by Walker, Rysa
∞15∞
KATHERINE
ROYAL OAK, MICHIGAN
FEBRUARY 13, 1939
A bitter wind whips around my bare ankles. I’m thankful for the coat that I found, along with several era-appropriate outfits and an assortment of wigs (which I have no intention of using), in the closet of the neat brick cottage two blocks away from the Shrine of the Little Flower. It saved me the hassle of shopping, something I’ve done only as part of my cover in the past rather than having to worry about finding something that actually fit. Clio’s mother must value fashion over functionality, though, because I’m wishing the coat were longer, with a nice, warm liner. Or better yet, that we were in an era where cultural norms didn’t mandate skirts that leave everything below the calf exposed to the elements and allow bone-chilling gusts clear up to your thighs. Long skirts may be inconvenient, but at least you can wear thick stockings underneath to keep warm. Richard, who is approaching the church from the other side of the block in a thick wool suit and overcoat, definitely got the better end of this deal in terms of comfort.
The tower up ahead stands in stark contrast against the cloudless winter sky, a pillar of limestone over a hundred feet high with a crucifix carved into the front. According to Father Coughlin, this tower was built in response to a cross that was burned on the lawn of this church shortly after he arrived to take over as priest. Coughlin, or possibly a stand-in with similar features, gave a dramatic reenactment of the KKK attack for a newsreel feature several years later, and it’s possible that it actually happened. No police report is on record, and no one aside from Coughlin and a few close allies seems to remember the event, but given how commonplace ties between the police and the Klan were during this era, it could well be that the incident was reported and never quite made it into the official record. Whatever the truth of the situation may be, the cross burning was the reason Coughlin gave for approaching a local radio station with the proposal to air his weekly sermons. Perhaps, he suggested, intolerance would be less prevalent if the community knew more about their Catholic neighbors? Perhaps he could help build bridges so that his small church would not be at perpetual risk of being burned to the ground?
Five years later, the proceeds from Coughlin’s now-syndicated radio show were used to build this much grander church and tower, with its stone cross that the Klan could not burn. It also served a dual purpose, since Coughlin’s weekly radio show, which gradually took on a tone far more political than religious, was broadcast from the tower.
In the reality I know, Coughlin pushed his rhetoric too far for the Catholic Church to condone. He had, however, built bridges—to the Klan, the Nazis, and a host of other radical groups that saw the Jews as the cause of every political and economic woe. His radio program was shut down, but he continued to preach from this church until the 1960s.
But in this here and now, Coughlin will announce that he is severing ties with the Roman Catholics to embrace Cyrisism. In less than a year, a new Cyrist temple will be opened about half a mile to the west, on the other side of nearby Roseland Park Cemetery. I walked past the location this morning, and apparently construction has been going on for some time. The new temple will showcase a massive limestone tower nearly twice as tall as this one, in the shape of a Cyrist cross. Charles Coughlin was clearly not above a bit of petty, symbolic one-upmanship.
Our goal today is to find out how long Coughlin has been planning this move. If we can pin down the date of his conversion decision, hopefully we’ll be able to prevent it. Plan A has Richard joining the reporters who will be arriving shortly to cover the press conference that Coughlin is holding in about an hour, following his address to a regional meeting of the National Mothers’ Union, which is being held here today and which I’ll be attending. The NMU is the feminine arm of Coughlin’s Christian Front. My gut feeling is that the Mothers’ Union didn’t exist in the other timeline. It popped up on what Madi calls the Anomalies Machine as a tiny blip on the radar, but only because of the publicity surrounding the connection to Coughlin. The group could well have existed in the other timeline, but simply kept out of the limelight. That seems unlikely to me, however, given that the leader, Elizabeth Dilling, was far from a shrinking violet. She craved publicity and had her fingers in many different pies in the late 1930s, including the publication of a newsletter chockful of anti-Semitic conspiracies under the guise of the Patriotic Research Bureau, proclaiming in the masthead to be For the Defense of Christianity and Americanism.
