See him 'on duty' --- whatever
his get-up of the moment --- and you won't soon forget. This
summer of 1996 he's favoring a sort of Sanctified
Sandwich Board arrangement --- a five-foot-high Our Lady
of Guadalupe wall rug hanging from his neck in front,
while a placard bearing posters of Jesus and Mary is
suspended on his back. The letters on the T-shirt beneath
are huge: "Choose Life." His bright red socks (to symbolize,
he explains, that we wade in the blood of millions of
aborted infants) are pulled up over black pants (to
represent mourning), while the bright red gloves on his
hands, he says, signify that our collective hands, like
Pilate's, are stained with blood. The style of the cowboy white straw
hat on his head seems to have changed the least over the
years. Like its worn-out predecessors it is still white,
and carries the same labels. On the front, a red heart
bears the image of a baby and the words "Protect the
Unborn," while on the back a sign declares "Say
No to Abortion, Restore Value to All Life, Vote Pro
Life." Pro-Life Andy Anderson --- he
legally changed his name in June, 1987 --- has been a
Reno landmark for over 20 years. Sixty-nine years old
now, he still shows up almost daily at what he calls
"the local abortion mill" (which he's pursued
from its old digs on Mill Street to its new, fortified,
quarters on Tyrone Road), to pray and conspicuously
dramatize the plight of America's unborn. Should you not
be current on that situation, text on the back of his
T-shirt will bring you up-to-date: there are "4,352
babies killed in abortions each day in U.S.A.
alone." In the view of several Reno
journalists, the big news about Pro-Life Anderson is that
he is not crazy. Gazette-Journal columnist and major
Gannett stockholder Rollan Melton once breathlessly
wrote: "Friends, if you ever believed
anything I've written for your eyes, believe this:
Charles "Andy" Anderson is most definitely not
crazy. A glutton for punishment, yes. But crazy? No
way!" And a couple of years ago Cory
Farley took the same tack, leading off a profile of
Anderson with the words: "The thing a lot of people
yearn to ask Pro-Life Andy Anderson is, "Are you
nuts? "Not rhetorically, as in 'I
don't understand you.' Literally, as in 'Are you
crazy?'" Even Anderson admits that "some
of these things I come up with are really way out, as far
as some people are concerned." But what seems to unsettle people
most about Anderson, when all is said and done, is that
he is living out an absolute commitment. In a
country that elects an Arkansan weather-vane to the
Presidency and where prestigious academicians teach that
truth is a repressive conspiracy, an effective
transcendentally- based commitment by someone not
deranged seems to boggle the media mind. Anderson's personal life has
essentially been sacrificed. Everything now is simply
grist for his anti-abortion cause. Call him up on the phone, for
example, and you'll hear pro-life doggerel: Abortion rights don't exist
Or evil wrongs may persist.
Pro-choice, the Devil's Lie
Babies do not choose to die.
Please leave your name message and
number at the tone signal, I will call you back as soon
as possible. God bless you and your loved ones.
Like his schoolteacher used to
remind him, "Andy, everything that rhymes is not
poetry."
Twice the man has crawled on his
knees from Reno's downtown Pioneer Center for the
Performing Arts to Washoe Medical Center "as an act
of
atonement, asking
God to have mercy on our country and to beg people to
stop killing their babies."
"I'm just a human poster in
God's hands, to use any way he inspires me,"
Anderson will explain, given a chance.
He speaks rapidly, touching on all
his key points.
"You have people who are
willing to advertise
dirty books and everything on neon signs on the main street of town," he says, "so why should we be ashamed to be neon signs for God?
"Some people say, 'Oh, you
love to see your picture in the paper, and all that,' and
if I could do it with a paper bag over my head, I would.
But I'm not ashamed of what I'm doing. "I'm just basically a..
a.." he searches for the word, and finds it,
"a.. PR man for pro-life with the Lord. Public
relations, like the guy on the commercials in
southern..." Anderson can't recall the name of
Southern California auto-sales legend Cal Worthington,
but he's got the gist of it: "... who says, "C'mon
down, I'll put my head in the lion's mouth, if you'll buy
my car, I'll stand on my head on my car.' And nobody
calls up and says, "Aw, you idiot, I wouldn't buy a
car from you if you were the last car dealer on
earth." What he's done is draw attention to his
product, rather than to himself. He draws it to himself
and then he gets his message out while they're looking at
that crazy guy on top of the car with his head in the
lion's mouth. (chuckle) "And that's my method. That's
what I do. I'm not doing it for my personal vanity, cause
God knows I have no reason at all; I'm as much of a
sinner as anyone else. "But even if it saves one
baby's life, then I'll feel it's justified. People may
say, 'I might not like his looks, but is what he's saying
true?' That's the important element." Anderson has been spat upon, pushed,
cursed and punched. Rocks have been thrown at him,
bottles thrown at him, he's been arrested and jailed
about 11 times. His various old cars have been
firebombed, the windows broken, tires punctured, antennas
ripped off, flags ripped off, hood ornament ripped off.
In 1984, when his wife was in the hospital dying,
somebody set fire to the basement of their apartment. But Anderson takes it all, continues
to speak gently, and keeps on coming. So where does that kind of
commitment --- to what we frigidly call 'fetuses' ---
come from? There's a story behind Pro-Life Andy
Anderson. Electric Nevada will share it with
you here next week.