Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

The teen, an alderman and Ten Commandments

The young man's letter questioning a stone monument in a city park prompts a tempest of biblical proportions.

FREDERICK, Md. - The phone would ring at dawn, not long after the newspaper had landed on front porches around town, carrying the latest on the teenager challenging the Ten Commandments.

"How does it feel to have raised a Communist?" one caller hissed.

Phyllis Trettien would try to reason with them. Her son wasn't attacking religion, she'd say. He was raising a serious constitutional issue about separation of church and state.

"They'd generally just hang up or scream at me, some Bible verse. They'd accuse me of being a horrible parent," she said. "Like there was evil afoot in Frederick."

Her son, Blake Trettien, was a high school senior last year when he wrote local officials asking why a 4-foot-high granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments was occupying a prominent spot in a municipal park.

His letter caused an uproar.

Christian groups held rallies at the monument. A Republican alderman, widely viewed as having ambitions for higher office, lambasted the town's Democratic mayor for pursuing a compromise. The mayor ordered police to stop the alderman's allies from marching in a parade with a procommandments banner.

The Frederick News-Post was inundated with letters to the editor, mostly from Fredericktonians angry at Trettien. But a lot of people wrote in support of him as well.

And then, when the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city on his behalf, Trettien joined a long line of litigants challenging Ten Commandments displays on government property.

The past three years have seen an explosion of such cases.

Since 2000, federal courts have ruled at least 17 times on the issue, in all but three cases ordering removal of the displays as unconstitutional.

In the 1990s there was only one significant federal ruling on the Ten Commandments, a decision ordering Cobb County, Ga., to remove a Decalogue panel from the wall of its courthouse.

Numerous other challenges since 2000 have been settled out of court or are pending.

The most well-known case involves Alabama judge Roy Moore. Now the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Moore announced Thursday he will defy a federal appeals court order to remove a 21/2-ton granite Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building. Moore has vowed to appeal the 11th Circuit Court ruling, which also applies to Florida, to the Supreme Court.

The establishment clause of the First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

So far, courts have interpreted that to mean the government may not appear to favor one set of beliefs over another. The Supreme Court has declined three times since 1994 to review lower court decisions banning the displays from public property.

Even so, 62 percent of respondents in a newly released poll for the First Amendment Center in Washington supported allowing public officials to post the Ten Commandments in public buildings; 44 percent strongly supported it.

In communities across the country, Decalogue disputes have spurred anguished debates that have tended to about the role of God in American life, debates that have tended to turn complex people on both sides into caricatures.

In Frederick, a young civil libertarian sees his nemesis, a conservative Christian politician, as dangerously intolerant. But this same politician believes every individual has a path to salvation, and not necessarily through Jesus Christ.

The politician, in turn, cannot fathom the young man's opposition to the Ten Commandments display as anything other than defiance of its moral precepts. But the young man has earned college scholarships that recognize exemplary character as well as academic achievement.

The charitable organization that erected the monument 45 years ago, meanwhile, wants to see it stay. But not at the price of demonizing the young man who raised the objections.

Both sides, though, do agree on one thing: The foundation of the republic depends on their winning.

Frederick, population 55,000, lies among Civil War battlefields and suburban sprawl in the grassy foothills of the Catoctin Mountains. Jobs are plentiful, given the presence of Fort Detrick, a major Army medical research facility. Other workers commute "down the road," as they say, meaning Baltimore and Washington, both about 40 miles away.

Here, history hangs heavy and full of contradictions.

Native son Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled Banner, the national anthem and symbol of freedom. But in Frederick's Catholic cemetery lies former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, author of the 1857 Dred Scott decision that affirmed slavery and denied citizenship to people of African descent.

Trettien's family moved to the area from Palm Beach when he was 4.

A rising sophomore at Johns Hopkins University, Trettien has straight blond hair, modishly parted in the middle, and a tuft of brown beard below his lip, known as a soul patch.

Now 19, he sat recently on a park bench in front of Frederick's Ten Commandments monolith, just blocks from his parents' home, reflecting on what he's learned since unleashing this maelstrom.

"A lot of people took it very personally, which I guess I didn't expect, though I should have. It seems like this was kind of an underlying issue the whole time. I had no idea there were these kind of conflicts in our community."

In 1956, looking to promote his film, The Ten Commandments, Hollywood producer Cecil B. DeMille telephoned a judge in Minnesota with an unusual proposition.

The judge, E.J. Ruegemer, had been posting paper copies of the commandments in public schools and courtrooms across the state to instruct youth on proper morals.

Why not post bronze plaques instead of paper, DeMille asked? And why stop at schools and courtrooms - what about other public places?

Ruegemer liked the idea but suggested granite, like the tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. The judge got his charitable club, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, to pay for the project.

