Posted on 11/09/2007 7:27:39 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
(After spending 35 quiet years behind prison bars in Maryland for trying to assassinate Alabama Gov. George Wallace, ex-Milwaukeean Arthur Bremer is to be released Friday)
Arthur Bremer is a relic of American history.
Thirty-five years ago, he left his three-room apartment at 2433 W. Michigan St. in Milwaukee, left behind a Confederate flag, unmailed love letters, notebooks, school report cards and family photos, left for a journey that would end in gunfire at a presidential campaign rally at a shopping mall in Laurel, Md.
Now, the man who shot and paralyzed Alabama Gov. George Wallace on May 15, 1972, is on the cusp of a new journey, from prison to freedom.
Bremer is expected to leave the Maryland Correctional Institution-Hagerstown quietly today and take up residence in Maryland.
After serving 35 years of his 53-year sentence, he is to gain his release through "good conduct credits" and is to be under Maryland state supervision. Officials announced Bremer's anticipated release in August.
At 57, Bremer is to re-enter a society that is changed profoundly from the America of his young adulthood.
And so, too, is his personal world.
His mother, Sylvia, 92, died in February. His father, William, 82, died in 2002. His four siblings are scattered.
"It would be fascinating to see the world from his eyes now," said David Blumberg, chairman of the Maryland Parole Commission. "Only he can experience it. It would be interesting if he chose to relate."
But over the decades, Bremer has chosen silence, declining all interview requests, leaving behind only the ramblings of a youthful diary and a statement at a 1996 parole hearing.
"He's just quiet," Blumberg said. "He keeps to himself, and that's fine. In the prison system, inmates like that are usually the ones that are. . . the preferred inmate."
'Hard for us kids'
Blumberg said he did not believe that Bremer, who has worked many years as an aide in the prison school, was a danger to society.
"I believe a lot of us were very different 35 years ago from who we are today, particularly somebody doing something as he did," Blumberg said. "And his total about-face about why he did it. I think he cringes at any type of attention, as compared to before, (when) he just relished it."
Blumberg added, "We want to make sure he becomes a productive citizen."
Wallace, paralyzed from the waist down, died in 1998. Three other people were wounded in the attack.
"We feel like he needs to serve out his complete term," said one of Wallace's children, Peggy Wallace Kennedy, who lives in Montgomery, Ala. "He's getting out 17 1/2 years early. After he shot my father, my father suffered for 25 years after that. And he suffered every single day.
"My father wrote him a handwritten letter, telling him he forgave him. My daddy did forgive him. He never heard back from Bremer. He did forgive him. It's hard for us kids to go that route."
She said her father "stood for the little man, of course."
And she said: "I think he changed the course of the Democratic Party. And I think, had he not been shot, I really think he could have been on a ticket."
Wallace, a segregationist governor who mounted a third-party presidential run in 1968, was making another run in 1972, vying in the Democratic primaries.
It was a troubled America. The country was still reeling from the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the U.S. military was mired in Vietnam, and Richard Nixon was running for a second presidential term. Nixon would win the White House again but resign later because of the Watergate scandal.
Into this political maelstrom stepped Bremer, a 21-year-old loner with a gun.
South Division graduate
A 1969 graduate of South Division High School, Bremer took classes at Milwaukee Area Technical College and studied photography. He also worked for around a year and a half as a bus boy at the Milwaukee Athletic Club. One day, he showed up for work with a shaved head, explaining that he wanted to get back in the good graces of a girl.
"I liked to think that I was living with a television family and there was no yelling at home, and no one hit me," Bremer had written in high school.
In the two months leading to the shooting, Bremer traveled frequently. He owned a 1967 blue Rambler sedan, purchased used for $795. He followed Nixon on a trip to Canada and was spotted at numerous Wallace rallies.
He struck in Laurel, lunging from a crowd at a Wallace rally.
His state trial, held in the summer of 1972, lasted five days. Bremer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Bremer's rambling diary was read in court. It included his plan to kill Nixon, as well as details of how he stalked Wallace.
A psychiatrist for the defense testified that Bremer's attack on Wallace "was an act to impress" Bremer's mother "and have her look up to him."
The jury quickly found him guilty. After the verdict was announced, Bremer told the court, "Looking back on my life, I would have liked it if society had protected me from myself."
Benjamin Lipsitz, now 88, who was Bremer's court-appointed attorney, said this week that "I pretty much thought he was a normal person."
Asked what kind of life Bremer might have led had he not shot Wallace and the others, Lipsitz paused and said: "I think he probably would have done all right. He was a pretty energetic boy for his time and his age. He did a lot of things that would be typical of the all-American boy. He worked, he went to school, seemed to have a normal amount of interests."
But Bremer followed his own path, one that changed history.
Interesting. The “impress mom” angle is a goldmine, as well as the fact that his mom was 10 years older than his dad. I wonder if there has been a recent psychiatric evaluation?
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