Kathy Kohm

 

Kathy Kohm

 Chapter 1

  On Sunday April 5, 1981 Blondie had the number one song that week with “Rapture”.  They had had a huge hit the year before with “Call Me” and this was a song to follow that up and hopefully capture some of that same success. Casey Kasem had announced its number one status that morning on his weekly Top 40 countdown. Listening to the countdown was a Sunday ritual for most Americans.  MTV was years away as was cable t.v..  Most televisions only received three channels. If you wanted to know the latest hit music you tuned in to Kasey Casem and listened to him count down the hit rock and pop songs from number forty all the way down to number one. It took all morning as he played each song with some information about new bands, changes in ranking from week to week or human interest stories in between. At my house we would listen on our way to church and then pick up with it again on the way home.  Then we would listen more in the house on the radio to see what the number one song was for the week. 

    “Rapture” by Blondie was an ethereal and smooth sort of song with an overall eerie and sad tone that ends in a strange attempt at rap.  We thought it was cool, though.  Anything Debbie Harry did was cool then. But the song had an eerie and melancholy feel. Most of the songs on the top ten that week were a bit sad.  “Woman” by John Lennon was high in the charts that week.  He had been shot dead outside his apartment building by a mentally ill fan just a few months before in December so quite a few of his recent songs were in the Billboard Top 100 that year.  It was still difficult to listen to any of his songs without feeling grief about the senselessness of his death.  “The Best of Times” by Styx was another popular song. Listening to that week’s top ten is like being enveloped in a strange cloud of melancholy.  Spring was coming.  It seemed that music should be upbeat and optimistic with Spring on the way but you cannot help to hear a somber trend in that top ten list.

    It was a Sunday and it was warm in Southern Indiana. Tornadoes had torn across the Midwest that night. Indiana saw storms and high winds but the morning had brought calm weather and a warm day in the low 50’s. 

    After a long cold winter a sunny day in the low 50’s can feel like a day at the beach. April in Southern Indiana can be cold and snowy one day and 70 degrees the next.  It can have cloudy overcast weather for a week and then suddenly the sun will come out and you would almost swear it was July in the afternoon. It was one of those rare beautiful warm days and brown haired, blue eyed, 11 year old Kathy Kohm decided to go jogging about 1:30 p.m.  Her Mother had left a little earlier to go get the car washed.  Her Father and her brothers were watching the NBA playoffs. She left the house after Casey Kasem had announced the number one song in green jogging pants with a white stripe down the legs, a yellow long sleeve sweater with her name on it, and light blue tennis shoes. Kathy only weighed 88 pounds but jogging was all the rage lately.  Even the word “jogging” was new.  Kathy played softball in the summer and was part of the YMCA swim team. It was a competitive team and every swimmer was always trying to beat their personal best. In a few years she would be in high school and sports would be even more competitive then.  She wanted to be ready.  It was also just a very nice sunny day to get out in the fresh air and jog.

     The neighborhood was perfect for it.  With paved tree lined streets that wound around three different lakes through a wooded hilly landscape.  It was an ideal neighborhood for jogging.  It was an ideal neighborhood for almost anything.  It was unusual for Southern Indiana in that it was a gated neighborhood with guards in guardhouses at both entrances.  Strangers could not just drive in. Parents felt perfectly safe letting their kids go out to play with friends or go for bike rides. Everybody knew everybody.  

    Kathy jogged and walked some near Holly Lake and passed by another jogger, William Griese around 2:15.  Griese said he saw her once on the road and expected to see her when he went back the other way but she wasn’t there. He didn’t think anything of it because he figured she went into a friend’s house or turned around.  Nothing seemed odd or worrisome.  What was there to worry about in a gated community?

    This type of gated community seems pretty common now but in 1981, in rural Indiana, it was a rarity. There were fancy neighborhoods an hour away in Evansville but a gated neighborhood with guard shacks at both of the entrances was very unusual even for a larger town like Evansville.  Most of Spencer County and the other surrounding counties were just farmland dotted with small towns. People sometimes joked about Christmas Lake Village as if it were Beverly Hills. And it was an odd little island. But it wasn’t fancy and glitzy like Beverly Hills. It was very neighborly. There were and still are lots of scheduled activities, clubs and social groups creating a very nice community within the neighborhood.  

      Kathy was usually only out jogging for about half an hour.  Her mother, Rosemary, got home from washing the car about 2:15. When Kathy did not return home by 3:30 her mother, Rosemary, was extremely worried. This was not like Kathy at all.  She called around to friends and neighbors. No one had seen her. Everyone knew this wasn’t like Kathy to go missing.  Rosemary called the Town Marshall, Leo Snyder.  He got a group of about 60 volunteers together to start looking.  The way the town mobilized so quickly is a testament to the kind of tight knit and neighborly community that it was.  

    But there was no sign of Kathy.  She had simply disappeared.

    I try to imagine what that must feel like to a parent to a missing child. You are just suddenly so helpless and untethered. Your child is just gone.  You can’t call them.  You can’t find them.  All their life you have always known where they were.  But suddenly that has all changed.  The worry, madness and frustration must be like nothing else.  And you would want to try to keep from imagining the worst. But you would ask most certainly imagine the worst.  Maybe she went to a friend’s house and forgot to call.  She would not do that but maybe she did.  She is only 11 but maybe this is some sort of pre-teenage rebellion.  She has not seemed rebellious lately at all but maybe that is what this is. 

     As the afternoon becomes the evening and a sunny day turns into a chilly night the dread and worry must be unbearable.  But you have no choice but to bear it.  There is nothing else you can do but bear it.  You have two other younger children, Kathy’s little brothers.  You have to hold it together for them.  

     Maybe she is hurt.  Maybe she injured herself.  Maybe the phone will ring in the morning and everything will be explained.  The night is long and you are exhausted but you don’t sleep.  Even so you hope that in the morning this will all have been a terrible dream.  But morning comes and Kathy is not back.  There is no call with the relief of happy news.  There is just nothing.  She is just gone.