This is a love story. A very different kind of love story. It’s about one St. Louis man’s love for Saddam Hussein. The Greeks would call it “Philia” love, meaning that he loved the Iraqi leader with a deep friendship, as a brother. You see, this man from St. Louis was a lot of things. He was a black man, he was a child raised by a single mom in the projects, and as a United States Army Nurse during the Iraq war, he became the primary medical attendant for many captured terrorists, including Saddam Hussein (code name, “Victor”). In 2009, Marianna Riley chronicled Robert Ellis’s fascinating story in her book Caring for Victor: A U.S. Army Nurse and Saddam Hussein. Most of what I share in this post is sourced from the book. I highly recommend reading it.
This post isn’t about Marianna or Saddam Hussein. It is about the man they shared in common. A man who loathed his father but found a way to befriend a terrorist. Robert Ellis was born in Carr Square Village, raised in Pruitt-Igoe and thrust into the responsibility of caring for the most dangerous and wanted terrorists at Camp Cropper in Iraq during the war. His relationship with Saddam Hussein and the internal personal conflict he experienced because of that relationship, is fascinating. In this post, I’d like to focus on Ellis’s childhood, growing up in Pruitt-Igoe and how that experience may have shaped his capacity to love, and hate.
Robert Ellis’s family was among the first residents at Pruitt-Igoe. The development was originally planned to include two separate sections; the Pruitt side for blacks, named after Wendell Oliver Pruitt, a fighter pilot in WWII and the Igoe side for whites, named after William L. Igoe, a democratic U.S. representative from Missouri who opposed declaring war on Germany in 1917. Before Pruitt-Igoe opened, the NAACP declared this segregation unconstitutional and were successful in opening all sections of Pruitt-Igoe to people of all color. But this policy never saw the racial integration it hoped to achieve in the community, only five percent of residents were non-black.
In 1954, Robert’s mother moved four girls and two boys into a three-bedroom unit. Ellis reminisces on the good and bad of growing up in Pruitt-Igoe. In the book, Ellis talks about the rush of riding the elevator, not from the inside, but rather standing on top of the enclosure staring up the dark, 11-story elevator shaft. He talks about dodgeball and playing with sidewalk chalk on the concrete indoor galleries near the elevators. At the time the book was published, a small group of residents still got together for reunions. At times, Ellis’s account of Pruitt-Igoe sounds almost fun and idyllic, and not completely devoid of love. But we all know, there was a dark side too. A big dark side.
As a white woman raised in rural Indiana, I know anything about the challenges of raising a black family in mid-Century St. Louis, the first thing I thought was “where was Robert’s dad?”
As Pruitt-Igoe fell into decline, the once attractive low cost of rent presented new challenges. Limited revenues failed to adequately cover basic services like garbage removal, elevator maintenance and window repair. The complex raised rent and ended up charging many residents nearly 75% of their income. To put this in perspective, many of the predatory loans that contributed to the 2009 housing bubble were made by institutions approving applicants for mortgage payments that amounted to 50% of their income. Budget experts recommend spending no more than 33% of after tax income on housing and transportation combined. With such high rent, many Pruitt-Igoe residents were paying 42% more for rent than they should have budgeted. And here is where I learned what happened to many of the working young men and fathers. Families with a male head of household, did not qualify for welfare in Missouri. Many fathers would move out of state, so their wives and children could benefit from government assistance. But were those families really benefitting? Growing up without a father figure? And what caused these men to leave instead of fight for better policies at home? These are the questions to which I have yet to find answers. But I want to believe a lot of these decisions came from a place of love and men desiring the best for their families. (city lab.com).
On the other hand, Robert Ellis’s father was close by, working on the local General Motors assembly line and rarely stopped by to see Robert’s mother or his children. Robert Ellis bore the last name of his father, different from his mother’s last name. A name was likely the only thing Robert ever accepted from his father. How is it that a man can find deep compassion for Saddam Hussein but loathe his own father? After reading about Robert Ellis, I can only infer that it speaks to his shrewd ability to read and discern people. He likely felt, justifiably so, that Saddam Hussein had some redeeming quality while the true character of his father lacked anything redeeming. Ellis does not condone the murderous cruelty that Hussein inflicted on the Iraqi people, but I think Ellis saw another side of Hussein. Somehow, Ellis was able to look past Hussein’s evil persona and forge a unique friendship with the former dictator. At times, in the book, you feel Saddam genuinely wanted a better future for Iraq, especially in his earlier years. And perhaps, Ellis recognized how deeply Saddam loved his own children.
Robert Ellis’s mother, Lola Foster, worked hard at her job conducting vision tests at the Missouri Department of Motor Vehicles while raising six young children. In 1968, Robert’s mother purchased a small, two-family flat two miles from Pruitt-Igoe and they moved away from the housing projects. She desired better for her family and she made it happen.
Robert also found compassion for those involved with the development and failure of Pruitt-Igoe. Many who contributed to Pruitt-Igoe, like the Japanese-born architect, Minoru Yamasaki, also wanted to do something good for St. Louis. Something that would breathe life back into a failing city and its working-class communities. But it didn’t work. Somewhere they missed a step and went about it the wrong way. They didn’t stand up for their beliefs or follow their gut. And then, they gave up. Eventually the ominous tenements came down and St. Louis swept the dust under the rug. Perhaps Robert Ellis felt swept under the rug by his father.
So now I’m going to take a diversion and turn this concept of Philia love on its head and apply it to us. It’s true, Robert Ellis never forgave his father. I don’t have all the information on their relationship because Ellis never spoke much of his father. But if a smart, educated man can find compassion for failed experiment that impacted his family and a terrorist leader, can we learn from that? If he can find some level of respect for a man who committed atrocities against his own people, can we find some compassion for each other?
Two things must happen if we want to bring compassion to race relations, and believe me, I’m the first one that needs to follow this advice. ONE. We have to see people as complex beings with many different sides. Just as Ellis saw with Saddam Hussein, everyone has a good and bad side. Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of our neighbors and friends, can we first try to identify the positive parts of each other? TWO. We have to keep asking why. So many headlines, articles and opinion pieces I read fail to dive deep enough into a “why” that doesn’t support their own agenda. This allows people to draw conclusions that fit their own personal biases. Robert Ellis didn’t allow biases to keep him from getting to know Saddam Hussein. In doing so, he gained a unique friendship that changed his life. It’s time to welcome objectivity and to admit we rarely have all the facts. It’s time to start asking “why” a whole lot more.