by Gay Talese
Burros had no telephone, his address was uncertain. His parents, who possibly had no knowledge of his Nazi activities, lived in the Richmond Hill section of Queens, in New York City. Burros was twenty-eight, was said to be stocky, blond, blue-eyed—“a knowledgeable and virulent Nazi” who was out of jail pending appeal on a two-year term for rioting and possessing a switchblade knife. Burros might become violent after he had learned of The Times’ interest in publicizing his secret. The story would undoubtedly ruin his career as a leader on the far right fringe. For this reason Rosenthal wanted a reporter who was a perceptive and skilled interviewer, a reporter who also had empathy for the people he was interviewing. This was not to be a crime story for an aggressive police reporter, or an odd tale for a clever feature writer; Rosenthal believed it would be a complex personal portrait of a Jewish boy’s self-hate, and it would have to be written with care and compassion.
Continuing to look around the newsroom, Rosenthal focused on a tall, skinny, pale reporter seated in the first row behind the rewrite bank. His name was McCandlish Phillips. At thirty-seven, Phillips’ black hair, slicked down and precisely parted, was graying at the temples; he wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, and blue tie, and, as usual, there was a Bible on his desk near his typewriter. Rosenthal knew, as everybody in the newsroom knew, that McCandlish Phillips was an evangelical Christian who, when not working on a story, sometimes sat reading his Bible or praying. On Phillips’ days off, or at night, he regularly preached in churches, or in private prayer meetings, or sometimes at a sidewalk pulpit near his apartment at 116th Street and Broadway. Once seen, he was hard to forget. He stood six-feet five-inches, and he spoke eloquently in a high-pitched voice that was filled with conviction but was never overbearing. He did not preach in the rasping, flailing Damned-Shall-Perish style of those barely literate philosophers who gathered each night in Times Square. Phillips was a man of quiet dignity and learning. He had a sense of humor, but more than that, he had a tranquil manner, a serenity that was based on his absolute faith in God and his belief that, come what may, it was God’s will.
In the newsroom Phillips never preached to his fellow reporters, although he was always approachable and even eager to discuss with them, if they wished, the teachings of the Bible or any other subject, including the sins of copyreaders. When one of Phillips’ stories had been butchered, Phillips did not immediately attribute it to the will of God, but rather to the dumbheadedness of deskmen, and he was never reluctant to complain—although he always did so with a certain decorum and never with profanity. He was well liked and admired by the staff, and he was often referred to as “Long John”—John was his first name; nobody called him “McCandlish,” his middle name, except those many readers who knew him through his by-line. Stories by McCandlish Phillips were invariably distinguished by their fine use of language, their slightly archaic, almost biblical precision and conciseness, often their humor, and always the author’s compassion for his subject.
When Rosenthal approached Phillips’ desk, he tried to convey his enthusiasm for the story without overdoing it.
“Look,” Rosenthal said, pulling up a chair next to Phillips and handing him the letter, “here’s the head of the K.K.K. for New York, and he’s a Jew. Let’s take a look at it. Get hold of this guy and see if you can find what makes a Jewish kid from Queens grow up to be a Nazi. It could make a terrific story.”
Phillips was interested. Not only was it an unusual story, but it confirmed for Phillips a premonition that he had had earlier in the week about working on this day. He had planned to take a four-day weekend, having accumulated many days owed because of overtime work; but while praying at home he had felt the Lord, clearly and unmistakably, telling him not to take the four-day weekend. And so on this Friday morning, October 22, 1965, Phillips was at his desk.
After Rosenthal had relayed everything that he knew about Daniel Burros, Phillips, assisted by two younger reporters, began to pursue the leads. There was information to be gotten from the police, who in recent years had arrested Burros at Nazi rallies; from the Anti-Defamation League, which had a confidential file on Burros; from the schools that Burros had attended and the places where he had worked. In Washington, the House Committee on Un-American Activities was aware of Burros; it had included him in a list of “prominent Klansmen,” and it knew that Burros had attended a meeting of the United Klans of America in North Carolina during August of 1965. Phillips also had found, in The Times’ morgue, the names of a few members of local Nazi or racist groups who might know something about Burros.
