. He was a lovable yet unloving man, a grifter who twisted the charity of others, someone who took people into his confidence and then scared them with his disclosures.60 Roger did not have an obituary or a public death notice in the Times-Picayune or any other major newspaper; only Abbeville publications took note. He did not receive a traditional jazz funeral in New Orleans, and it could be said that few drank to his memory.
Years later, Miss Fury, a drag queen who worked at Wanda’s on Iberville Street, came forward with a story that Roger had also confessed to setting the Up Stairs Lounge fire to her as she bartended. “He’d only meant to cause a little fire and some smoke,” she told historian Johnny Townsend. “He’d only meant to scare everybody.” Roger closed his eyes to the world having never admitted on the record what he, in private, confessed to at least three individuals: the negligent homicide of thirty-two people. Up Stairs Lounge survivor Stewart Butler offered Roger a small pardon: “I doubt he could have had any idea, when he set the fire, what was going to happen.”61
Former New York Times reporter Roy Reed, without naming Roger Nunez, postulated on what the arsonist might have felt. “It occurs to me that the guy or the guys who were responsible for this, who had to have been in the neighborhood when the fire broke out, must have realized what they had done, that the fire that they had set had killed these people in the most horrible way imaginable,” he said. “I’ve tried to put myself in the mind or minds of those two guys, and I can’t even imagine the nightmares that they might have had from those few minutes of unmanageable rage, when they impulsively lit that fire, and had the rest of their lives to regret it. You have to wonder whether a suicide might have been connected to it.”62
Above all, Roger’s legacy was more rascal than rogue. He proved to be a misunderstood intelligence who relied upon a practiced display of weakness to manipulate great acts of compassion from ex-friends, ex-employers, ex-counselors, and ex-lovers, as well as parole officers and policemen. Some would rather perjure themselves than harm him. Consumed by agony, he revisited that agony on his fellow invisibles. He was almost pathological in his desire to get what he could from situations, harming others whether or not he had been provoked. Roger was also, paradoxically, a deeply religious soul who believed that the holiness of his intentions counterweighted his choices.63 Given the preponderance of evidence, one cannot say conclusively that his life was the only one he took.
CHAPTER 14
Rally Forth
November 1974–1979
While gay activism in New Orleans virtually collapsed,1 the power of Gay Liberation swelled into a national movement that displayed its strength in manifest ways.
The municipalities of Seattle, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., Berkeley, California, and Austin, Texas, for example, all passed ordinances to prevent discrimination against homosexuals. The states of Massachusetts, Ohio, Arkansas, and North Dakota had rolled back sodomy laws and decriminalized same-gender sex.2 Meanwhile, an enlisted serviceman in the air force decided to test the military’s ban on homosexuality by coming out, in writing, to his commanding officer. “After some years of uncertainty, I have arrived at the conclusion that my sexual preferences are homosexual as opposed to heterosexual,” wrote Sergeant Leonard Matlovich. As a consequence, Matlovich, who had been honored with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart during Vietnam, received a general discharge—not an honorable one—from the armed forces, ending his career with a note of reproach. Matlovich then reached iconic status when his face graced the cover of Time magazine with the headline “I Am a Homosexual.”3
As mayors of Atlanta and Los Angeles proclaimed Gay Days in their cities, Mayor Moon Landrieu remained tightlipped as the closet of New Orleans reclaimed its former hold. In the French Quarter, gay “Southern Decadent” parties blossomed into masked street parades with grand marshals—the first public festivals for homosexuals in city history.4 But these to-dos were minuscule compared with the biggest and most heralded celebration in town: the opening of the $163 million Superdome in 1975. Landrieu attended the ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Comedian Bob Hope hosted. Raquel Welch sang. Archbishop Philip Hannan gave the invocation to a crowd of more than forty thousand.5
About a mile away from the stadium, Deacon Courtney Craighead soldiered on as a provisional leader of the MCC of New Orleans. He continued the search for a new minister alongside fire survivor Ricky Everett.6 In 1975, Courtney and Ricky selected Mary Morris, a pastor whom they hoped could stabilize the congregation.
