“Earlier in day the nun was beating me, now she has me suckle on her breast. I heard them killing a kid once. Just some of the things I'm dealing with in therapy.”
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| Madonna Manor |
The interview is a firsthand account of the nightmare of life for young boys in Madonna Manor children’s home run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans in the 1960s and 70s. Based on interviews with Ted Lausche Summer 2012 in Chicago, here is Ted 4, in Ted’s own words:
I heard them killing a kid once.
We’d seen other kids get killed too. You just didn't talk about it. One kid got thrown under a giant tractor they used to cut the lawn.
CofA: WASN’T IT BLOODY?
It was terrible, then we never saw the kid again. Nobody ever came around to explain. It was just like, everybody knew.
You could be next.
We were out on the field playing soccer. H told us to move because he was going to start cutting the grass. There were about 13 of us, and we said fuck you, we're going to finish our game.
H went by on his mower, and this kid. . .
He was a big kid, a large kid, older kid. H was mad because we hadn’t moved.
It was a really hot summer day, August, a swamp area, five miles from New Orleans if you fly across river, in Marrero a suburb near Algiers. Back then we were the only thing out there, with just a two lane both ways.
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I Was Laying In The Tall Grass Next To A Hand Sticking Out Of The Ground. It had been eaten, dry skeleton like.
I Was Laying In The Tall Grass Next To A Hand Sticking Out Of The Ground. It had been eaten, dry skeleton like.
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I’d run and hide on the property
Other kids would run and right away try to get to New Orleans. When I’d run away, I’d go hide somewhere on the property. As a result I saw places where bodies buried.
The fog was thick and I lay in the tall grass.
That's when I ended up lying in the tall grass next to a hand sticking out of the ground. It had been eaten, was dry skeleton like.
HOW DID YOU END UP IN THE ORPHANAGE?
My dad was a politician in Chicago.* He was on stage at one time with the original Mayor Daly.
My mom never married my dad.
DID YOU EVER MEET HIM?
When I was a baby, maybe three years old, she put me in a taxi cab, I remember it, her and cab driver arguing. We get to a bar, Figaro’s, a Mafia outlet. Dad wasn’t there though. He should have been, because he was running whore house activity.
His name was Theodore Paul Lausch.*
When she had me, she still had her maiden name. She decided for the birth certificate, his Lausch too guttural but by adding the E on the end it became Lausche.
Pronounced Laushay
Made the name sound French.
It was the 1950s, she was a single mom with a kid. She went to work as, well, as a dancer.
(One time Ted did meet his father in a hotel room.)
He bought me this weird ass toy, a yellow dump truck. He was laying on the couch, he was fifty something, still in great shape.
Mom moved us to New Orleans. She got busted for whoring, got 30 days, and didn't tell the cops she had a kid at home in the apartment. She just left me, that's how I ended up in an orphanage.
The apartment where I’d been for days with no food was right downtown New Orleans, two blocks from the police station. After I’d been there for days with no food, I walked out and sat next to a fire hydrant, and a cop car pulled up.
At the police station they pushed two giant chairs together under a slow moving fan, that's where I spent the night. They brought me sandwiches. I was outside the drunk tank in a little cell.
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Here’s How The Book Should Start. Imagine a world where the only touch is violence.
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Soon after I arrived at the orphanage, I was still new and f---ing scared out of my mind. As soon as I walked in, when the social worker walked away this little tiny nun came around, she was about two inches bigger than me, all covered in black, all you saw were her hands and shoes.
She says, “You're going to love it here,” and got me an ice cream cone. I'm thinking this is paradise. Then the social worker walks away. The ice cream cone flies into the garbage, the nun grabs me by the ear.
She jerked me down to the floor, slapped my face into the tile and said, I'm going to tell you everything you need to know between here and your dormitory. Then through two dining rooms and a courtyard, believe me she did. She dragged me by my ear when I couldn't keep up, slapped me half a dozen times.
But she did not swear. That would be sinful.
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Sure I remember her name.
It's Sister Mary Omar.
She was about four foot six and was head at the time of Holy Sisters of Notre Dame out of Texas.
There were about 500 kids at the orphanage, along with some deaf girls also on the property.
I was there maybe a week, still feeling my way. There were unwritten rules about everything. You were regularly beaten, everybody got punished, then afterwards everybody would beat everybody else up.
You slept two to a bed. I'm laying on the floor, a kid kicked me onto the floor.
The strongest survive.
From the floor I hear a kid on a bed crying, see another kid is eating his sheets.
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Earlier In Day She Was Beating Me. Now she has me suckle on her breast.
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(Cut to R-Rated excerpt )
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(END R-RATED EXCERPT)
It wasn’t just me it was other kids too, she just seemed choose them at random.
The nuns at Madonna Manor must have been the lowest of the low, and this had been going on for a long time.
And we went to Mass twice a day, three times on Sunday.
Everything we got was donated from the community. When I got out of Madonna Manor, I wanted to go see each charity in the community and tell them, they should find out where their money goes.
I tried.
Betty J. Hall, nee Lausch, age 84, beloved wife for 65 years to Theodore R. "Ted"; loving mother of ... Funeral Service 7 p.m. at Colonial Chapel,
Published in Chicago Tribune on Oct. 29, 2008 - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/chicagotribune/obituary.aspx?n=betty-j-hall&pid=119489050#sthash.RuQVaJlG.dpuf
Posted by Kay Ebeling
The City of Angels Is Everywhere
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