He compiled a list of people and places to check, divided it with the two other reporters, and later in the afternoon Phillips, accompanied by a photographer named Carl Gossett, set out for a neighborhood in Queens where he believed he might find Burros.
The address was of an apartment over a shop on Lefferts Boulevard, but when Phillips inquired he was told by the shopkeeper that no one named Burros lived in the apartment upstairs. A few youngsters standing nearby, however, recognized the name and pointed to a brick apartment house a few blocks away. There, within a small vestibule, among four name plates on an old brass mailbox, Phillips saw “Burros.” He rang the bell; no answer. He rang the other bells; none answered. Noticing a traffic cop outside, Phillips walked over and asked if he knew anyone named Burros. The policeman said that he did, an elderly man who had just left the apartment house about an hour ago, and would probably return soon. The policeman did not know if the man had a son. Phillips and Gossett waited. As people passed the building, Phillips, leaning low to be heard, courteously asked if they knew Daniel Burros. A few of them did, and they proceeded to describe him. He was somewhat stocky, short, and wore glasses. He was blond. They did not know exactly what he did for a living, but he was in and out of the neighborhood at odd hours. He was an only son, a very good boy, never destructive. His mother worked as a sales clerk in a department store; his father, ill, usually remained at home. Nobody in the neighborhood, Phillips realized, seemed to know about Daniel Burros’ political activities.
The afternoon passed; it grew dark and began to rain. Gossett had no chance of getting a photograph of Burros into the next day’s Times at this late hour, and so after telephoning the picture desk he was told to leave. He loaned Phillips the raincoat that he always carried in his car trunk, then drove home. Phillips waited alone for the return of the elder Burros, or perhaps of Daniel Burros himself.
Phillips felt a bit queasy as he stood in the entrance of the building under a globe light that was broken. It was an old, rundown two-story yellow brick building that was divided into four apartments. The Burros family occupied one of the apartments on the second floor. The neighborhood was like dozens of other neighborhoods in Queens that spread low and unglamorously beyond the skyline of Manhattan. Its inhabitants were predominantly lower-middle-class whites who had escaped their old neighborhoods of ethnic distinctiveness in Brooklyn, the Bronx, or lower Manhattan, and had created, in such places as this, settlements of sameness. Travelers could pass through most sections of Queens hundreds of times—en route to the airports, or to Shea Stadium, or to the beaches beyond—and discover no reason for stopping except the traffic lights. Some of the houses were extremely well kept and had tidy lawns, and trees; but there was no more sense of the country or the suburbs here than there was of the city. Across the street from the Burros apartment there was a bar with a neon sign; a supermarket was half a block away; a U.S. Army recruiting poster, swinging in the wind, stood close to the curb near a bus stop.
But it was the anticipation of meeting Daniel Burros, and not the neighborhood, that accounted for Phillips’ slight feeling of uneasiness. Neighborhoods, be they elegant or shabby, had little effect on Phillips. Material objects did not interest him. He had never spent money on luxury items or on entertainment. What was left after paying for the necessities of New York, he gave away—to his church, to his mother—who had been separated from his father, a traveling salesman, years b
efore his father’s death—or to his younger sister. McCandlish Phillips had never married, and solitude did not often bother him because he felt the omnipresence of the Lord, and because he also had spent most of his adolescence moving from town to town, school to school, making friends and then being forced to leave them.
After he had graduated from high school, and after taking the advice of one elderly editor who assured him that college was a waste of time, Phillips accepted a $20-a-week job on a weekly sports publication in Boston. Later he became a general-assignment reporter for a small newspaper chain in Brookline, and it was there that he met a man who would alter the course of his life.
