Stones, Embraces,
and Ladies of the Night
A neighbor
introduced me to the story of Little Eva Leroy, whose misfortune on Christmas
Eve, 1877, put Alpena in newspapers across the nation. The New York City Herald
broke the story, telling a shocking tale of a prostitute run out of a
cold-hearted village to freeze to death alongside a wilderness road. The paper
added pathos to the tragedy by noting that this happened “on the anniversary
eve of the time when angels sung peace and good will among men on earth.”
The lurid tale was
a little tall -- at least as far as the role of Alpena was concerned. Eva did
in fact suffer hypothermia on that Christmas Eve and as a consequence die
several days later. And her frozen body was in fact found beside the road
between Alpena and Rogers
City (wilderness enough
in those days). But, Eva had been in Rogers
City for about a week
before Christmas, and was returning to Alpena. And if it could be said that she
had fled Alpena earlier that December, it was only because she did not want to
be caught in a raid on her establishment, as had some of her profession at a
similar place nearby.
Little Eva was not
run out of Alpena. Nor, that Christmas Eve, was Eva run out of Rogers City.
She left voluntarily, intending to catch the coach back to her former place of
employ. But as she trudged along the road, inadequately clothed for the weather
and nipping at brandy, the coach never came, and she inevitably fell or lay
down, inebriated or exhausted. A New York
newspaper might publish that the dead Eva was “free from the terrors of men and
their hate” and from “the brutes of Alpena” who “cast the first stone,” but the
facts exonerate the village
of Alpena.
Or do they? Do
they completely? I’m one of those who subscribe to the notion that it takes a
village to raise a child, and who believes that life is more complex than
simply reaping what we sow. Accordingly, I wonder about the cause-effect
relationship between Alpena and Eva Leroy -- wonder if whether the village had
played its upper hand cards differently, she might never have left. Is there
not more than one way to embrace the likes of Little Eva -- a way to assimilate
them into the community?
Consider the story
of Snotty Nosed Annie, a local businesswoman like Eva Leroy, who worked here
some forty years later. Annie, despite what you might imagine from the
adjective before her name, was a gifted singer who wanted nothing more than to
sing in a church choir. (Never mind her profession; Annie knew and loved her
hymns.) But every congregation in town declined her earnest offers to add her
voice to their praises. Finally, resentful of the rejection and exclusion, she
left the bar at the long-gone Globe Hotel to protest in front of Trinity Church. There, she sang vulgar versions
of “Barnacle Bill the Sailor” and “Charlotte the Harlot” until the rector
called to have her carted away. In the cart, she sang “Onward, Christian
soldiers” and “Shall we gather at the river.”
What if, instead
of calling law officers, the good rector had invited Annie to come into his
office (these days with his secretary present)? This seems truer to the spirit
of Jesus, who intervened when an adulteress was about to be stoned (Jn 8:1-11),
and who allowed a “woman of ill repute” to wipe his feet with her tears (Lk
7:37-39). Redemption has to begin somewhere, and always with an act of grace,
not condemnation. Who knows? Snotty Nosed Annie might have changed to become
the president of the Zonta Club. And by similar acts of grace, Little Eva Leroy
might not have died so untimely a death.
Alpena’s blackened
eye 129 years ago this Christmas does not bid us to “shed tears for [her] sad
fate, poor Eva Leroy,” so much as to ponder the present and always relevant
meaning of this, “the blest day of promises, faith, hope and joy.