Local Eagles chapters, known as "aeries," distributed 4,000 of the stones in the 1950s and 1960s. They were prominently inscribed with the phrase, "I AM the LORD thy GOD" and were decorated with stars of David, symbols of Christ and an eagle clutching an American flag.

Frederick's monument was dedicated on June 29, 1958, in front of the County Courthouse, which later became City Hall.

In the 1980s, the monolith was moved to Memorial Park, a shady square of stone monuments remembering Fredericktonians who have died in wars from the American Revolution to Vietnam. The park was once a cemetery for the Evangelical Reform Church across the street.

For years, the stone inscribed with "thou shalt not kill" stood watch over the monuments to the fallen soldiers.

In July 2000 the Reform Church pastor, although himself a strong believer in separation of church and state, told his congregation he was surprised the monolith had not become an issue.

"At some time, someone will object," Frederick A. Wenner said in a sermon. "And we'll have a hot time in the old town."

Trettien's father is a landscape architect. His mother teaches special education classes at a prison.

"I've tried to teach my children to see the good in everyone, even a 17-year-old murderer," she says. "I've raised my children to think for themselves."

Being independent minded hasn't always been easy for her son, who describes himself as "always kind of small and picked on." In eighth grade, a group of bullies harassed him. Fistfights were impossible to win, so Trettien hurled taunts instead.

The bullies complained that Trettien was sassing them. A school counselor called him in for a lecture.

"He told me to respect the power structure," Trettien says.

That was it. Trettien dropped out.

He spent the rest of the year schooling himself at home. He read books and watched television documentaries. A tutor helped him with algebra.

When ninth grade came around, he jumped to high school. By then, he was two or three grades ahead in math.

Today, Trettien attends Johns Hopkins on nearly full scholarship.

Two years ago, Trettien heard a National Public Radio report about a Decalogue battle in Elkhart, Ind. That got him to thinking: What about our monument?

He mailed letters to city and county officials in March 2002. "The government's endorsement of one belief over another creates an environment that is hostile to those who do not hold the same beliefs," Trettien wrote. "This is offensive; Governments simply should not display religious symbols in a way that divides us."

Alderman David Lenhart wears his black hair spiked with a hint of gel. On his finger is a gold ring with 17 diamonds - one gem for every year of his marriage.

The mustachioed software company executive admits to having succumbed in the past to avarice: "Money used to be extremely important to me. Extremely important. It's not anymore."

His father passed away in 1990. His mother was killed six years later in a car wreck. During this time, Lenhart and his wife were trying to have children, undergoing expensive and agonizing fertility treatments.

He felt a hole open inside.

"It just became very clear to me that that safe harbor I had had with my parents - that place where I could do no wrong - was gone. That feeling of total, unconditional love - gone," Lenhart, 43, says.

Gradually, he found a new sense of security. "It's not like fire by baptism or drenched in water. I think it was just a series of life experiences that made me recognize a lot of sorrow, but then, a lot of joy," he says.

"All I know is I fully, completely give my life to Christ."

It's not news in Frederick that Lenhart, a Republican, doesn't think much of Jennifer Dougherty, the city's Democratic mayor. He has criticized her management style, her municipal appointments and, especially, her handling of the Ten Commandments dispute.

"People who want to take down the monument don't want to be held accountable to the principles or rules that stone represents," Lenhart says. "If you are a moral person, what objection could you possibly have to these principles?"

He's been so vocal, in fact, that many observers think Lenhart is after her job.

"I think Dave has political ambitions. No question," said his friend John Ashbury, a local political commentator.

And for an ambitious Republican in Frederick County, is fighting the ACLU over the Ten Commandments a good political move? "Within a certain segment of the local population, absolutely," Ashbury says.

The Trettiens grew wary of the alderman when, at a rally on the steps of City Hall, Lenhart stood by quietly while a local preacher denounced Blake Trettien as an "evil force."

Their unease was reinforced when Trettien appeared with Lenhart and Bob Tansey, leader of the local Christian Coalition and a retired military officer, on a radio show last summer. The host was a former alderman named Blaine Young.

"Young came right out in the beginning and said he was opposed to me," Trettien recalls. "And he kept referring to me by my first name. It was like, "What do you think, Mr. Lenhart? And you, Colonel Tansey? Now what about you, Blake?'

"So I started doing the same. I'd say, "Well, Blaine.' "

In the waiting room after the show, a red-faced Tansey threw his notes at Phyllis Trettien. "Steady erosion of Christian values," said one of the talking points.

There was no point in fighting the ACLU lawsuit, the mayor argued. Her solution was to sell the sliver of land on which the monolith sat to a private group - preferably, for historical and practical reasons, the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Eagles.

Satisfied that the monument was now in private hands, the ACLU dropped its lawsuit in December.

Local businessman Chris Goodwin pilots his Cadillac through town, his windows open, a cigarette in hand. Bearded and garrulous, he is also a proud member of the Eagles, and like most Eagles, was disgusted by the controversy.

