Arlington Hts. father-son bonds twist in winds of life

Visit a maternity ward on any day in any suburban hospital and you can spot the gleam in a new father's eyes as he proudly points to his son on the other side of the glass and boasts to visitors, “That's my boy.”

Walk through most suburban neighborhoods on a sunny Sunday afternoon and you'll see the identical smiles that erupt on the faces of a father and his toddler son if the boy's fat plastic bat makes contact with the ball tossed underhand by the dad. Elementary schools are packed with camera-toting dads capturing their sons' concerts and other performances. We see dads bend to tie their sons' shoes on the playground, or stand at worship services or school dances behind dressed-up sons sporting neckties that were tied by their fathers.

The suburbs produce a never-ending public display of wonderful, lifelong, father-son memories. Sometimes those sons grow up to be adults at their old dads' bedsides for the last earthly moment they'll share.

The final exchange between 55-year-old widower George Nellessen and his 19-year-old son, Mathew, according to prosecutors, occurred in their Arlington Heights family room when the dad, bound to a chair, sat helplessly as his son grabbed a baseball bat from the garage, swung it into his dad's head five times, and then stabbed him in the neck with a steak knife and spent a couple nights in the home with the corpse before the crime became public. The son and three suspected accomplices are being held in Cook County jail on charges of murder and armed robbery.

We react to that blood-chilling horror with revulsion and sad amazement of how life can go from a father gazing upon his innocent newborn son for the first time to prosecutors' allegations that the father's eyes were taped shut as that same son snuffed out his life.

The federal government's National Violent Death Reporting System, which collects information from a group of states that does not include Illinois, says 98 parents were killed by children across 16 states in 2008. In recent years, the suburbs have seen a handful of parents killed by their offspring, from an adult man charged with decapitating his mother in Palatine and leaving her head on her porch to a 16-year-old Algonquin son who shot his dad in the head.

“This happens all the time, every day, and we just gloss over it because it happens in California or somewhere else,” says Pastor Rande Smith of the Community Church of Rolling Meadows, the Nellessen family's church. “When it happens here with people you know, it's like a kick in the gut.”

Rolling into the millennium as a complete family with two young kids, the Nellessens seemed to be a loving family doing their best to handle “what life dealt them,” says the pastor Smith, himself a father of one son and four daughters. Smith officiated at the 2004 funeral of Laura Nellessen (George's wife and mother of their daughter and son), who died of cancer at age 45. The remaining family members “didn't seem bitter toward God,” Smith says, and they carried on as best they could.

Every year on the anniversary of Laura Nellessen's death, the surviving father, son and daughter bought an ad in this newspaper to express their love: “May the winds of love blow softly, and whisper so you'll hear. We will always love and miss you, and wish that you were here. Always on our minds. Forever in our hearts.”

Trying to figure out what went wrong since then or what anyone might have done differently to prevent this new tragedy is an exercise in frustration.

“We never know what is going on in another person's mind,” notes Smith, who wonders himself how things ended so badly. “I doubt that we will ever know the answers to these questions.”

Even in maternity wards with the start of new lives, there can be “a lot of sad stuff” for babies born into families with hardships and conflicts, says Cindy Hartwig, director of women's and children's services at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights.

But Hartwig says that father-son bond generally is a joyous thing to witness.

“There's nothing better than watching a new dad,” she says. “They're proud. For a man to have a son, to pass on his legacy, it's huge. It's precious. It's a new life.”

Nearly every dad happily dons the hospital's souvenir baseball cap sporting his newborn's footprint, and eagerly jumps into the “Dads Boot Camp” class to learn skills such as changing a diaper, Hartwig says. Many dads make predictions about their sons.

“They're all going to be professional baseball players or Michael Jordan or doctors,” says Hartwig, who has been working as a nurse since 1977 and has an adult son and daughter.

“Life changes as kids grow,” Hartwig says.

As much as people blame parents when things go wrong or credit them when children succeed, the truth is that no one has 100-percent control over everything that happens in those lives, Smith says. The pastor says George Nellessen loved his two children equally.

The son's next court appearance is scheduled on the Monday after Mother's Day. The 21-year-old daughter attends a college out of state and “has a strong support system of an extremely supportive family, and for that, I'm thankful,” Smith says.

As some struggle to cope with tragedy, others begin today with fresh slates, new lives and all those wonderful moments to enjoy. The worst tragedies share the same suburban landscape as the happiest moments life has to offer, including those bonds between fathers and sons.

“For me, how I deal with it, is I went home and called my son in Pennsylvania and thanked him for being a wonderful kid and a responsible adult,” says Smith, who notes that his faith promises a bright forever in the future. “We never know what tomorrow is going to bring, so we live each day serving the Lord and loving one another.”