Not By The Sword
How the Love of a Cantor & His Family Transformed a Klansman
By Kathryn Watterson
From Chapter 13, “FACE TO FACE - KLANSMAN”, P. 164-166.

When she opened her car door and stepped out onto the icy walk, Julie noticed a small, skinny black woman sitting on the porch of 820 C Street, watching as she and Michael walked up the long concrete sidewalk toward the plain, low-slung building. Julie wondered if Larry had harassed that woman, too. They stood at the mailboxes for a moment. “It’s number three,” Michael said. They walked to the left, and eventually realized they had taken the long route around the strange, bleak building. A chain-link fence separated the apartment’s uneven walk from a side yard strewn with empty beer cans, soda bottles and garbage. Two large dogs bared their teeth and barked ferociously at them from the other side of the fence. Julie noticed one of the dogs had a clean, gleaming white coat, which made him appear beautiful and oddly out of place amid the trash & dirt & ice turned into slush around the bottom of the fence. The Weissers didn’t know they were looking at the dogs Larry was planning to kill with poisoned meatballs.

Finally, Michael and Julie came to a yellow door with the number 3 on it. A handwritten note in large black block letters said, “Solicitors Not Welcome." Michael knocked on the door and a voice from inside yelled, “Who is it?”

“The rabbi,” Michael answered. Michael and Julie looked at each other while they waited. The courage of their convictions had carried them this far and now their excitement was edged by apprehension. The door creaked open slowly and Michael and Julie saw the bearded Larry Trapp in his wheelchair. An automatic weapon—a MAC 10—was slung over the doorknob on the back of the door and a huge Nazi flag hung on the wall behind him. Larry backed up his wheelchair to make space for Michael and Julie to step into the room. He didn’t reach for his gun or even look at it. He merely looked up at them, and in that instant, Julie was struck by Trapp’s appearance. She had known his legs were amputated, but his piercing blue eyes, his long dark lashes and his full, thick beard conveyed a sense of wholeness, and she felt it incongruous for a man with such a large presence to be confined to a wheelchair.

“Hi, Larry’ Michael said.

“Hi there’ Larry said, extending his hand.

Michael walked over and took Larry’s outstretched hand in his and said,

“It’s good to really meet you in person.”

At the touch of Michael’s warm, strong hand, Larry winced as if he had been hit by a jolt of electricity. Then he broke into tears. He didn’t know what had hit him, but he looked down and began yanking at the two silver swastika rings on his fingers. He clumsily pulled one off and then pulled off the other and held them out in the palm of his hand. “Here, I can’t wear these anymore,” he said, beginning to cry even harder. “I want you to take these rings. They stand for all the hatred in my life. Will you take them away?”

He put the swastika rings in Michael’s hand. Michael put them in his pocket, and he and Julie looked at each other in stunned silence at the coincidence—which seemed miraculous.

“Larry, we brought you a ring, too:’ Julie said after a moment. “I got this for Michael two years ago, and we wanted to give it to you.” Julie and Michael knelt beside Larry’s chair, and Julie slid the ring on Larry’s finger. “We wanted you to have this," she said.

Larry traced the strands of silver with the fingers of his other hand and began to sob more loudly. “I’m sorry:’ he said, trying to catch his breath between fits of weeping. “I’m so sorry for the things I’ve done.” Michael and Julie put their arms around Larry and hugged him and told him things were going to be okay. Larry bawled like a baby, tears pouring down his face, his nose running. Julie and Michael, overwhelmed by emotion, both started crying, too.

Larry noticed Julie crying and looked at her. “What did I do to her?” he asked Michael.

The three of them laughed, sobbed, hugged and cried, and, as Julie and Michael knelt beside Larry’s wheelchair, their arms around him, this Nazi no longer seemed to be a Nazi and Klansman, but suddenly seemed to be their brother. If someone had told them four months earlier they would feel such deep compassion for this despicable racist, they might not have believed it. Yet on this night, as Larry kept crying and crying, apologizing, saying how sorry he was, how bad he felt, both Michael and Julie felt they’d known him and loved him for a long, long time.

After they all stopped crying and blowing their noses on the Kleenex Julie kept providing from her purse, Michael and Julie and Larry talked for three hours.

Julie and Michael sat on beat-up old folding chairs on each side of of Larry, listening to him talk and responding. At one point, Julie got up and found three old scarred plastic plates in Larry’s dirty little kitchen area, and Michael started to serve the dinner they’d brought—chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, coleslaw, biscuits and extra french fries.

“You people can eat chicken?” Larry asked.

“Sure!” Julie said with a laugh. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“What’s that meat you can’t eat?”

“Pork.”

“Oh, pork, yeah. I knew there was one like that:’ Michael was putting chicken on the plates and he asked Larry, “What do you want—white meat or dark meat?”

“I’m not a Klansman anymore, so give me the dark meat,” Larry said, trying to make a joke. “I really was going to ask you if you’d bring me a ham sandwich, but I didn’t think that was appropriate.”

Larry had a board across his wheelchair to use as a tray, and Julie set the plate Michael had fixed for him on it. She and Michael ate with their plates on their laps. Larry wasn’t eating much—he had a big grin on his face and said he was too happy to eat.

At one point, Michael started telling jokes. Michael tells jokes as easily as most people sneeze. Larry started laughing and added a joke of his own. Larry’s joke seemed crude and adolescent to Julie, but listening to him and laughing with him surprised her. She realized she had assumed anyone so racist must be an idiot. But Larry was articulate, quick-witted with puns, even funny. It amazed her to be actually sitting there laughing at his jokes! But then again, it amazed her she was sitting there at all.

This man was tormented by his own life, and even though jokes cleared the air, he kept going back to the subject of his changed feelings, his sense of urgency about getting out of the Klan, his anxiety about how badly he had hurt other people. Larry showed them Monica Kuhns’ letter and asked Michael to read it out loud. They all listened as Michael read: “ ' ... . It’s not about rules and regulations, things you can and can’t do, and people who are perfect. It’s about LOVE. Something I know hasn’t been a very big part of your life....’”

“She’s right, you know:’ Larry said. “I feel it already. She told me, ‘I know you try to intellectualize everything, but some things you have to accept by faith: It’s also funny how she told me, if you give up all that bitterness, hatred and hurt, ‘you will be changed in ways you won’t believe’. This may sound crazy, but I already feel like I’m changed in ways I can’t believe”.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: Liberty Goodwin, Tel. 401-351-9193,

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