Panel Includes John Lennon’s Bodyguard
By Samuel Newhouse
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
NEW YORK — Brooklyn judges and other members of the local legal community spoke last week in a high school classroom about the realities of interfaith and interracial dating and marriage.
Kings County Supreme Court justices Deborah Dowling and Arthur Schack spoke to students at Stuyvesant High School about the complications that arise when members of different ethnic or religious groups begin a romantic relationship.
The talk was sponsored by the organization “Not Just Blacks and Jews in Conversation,” which Brooklyn Criminal Court Attorney Shannon Taylor is the executive director of. It took place over two school periods in the classroom of Prof. Warin Donin.
The judges’ and other speakers’ willingness to speak openly about issues that aren’t discussed in polite encounters got a real conversation going:
“Whatever culture you are from,” Justice Dowling said, “you should marry who you love. But you lose something in the translation when people from different cultures and faiths marry. Your culture can become a little watered-down.”
“No one fits into neat little boxes, is x, y or z,” Justice Schack said, who is a Stuyvesant alumnus. Schack is married to a Puerto Rican woman whom he met while working as a teacher, although he admitted his parents had been somewhat apprehensive at first.
One listener asked about the situation of an Italian/Dominican girl who was taunted by students who repeatedly asked her, “What are you?”
“This problem is real, and you get to that point where you ask, who am I? Where do I fit?” Dowling responded. “It’s damaging to the psyche.”
Schack explained that his children also have been asked what they are, and that their answer is to tell people, “I’m me!”
People focus too much on what they are not, and should emphasize simply what they are, Dowling and Schack said.
As the speakers agreed, New York is one of the best places for a diverse family to live.
Michael Yavinsky, chief court attorney of the New York City Criminal Court, said that he felt more comfortable living in New York with his family than he would in his hometown in Connecticut. His wife is Asian and they have two children together.
“I probably would have converted, if my wife’s family had wanted me to,” he said. “But I think the racial aspect is harder than the religious, because it’s physical, and visible.”
U.S. District Judge Jerome Hornblass, a founder of “Not Just Black and Jews in Conversation,” also spoke to the students, urging each to learn about their own heritage and roots, and to embrace that part of their identity.
“Our country values the separation of church and state, and there are two prongs to that,” he said. “One is that there is no official religion, and the other is that you must accept other cultures.”
Another speaker was Rev. James McClain, of the Salvation and Deliverance Church in Harlem
“If people call you names, don’t pay no mind,” he said. “That’s been around since the beginning of time.”
He spoke about god and urged students to disregard racial and religious differences.
“Everybody in here is beautiful. It’s a big beautiful room of people,” he said. McClain mentioned his experiences working as John Lennon’s bodyguard and sharing his gospel music with the famed Beatle.
At one point, speakers clashed over their views about Jewish people marrying people from other religions. Some speakers said that Judaism in America is dying out because of intermarriage.
However, the open nature of the talk gave it an exciting and authentic tone. The students, themselves an ethnically diverse group, were very receptive to the speakers.
Lennon’s Bodyguard Speaks
Rev. James McClain, a speaker at the talk, worked as a bodyguard for John Lennon in 1980, up until Lennon’s assassination by Mark David Chapman on Dec. 8 on the Upper West Side.
“I liked John a lot, and he liked me,” McClain told the Eagle. He said that Lennon gave him positive feedback after listening to a tape where McClain sang gospel music.
In the months before his death, Lennon recorded and released the album Double Fantasy, which includes such memorable songs as “Watching the Wheels” and “Beautiful Boy,” which is about the joy he expected to have watching his young son grow up.
McClain met Chapman during these recording sessions.
“I met the man that killed him,” McClain said. “He was outside the Hit Factory with the other fans, trying to get an autograph. In fact, he got an autograph from John the day that he killed him.”
Tragically, McClain had fallen ill on that fateful day and could not work. Lennon was being guarded by his driver instead. Chapman approached Lennon from behind just outside the Dakota apartment building, where Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono lived.
As the couple stepped out of the car, Chapman asked for an autograph. Lennon started to sign, and Chapman shot him four times. Lennon died 20 minutes later.
“There’s evil in the world,” McClain said.
McClain continues to sing and record gospel music today.
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© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2008
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