GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
AUGUST 1, 1997
Evenings Out
A mother's promise
After the Navy let one of her son's killers free, Dorothy Hajdys vowed the other would serve his entire life sentence
by Doreen Cudnik
Dorothy Hajdys is the kind of mom that has always put her kids first. Like many in her working-class Chicago neighborhood, she punched a factory time clock each day in order to put food in the refrigerator and clothes on their backs.
Hajdys never expected her quiet life to become an item on the evening news. She certainly never expected that someday she would be standing up for a cause.
When Hajdys accompanied her son to the airport on August 27, 1992 to see him off to his Navy base in Japan, she had no idea it would be the last time she would see him alive. The daughter and former wife of Navy men, she was proud that her 22-year-old son, Allen Schindler, was following a family tradition.
While in Sasebo, Japan, Schindler was stationed on the USS Belleau Wood--a ship he referred to as the Hell-eau Wood.
"He often told me that he never had to worry about dying and going to hell because he was already there," Hajdys remembered.
On October 27, 1992, the hell that Schindler had been enduring came to a horrible climax. While on shore leave, shipmates Charles Vins and Terry Helvey followed Schindler to a park rest room. They proceeded to beat him so savagely that later, his body was unrecognizable to his own mother.
The story of Schindler's senseless death, and of Hajdys' ongoing fight to see that justice is done, is the subject of Any Mother's Son, a made-for-cable movie which premieres on Lifetime Monday, August 11. The movie stars Bonnie Bedelia as Hajdys (pronounced Hay-jis) and Sada Thompson, of Family fame, as Schindler's grandmother.
When two naval officers came to her door on October 28, it marked the beginning of a nightmare for Hajdys and her family.
"Any mother knows when you have a son in the military that when they come to your door in dress blues, something terrible has happened," Hajdys said. "I knew either he was hurt badly or that he was dead."
The visit was also the beginning of a series of secrets and lies that would shatter her trust in the United States Navy.
"The Navy told me nothing. They did not tell me how he was killed, just that he was dead." Hajdys said.
It took days for the Navy to ship Allen's remains back to Chicago, since the autopsy was performed on Okinawa, and the body prepared for burial in California. Each passing moment fueled her feelings of denial.
"Every time the phone would ring, I'd grab it and say 'Allen,' thinking it would be him calling me and telling me it was all a big mistake."
Once Schindler's body finally arrived in Chicago, Hajdys remembers someone from
the Navy calling her to say they had done everything they could to prepare Schindler for burial.
"We went to the funeral home, and the Navy was there and my minister was there, and all of them were begging me not to go in," Hajdys said. "They did not want that coffin open. I couldn't understand why the Navy didn't want me to see him."
What the Navy didn't want Hajdys to see was a body so brutally beaten that every organ had been destroyed. The coroner's report said that it looked as if Schindler had been trampled by a horse, and that the injuries sustained were more like those from a high-speed automobile accident or a plane crash rather than a beating by a single person.
Bonnie Bedelia is Dorothy Hajdys in Any Mother's Son.
Were it not for two tattoos on his arm, Hajdys said, "To this day you would not be able to convince me that was my son."
Vins and Helvey were arrested within 24 hours of the murder. Schindler was given a funeral with full military honors, but although the Navy had the two men in custody, it would be another two months before Hajdys discovered that the men responsible for Schindler's death had been shipmates.
Captain John Curtis, the legal officer assigned to the case, assured Hajdys that everything was going according to plan, and that she would be notified of the trial dates for both men.
It was Rick Rodgers of the military newspaper Pacific Stars and Stripes, not the Navy, that first told Hajdys her son had been the victim of a gay-bashing. The pages of Schindler's own journal, sent to Hajdys along with his other personal effects, confirmed that her son was gay and that he had told his commanding officer. Hajdys also learned that as a result of that admission, the Navy had begun discharge proceedings against him.
With the mainstream media now camped out on her front lawn, it was nearly impossible for Hajdys and her family to lead a normal life. While struggling with her own homophobia, her younger son endured comments from classmates suggesting that Schindler had "got what he deserved." A woman from her ex-husband's family, worried that the Schindler name was being tarnished, suggested to Hajdys that she have her son's body exhumed and "tests" done to prove he was not gay.
At the same time, Hajdys met more and
more of the people that had loved her son, and her preconceived notions about gay people began to change. A trip to San Diego in January 1993 for a memorial service held by Schindler's friends proved to be a major turning point.
"That weekend made me realize that they loved him just as much as my family did." Hajdys recalled. "That weekend did it that's where my whole view on gays changed.”
It was during this time that Hajdys met reporter Peggy Evans, who was working on the story for the Chicago Tribune. Evans informed Hajdys that three weeks after Schindler's murder, the Navy held a 'closed' court martial in which Charles Vins was convicted on lesser charges. Even though the Navy had knowledge that Vins physically participated in the assault against Schindler, he was not given a dishonorable discharge. After a plea agreement, he served only 78 days for his part in Schindler's murder. He presently lives about 30 miles from Hajdys' home.
To this day, Hajdys is outraged that, as far as the Navy was concerned, her son's life was only worth 78 days of Charles Vins' life.
"If you're convicted of committing sodomy in the military, you serve a longer sentence than that, and you get a dishonorable discharge," she said. "In other words, the government is telling us that being gay is a bigger crime than helping to kill somebody."
Feeling as if she had been duped by the Navy, Hajdys began telling her story to anyone who would listen.
She became involved with a group of gay
BRUCE MACAULAY
veterans and appeared with them at the lesbian-gay March on Washington in April, 1993.
"It was the first time I smiled since the day Allen was killed." she said. "As we started to take off in the parade, the people in the crowd just shouted 'Mom!' I can't even express what it was like. It felt like I was doing something for Allen."
When Hajdys spoke in front of the crowd of hundreds of thousands of people on the National Mall, you could hear a pin drop.
"I remember saying, 'You can do a lot of things to me, but don't mess with my kids!""
Just as Vins' had, Helvey's court-martial came and went without her knowledge, despite assurances from Captain Curtis that she would be notified of the date. Helvey pleaded guilty to murder before his court-martial began, and Hajdys attended his sentencing hearing in Japan, hoping to bring closure to her son's death. Despite testimony that portrayed Helvey as the victim of horrible abuse as a child, he was sentenced to life in prison. One of the most riveting moments in the movie comes when Hajdys confronts Helvey face to face after his sentencing. Watching the movie, she observed that "Bonnie [actress Bedelia] was a lot quieter than I was in real life."
"I just screamed at him, 'Why? Tell me why! What did Allen ever do to you?' He just said, 'Nothing, ma'am'."
Each year in July, Helvey has a hearing before the Naval Clemency and Parole Board, where he can petition the court to have his sentence changed. After years of confusion
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