Morris decided that her first act should be to realign the church with its tragic legacy. Overruling words of caution from her deacons, she hosted an anniversary service for the Up Stairs Lounge fire in June 1975. This was to be the first such memorial in New Orleans in two years, but Morris’s efforts, though well intentioned, failed to gather support. She soon stepped aside. Ricky Everett was promoted to the role of deacon for a span but eventually grew tired of the disarray. He parted ways with the MCC of New Orleans when he felt that the church had lost all sense of direction. “The way the people wanted to run the church just was not what I considered led by the spirit of God,” he explained. “They were trying what they thought was the right thing to do, but these people were more involved in doing Mardi Gras clubs and running the Mardi Gras clubs.”7
Adept at turning life’s corners, Ricky moved on from the spiritual home of his deceased best friend, Bill Larson. “You’ve got to. You can’t sit back and have the attitude, ‘I don’t think I can do that, that’s crazy,’ ” explained Ricky. “You just do it. That’s all it is.” He eventually relocated to the New Orleans suburbs and found success in myriad careers, from steamship operations and publishing companies to interior design firms. He fell in love with a man whom he called his “husband,” although their union lacked legal status, and outlived the devastation of the man dying of a sudden heart attack. Eventually, Ricky found the strength to speak and preach about the terrible blaze.8 Enduring tragedy had made him a consummate survivor.
IN JULY 1975, after two years of investigation, state fire marshal investigators presented the case for arson at the Up Stairs Lounge to Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick (father of the famous crooner Harry Connick Jr.). Although the fire marshal conceded that the prime arson suspect was dead by suicide, investigators asked the DA to accept their conclusion that Roger Dale Nunez was the man who lit the blaze that killed thirty-two people. Deputy state fire marshals deemed this a fitting denouement. Since Roger was deceased, and the criminal justice system wasn’t designed to try the accused postmortem, charges of manslaughter
and/or negligent homicide could not be forthcoming as a result of Connick’s sign-off.9
Investigators simply wanted closure, which Connick’s review and endorsement would provide. However, Connick reviewed the case in full and declined to accept the fire marshal’s conclusion. This act of dismissal, given without explanation, garnered little attention, even though an earlier Times-Picayune story announced that the DA was reviewing the arson case while noting how “millions of dollars in lawsuits were filed by relatives of those who died and persons injured in the blaze.”10
Considering that injured parties were seeking civil damages from city and state agencies, and that acceptance of the fire marshals’ findings would accelerate the release of relevant files, Connick’s dismissal had the effect of leaving the Up Stairs Lounge investigation perpetually open—thereby making evidence more difficult to access by opposing attorneys. Such delays created a legal blockade, and opposing attorneys were compelled to sue agencies like the fire department simply to access their documents.11
As it happened, the New Orleans Fire Department had yet to issue a report on the Up Stairs Lounge in 1975, even though the National Fire Protection Association had published its findings the previous year. In that report, flame tests on the indoor-outdoor carpeting inside the bar conducted by the National Bureau of Standards (a federal agency) revealed the material to be “Class E,” a category considered too flammable for use in a place of public assembly. Patrons had been standing on a fire hazard. This carpet, which transferred flames from the stairwell to the bar within seconds, had passed New Orleans fire safety inspections on multiple occasions.12