But even though I remember Dilling’s name from when I was working on my research plan during field training, I don’t remember the National Mothers’ Union itself. It’s possible that’s just a gap in my memory. There were certainly plenty of far-right women’s groups that wrapped themselves in the cloak of patriotic motherhood. While my memory is far better than average, thanks to the CHRONOS gene, it’s still not perfect, and the fact that the group popped up on that anomalies list and is connected to Coughlin makes it worth investigating.
If I can wrangle just a few minutes alone with Mrs. Dilling, I’m pretty sure I can get her talking. Dilling has a considerable ego, and also a chip on her shoulder about the tendency of the various isolationist groups to discount the value of her work. And thanks to the diligent efforts of Clio’s parents, I have two copies of her vile little newsletter in my bag, along with a business card announcing myself as a journalist for the Catholic magazine Our Sunday Visitor.
Richard and I will meet back at the house on Earlmont Road around noon, which is roughly four hours into the game, although we left that a bit flexible, just in case either of us gets a solid lead that requires a bit more time to follow. If Plan A doesn’t yield the information we need, I’m tentatively planning to jump back to Friday. Coughlin was traveling at the time, so hopefully security will be a bit lax. I’ll try to blend in with the secretarial staff. Coughlin had well over a dozen women who handled the letters and donations that were delivered to the church in large mail sacks on a daily basis. If I can get into the office, I’ll set a stable point so that Richard and I can return after hours and go through Coughlin’s correspondence, appointment calendar, and whatever else we can find. Either way, we’re scheduled to meet Tyson, Madi, and Clio at the stable point in Manhattan at the five-hour mark.
To be honest, both of these plans suck. Normally, we’d spend days, even weeks, establishing a cover. I wouldn’t dream of approaching a historical figure, even a minor one like Elizabeth Dilling, until I’d attended numerous meetings. She might not know my name when I began the conversation, but she would recognize my face. I spent three weeks in the 1870s last year building up two separate covers within the warring factions of the women’s suffrage movement—one in New York and the other in New England. This involved dozens of day trips to attend their monthly meetings and several side trips where the goal was simply to exchange a word of greeting with Susan B. Anthony or Lucy Stone at a public event. All of that effort was aimed at learning whether the two groups collaborated on an undercover strategy to create a network of supposedly apolitical women’s clubs to serve as “suffrage kindergartens” to convert the vast majority of women who claimed they had all the rights they needed. An interesting question to be sure, but not a problem on par with trying to prevent the complete destruction of our timeline.
Things can and do turn on a dime when you’re in the field. CHRONOS agents are trained to respond quickly, to think on our feet. We are not, however, trained to wing it. Walking in with no real cover, no set plan?
That’s winging it.
I spot Richard leaning against a tree across the lawn, CHRONOS key in hand. He probably set a stable point here on the lawn and is scrolling forward to find out when the press will start arriving. He gives me a little finger wave, barely looking up from the key, and I scan the area for a group of women who look like they know where they’re going. I don’t find them on the church grounds, but rather in the parking lot, and they’re heading toward the school across the stre
et.
The meeting is scheduled to begin at ten. Many of the seats are already taken. Some of the women appear to know each other, but there are plenty of others who seem to have traveled here on their own, so I don’t feel too out of place. A few minutes after ten, the side door opens and Elizabeth Dilling enters, along with Father Coughlin and a woman I don’t recognize. Dilling, a small, neatly dressed woman with horrible taste in hats, steps up to the podium as Coughlin takes one of the two seats on the stage. The other woman sits near the front and pulls a small notebook out of her bag. She must be one of his secretarial staff. That reminds me that I’m supposed to be here as a reporter, so I take out my own pen and paper and begin jotting down notes as Dilling welcomes the group.
