By Beryl Wajsman
Saturday, august 20, 2005
"We are blind until we see,
that in the human plan,
nothing is worth the making,
if it does not make the man."
~ Edwin Markham
Johnny Bertolo was all heart. He lived hard. He sucked the marrow out of the bones of life. In our smug society that does not dare to care he dared greatly and cared deeply.
Nothing mattered more to him than friends. You could literally put your life in his hands. They cradled a flame that could thaw the coldest fear. Last Thursday someone snuffed out that flame.
He was no angel. He was born into trouble. a child of the streets he did just about everything wrong...too early...too young...too often. He trusted too much in those years and got real cocky. He thought he was a prince of the city. One day he was toppled...and got thrown to the dungeon.
He paid his debt. He did his time. Seven years of it. When he saw the sunlight again the cockiness was gone. But the heart was still there...and the flame still burned brightly. This time around he pledged himself to the gentle warmth of compassion, not the searing heat of contempt. But you won't read about that in most papers. They're only interested in the half-truths. adding up two and two and getting five.
Paroled early, he went to work in the unions. The building trades. One of the toughest. He organized. He ran sites. He fought for his men. a combination of confessor and counsel. When they were broken in body and spirit he battled the icy frost of indifference for them. When they indulged in ignorance and insolence he unleashed the same passion at them. He did not suffer fools gladly. But no problem was too small for him to solve. No union member too insignificant for him to help.
When his parole ended he threw himself into the social benefit work of labour. He arranged medical care for the sick; filled out forms for the barely literate; raised money for the poor; guided the uneducated toward more schooling. For two weeks before Christmas he was almost unreachable as he organized dozens of trucks and ran around the city with his friends delivering clothes, food and even furniture to the poor.
To many workers, even unionized ones, governments and bureaucracies - including their own - are a maze of confusion and a snare for the unwary. To thousands, Johnny was the light that led them out of the tunnels of the maze. His was the first number on their speed- dial. For the past week there has not been a dry eye among union leaders. Men used to rousing tens of thousands with commanding voices spoke with thick, choked, cottony whispers. Johnny Bertolo was escorted out of this vale of tears with full union honours.
But this isn't exciting enough for most of the press. It doesn't sell papers. Only his old life does. No reason then for most reporters to give a guy an even break.
But the fact was that his life had turned around. He had pulled himself out of the world he was born into. He felt at peace. He was in a better place.There was so much left to do. But you won't be reading about that in the dailies either.
Last Thursday he was leaving for his first trip in years to see his family in Italy. But it was not to be. at eight in the morning, as Johnny was leaving the gym where he religiously trained each day for his beloved boxing bouts, three hooded assassins bushwhacked him as he was getting into his car. Five bullets ripped into the bones and sinews and gristle of his back.
But they weren't enough to stop that great heart of his. He tried to use the car as shelter. But a sixth shot found its mark and slammed him to the asphalt. It had torn into his skull. as he struggled for life, one of his executioners pumped a final, fatal shell into his brain.
John Bertolo's only crime was the baggage of a shadowy past. His greatest grace, an unwavering allegiance to friends old and new. Even those who had not changed their ways, could, in a time of trouble, find a sympathetic ear from Johnny. No false pieties for him. He understood, viscerally, the meaning of "there but for the grace of God go I".
Johnny had been to hell and back, and was always ready to extend a helping hand to pull out those still in. His union career had been exemplary. His parole record spotless. He never hesitated to act as a "bon père de famille" and try to bring reason to bear where there was discord and division. Last Thursday an iron fist of hate from years gone by slammed shut Johnny's open hand of help.
It is to be hoped, no it should be demanded, that the police do not dismiss this case as a simple "settling of accounts" and put it into the back files. Whatever his past, John Bertolo was a citizen of worth. Every effort must be expended to bring his killers to justice.
Many of the smug, self-satisfied "suits" - and I can still hear Johnny calling them that in his gruff tone that reminded you of the gravelly roads he traveled--would still call him criminal. They would then finish their lunches of shrimp cocktails and filet mignons washed down with martinis and Chardonnays and proceed back to their counting houses to play their funny-money games that leave so many penniless and so many more hopeless. Princes of the city themselves, but with no restraint of consequence. Will they ever have to pay the price of redemption for their compromise of conscience and community? Or will they always remain protected by the lethargic apathy that so many of the rest of us can't even recognize because we've been sitting on it for so long?
John Bertolo was redeemed. and before we get too mired in that comfortable and complacent self-absorption that has made us devoid of moral compass in our own lives, we would do well to reflect on the words of Edwin Markham that "We are blind until we see that in the human plan nothing is worth the making if it does not make the man." John Bertolo was a man. all our lives would be considered well-lived if we were half as much as he.