Such discoveries encouraged the injured parties seeking restitution, and more files from never-ending investigations had to be subpoenaed and submitted in privileged status with clerks of the court—presuming that those agencies seeking to avoid disclosures would be nonetheless transparent. (As a matter of record, the seven-page NOFD report, now available to the public, was a handwritten document dated “6/24–25/73.” Casework ended the day after the fire, and little clerical time was devoted to preparing the report itself. Only a seven-page supplemental report, an NOFD summary of National Fire Protection Association conclusions, appears to have been typewritten at a later date.13)
Bill Rushton and his writers faithfully reported the legal proceedings in the Vieux Carré Courier and The Advocate. “NOFD Public Relations Officer Richard Blackmon concedes that prompt reports were issued in three of the city’s other major blazes in recent years,” wrote Rushton. “The only ‘official’ Up Stairs fire document produced thus far, Blackmon says, is an internal memorandum from the Fire Chief to the city’s Chief Administrative Officer, a memorandum protected from public inspection by state law.” 14
In sworn depositions, Anthony Guarino, owner of 604 Iberville (the building formerly rented by the Up Stairs Lounge), admitted to having run an illegal bookmaking operation to fund his real estate holdings. For reasons unexplained, opposing attorneys made inquiries as to whether Guarino had offered bribes to an agent of the Louisiana state fire marshal.15
EVEN AS INTEREST in the fire waned, and while evidence continued to be hoarded, questions persisted among family members and former lovers of the victims. Many of those inquiring had not seen or heard from estranged kin, like Ferris LeBlanc or Reggie Adams, for what felt like eons. Marc Schmitz, a classmate who had known and loved Reggie Adams back in Dallas, wrote their high school, Jesuit College Prep, to inquire about his whereabouts. On June 10, 1976, Schmitz received a response from a priest who knew them both: Reggie had died in a New Orleans fire nearly three years before.16
Around this time, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, the former Armstrong Park committee cochair serving on the state Court of Appeals, joined a three-judge panel reviewing $28 million in civil complaints brought by Up Stairs Lounge survivors and families against the City of New Orleans, the Louisiana Office of the State Fire Marshal, and Up Stairs Lounge owner Phil Esteve, among others. This class-action lawsuit, on appeal after being heard and dismissed by a state judge at the district level, claimed gross negligence by multiple parties for failure to maintain a safe building for bar patrons—a building that, with a small can of lighter fluid and a single spark, went up like a tinderbox.17 Rather than settle for a lesser sum with each plaintiff, the city and the state resolved to fight these nineteen consolidated lawsuits and hope for a favorable outcome.
Officials would not be disappointed. In February 1977, the appeals court ruled two to one that plaintiffs could not sue city or state agencies for damages due to “failure to inspect or negligent inspection.” In its ruling, the court cited an earlier case, involving a negligent dogcatcher and a roving dog with rabies, as precedent. Interestingly, the appeals court did not consider whether a failure to inspect the Up Stairs Lounge for more than two years prior to June 1973, a period of time in breach of state safety standards, or the failure to cite flammable carpeting during inspections might create a unique form of liability.18 Fire inspectors thus received legal carte blanche for duties not performed or performed unsatisfactorily.
Shrewdly, Judge Morial distanced himself from accusations of harshness for a legal decision that would compare a deadly inferno to a rabid dog with a one-sentence dissent that took issue with “that part of the opinion which affirms the decision of the district court maintaining the defendants’ exceptions of no right and/or no cause of action.”19 Even a progressive judge in 1977 could not expose himself further than to say that the Up Stairs Lounge victims had a right to sue someone—just not the public institutions with money. With his dissent, Morial upheld his reputation while assenting to a legal decision that saved his city and state a treasure trove of cash.