"It's tough to argue with "thou shalt not kill,' " Goodwin says. But the hostility toward Trettien just wasn't right. "The kid was looking at an issue that involves a matter of principle. And he was getting slammed in the press."

Civic pride motivated the Eagles to buy back the land. They wanted to put the controversy behind Frederick. "The city was getting a black eye," Goodwin says.

In the Cadillac with him are fellow Eagles Joe Baer, 60, and Bill Burall, 77, who recite, in unison, the Eagles pledge: "If I cannot speak well of another Eagle, I will not speak ill of him."

Baer's father was a warehouse worker at Fort Detrick, the Army medical research facility in Frederick, and was involved in giving the monument to the city in 1958. "I remember when he told me, "Son, we're going to have the Ten Commandments donated to the city of Frederick.' I was 15 years old."

It was a proud moment for his father, Baer says, uncomplicated by the culture wars. "We didn't have all that stuff going on like we do today. But times change," he says, sighing.

Tooling about town, Goodwin stops to show a visitor the Eagles clubhouse, a 1950s brick building with a bingo room and a bar that serves draft beers for 70 cents.

The next stop is Memorial Park. At the Ten Commandments monument, Baer lights a cigar, leaning into the stone to shield it from the wind. At the monument's base is a green vase holding wilting day lilies and with a card taped to its lip.

"I don't know what this is, but it's got an interesting little note here," Baer says. The card contains an unattributed verse about God being a "universal religion of love" that transcends all faiths and dogmas.

"You want it?" Baer asks a reporter.

"Take it," Burall urges. "It's just going to get throwed away, anyway."

Lenhart is the type who, when lunching with friends, will be the only person at the table to say grace. But he does so silently.

That might surprise the Trettiens.

But Lenhart's friend, John Ashbury, who calls himself "not particularly religious," insists the alderman never tries to foist his beliefs on his friends.

The Trettiens also might not expect to hear Lenhart say: "I know in my heart that my Muslim friends, my Jewish friends - that they all have a path to God. For me, that path is explicitly through Jesus Christ. He is my savior, and he is God's son. I believe others have to find their own path."

As for politics, Lenhart won't rule out running for mayor. But it's not his life's goal, he says. To understand that, people need to know something.

In April 2002, while on a business trip to San Diego, he suffered a major heart attack and collapsed on the sidewalk.

"Am I dying?" he asked a paramedic.

"We're going to save you," the man replied.

The strange thing about dying was how perfectly he comprehended it. His mind was lucid. He could move, smell, talk - except there was something draining from his body, something precious and good. Flowing in behind it, filling the cavity, was terror.

Lenhart prayed, "Please, don't take me. Don't take me."

God answered. Lenhart felt peace. And he knew he would live.

After a shot of nitroglycerin, his blood pressure surged. A surgeon at a nearby hospital whisked him into surgery.

Lenhart is convinced God saved his life for a purpose that has yet to be revealed. Maybe it's to become mayor. Or maybe it's simply to be a good husband and father to his two kids, born after years of fertility treatments.

He returned to Frederick infused with a sense of mission.

"There is no doubt in my mind," he says. "God does exist."

And Trettien? Does he believe in God?

The normally unflappable teenager bridles at the question, which has come up so often in the past 18 months.

"Once again, that's nobody's business. See, that's the kind of thing I really, really tried to avoid. Because it's not about me and my beliefs, or anyone's beliefs, it's about making sure anyone, regardless of religious belief, feels welcome and comfortable in government places."

Trettien sits on the bench in front of the monument. He's asked to name the Ten Commandments.

Trettien begins reeling them off.

But the monument is right there!

He laughs and covers his eyes, promising to name at least the first four, since "they're the most objectionable because of their explicitly religious content."

He begins:

"You shall have no god before me. Um, let's see. What else? Don't take the Lord's name in vain. The Sabbath. There's one more." He lifts his hand and peeks at the monument. "Oh, yeah. Graven images!"

Nearly a year and a half after Trettien wrote his letters to City Hall, the Ten Commandments controversy lives on in Frederick.

In June, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a watchdog group, filed a new lawsuit alleging the constitutional violation has not been resolved because the monument still appears to be standing in a public park.

Now, the city is talking about building a fence around the monument, a physical and visual barrier to signal its separateness. But the park is not large - about 1.3 acres - and the general feeling is that a fence will look absurd.

Burall suggests playfully that the Eagles remove the monument but keep control of the land, "just to be ornery."

Baer throws back his head and laughs: "Yeah, I may want to sit up there in the evenings and drink a few beers."

But his smile quickly fades.

"You know, we don't have no ax to grind," the lifelong Eagle says solemnly. "We don't like having to spend our charity money, neither, but we thought we'd buy the land and be done with it. We should have knowed better. This is America."