The previous year, in 1989, Gannon had still just been curious about the workings of Operation Rescue and the pro-life movement. A friend told him there was a rescue about to take place nearby. He told Gannon: you’ll see a yellow ribbon around the clinic. Stay outside of the line, and you won’t be arrested. Go inside, you’ll be arrested. Gannon had just retired. He was looking for a new focus in his life and, perhaps, new friends. Raised on Staten Island, he worked in administration for an engineering firm for 40 years, the last few on the 89th floor of the World Trade Center. His beloved wife had been dead more than 20 years.
Gannon showed up at the rescue. Should he take part, or not? He saw that his friends stood inside the ribbon. He figured that’s where he belonged, too. He joined them. Got arrested. His new life was under way. Gannon took part in 14 rescues, went to jail each time. They were exciting days. The night before, they’d all gather at an agreed location, plan, pray. Some of them slept on the floor. No food or drink in the morning, so they could stay locked down at a clinic for as long as possible without needing to use a bathroom. Great memories, great people, he reflected.
It was at a rescue later that year, in West Hartford, where he met Jim Kopp. He would never tell Gannon where he had been or where he was going. But Gannon’s door was always open. Eventually Jim had his mail forwarded to Gannon’s box. When he stayed at the house the two of them went to mass at St. Elizabeth Church every day at 8 a.m., protested at the abortion center on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Gannon didn’t dress fancy for church, but Jim, he stood out. Just wore whatever was on his back. They could all tell he was a visitor. Gannon joined the Lambs of Christ pro-life group. Jim called his elderly friend “Jay” for short, an old nickname from their time in jail.
They didn’t watch TV together, or talk all that much. Jim did his own thing, went for his walks in the nearby wooded area. His quiet time, he called it. Gannon thought the solitude was good for his friend. Gannon did the cooking. Not that Jim put much emphasis on food, or drink. He was always thinking. Food didn’t seem to mean much to him. Ate what was put before him. He had other things on his mind. One night, when Jim was out walking, Gannon heard a knock on the door. The local police who patrolled the retirement community had seen a lanky, bearded man walking slowly by himself not far away and had picked him up.
“He says he’s with you,” the cop told Gannon.
“Oh yes—he’s one of us,” Gannon said cheerfully. Kopp’s bearded face lit up with a grin.
Days later, Jim was gone, again. It was imperative he remain in the field. He lived for longer stretches in St. Albans, Vermont, with a man named Anthony Kenny and his wife, in a dusty wooden farmhouse with a view of the mountains. Vermont was the setting for a story that Jim was telling. It was an abortion mill in Burlington, Vermont. The operators of the mill were using the drained blood from aborted babies in a Black Mass satanic ritual. Jim had heard the story. Or read about it. Or maybe it surfaced from somewhere else entirely, from a red-black dimension of his mind’s eye where abortion lurked as pure evil.
On March 20, 1990, he was arrested outside the Vermont Women’s Health Center in Burlington. Jim was now 36. It was a big protest, 95 arrests. It was a pretty diverse crowd, including his old friend Jay Gannon, as well as young activists new to the cause, women like Jennifer Rock and Amy Boissonneault. Amy was 23, from Fairfax, Vermont. Jim had great affection for her, everyone did. But for Jim there was another—a 27-year-old woman with dark hair and pale green eyes: Loretta Claire Marra, daughter of William Marra, the Fordham professor whom Jim greatly admired. Loretta studied graduate philosophy, was intellectually charged, a spirited conversationalist. Jim had connected with few people, if anyone. Loretta was different.
Her father was a prominent Catholic apologist who founded a radio program in the 1970s called “Where Catholics Meet.” In 1988, William Marra ran for the U.S. presidency for the Right To Life Party, winning 20,504 votes—in the middle of the pack among several fringe candidates. Loretta’s mother, Marcelle Haricot Marra, had served with the French resistance during the Second World War. The story went that in Normandy, when paratroopers landed far afield of their intended target, she helped lead them back to their destination, and saved many lives. Loretta told her friends that her mother had even received the Croix de Guerre medal from General Charles de Gaulle, and that Rue Marcelle Haricot in Paris was named after her mother. Loretta Marra had much to live up to.
Pro-lifers were mesmerized when she spoke. Loretta was five-foot-six, 130 pounds, an unremarkable appearance at first glance, but up close she drew people in, a passionate light flaring in her eyes, always speaking from a place deep in her soul. James Gannon was transfixed, and Jim Kopp as well. Loretta and Jim had an instant rapport, so much in common. Gannon watched the two of them interact, banter, jumping from politics and history to pop culture. It was as though Loretta could hum the first few notes to a song and Jim could pick it right up and continue, he reflected.
In January 1991, Jim and Loretta were arrested together at a protest outside a clinic in Levittown, Long Island. He had invented a new steel, donut-shaped locking device. They used it to lock their feet together to block the door of the clinic. Saving babies, connecting in body and soul. Police needed power tools to separate them.
Back out west, Chuck Kopp had retired at 69. He had been living with his second wife, Lynn, in San Rafael, not far from where Jim’s mother, Nancy, still lived in the family house in Marin County. Mid-life and beyond had been a rocky road for Chuck. He nearly lost his job, had problems with drinking, all of it surely exacerbated by the stress created by his affair with Lynn and the divorce from Nancy. He had a stroke. Friends couldn’t believe how much he had changed. Chuck, the ex-Marine, who used to be so sharp, seemed gone. One day Jim returned home to visit his father at the hospital, and sat with Lynn in the cafeteria. Jim had not spoken to her for a couple of years. He never warmed to her.
“That last time we talked you said you weren’t going to see him any more,” Jim said.
“That’s how I felt at the time,” Lynn told him. “But it reached the point of no return.” Jim put his head in his hands, elbows on the table, staring at her, incredulous, and then glowered at her, saying nothing.
Chuck slowly bounced back from the stroke. He kicked his drinking habit. Things were improving, but there remained the problem with his youngest son, and his antics in the anti-abortion movement. Lynn told the story how one night, she and Chuck were out for dinner with Jim’s twin brother, Walt, and Chuck’s brother, James, from Los Angeles.
“So did you see Jim on TV last night?” asked Walt. The TV news had carried a story about a violent protest at a clinic in the Bay Area. The footage showed Jim arrested after chaining himself to an examining table.
Chuck’s lips narrowed. “Damn fool,” he said.
Was it possible that on some level, while shaking his head at his son’s behavior, Chuck appreciated Jim’s passion? If that sentiment did exist, Chuck did not express it to anyone. Jim believed he knew. He looked into his dad’s eyes on the occasions when they were together and was certain he saw pride.