People are more ho-hum about murder these days. There are just so many of them. But back in the fifties, even in a big city like Hannawa, they rattled everybody. And David Delarosa’s murder sure rattled us. I remember Effie calling me in a panic. It was April 18, 1957, the Thursday before Easter. “Somebody’s killed Gordon’s new friend,” she said.
Just how Gordon met David Delarosa, I still don’t know. But all of a sudden Gordon started bringing him to the jazz clubs, and inviting him to our parties. He didn’t fit in and Gordon knew it. “Maybe David ain’t the hippest cat,” Gordon once told me, “but he’s cool enough in his own way, don’t you think?”
David Delarosa wasn’t an intellectual. He wasn’t artsy. He wasn’t angry or introspective or full of high ideals. He was just a fun-loving kid from Sandusky on a wrestling scholarship. And boy was he good looking! He was lean and muscular. He had curly black hair, which he wore quite long for those years, and full pouty lips just like that actor Sal Mineo. Instead of having black Mediterranean eyes like you’d expect, his eyes were a cool, spooky gray.
Anyway, two days into the spring break, somebody threw David Delarosa down the stairway of his apartment building and then bludgeoned his pretty face with something hard and heavy until he was dead. As far as anyone knew, there was only one suspect, a local bebop jazz musician named Sidney Spikes, who was held for a few days, badgered relentlessly and then released. A decade later Sidney, as I’ve said, would change his name to Shaka Bop and become a major political force in the city.
Just as I’d expected, there were no stories filed under Dumps. But there sure were under Delarosa, David. I took them to the table, took a big bite from my sandwich and leafed through the clippings. The fat, black headline in the Friday, April 19, 1957 edition of The Herald-Union declared: STAR HEMPHILL WRESTLER SLAIN
The headline in the Easter Sunday edition hinted at the difficulty police were going to have solving David’s murder: POLICE SCOUR CAMPUS FOR MURDER WEAPON
On Wednesday, May 1, there was this frustrating headline: SEARCH FOR CAMPUS KILLER DRAGS ON
Then on Tuesday, May 7, this one: POPULAR NEGRO MUSICIAN HELD IN DELAROSA MURDER PROBE
Oh my, how sick we were when we first saw that story! We all just idolized Sidney. He was the only Negro most of us fluffy, white slices of Wonder Bread knew. He was smart and funny and handsome. And could he play that saxophone! We simply could not believe he was a suspect.
I remember sitting that night with Gordon at Mopey’s, nursing bowls of chili while the street outside filled with blowing snow. He yelled at his copy of The Herald-Union like it was God: “First you tell me David’s dead. Then you tell me maybe Sidney did it. Man, what you gonna tell me next? That the moon’s made out of cabbage?”
Three days later, on Friday, May 10, there was a happier headline: NEGRO JAZZ MAN RELEASED
We were still worked up about David’s murder-and the way the police were bungling the investigation-but the spring semester was slipping away and other things needed our attention. We took our finals. We graduated. Lawrence took his journalism degree and a 3.8 grade point average straight to The Herald-Union. I got a crappy part-time job at the city library scrubbing the sticky fingerprints off children’s books. Gordon and Chick got jobs at a local factory to help pay for graduate school. Effie drove across country with a professor who’d just gotten his divorce decree. Gwen and Rollie had a huge church wedding. Lawrence and I took the bus downtown and got married by the mayor.
A full twelve months went by before the next story on David’s murder appeared, on Sunday, May 17, 1958, in a black-bordered box across the top of Page One. The headline asked: WHO KILLED DAVID DELAROSA?
One Year Later Police Admit They Don’t Have A Clue
And that was the last of The Herald-Union’ s stories on David Delarosa’s murder. I read the headlines again. Then I read the stories themselves, and then re-read them, three or four more times, until my brain and my heart were filled with a dump truck-full of questions. I put the Delarosa file under my arm and carried my dirty dishes upstairs to the sink. I combed my hair and dabbed on just enough makeup to make myself presentable. I drove downtown to The Herald-Union.
Eric spun around on his chair when he saw me. He pretended to be disappointed. “I was hoping you’d died.”
I threw my coat over the back of my chair and grabbed my mug. “So was I,” I said, “but I guess the good lord wants both of us to suffer a while longer.”
I went to the cafeteria and made myself a cup of tea and then sipped my way to Sports. Ed Boyer looked up from the funny pages he was reading. His chewing gum literally fell out of his mouth. “Mrs. Sprowls-everything all right?”
You can understand his alarm, can’t you? I regularly cut through Sports on my way to the cafeteria. But I never stop to chat. As far as I’m concerned, that ramshackle corner of the newsroom is a foreign country. They speak a different language. They have unfathomable customs. They wear bizarre native costumes. They eat indigestible things. “I was wondering if I could take a look at your old files,” I said.
Ed’s face went white with worry. “For?”
“I’m looking for information on a wrestler who was murdered many years ago-”
Ed was suddenly a statistic-spitting robot: “David Anthony Delarosa. Hemphill College. Wrestled in the 141-pound weight class his freshman year, 149 after that. Ohio Athletic Conference champ in fifty-four and five, All-American in fifty-six and seven.”
I’d long ago learned that sports reporters know more useless information than anybody on earth. I was impressed nonetheless. “How the hell you know all that?”
“He’s got a plaque in the field house,” Ed explained. “Between the concession stand and the toilets. You see it every time you go for a wiz.”
Ed led me to the storeroom by the back steps where Sports keeps its files. It was a filthy mess. “Do you have a plastic liner to catch the leachate?” I asked.
Despite all of my efforts, Ed never quite understood my joke. But he did know right where to find the file on David Delarosa. He accompanied me to the Xerox machine and chewed on his gum like a woodchuck while I made copies. I escaped to my desk just as fast as I could.
There was an inch of clippings on David Delarosa in the file but only one interested me. It was a column written by Ted Thomas, the paper’s sports editor at the time. It was dated Tuesday, December 9, 1957:
WRESTLERS GRAPPLE WITH SLAIN CHAMP’S DEATH
By Ted Thomas, Sports Editor
Howard Shay says he doesn’t feel like wrestling anymore, not since two-time All-American David Delarosa was brutally murdered just four days before Easter. But Shay, like the other young men on the Hemphill College squad, says he has no choice but to return to the mats this winter.
“I can feel him right next to me in the gym,” Shay said with a sad grin, “threatening to haunt me for the rest of my life if I don’t do my best to get the win.”
Shay, an education major from Mallet Creek, who wrestles in the 197-pound class, was more than Delarosa’s friend and teammate. For the two years they shared a one-room apartment in the off-campus building where Delarosa’s body was found.
“We’re determined to carry on,” Shay told this reporter. “It’s what he’d want us to do.”
Indeed, at a prayer breakfast before the team’s first match of the season, against arch rival Edinboro College, Coach Patrick Zemary dedicated the wrestling team’s season to Delarosa’s memory, saying, “David was an inspiration in life and he will remain an inspiration to us in death.”