Thus, the state Court of Appeals denied plaintiffs like widow Jane Golding a requested $2 million (for the loss of John Golding’s income) and Bud Matyi’s daughter, Tina, a requested $500,000 (to secure the financial future that her deceased father could no longer provide for). For survivors and families, this court decision represented the final stake that vanquished their chances for any substantial recompense.20 The civil court system would not redeem their grievances in the absence of criminal justice. “All we had to keep us going was Social Security,” John Golding Jr. recalled about his mother’s finances after his father’s death. “So anything that we could have gotten from a lawsuit or from whatever party would have been extremely helpful. We were on the edge, and thank goodness that no major health issues or anything else came up.”21
Freed from financial liabilities, the city and state carried on while Up Stairs Lounge owner Phil Esteve and building owner Anthony Guarino ended up settling with the plaintiffs for a total of $80,000 (a trivial sum once divided among the plaintiffs). Duane Mitchell and his brother, Stephen, whose mother and grandparents did not make efforts to participate in the lawsuit, received nothing from the settlement to offset the premature passing of their father, Mitch. “I’ve never seen a dime of it,” Duane insisted. Over time, this sum somehow became worse than nothing to young Duane—large enough to put a price on a head and small enough to rot his trust in his fellow man.22
YET GAY LIFE continued to thrive in the Quarter—a nexus for queer parties. Southern Decadence became an annual occasion, and Mardi Gras festivities hosted by Bill Rushton drew Christine Jorgensen, the transgender activist widely believed to be the first American to receive sexual reassignment surgery, and the legendary gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. According to Bob Damron’s Address Book, there were more than forty gay and lesbian hangouts in New Orleans in 1977, with twenty-seven owned and operated by homosexuals. Gay vacationers in search of light entertainment now took in “nellydrama” shows held at the Fatted Calf by the re-formed Up Stairs Theatre, although few attendees understood the “Up Stairs” being referenced. Out-of-towners in the mood for the kind of drag revues once performed at the Up Stairs Lounge now came to the Post Office, Phil Esteve’s establishment, where female impersonators lip-synched to popular ballads. A few of th
ese queens had even performed at the Up Stairs Lounge, but no melancholy remembrances would be forthcoming during crowd-pleasing shows. Bartender and manager Buddy Rasmussen, no doubt overwhelmed by memories of Adam Fontenot during these routines, abruptly quit his job in the middle of a shift.23
Reportedly, Buddy returned the next morning to toss his keys at Phil Esteve. “He was never the same after [the fire],” recalled Steven Duplantis. “I remember visiting with him somewhere and him just about breaking down and saying, ‘There’s so much more I coulda done, half my fault.’ ” Buddy never worked in another bar again. He withdrew farther from the crowds and began a career in a shipyard that lasted until his retirement in the 1990s. He would, however, be named Queen of Mardi Gras for the gay Krewe of Amon-Ra in 1983. Buddy eventually moved to a plot of land in the Arkansas countryside, a place of trees and sunny glades.24
As the Quarter’s old guard maintained its predominant hold on the gay scene, Ed Martinez, now reporting for the weekly Vieux Carré Star, took umbrage with the status quo. In a 1978 cover story, Martinez broke the silence by asking his readers, “Where are the gay activists in New Orleans?” Martinez chided the lack of “militant gay activity” in his city, while citing the deep “ghettoization of gays” and the persistent lack of kinship between closeted and out communities. Turning to the Up Stairs Lounge as a patent example of the lack of progress, Martinez rued how “nothing could have given a gay community more reason to band together than that horrible tragedy.” Yet, in his words, “after the fire at the Up Stairs Lounge, everything has returned to normal. Nothing to raise gay consciousness has happened.”25
Phil Esteve was incensed by the story and called Martinez to give him a lecture. Esteve explained, in an on-the-record interview, that the historic fire’s politicization and controversy demonstrated precisely why there was no need for gay activists in town. Eager to critique Troy Perry and Morris Kight’s activities in 1973, Esteve harangued them for taking “the attitude that they were in New Orleans to tell the local community what should be done, not to try to help in a time of crisis.” Calling Perry and Kight a “divisive force,” Esteve voiced further doubts about the National New Orleans Memorial Fund by noting how “there was a feeling among the survivors that the funds that Kight was administrating were being mishandled, if not actually misappropriated.” Esteve went on to postulate that “perhaps there is some correlation between the amount of gay activism in other cities and the degree of police harassment,” noting what he interpreted as the success of New Orleans’s “live and let live” relationship between homosexuals and police.26 Human rights and visibility for homosexuals, in the mind of a man whose bar had burned to the ground without explanation, came secondary to homosexuals’ ability to muddle through without attracting trouble.