Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead

Table of Contents

 

 

 

FRANK MEEINK’S STORY is inspiring, compelling and moving. It has the power to change lives. We should all be grateful to him for sharing it.

—
Morris Dees, Founder and Chief Trial Counsel, Southern Poverty Law Center

 

FRANK MEEINK’S BOOK is a candid and captivating story of upbeat transformation of a raw racist into a courageous citizen, which has much to teach all of us. Don’t miss it!

—
Dr. Cornel West, author of
Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism

 

AS A WHITE MAN, trying to stand in solidarity with folks of color in the struggle against racism, I am heartened by Frank Meeink’s story. His narrative confirms that we as white folks have a choice when it comes to how we wish to live in this skin. We can remain silent, or even collaborate with the subordination of peoples of color, or we can become allies in the fight for justice. Meeink has made his choice. May we all have the courage and fortitude to do the same. Nothing less than the fate of our nation depends on it.

—
Tim Wise, author of
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son

 

FRANK MEEINK’S STORY is so brutal, so visceral, so unflinching, and in the end, so soul-wrenchingly, specifically American, that it should from this moment on be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the origin of race hatred in these United States of America.
Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead
stands out as more than a great memoir. It is testament to a great heart, to a man willing to own up to his own violent past and, ultimately, shine a light of hope on this sick, pigment-fixated, demented nation we inhabit. The writing is phenomenal and Meeink’s tale will keep you riveted. In the end, like all true testaments, what the author has to offer is hard-earned, down-to-the-bone hope. I loved this book.

—
Jerry Stahl, author of
Pain Killers
and
Permanent Midnight

 

I WAS UNABLE to put this book down. Frank’s story pulled me in to the point I felt I was living it with him, like I was skating alongside him as he overcame the odds and changed his life, and along the way, proved how hockey and other sports can change other kids’ lives, too.

—
Bobby Ryan, Anaheim Ducks, National Hockey League

 

FRANK’S TRANSFORMATION PROVIDES us commanding proof that reconciliation is possible even for those most tightly bound by hatred.

—
Jesse Dylan, Director of the Obama campaign’s
Yes We Can
video and the documentary
Reconciliation

 

POWERFUL, ABSORBING, STUNNING and sobering, this book is an unvarnished, revealing, sad, and painful portrayal of a struggle that continues, and of a tortured but hopeful soul striving to do good.

—
Barry Morrison, Regional Director, Anti-Defamation League

 

FRANK MEEINK’S LIFE story is a window into a world where hatred works like a drug. It is a compelling and cautionary tale.

—
Kenneth Stern, Director on Anti-Semitism and Extremism, American Jewish Committee

For Riley, Jake, Matt, Smooth D., Little Nick, and Fargosrena.

 

May you always, only, know love.

FRANK MEEINK AND JODY ROY WOULD LIKE TO THANK the following individuals and organizations for their contributions to
Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead
:

For introducing them to each other, Quay Hanna.

For funding to underwrite research costs, Ripon College and the FaCE Phase I grant program of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest.

For research assistance, Matt Birschbach and Tony McClintock.

For feedback on early drafts, Deano, Micah, Jackie C., Stuie, Nancy L., and The Eclectic focus group.

For sharing their memories, “Margaret,” “Big Frankie,” “Nanny,” “Pop,” the “Bertones,” “John,” “Kirsten,” “Hayley,” “Louie Lacinzi,” “Crazy Cha- Cha,” “Jeremy,” “Clark,” “Jessica,” “Maria,” “Nina,” “Valerie” and her family, Barry Morrison, Michael Boni, “Bob,” “Aunt” Joan, the former coach of the Eddie O’Malley team, “Squints,” “Vicey,” “Earbow,” and other “boys” from the corners of Second and Porter, Third and Jackson, and 68th and Buist; current and former employees of the Philadelphia Public Schools, the Catherine Hamilton Center, the Indianapolis Fire Department, the Terre Haute Police Department, the Springfield Police Department, Sangamon County Jail, the Sangamon County Public Defender’s Office, the Sangamon County State’s Attorney’s Office, the Illinois Department of Corrections, and the University of Illinois – Springfield (formerly Sangamon
State University) Telecommunications Department. To those and many others who took the time to sit for interviews, thank you!

For turning Frank’s vision of Harmony Through Hockey into reality, The Philadelphia Flyers, The Anti-Defamation League, and the City of Philadelphia. For helping establish the program in the Midwest, Global Spectrum, Schlegel Sports, the Iowa Stars, and the Iowa Chops.

