For them, the choice was black and white

Greg Bean

Coda

I remember a day in early spring, sometime in the late 1960s, when Uncle Earl showed up on our doorstep with a new vacuum cleaner.

It was his first day on the job, selling Hoovers door to door, and he wanted to try out his new sales pitch on my mother, who may or may not have needed a new vacuum cleaner, but was a willing audience for his efforts.

And a pathetic pitch it was, because Earl was a lousy vacuum cleaner salesman. But he was an honest man, and that’s why he was now selling Hoovers.

I didn’t learn the full story until years later, of course, but Earl was selling vacuums because he’d recently quit his real job and selling vacuums was the only work available in that tight economic climate. He had a mortgage and three kids to feed.

Before selling Hoovers, Earl had been a salesman for a local heavy equipment firm, a firm that frequently did business with the county. A few months before, the county commissioners had placed an order for some trucks and an earth mover.

It was a good sale for Earl, with lots of potential commission. But when it came time for the county to settle up, one of the commissioners had a request — fill in the sales paperwork for a few thousand dollars above the real sales price. When the county paid the bill, the commissioner said, he’d split the difference with Uncle Earl and the owner of the company.

When Earl went to his boss to say he’d been offered a kickback, his boss just shrugged his shoulders and said that’s how business with the county was done.

Uncle Earl didn’t report the fraud, as he probably should have done, but he quit his job that very day. He just couldn’t bring himself to commit a crime against his friends and neighbors who paid the bills with their taxes. It was simply wrong, he said. A clear choice for a man with a personal moral code.

A few weeks later, he was selling Hoovers because that was the only work he could find.

As I mentioned, it was a tough economic climate in our part of the country in those years. We lived in a small town and jobs were scarce.

It took Uncle Earl several years to get his life back on track after he drew his personal line in the sand and quit selling heavy equipment. He lost his house. He sometimes had two or three low-paying jobs at a time in an effort to make ends meet. His kids wore hand-me-downs and got only one pair of new shoes a year. At that time, a pair of high-top Keds was five bucks.

All because he did the right thing.

I asked him about it years later.

“Why didn’t you take the money?”

He looked at me as if I was a tad dim. “Because it wasn’t the right thing to do,” he said simply. “Because I have to look at myself in the mirror every morning when I shave.” He pointed a finger toward the house, where his kids were watching “McHale’s Navy” on the old black and white television. “Because my life has to be an example for theirs. It has to be an example to you — no matter if it means some hardship.”

That sounds a little corny and simplistic, I know, but I’ve been thinking a lot about Earl in the last few weeks as arrest after arrest is made in this area after alleged criminal activity that suggests not much has changed in the last three decades. I think about him every time I hear someone attempt to justify or explain these particular criminal activities.

“They were set up. They wouldn’t have taken the money if the FBI hadn’t tempted them with it.”

“I can’t believe anyone would sell out for so little money. They must have been framed.”

“Doesn’t that sound like entrapment, or maybe politics?”

“Is it really a crime if they were taking government money and not real loan-sharking proceeds?”

“Everybody in government does it to some extent. What’s the big deal?”

I think those people are wrong.

I remember what U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie said the day the first round of arrests were made in Monmouth County.

“What we discovered is that this was business as usual across a surprisingly wide swath of Monmouth County, where an attitude of greed, arrogance and entitlement prevailed,” Christie said. “These complaints portray a shocking eagerness and ease with which these public officials engaged in criminal activity, to trade contracts for cash or even to be involved in money laundering.”

In other words, these accused criminals were offered a simple choice — do the right thing, the legal thing, or take the money.

They allegedly took the money — eagerly and with their own free wills. Beyond that, there are no shades of gray. If Christie and the FBI are right, there are no glib explanations, no mitigating circumstances. We need not pity any of them as they face their punishments — even if they are good family men with long histories of public service. Even if they are really nice guys.

They allegedly took the money. If they took the money, they broke the law with knowledge that they were engaging in criminal activity, no matter where or whom that money came from. If they broke the law and the public trust, then they should go to jail.

It’s just too bad none of them had a chance to talk to Uncle Earl before they made their awful choices. He might have been able to steer them toward an honorable career in vacuum cleaner sales.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers.