THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994 TAG: 9406090532
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT
DATELINE: 940612 LENGTH: Medium
The federal prisoner who issued this cryptic threat made good on it 18 months later. In July 1976, shortly after his release from the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Ill., career criminal Gary Gilmore killed two men while robbing a gas station and a motel in Utah. The crimes coincided with the U.S. Supreme Court's reinstatement of the death penalty, and Gilmore was sentenced to die. In disgust over the state legal process, he demanded to be executed and labeled Utah Gov. Calvin Rampton a ``moral coward'' when Rampton ordered a stay. After much legal wrangling, Gary Gilmore, 36, stood in front of a firing squad on Jan. 17, 1977.
{REST} In the disturbing Shot in the Heart, Mikal Gilmore, a longtime Rolling Stone writer and editor now in his early 40s, examines why his second oldest brother Gary, an intelligent man with artistic talent, fell prey to a side of his temperament that led him to prefer trouble and violence, and finally, to engineer his own death. Mikal doesn't try to explain Gary's crimes away, but he does place blame on his father, Frank, a ruthless disciplinarian who routinely, and without cause, beat the three oldest boys, as well as on ineffectual schools and juvenile-offender facilities.
But the story Mikal tells is larger, more daunting and ultimately, much more troubling than a simple true-crime apologia. His tale, and that of his brother, tells of the long shadow cast by the Gilmore family and its effect on several generations. There are hints of secrets in Frank's life that conceal behavior far worse than the confidence games he ran in the 1930s. Mikal gets to the bottom of some, but one big one remains hidden. What is obvious is the tremendous damage that Frank, along with his wife, Bessie, who, unlike himself, was a Mormon, inflicted on their four sons, also including Frank Jr. and Gaylen. (Gary Gilmore's last words: ``There will always be a father.'')
The darkness still shrouds the remaining Gilmores, Mikal and Frank Jr. (Though not a criminal, Gaylen also met a violent death in the '70s.) Mikal, the youngest son, sees it as a presence in his own failures at love and in Frank Jr.'s lonely existence. They tried to escape the family, writes Mikal, but ultimately they failed. Nothing - not religion or the sex and rock 'n' roll that he later turned to - has been able to carry Mikal to salvation. The closest thing to a happy ending this book can claim is a repaired relationship between the two surviving brothers, and even that is touched by the legacy of their flawed parents - and by a shocking surprise revealed near the book's end. Still, Mikal manages to write gracefully of Frank's and Bessie's own sad, tangled histories, and to make his way to a forgiveness of sorts.
Shot in the Heart is predictably bleak, and the author indulges perhaps a bit too much in portentous musing about the superstitions, dreams and ghosts that are a significant part of the history handed down to him by a scared, broken Bessie. As a brutal work about the darkest side of a family, though, it's an important book that shouldn't be ignored.
by CNB