The man, a devout Christian, worked in the advertising department. One day he asked Phillips if he might like to accompany him and his wife to church on some Sunday morning. Phillips accepted and he was soon pleased that he had. It seemed obvious to Phillips that the words of the minister from the pulpit were carrying right into the lives of the people. There was a clearness of countenance about them, a directness of manner, a certain warmth that seemed much more than mere sociability; it seemed genuine.
Phillips accepted the man’s offer to return, and did so for the next nine Sundays. On Phillips’ tenth visit, after the sermon had ended, the minister asked that all heads be bowed, all eyes closed. “You have heard the words that have been spoken this morning,” the minister said, “you have heard that Jesus Christ died for your sins, and that he is ready to come into your life and to govern your life.…” Then the minister asked if there was anyone in the congregation who acknowledged himself as a sinner, and who recognized the need of Christ as his Savior—would those persons please raise their hands? It was not a thought process with Phillips. All he knew was that he wanted to raise his hand, and he did.
He was drafted into the Army shortly after his conversion as a “born-again” Christian, being stationed for the next two years at Fort Holabird, Maryland. He rose to the rank of sergeant, and although he sometimes thought about his future he mainly felt that it was in the hands of Christ. Before his release from the Army, hours before he was to leave Fort Holabird, Phillips felt a great sense of adventure—he did not know exactly where he would go when he walked through the military gate for the last time. He thought that he might end up in Alaska, or Hawaii, or wherever the Lord would lead him to do what was to be done. When Phillips received no sign, he bought a train ticket to Boston, but he never got there. He got off at New York, checked into a hotel in Times Square, and prayed. The next morning he bought The Times and the Herald Tribune. In the middle of one of The Times’ classified advertising pages there was a half-inch notice: “Editorial trainee wanted. Apply NYTimes Personnel.”
Phillips got on his knees and prayed, then walked toward the Times building.…
McCandlish Phillips had been standing outside the Burros apartment building for more than an hour when he noticed an elderly man, starting to walk slowly up the path. It was almost too dark and misty to see the man’s face, but he was stocky and slow-footed, and, as he got closer, Phillips could observe a bulbous nose, pale pouted cheeks, sad eyes. He wore a thick coat slightly frayed.
“Mr. Burros?” Phillips asked.
The man looked up, but his vacant expression hardly changed as he answered, “Yes.”
“I need to reach Dan,” Phillips said.
“Who are you?”
Phillips gave only his name. Mr. Burros remained silent and waited for a fuller explanation.
“I’m with The New York Times,” Phillips added, finally. “We have a story about Dan, and I need to talk to him.”
Quickly, Mr. Burros turned away.
“I got nothing to say,” he said, pushing the door open, then closing it. Phillips remained in the doorway, watching the thicknecked elderly man, about seventy years old, slowly climbing the steps to the second floor. Phillips had no story for the next day’s edition, and because of the damp chill of the evening, and because he also did not wish to encounter Daniel Burros at this time, a reaction that he did not pause to analyze, he decided to walk to the bar across the street and to call The Times. Rosenthal had left, but an assistant editor told Phillips to come back to the office. Before doing so, Phillips wrote a note to Daniel Burros and returned to the apartment to leave it for him. He then left the building for the subway station, and the long ride back to Manhattan.
Daniel Burros did not respond to Phillips’ note, nor to a followup telegram, although Phillips later learned that Burros had received and read both. Phillips meanwhile continued to dig into Burros’ past, assisted by the two younger Timesmen. They interviewed dozens of people who had known Burros, had gone to school with him, had employed him, or had arrested him; and slowly the bizarre sketch of young Burros began to materialize.
