on march 18, 2002 my hometown of wheaton il got an early morning shock as st. michael's catholic church burned down. it was a really strange day for me personally. you see i went to st. michael's as a kid. i grew up in that church. i got my first holy communion there. i got confirmed there. i went through the whole ccd process there every monday night. i would get the cross on my forehead on ash wendsday. i would try to stay awake during midnight mass every christmas eve. i went through st. michael's cub scout pack 134 den 2. i'm a catholic.my ex-girlfriend wondered why i was still catholic even through all of the pedophilia scandals and the fact that i don't agree with my church's stance on abortion and homosexuality. i guess the reason is that i grew up with it. it's a part of my life. it was like a parent to me.
when it burned down in 2002 i remember feeling odd. the sunday before i went to afternoon mass with my dad and i remember just looking around the church. i took every nook and cranny of that place in. i would look around at the place and day dream as a kid. so when i was woken up by my mother and told that it had just burned down i remember being shocked. i was just there and now it was gone.
eventually the church got rebuilt and opened on march 18, 2006 (five years to the day that it was burned down). but what still remains is why?
adam palinski (a wheaton resident and parishioner of st. michaels) was convicted of the crime and sentenced to 39 years in prison because of it. he was picked up by the police at a metra station where he was going to take the train to go to class at columbia in the city. he studied film there.
i've been studying this story for a piece i'm working on for my creative non-fiction class. i think what interests me about palinski is how similar the two of us are. apparently he use to work with wheaton community television ch 17, which is a place that like st. michael's was very important in my life. He was on the honor roll at st. michael's elementary and middle school. at wheaton south high school. he was on the speech team, student council, and apparently did a play his senior year. then he went to study film at columbia. so apparently this guy was on the right track. i don't understand what happened?
it was wired when everyone found out that adam was convicted of the crime because people at WCTV kept telling me that "he was a lot like you."
it's wired to be compared to someone like that. i'm wondering what was different between the two of us. why is he in jail and why am i about to graduate?
i think a lot of it has to do with that pressure factor of living in a town like wheaton. i wheaton north and south high schools are considered two of the best high schools in the country. i remember at my graduation the superintendent called wheaton north "one of the last great american high schools." it's not as if we are living in a shit hole town here. this town is ripe with opportunities for kids. and that pressure can be hard to live up to.
i realized today that the reason people get mad at other people is because someone failed to meet an expectation that the other had set for them. coming from a town like wheaton where you are surrounded by somewhat successful people, you are expected to be successful too. when that expectation isn't met you get labeled a loser for life.
the one thing that really made me feel funny about looking into adam was the fact that at the trial the judge called him a "heart breaker." he "broke the hearts of the church and the community." He was labeled a failure in so many words.
my dad and i talked about it today and he said something interesting. he said, "you know i don't know that much about him [adam], but at mass i always hear that we should prey for him."
even though he "broke our hearts," st. michael's still prays for adam. apparently he told the judge at his hearing that he had found religion and faith in god. when it was reported in the papers the article then said that it was "too bad" he had to find out about it now in prison.
from a town that is suppose to be cristian, they sure don't act like it.
