Cornelius

[Guest guest]

Hi, Cornelius

by: Bob Greene, A 4th Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul

I had been writing a newspaper column for almost 20 years. As part of

my work I had seen some of the darkest and unhappiest aspects of

human nature, and I had written about them. It was beginning to get

to me.

There were nights when I would go home from work and question the

very nature of humanity, and wonder if there was any answer to the

remitting cruelty I was observing and writing about so often. Part of

this had to do with a particular case I had been covering. The case

involved one of the worst crimes I had ever encountered.

A beautiful, bright-eyed, four-year-old boy name Lattie McGee had

been systematically tortured over the course of a long Chicago

summer. He had been beaten, he had been starved, he had been hanged

upside down in a locked and darkened closet for nights on end.

All that summer his life dwindled agonizingly away in that closet,

and no one knew he was there; no one heard his muffled cries. After

his death, when the police discovered what had been done to him, I

wrote column after column about the people who had murdered him. So

many cases of impoverished children from forgotten neighborhoods get

lost in the court system. I wanted to make sure that Lattie McGee

received justice, or something close to it.

With all the public interest in Lattie because of the columns, the

story of his brother, whose name was Cornelius Abraham, did not

receive as much attention. The same things that were done to Lattie

were done to Cornelius, too. Somehow he survived. He watched his

brother slowly being killed and was unable to stop the killers.

Cornelius' brave testimony in court is what helped to convict them.

By the end of the trial Cornelius had just turned nine. He was a

thin, extremely quiet boy; with his little brother dead and his

mother and her boyfriend in prison, he was living with other

relatives. The two great loves of his life were reading and

basketball.

In one of the columns I had written about Lattie, I had mentioned

Cornelius' passion for basketball. Steve Schanwald, a vice president

of the Chicago Bulls, had read the column and left a message at my

office. Though tickets to Bulls' games were without exception sold

out, Schanwald said that if Cornelius would like to come to a game he

would be sure there were tickets available. Jim Bigoness, the Cook

County assistant state's attorney who had delicately prepared

Cornelius' testimony for the trial, and I took him to the game.

To every Chicago youngster who follows basketball, the stadium was a

shrine. Think of where Cornelius once was, locked up and tormented

and hurt. And now he was in the stadium, about to see his first Bulls

game.

We walked down a stairway, until we were in a lower-level hallway.

Cornelius stood between us. Then a door opened and a man came out.

Cornelius looked up, and his eyes filled with a combination of wonder

and awe and total disbelief.

Cornelius tried to say something; his mouth was moving but no words

would come out. He tried to speak and then the man helped out by

speaking first.

" Hi, Cornelius, " the man said. " I'm Jordan. "

Jordan knelt down and spoke quietly with Cornelius. He made some

jokes and told some stories about basketball and he didn't rush. You

have to understand - for a long time the only adults Cornelius had

any contact with were adults who wanted to hurt and humiliate him.

And now Jordan was saying, " Are you going to cheer for us

today? We're going to need it. "

Jordan went back into the locker room to finish dressing for the

game. Bigoness and I walked Cornelius back upstairs to the court.

There was one more surprise waiting.

Cornelius was given a red shirt of the kind worn by the Bulls' ball

boys. He retrieved balls for the players from both teams as they

warmed up.

Then, as the game was about to begin, he was led to Jordan's seat on

the Bulls' bench. That's where he was going to sit - right next to

Jordan's seat. During the minutes of the game when Jordan was out and

resting, Cornelius would be sitting with him; when Jordan was on the

court, Cornelius would be saving his seat for him. At one point late

in the game Jordan took a pass and sailed into the air and slammed

home a basket. And there, just a few feet away, was Cornelius

Abraham, laughing out loud with joy.

I wanted to thank Jordan for taking the time to be so nice to

Cornelius. The meeting between them, I had learned, had been

something that Jordan had volunteered for; he had been aware of the

Lattie McGee case, and when he had heard that the Bulls were giving

Cornelius tickets to the game, he had let it be known that he was

available.

After the game, in the locker room after the last sportswriter left,

Jordan got up to retrieve his gym bag and head for home. As he walked

toward the door of the locker room he saw me and stopped, and I

said, " I just wanted to tell you how much Cornelius appreciated what

you did for him. "

For a second I had the strange but undeniable impression that perhaps

this was a man who didn't get thanked all that often - or at least

that there were so many people endlessly lining up to beseech him for

one thing or another that all he was accustomed to was the long file

of faces in front of him wanting an autograph, a favor, a moment of

his time, faces that would immediately be replaced by more faces with

more entreaties. He stood there waiting, as if he was so used to

ceaselessly being asked for things that he thought my thanks on

Cornelius' behalf might be the inevitable preface to petitioning him

for something else.

When I didn't say anything, he said, " That's why you came back down

here? "

" Well I don't think you know how much today meant to Cornelius, " I

said.

" No, I'm just surprised that you came back down to tell me, " he said.

" My mom would kill me if I didn't, " I said, smiling. " She tried to

raise me right. "

He smiled back, " Mine, too, " he said. We shook hands and I turned to

leave and I heard him say, " Do you come out to a lot of games? "

" First one, " I said.

" Well, you ought to come back, " he said.