Little Pink House Part 1

Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage.

by Jeff Benedict.

To Josephine, my grandmother.

I wrote much of this book in the attic of her home. Many afternoons she trudged up the attic steps and quietly placed a grilled-cheese sandwich on my desk before saying, "You keep writing, kid." She knew I didn't have time to stop for lunch. My grandmother loved this story and couldn't wait to read the finished product. Sadly, she never will. On January 15, 2008, Josephine died suddenly, shortly before I finished writing. If only I could have written faster.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Eminent domain is the government's power to take private property for public use. n.o.body particularly likes it. But occasionally it's essential to make way for roads, schools, hospitals, and the like. And Americans accept this practice as long as deprived property owners receive due process and just compensation. Under the Fifth Amendment, that's been the American way since the Framers drafted our Const.i.tution.

But the Supreme Court changed the rules in 2005 when it decided Kelo v. City of New London. Kelo v. City of New London. Now local and state governments can take private property from an individual and transfer it to a private developer in hopes of generating more tax revenue or creating jobs. The Now local and state governments can take private property from an individual and transfer it to a private developer in hopes of generating more tax revenue or creating jobs. The Kelo Kelo decision equated these public decision equated these public benefits benefits with public with public uses uses.

Under this interpretation, there's no telling where the government's power to take private property ends. "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in a blistering dissent in Kelo Kelo. "Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."

The Kelo Kelo case is infamous. But the stirring story behind what drove Susette Kelo-a divorced nurse-to take on a powerful governor, a billion-dollar corporation, and a hard-charging development agency to save her pink cottage is a hidden drama that begs to be exposed. On one level, it's a uniquely American saga about power and defiance that makes the Supreme Court decision even harder to swallow. But at its core, this story is about pride, a virtue that breeds self-respect and a condition that is first among the seven cardinal sins. case is infamous. But the stirring story behind what drove Susette Kelo-a divorced nurse-to take on a powerful governor, a billion-dollar corporation, and a hard-charging development agency to save her pink cottage is a hidden drama that begs to be exposed. On one level, it's a uniquely American saga about power and defiance that makes the Supreme Court decision even harder to swallow. But at its core, this story is about pride, a virtue that breeds self-respect and a condition that is first among the seven cardinal sins.

Little Pink House is an inside account of how a political street fight over a neighborhood escalated into a high-stakes federal case. It's the unsanitized version that the Supreme Court never heard. And it's told by the people who lived it-the residents whose homes were taken; the local officials who authorized the takings; the development agency that designed the plan; the state officials who supplied the money; a is an inside account of how a political street fight over a neighborhood escalated into a high-stakes federal case. It's the unsanitized version that the Supreme Court never heard. And it's told by the people who lived it-the residents whose homes were taken; the local officials who authorized the takings; the development agency that designed the plan; the state officials who supplied the money; a Fortune Fortune 500 company that stood to benefit; and lawyers who fought ferociously over whether this was right or wrong. All of these parties cooperated for this book. 500 company that stood to benefit; and lawyers who fought ferociously over whether this was right or wrong. All of these parties cooperated for this book.

Between November 2005 and March 2008, I conducted close to three hundred on-the-record interviews. I also received via e-mail well over one hundred written responses to factual queries I posed to partic.i.p.ants. Most of these queries involved detailed follow-up questions to prior interviews.

I also had access to deposition transcripts, video and audio recordings of meetings and events, and many doc.u.ments (internal corporate correspondence, internal government memos, and lawyers' private notes), as well as private papers and correspondence, such as journals, diaries, and e-mails. In all, I obtained enough doc.u.ments-including voluminous records obtained under the freedom-of-information laws, court papers, press reports, and photographs and maps-to fill more than a dozen large, plastic storage containers.

My primary objective in this is to tell a compelling story that is true to the characters who shaped this historic case. I am deeply grateful to individuals on all sides who afforded me their time and helped me understand this complex story about people whose struggle ultimately shifted one of the most enduring principles of our democracy.

Perhaps no writer had more influence on English common law and American jurisprudence than seventeenth-century English jurist Sir Edward c.o.ke. He penned one of the most famous lines of all time: "A man's house is his castle-et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium." The Latin portion of the sentence is less well known. The loose translation is: "and where shall a man be safe if it be not in his own house?"

Amazingly, after Kelo v. City of New London Kelo v. City of New London, c.o.ke's comment may be more relevant now than when the American colonists rebelled against the king.

Jeff BenedictApril 8, 2008Buena Vista, Virginia

ON CAPITOL HILL.

September 20, 2005 U.S. Senate Chambers Washington, D.C.

