Neighborhood stalwart's shooting shakes community, but not his faith
By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune The Times-Picayune
A former Catholic school principal who pioneered the rebuilding of his eastern New Orleans neighborhood was shot last week during a home invasion, sending shock waves through the community he encouraged to come home.
Walter Bonam is known for his efforts to address racial discrimination in New Orleans
Walter Bonam, known for his work with the Catholic church and his efforts to address racial discrimination in New Orleans, was gunned down while struggling with a man who walked into his house in the 7400 block of Seven Oaks Road Wednesday and demanded money from his wife.
Friends and neighbors held a prayer vigil the next day for Bonam, who is paralyzed from the waist down and still has a bullet lodged in his chest, according to Sarah McDonald, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese.
McDonald said the shooting came as a shock to the archdiocese, where Bonam oversees evangelization and the rite of Christian initiation of adults. It also comes at a time when Archbishop Gregory Aymond is preparing an action plan for a campaign to fight violence and racism in New Orleans.
Bonam's wife, Jennifer, told police that she saw a young, thin, tan-complected man walking up and down their street early Wednesday, according to police spokeswoman Hilal Williams.
Bonam, his wife and a daughter were barbecuing in their yard, leaving the front door and garage open as they went back and forth into the house, Williams said.
At 9 p.m., a thin man holding a chrome-colored pistol, his face covered with a white bandanna, appeared in the dining area of the home and demanded money of Jennifer Bonam, Williams said. She gave him a wallet, but after finding no money in it, the man put it down on a kitchen table and repeated his demand, Williams said.
Jennifer Bonam then led the robber into the garage, where she said he could find her purse in a car.
Walter Bonam soon came to his wife's aid and began struggling with the man, Williams said. At some point the gun went off, and the robber fled on foot.
Jennifer Bonam told police that after the shooting, she saw a black sports utility vehicle circling the area, but could not give a description of the several people inside it, Williams said.
Bonam was the first person to rebuild his home on that block of Seven Oaks Road a year after it was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. That was the second time the house had been rebuilt; it burned down during a fire in 2001.
Writing a guest editorial for The Times-Picayune last year, Bonam talked about the concerns of those returning to sparsely populated eastern New Orleans.
"It was another year before anyone else moved onto our street. At times, we wondered aloud whether we were brave or foolish," he wrote. "Five years on, about half of the houses on our street are occupied. (Is the block half-empty, or half-full?)"
But even in the immediate aftermath of the storm, Bonam expressed confidence in the ability of residents to overcome its devastation.
"In many countries, abject poverty and governmental impotence are a way of life," he wrote in another editorial for the paper. "People in those places have no basis for expecting anything different. There is no safety net, no FEMA, no flood or homeowners insurance on which to rely when disaster strikes. Can we see far enough to recognize that we are blessed to live in a place where, even when these fail us to some degree, we are better off than those who never had them at all?
"Can we not acknowledge that the temporary housing into which many of us have been pushed, and which we lament, is superior to the ordinary circumstances of life for billions around the globe?" Bonam wrote.
His friends and co-workers say Bonam is approaching the shooting with the same attitude.
"I was so impressed with the faith of this man after what happened," said Sister Mary Ellen Wheelahan, safe environment coordinator for the archdiocese, who visited Bonam on Friday. "He's on a journey with God and he doesn't know which way God is leading him, but he's accepting of it."
The Rev. John Harfmann, pastor at Corpus Christi-Epiphany Catholic Church, said Bonam sings and plays guitar with the church's choir, which is directed by his wife. He formerly served as principal at St. Peter Claver School.
"Walter is an example of a very religious, calm and very sincere follower of Christ," Harfmann said. "He lives it by word and by example and by sharing his time and talents."
Bonam also has been a key player in the archdiocese's efforts to address racial discrimination in the New Orleans area, and helped to write the pastoral letter on racial harmony issued by Archbishop Alfred Hughes in 2006.
In classes Bonam led after the letter was released, he realized that he'd have to use humor to cut through what was likely to be a tense atmosphere, said co-worker Holly Caffarel, who attended the first class.
"He put on this beanie hat and dreadlock wig and asked, 'Now, is everyone relaxed?'" she said. "That's the kind of person he is."
But Bonam takes his African-American heritage very seriously in addressing discrimination, in part because of his upbringing as the son of a World War II Tuskegee airman.
"As products of a society steeped in centuries of wholesale racial discrimination, our social institutions have become the railroad tracks along which the freight train of racism moves with a momentum no longer dependent upon the open, active prejudice of individuals," he wrote in the Times-Picayune. "No, racism can and does keep moving just fine in the absence of a critical mass of citizens willing to consciously and actively block the tracks and bring it to a halt."
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