There was a time at the Children's Home Society (orphanage) when
we children were receiving beatings almost on a daily basis,
especially when we were being taken care of by a Mr. and Mrs. Ball.
He was a very cruel and harsh man who had no compassion in his
heart for children, none whatsoever. This man was one mean
son-of-a-bitch. Sorry, but there can be no other words to describe
a man like him.
No matter how small the infractions, the children would be taken
into the sewing room and beaten within an inch of their lives--and
I mean within an inch of their lives. THIS MAN WAS A VERY CRUEL
PERSON. Evidently he got some form of joy out of beating small
children. One could see it in his eyes and in the smile on his
face. As I look back on these beatings today, I think it was a
sexual thing with him. Of course, we did not know about those types
of things back then. After all, we were only eight, nine, and ten
years old.
Finally we children could take no more of his beatings. We talked
about running away together but decided that it would be better to
beat him to death before he killed one of us. We all got together
one night and discussed what would be the best thing to do. I will
never forget my little heart beating really fast as we talked about
killing him and how we would do it. I will never forget feeling my
heart beating on the side of my neck. "THUMP, THUMP, THUMP," it
went. I even got dizzy because I was so scared. I really didn't
want to hurt anybody but I was not going to say anything at all,
because I was not going to be the chicken.
On Saturday morning Mr. Ball called all of us kids onto the front
porch and told us all to line up at the sewing-room door. After we
lined up, Mr. Ball went into the sewing-room and closed the door
behind him. We heard him sliding the big table around so that we
could lay across it while he on beat us. None of us kids even spoke
a word; we just stood there real quiet, staring at one another,
shaking all over, all wondering if we could really kill this evil
man before he killed us. But no one moved or did anything. We just
stood there huddled in a tight group, all scared and horrified
like.
Then the door opened and Mr. Ball called the first boy into the
room and then he closed the door behind him. It was really quiet
for about a minute; then we heard the boy start to scream and yell
as he was being beaten. You could hear the large wooden table
scraping and sliding across the floor with each and every
hit.
All us boys started backing up from the sewing-room door and began
moving down the hallway, still huddled in a very tight group,
towards the television room at the other end of the hallway. The
boy being beaten just kept on yelling and screaming, hollering and
begging for us--by name--to come in and help him.
( NOTE:I will use no names other than my own.)
Then one of the older boys yelled out, "Let's go," and we all
started running towards the sewing-room door, yelling and screaming
at the top of our voices like a bunch of crazed lunatics or
manics.
As the door opened, all of the boys grabbed hold of Mr. Ball, threw
him to the floor and began beating him with their fists, ping-pong
paddles and with anything that they could get their hands on. I
grabbed a large pair of scissors and ran towards Mr. Ball, trying
to stab him, but I could not get close enough to wound him because
of all the boys who were beating on him. They were yelling over and
over, "Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!" I just stood there, looking
and yelling along with them to kill him, and I kept stabbing that
sewing-room table, over, and over, and over as hard as I could. I
must have stabbed that darn table a hundred thousand times before
it was all over. Then Mr. Ball did not move anymore and he quit
making those awful gurgle sounds. So the boys got up off him,
closed the sewing room door and we left him for dead.
Well, we did not kill Mr. Ball, but we thought we had--and we
wished we had. We watched them cart him out of the sewing-room and
off to the hospital, where he was treated for many deserved
injuries. I never saw him again after that day, and I thank God for
small miracles. I thank God for giving us enough nine-, ten-,
eleven-, and twelve-year-old little balls to save our own
lives.
This was a really bad time for all of us kids in the orphanage. It
is no wonder that so many of us ended up in jails and prisons. It
is an absolute miracle that any of us even made it out alive. Maybe
some of us survived because we hated the world so badly that we
just could not give up. But the little kids that it really
destroyed inside are the ones who do not think that what happened
to them is important at all.
Those are the orphan kids, now adults, who are really dead inside.
They just do not understand what they are missing in their lives
today because of what happened to them just yesterday, and that is
very sad.
Roger Dean Kiser, Sr.
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Roger Dean Kiser, Sr.