Burros had been born in the Bronx in March of 1937 to parents who had married late in life—his mother had been thirty-four, his father forty-two, both descendants of Russian Jewish immigrants. Daniel Burros’ father, the tired man that Phillips had briefly met, had joined the Navy before World War I when he was about sixteen, and after one enlistment he had transferred to the Army, serving with a division that had pursued Pancho Villa. During World War I, in France, Burros had received a throat wound that would forever impair his speech. In civilian life he became a machinist, but his health was bad, and when Phillips had met him he was not working, living mainly on his government pension and on whatever income his wife earned as a saleswoman in a department store in Jamaica, Queens.
Esther Burros was devoutly religious, and when she produced, at thirty-five, her only child, she became extremely loving and protective. Even when Daniel Burros was in the sixth grade, Mrs. Burros would often walk him to school and would return to take him home afterward, although the school was only a half-block from the Burros apartment. Daniel Burros had gone through the bar mitzvah ceremony, he later confided to a friend, because he had been “pressured” into it at home, but Burros had seemed to enjoy a warm relationship with the rabbi until the rabbi, offered a larger congregation on Long Island, had accepted it because he had needed more money for his family. Daniel Burros had appeared to be disappointed by the rabbi’s decision, but the boy continued to do well in school, and had registered an I.Q. of 154, which labeled him a “gifted child.” His grades in high school continued to be outstanding, but warped signs of confusion and rebellion began to appear. He took pride in his blue eyes and blond hair, and began to represent himself as a German-American, not as a Jew. With his friends, those who did not know that he had attended Hebrew school, he argued often that the German leaders had been misunderstood during World War II. He seemed awed by the top German generals, and was resentful of those fellow students who disagreed with his opinions. One day, after an argument with a Jewish student had led to swinging fists, Burros blurted out bitterly: “Jew bastard!”
Burros was somewhat influenced in high school by his history teacher, an Irish-Catholic McCarthyite, who helped to crystallize some of the right-wing philosophy that Burros was espousing. Burros’ poorest school grades were in Hebrew, which he had flunked, while his grades in German had been excellent. He finished high school with a four-year average of 87, which would have qualified him for a scholarship to college, but he had not been interested, explaining to one friend that college was for “Jew boys” trying to dodge the draft. Burros wanted to become a soldier, and in 1955 he had enlisted in the United States Army paratroopers, serving with the 101st Airborne Division and the 187th Airborne Combat team. He made seventeen parachute jumps, and was among the troops sent to Little Rock, Arkansas, under Major General Edwin A. Walker, to control the disturbances caused by the school integration program. Burros’ letters to friends revealed that he had been appalled by the sight of white soldiers “protecting niggers,” and that he believed that the nation was becoming a left-wing police state.
Though he had wanted to achieve status as a brave soldier, Burros’ companions in the service were more amused than impressed by him.
He looked almost comic in uniform. He had lost his flabbiness and was broad-chested and thick-armed, but he nonetheless was very short and seemed to be weighed down by the parachute pack, the large round helmet, and boots. His snappy salute was too snappy. He was a mockery of militarism. They laughed at him, and on more than one occasion he tried to commit suicide. Sent to an Army psychiatrist, Burros was diagnosed as an emotionally immature individual overwhelmed by childish fantasy. In 1958 he was discharged.
He had worked for a year and a half in the Queens Public Library as an office-machine operator, but by 1960 he had quit and become active in the American Nazi party, commanded by George Lincoln Rockwell. He found a $300-a-month job in Washington as a multilith operator with the United States Chamber of Commerce, but his main activities were centered in Rockwell’s barracks in Arlington, Virginia, where he lived and established himself as perhaps the most militant of anti-Semites. There he had drawn pictures of gas chambers, hoping to amuse the other troopers. He also displayed a little green-wrapped bar of soap that was labeled: “Made from the finest Jewish fat.” Burros had been an active public demonstrator with the Nazis, once picketing the Chamber of Commerce building where he worked. He was fired, and he was later arrested and fined $100 for pasting swastikas in an elevator at the B’nai B’rith building in Washington. He was convicted on three other occasions during the summer of 1960 for using profane language and for fighting with spectators at street rallies.