Clutching her notes and wearing heels, a gray skirt, and a white blouse, Susette Kelo approached the witness table, hoping the senators noticed her salmon-pink sweater. It matched the color of her house and had sneaker prints across the front, signifying "They walked all over me."

"Are you nervous?" her attorney, Scott Bullock, asked.

"Not too bad."

"You'll be fine," he said, patting her on the shoulder.

Facing a panel of senators, she sat down, grabbed a pitcher of water, and poured herself a drink. Bullock took a seat in the first row behind her.

Senator Arlen Specter pounded the gavel.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The Senate Judiciary Committee will now proceed with a hearing on the issue of the right to take private property under what is called the doctrine of eminent domain for public use. Our hearing is prompted by the recent decision just a few months ago, in June, by the Supreme Court of the United States in a case captioned Kelo v. City of New London Kelo v. City of New London, where private property was taken for the use of a private company, Pfizer."

Specter indicated that he and Senator Patrick Leahy had just been across the street in a conference with Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. They had been discussing the harsh criticism generated against the Court by the Kelo Kelo decision. As the author of the majority opinion, Justice Stevens didn't particularly appreciate all the fire the decision had been under. But Specter insisted the matter required congressional review. decision. As the author of the majority opinion, Justice Stevens didn't particularly appreciate all the fire the decision had been under. But Specter insisted the matter required congressional review.

"The Fifth Amendment," Specter continued, "prohibits the government from taking private property unless it does so for a public use and with just compensation ... But the Kelo Kelo case goes a significant step further and takes it for economic development, where there are jobs, increased taxes, and other revenues. The issue, which the Congress has authority to act on-this is not a const.i.tutional issue where the Supreme Court is the last word-is to determine as a matter of public policy whether this is a wise, appropriate taking of private property." case goes a significant step further and takes it for economic development, where there are jobs, increased taxes, and other revenues. The issue, which the Congress has authority to act on-this is not a const.i.tutional issue where the Supreme Court is the last word-is to determine as a matter of public policy whether this is a wise, appropriate taking of private property."

Specter yielded to Senator Leahy, who declared his respect for private-property rights. Leahy looked Susette in the eye and continued, "Ms. Kelo, I am probably one of millions of Americans who were distressed when we learned your story. We are concerned about what happened to you ... It has been said that tough cases make bad laws. It can also be said that bad law can lead to bad remedies, and so we are going to have to figure out the best way to do this."

When the senators' preliminary remarks concluded, Specter introduced Susette as the first witness. "Despite her loss before the Supreme Court," Specter said, "she continues to inspire and advocate for a return to sensible eminent-domain policy. Thank you for what you are doing, Ms. Kelo, and we look forward to your testimony."

She took a deep breath.

"I want to thank Chairman Specter and the rest of the Senate Judiciary Committee for the opportunity to testify," she began. "My name is Susette Kelo, and I live in New London, Connecticut. I am the Kelo in Kelo v. City of New London Kelo v. City of New London, the now infamous U.S. Supreme Court case."

She cleared her throat and went on, "The battle against eminent-domain abuse may have started as a way for me to save my little pink cottage. But it has rightfully grown into something much larger-the fight to restore the American Dream and the sacredness and security of each one of our homes."

1.

GIMME SHELTER.

Spring 1997 Medic Eleven, come in."

Forty-year-old EMT Susette Kelo grabbed the paramedic truck's radio receiver. "This is Medic Eleven."

"Respond to a man down at First Avenue and Niantic River Road."

Susette's partner, Jeff Douchette, whipped the wheel around and headed toward Niantic Bay, an inlet off Long Island Sound in southeastern Connecticut.

"Medic Eleven en route," Susette said.

Married with five sons, Susette Kelo had become an EMT a few years earlier, after a drunk driver crashed head-on into her seventeen-year-old son's vehicle, nearly killing him. Paramedics had helped save her boy's life. Susette had begun volunteering on ambulance runs as a way of giving back.

The experience ultimately convinced her to become a medic. Emergency response offered Susette an escape from her unfulfilling home life in Preston, a small farming community twenty miles from the Connecticut coast. Susette and her husband, John Jorsz, had a ranch house, a barn, and farm animals on four acres. It had been a great place to raise boys. But now all of them except her youngest lived on their own. And with high school graduation approaching, he would soon be gone as well.

She was thinking about moving on, too. Her marriage had soured, the relationship reduced to constant bickering. She felt like her husband showed more affection for the bottle than for her. He felt like she didn't appreciate how hard he worked to provide for them. But it didn't matter who was right; the romance was drained. And with the kids gone and the animals sold, the ranch felt empty and cold.