“I’ll keep my opening remarks brief,” she says with a conspiratorial smile, “since our host has another event after this one, and we want to make the best use of his time. Most of you know me from previous meetings, but I see a few new faces in the crowd. No doubt we have corresponded, and I’m sure that you’re busy organizing your districts. I just wanted to give you a brief—very brief!—record of my activities as your president over the past few months. I’ve been busy. As the good book says, ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves.’ Some of you may have seen the newspaper accounts of my trip to Washington, DC, last month, where I provided testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee opposing the nomination of Felix Frankfurter to the Supreme Court. They didn’t listen, of course, but I did my very best, noting that the country would rue the day they placed that man on the highest bench in the nation. I won’t go into the sordid details—they’re all in my Red book, and I have copies with me if you’d like to purchase extras for your members. Suffice it to say that his connection to the American Civil Liberties Union alone disqualifies Frankfurter, as, I would argue, does the fact that he is a non-Christian. As such, he should not be placed in a position to judge us. As noted in Cyrus 6:7, ‘Neither should you be yoked with unbelievers. What fellowship can light have with darkness?’”
Most of the women nod appreciatively, although I do see a few confused expressions as Dilling goes on. “As I told the committee, not a single word of what I’ve written about Mr. Frankfurter, and for that matter not a single word in the Red book, has been disproved. If it had been, I would be in jail this very minute, and as you can see, I am not.”
She pauses until a wave of applause circles the room.
“Although,” Dilling continues, holding up her hands, which are clad in demure white gloves, “I’m afraid that may change in the near future, as I’ve made some rather powerful enemies in standing up for our way of life. I don’t want my children to live under a socialist or communist kind of government. Mothers have an obligation to feed their children, not children in other countries whose parents were unwise enough to wage war. If women—and I can hardly bear to even call them women—such as Dorothy Thompson had their way, our sons would be marching into Berlin even now, such a bugaboo has she made of Adolf Hitler. The simple truth is that we don’t want our sons to die on foreign battlefields. Nor do we want our children attending the kind of colleges that Justice Brandeis and his wife were connected with, where they teach communism and have free love and nudist colonies. This is sadly so pervasive among the Jews in this country, and Brandeis is no exception. Five of the nine justices on the Supreme Court today have verifiable ties to the communist movement in this country and abroad, as I show conclusively in my Red book. They’re going to get us into another foreign war if we don’t organize and speak out in every state. But I’ve gone on long enough. We’ll have plenty of time to go into more detail on all of this in our sessions later in the day, so please allow me to end my remarks by saying that even though this is a truly dark time for our country, I’m comforted knowing that we have strong, God-fearing men like Father Coughlin taking our message to the people.”
The women applaud enthusiastically as Coughlin steps to the podium. He holds up a hand, smiling, and when the applause dies down, he thanks Dilling for her introduction and welcomes the group to the Little Flower Shrine. His voice starts out a bit more gently than what I remember from vids of his speeches, but it slowly begins to rev up as he shifts from casual words of thanks to politics, which is, after all, the reason the group is assembled.
“As many of you know, I have always fought for the little guys, the downtrodden. It’s hard to do that when you’re part of a monolithic institution, but I have endeavored to remain close to the people who make this country great. And no group does more toward that goal than our blessed mothers.”
He speaks for several minutes about the sacrifices that mothers make, and somehow manages to segue into internationalism, a rant against the Jews, and the assertion that fascism is almost certainly the nation’s only hope for warding off godless communism.
“But we cannot forget that people are suffering. Our leaders must ensure that capitalism benefits you, the everyday people who make this country great. The one silver lining of this economic depression is that the greedy have been brought low, and there is now a chance for working people to invest. And I know that’s a scary idea in these times, when so many have lost so much, but with God on your side, you’ll know the right moves, the moves that will make your family safer without handing your money over to the Jewish banks. Pay close attention to my upcoming address, for this is the next battle that we must win—taking back our economy and ensuring that it works for those who built this country, the true Americans. This is the one area where I feel the Catholic hierarchy has been somewhat derelict in its duty. It is all good and well to feed American souls, but we must also ensure that they can keep soul and body together. If we do not, the communists will win, and in a communist society, God is not welcome.