For supporting Frank throughout this process, everyone at F&G and the White House.

For their patience, understanding and assistance during the years Jody devoted to this project, everyone at Ripon College, especially Jerry, Claudia, Vida, Jean, Tammy, Ric, Cody, and the students and faculty of the Department of Communication. Special thanks to Shawn K. for his unwavering emotional support and for being on the stairs when the call came.

For believing
Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead
can make a difference, Rhonda Hughes, Kate Sage, and the team at Hawthorne Books.

For being the perfect editor for this book, Adam O’Connor Rodriguez.

For uttering not one word of complaint when Jody moved yet another book and, at times, Frankie himself, into the house, Pookie.

For accepting Jody as her “other husband,” and for loving and believing in Frankie even through the worst of times, “Valerie.”

Finally, Frank would like to thank Jody for transforming his story into a book, Jody would like to thank Frank for entrusting her with the privilege, and they both would like to thank the Higher Power for everything.

 

NOTE:
In the interest of privacy, names and identifying characteristics of some individuals and groups have been altered in this book.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THIS IS THE TRUTH: I READ
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RECOVERING Skinhead
with my mouth either actually or metaphorically agape, because I just could not believe anyone could be this much of an idiot and live to tell the story so clearly and cleanly. I don’t know what the worst of it is: the racism, the anti- Semitism, the sexism, the alcoholism, the addiction, the depression, the abuse, the violence, the homicide, the suicide – or just the way all these maladies coexist. Frank Meeink’s story is upsetting and crazy, but it is above all a strangely absurdist drama that forces us to ask a troubling question about American life: Why, in a land with so much opportunity, is a critical mass of young people choosing hatred over possibility?

Frank Meeink speaks for those people, the ones you don’t know and don’t want to know, the ones who walk around with the creepy feeling they were born to lose. The only thing these people have to hang onto is their taste for blood, their desire to kill. When President Obama, at a campaign fundraising dinner in San Francisco, made the error of referring to those folks in Pennsylvania who cling to their guns and religion because it’s all they’ve got, he wasn’t wrong: meet Frank Meeink – he bashes in skulls for kicks. At the book’s turning point, Frank finds himself doing time in the same Illinois state prison as John Wayne Gacy and suddenly realizes: this is no mistake – he is exactly where he belongs, with the worst of the worst.

But to begin with, Frank Meeink is just an Irish-Italian kid
in a row house in South Philly with a big extended family full of people with names like Big Louie and Little Nick. He’s anybody’s neighbor. To read
Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead
is to understand that evil is the end result of nothing more than the boredom and emptiness we’re all too familiar with, at one time or another.

Frank Meeink and I are contemporaries, but I grew up in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, I went to Jewish schools until college, and even though my father disappeared when I was young, my mother invested heavily in my education and upkeep. I could not have been more depressed or suicidal, but all this negative energy led me to academic overachievement and eventually Harvard, not Neo-Nazism. Frank’s broken down family is quite a different story: all of his assorted parents are addict-alcoholics, his mother and stepfather are drug dealers, and the most memorable interior design quality he describes of his childhood home is a living room full of holes in the furniture from cigarette burns as a result of all the nodding-off junkies. “Wardens and gang chiefs had parented me more than my parents had,” he reports. Frank Meeink, too, could not have been more suicidal or depressed, but all his negative energy leads him to white separatism and eventually the American Nazi movement. Harvard and Nazism don’t have much in common really, but both are refuges for compulsive people seeking regimentation and authority and prestige. That the former is considered a good place to end up and the latter is believed to be the worst kind of dogma to get caught up in is merely a reflection of time and place: Frank’s setting is, blessedly, the United States in the late twentieth century, not Germany in the late 1930s.

But that’s what makes Frank’s life so familiarly tragic: he is smart and brash, and he can’t find anything better to do with his adolescent frustration than deposit it into a black hole of bully politics. As the book unfolds and Frank’s life unravels, he starts to meet people of different races, religions, and ethnicities – in prison, in sports, and at work – and he discovers that his hate is ill
founded, that it’s just stupid and ignorant. His favorite people in jailbird football are black, and his favorite boss is Jewish. “Understanding is the first step toward prevention,” explains Frank’s first mentor in his lessons in tolerance. Slowly and then suddenly, Frank just kind of stops being a Nazi – he even gets the five-inch swastika tattoo lasered off of his neck. Frank goes from being the leader of Strike Force, a Nazi youth gang that he started with a buddy, to speaking at universities and conventions for the Anti-Defamation League; from preaching hate to praising love.