Susette knew she needed a change in scenery when the highlight of her week had become weekend EMT shifts. Most calls took her to waterfront communities on Long Island Sound. The water had a way of brightening her day.

"There he is," Douchette said, pulling up beside an elderly man sitting on a sidewalk curb, his feet resting on the street. Sweat saturated his shirt. An elderly woman and some pedestrians huddled around him.

"Grab the monitor," Douchette said.

With the summer temperature pushing eighty-five degrees, Susette had her long red hair pinned up in a French twist. Her form-fitting, navy blue uniform stuck to her tall, slender figure as she grabbed an oxygen bag, a heart monitor, and the drug box from the truck. But even while doing this she couldn't help noticing the attractive beach cottages lining the avenues along the water.

"Boy, it's beautiful down here," she said to her partner.

He headed straight for the patient, whose wife explained that they had been out for their routine morning walk and her husband had collapsed with chest pains. The man labored to breathe.

Susette gave him oxygen and applied cardiac-monitor cables to him while Douchette checked his vital signs. She saw fear in the elderly couple's eyes as an ambulance arrived.

"You were probably overcome by the heat," Douchette told the man, rea.s.suring him that he would be okay. "But just to be safe, we're going to bring you to the hospital. And I'm going to go with you."

Susette helped the patient onto a stretcher before packing the equipment back in her truck and taking the keys from Douchette, who climbed into the ambulance. "I'll meet you back at the hospital," he told her.

Pulling away, Susette spotted a house with a private dock, a small patch of beach, and a "For Sale" sign. That afternoon, when her shift ended, she returned to the scene to get the Realtor's name and phone number off the sign and take a closer look at the house. The setting sun put a sparkle on the ocean water that lapped up to the property's sandy sh.o.r.eline.

I really have to move down here, she thought. she thought.

For more than a year, Susette had been trying to talk her husband into selling the ranch and moving closer to the water, convinced she could cope with an unfulfilling marriage if she had the water as a friend. But Jorsz consistently resisted. A machinist at a paper-recycling mill, he spent sixty to seventy hours per week at work. The ranch offered a place to unwind on the weekend doing what he enjoyed-tinkering on engines and fixing things. Besides, his job was only fifteen minutes from the house. He really had no interest in leaving a rural town for a more congested coastal community close to an hour away from his job.

Susette called the Realtor and got the price for the beach house: $170,000. If her husband would agree to sell the ranch, she figured, they could pay cash for the beach house and still have enough left over for a small retirement nest egg. She hoped a house with a private boat dock might be enough to finally persuade him. That evening, Susette approached her husband in the yard while he worked on a piece of farming equipment. She described the house.

"You wouldn't have to work anymore," she told him.

"I don't want to leave," Jorsz said, not bothering to make eye contact.

She could tell he had been drinking. "You know, you might like this place," she added. "There's a dock. We could get a boat."

He ignored her.

"I'm going to ask you again for the last time," she said in desperation.

"I'm not leaving Preston," he said.

Susette took a step back. "Well, if you don't want to go, I'm going anyway."

He showed no expression. Neither did she.

She had been let down her entire life. It had begun with her father, William Stevens, who had walked out right after Susette's birth on June 14, 1956. Stevens had left Susette with nothing, not even a last name. Dest.i.tute, Susette's mother, Josephine Cha.s.se, had waited tables at a diner to support her six children in Millinocket, Maine, a remote rural town over sixty miles north of Bangor, not far from the Canadian border.

While her mother worked, Susette and her siblings fended for themselves during the long, hard winters. Her older brothers often fed her water with chocolate flavoring for breakfast. She wore socks on her little hands for mittens. At age four, Susette learned to keep warm inside their frigid house by climbing under the kitchen sink to be near the hot-water pipe. She had few friends and very little to look forward to.

In need of more steady work, Susette's mother moved to New London, Connecticut, before Susette's tenth birthday. She enrolled Susette in a Catholic school. After getting pregnant at age sixteen, Susette married Michael Kelo. By the time Susette turned twenty-five, she and Kelo had five sons.

Two years later, she divorced Kelo but kept his name. When her ex-husband failed to pay child support, Susette and her sons ended up on welfare for a short time before she found employment as a shipyard electrician at Electric Boat, a division of General Dynamics that manufactures submarines. With her five boys, she moved into a small house next to a chicken farm in Preston.