“And now, while you ladies adjourn to refreshments in the fellowship hall, the vultures of the press await. As some of you may have already gathered, I have decided to leave this church that has been my home for so many years.” He holds up his hands in response to the expressions of dismay. “Do not worry. I will take up the cross under a new banner. It is my hope that Cyrisism will better unite us against our common foe, rather than divide us sect against sect. I had planned to delay this announcement until we’d made a bit more headway on construction, but I can state with some assurance that the Temple of the Lotus Flower will open just across the way in the spring. My radio ministry will continue in the interim. And if any of you happen to bump into the vultures I mentioned in the parking lot later, be sure to let them know that you were the ones who got the big scoop. You ladies are, after all, the very heart of this movement. While you are kind enough to allow us men to think we run things, I want to assure all of you that I, for one, know the actual truth of the matter. And now, I place you once again in the most capable hands of Mrs. Dilling.”
Coughlin leaves through a side door, and we follow Dilling into the fellowship hall, where cookies, coffee, and a pitcher of watery-looking lemonade are arranged on one end of a banquet table. A stack of books and pamphlets is at the other end. Dilling chats with several of the women as she pours herself a cup of coffee and then takes her place at the business end of the table.
I debate making small talk with the women for a moment so that I don’t look overly eager, but we’re pressed for time, and she’s all alone right now. If I wait, I may end up stuck in the afternoon sessions and never get a chance to talk to her. And so I pull out the business card and copies of her newsletter that were in the research packet the Dunnes put together for me.
“Mrs. Dilling, I hate to be forward because we haven’t officially met. I’m Mrs. Daisy Ritter, and I’ve just started a branch of the NMU in the Fort Wayne area. I also do a little writing on the side—nothing like your excellent work, just occasional interviews and articles for Our Sunday Visitor, because their headquarters is in Huntington where I live. I’ve been listening to Father Coughlin from the beginning, and I’ve written several articles about him—”
Dilling fr
owns, cocking her head to one side. “I’m pleased to meet you, of course, Mrs. Ritter. But I was under the impression that Bishop Noll was not a fan of Father Coughlin.”
Oops. I smile, nod, and shift gears. “Exactly. I’ve written several articles. The bishop has published almost all of my other stuff, but he seems to be of the opinion that women should stay out of politics, for the most part. He probably won’t be happy when he finds out that I’m trying to start a branch of the National Mothers’ Union, so I’m . . .” I stop and lower my voice to a confidential whisper. “I’m trying to branch out a bit. Maybe begin publishing a few pieces in the papers in Fort Wayne and Indianapolis. And Father—although I guess it’s now Brother—Coughlin just gave me the most wonderful idea. I want to write a feature about your role and, more broadly, the role of women in general within his ministry. It’s been clear to me for some time that the two of you work together very closely. As I said, I’ve been listening to his weekly message, but my sister and I are also longtime subscribers to your newsletter. Such wonderful, in-depth research, really. Anyway, from my reading, I’ve gotten the sense that Fa . . . excuse me, Brother Coughlin relies heavily on your input for his sermons.”
To be honest, I suspect that the reverse is true. The research memo Kate Dunne provided showed a lot of overlap in their topics, but Coughlin was generally the one to go first. He’s not the one I’m sucking up to, however.
“Why, yes,” she says, beaming. “We collaborate very closely. That’s why I was willing to take the train all the way from Chicago to hold this event here.”
“So you already knew his big news?”
I expect her smile to falter, but it doesn’t. “Oh, yes. Of course. This may be new to the press, but the entire thing has obviously been in the works for quite some time. He’s met on several occasions with one of the lead Cyrist Templars to discuss plans for the new church. And . . .” She looks from side to side and gives me a conspiratorial little grin as she pulls down the edge of her left glove to reveal a pink lotus-flower tattoo.