John David Norman - Evanston - The Connections, Military and more pt3
Continued from part 2
It was the comment the newsstand had helped to nap an undercover FBI agent stealing girly magazines. A comment made over 30 years ago about something that happened decades before but hit me to the core of familiarity and another possible puzzle piece linking others. Am I right? I don't know but I do know there was, in fact, a lot going on in Evanston during the 70s and no one realized. This is my healing and hopefully others find some as well, I know you are out there and have wondered for yourselves. We weren't crazy, it was like living in an alternate reality covered in the blanket of gaslight.
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| The Chicago Tribune article; Evanston haunt back in business, was published in 2001 |
My dad knew those owners, too. Those owners knew the family of one of the bar owners. The all went to St. Marys Church and St. George High School. Obituaries help tell that story.
The newsstand was a pulse point in the community. I haven't met someone from there that never darkened their doors. Even for us in the 70s it was like having an artifact from the 20s still alive and working hard - something that needed to be respected for the history it was and contained with all those magazines and newspapers. A vibe of its own.
The newsstand in the city is nestled up to the shore of Lake Michigan. Ethnic grittier Rogers Park to the south and the elite Gold Shore to the west. It is there you will also find Great Lakes Naval Academy and Fort Sheridan, which was still active.
My Dad was an Air Force vet from the later part of the Korean War. He had been drafted. My Uncle George retired Major General from the Army Reserves and had commanded at Fort Sheridan, right there along that same shoreline. Dad's friends, all vets. When I say I was surrounded by military, I was surrounded. All very large, dad at six feet four and Uncle George, six foot seven. Those childhood buddies weren't tiny.
Even that neighbor on Washington Street, the one with those two dogs- Kelly and Duke. He lived with that blonde guy, lanky fella' who always rode his bike and said he was a teacher, he lived with him off and on. He was a vet -Nam. He was also the reason I am even writing all of this, he molested me. His roomy, bike riding teacher, looked 99,9 percent like John David Norman.
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| When Monsters Rode Bikes Past Out Schools |
A lot of veterans, a lot resources to be needed and being the Evanston with Northwestern also sits right next to Chicago University there were a lot of intelligent minds watching, studying, the world around them and those students during times of war and peace, I believe, were walking specimens of culture, psychology and social dynamics. The very essence of everything needed to even conduct experiments within programs like MKUltra and all the rest and pretty much go undetected. The logistics were perfect.
Now, while I have no absolute concrete proof, I cannot shake knowing about MKUltra, all documented, and those experiments conducted in a little hotbed of smoldering embers, like Evanston. Progressive Evanston. The one where open labs schools were becoming a new normal in the 70s, King Lab and Central Elementary are two examples. Central I attended for a couple of my childhood years. I lived in that building pretty much across the street. The popular corner for the soft serve ice cream truck. It is where I learned about topographic maps and college level algebra - we had long listening sessions with headsets on in darkened rooms. Our instructors came in via visiting teams. The one thing I remember is 2e2 math -learning about exponential growth and how to calculate it's growth, beyond that, I ruled the tetherball pole. I was just 8 and 9 years old. Progressive Evanston.
Now, back to the undercover rogue FBI agent being nabbed and spoken about in that article. In my research into our government's history with their weird post war programs the first thing I learned was how they recruit and back then it was often servicemen who didn't have the cleanest military records but did have a special skill that would be an in from intelligence to multilingual. Glitches in the personality would be needed to stand and witness what was going on without flinching and running for their mother. In regard to John David Norman you'd need people with a similar glitch as his, but targets being a different type or gender. It's been reported that there were undercovers in his operations.
Evanston was a hotbed of student disobedience during the civil rights and war years.
* 1978- "On May 3 more than 100 black students marched to south campus and occupied the Bursar's Office at 619 Clark St. They chained the door and began the first major sit-in the history of Northwestern."
*1969 - Evanston Peace Center Members:"In 1969, members had begun visiting a nearby veterans hospital. They also started to provide draft counseling, which included advising people how to attain deferments."
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