That's when she met thirty-two-year-old John Jorsz, who lived down the road, alone on his ranch. He had never married. At thirty-one, Susette had a body that defied the fact that she had delivered five children. Her fiery red hair ran all the way down to her waist. After a hurricane took down a tree in her yard, she asked Jorsz to cut it up, which he gladly did. Then when her boys' dog died, Jorsz helped them bury it. He even made a grave marker-a wooden cross bearing the dog's name.

In 1988, Susette married Jorsz and moved into the ranch house, along with her sons. Although the marriage never sizzled, it suited their needs. Jorsz provided a roof and three square meals a day, and he cared for the boys as if they were his own. Susette brought livestock to the farm and used her green thumb to dress the place up with gardens and crops.

Things worked for eight years. But when Susette hit forty, she yearned for something more. Tired of the day-to-day grind of maintaining the ranch and a marriage headed nowhere, she wanted to pursue something for herself. Childhood poverty had cheated her out of an education. Early pregnancy and a determination to be a good mother had negated any chance of a career. She had worn out her life raising five sons and trying to make two unfulfilling marriages work. There had to be something better out there. To figure it out, she needed a fresh start.

But the beach house wasn't the answer. It was nothing but a pipe dream without her husband's help. She knew she could never afford it on her own. That's all right That's all right, she figured. One way or the other, she'd find a place of her own by the water. And when she did, she'd leave Jorsz.

Any hope of landing near the water rested in New London, one of the oldest cities in America. Established in 1658 and named after Great Britain's main city, New London, at the juncture of the Thames River and Long Island Sound, thrived as a colonial port. Whaling made it a commercial power in the 1800s. In the twentieth century, though, New London was transformed into a blue-collar, industrial city, with the defense industry exploiting the city's seacoast for U.S. Navy and Coast Guard installations. But as the cold war wound down and the defense industry cut back, New London's unemployment rose, and its property values fell.

Susette's EMT unit had its home base at New London's city hospital, where Susette spent most of her weekends. A few weeks after her husband insisted he'd never leave Preston, Susette and Jeff Douchette got called to an emergency at New London's Naval Undersea Warfare Center, a thirty-two-acre vacant campus of buildings and laboratories on the banks of the Thames. The call turned out to be a false alarm. As they left the base, Susette asked Douchette for the keys and suggested a scenic route back to the hospital. Douchette agreed.

Susette exited the base onto East Street, which ran between the base and a civilian neighborhood settled by Irish and Italian immigrants in the early 1900s. Some homes on East Street had views overlooking the base and the water. Susette coasted to a stop sign at the end of the street.

"Wow, look at that house," she said, pointing at a two-story Victorian that occupied the corner of East and Trumbull streets.

Douchette was not impressed. The house looked abandoned and had no yard or driveway.

Susette parked the truck to get a closer look. Vines and overgrown brush concealed a set of brick steps leading from the street to the front door. Dreary beige paint, cracked and peeling, covered the exterior. A weathered "For Sale" sign dangled from a fence.

"I think I'd like to buy that," she said.

"Are you crazy?" Douchette said.

"No, I'm serious."

"You gotta be out of your mind."

The front of the house's foundation ab.u.t.ted the cracked sidewalk on East Street. The left side of the house went right to the edge of Trumbull Street. Fewer than ten feet separated the right side of the house from an almost identical Victorian that also had a "For Sale" sign on it.

Susette didn't care. The place had a water view. The fact that it needed work convinced her she just might be able to afford it. She jotted down the phone number and the address "8 East Street" on a sc.r.a.p of paper and stuffed it in her pocket.

2.

BIG AMBITIONS.

John G. Rowland had reason to smile. The Republican governor's polling numbers had top Democrats backing off from challenging him in his upcoming bid for reelection. Rowland had strung together an improbable series of convincing victories at a remarkably young age. After winning election to the state legislature at age twenty-three, Rowland had become a U.S. congressman at twenty-seven. Then in 1994, the state had elected him governor at age thirty-seven. Handsome, charismatic, and immensely popular, the governor had established dominance in a blue state in the heart of the northeast.

His meteoric rise had not gone unnoticed by the Republican National Party. Another four-year term as the state's chief executive would solidify his hopes of reaching the national stage. In this campaign, however, Rowland had more in mind than just winning: he also wanted to carry some of the state's most Democratic cities.

No Connecticut town voted more Democratic than New London, where Democrats outnumbered Republicans more than four to one among registered voters. Democrats absolutely dominated local, state, and federal elections there. But these overwhelming odds only fueled Rowland's ambition. He figured the city's economic woes gave him an opening. New London's unemployment rate was twice as high as the statewide average. Industry and business had fled the city. The crime rate was up, and a feeling of hopelessness had set in.