ARE WE BATS?

Miami Herald, The (FL)
January 22, 1989
Author: TOM SHRODER Herald Tropic Editor

So this guy was installing gutters on the roof of Michelle Genz's new home and Michelle started talking to him. The guy was bragging about his football prowess. Said he was going to play for the University of Miami, which turned out to be a slight exaggeration. "I'm the athlete," he told her. "My little brother is the genius." Seems his little brother had a strange interest. He was heavily into bats. In fact, the little guy was currently trying to save a colony of 5,000 bats, probably an endangered species, holed-up in the Spanish tile false-fronts of a coastal condominium. This turned out to be exactly true.

Just a bit of polite conversation between a home-owner and a workman. Hardly a likely source of inspiration for a Tropic cover story. Hardly a likely topic.

But here it is. On the cover.

Why?

It isn't urgently important, like a story about how crack cocaine is destroying the social fabric of the inner city, or one on the collapse of our juvenile justice system. It isn't definitive of our place and time, like a story on Miami as the new Casablanca, or a photo/story on the rise of South Florida's youth gangs. It isn't a tour de farce by Dave Barry -- like a report on UFO sightings in the Panhandle, or a retort to an arrogant New York Times Magazine cover story on Miami. And it's not a tour de force by T.M. Shine about an average Joe struggling to live under the crushing thumb of a dead-end job.

It's not a wacky reader participation stunt like The Hunt, outright lunacy like the Replace Andy Warhol Contest, an inspired bit of trivia like Why Things Are, or the inside story on some real-life melodrama like Maria DeSillers. It doesn't break new ground, like the story about what really happened after the space shuttle Challenger blew up; nor will it possibly get an innocent man out of prison, like the expose of the shoddy prosecution of James Richardson in a notorious murder case.

The story of Matt Crowder and his bats is one of those rare stories that comes along where even the twists have twists. It is a story that reads like a cross between a fable and a made for TV movie. It is a small story about being a little boy with big ideas. It is a story about how medieval myths and juvenile fears can conquer common sense. It is a story about the destruction of our environment, and its cost, both material and spiritual.

It would be all of this if Matt Crowder were just an ordinary 13-year-old boy. But he is more than that. He is a Jehovah's Witness, a religious group known mostly for its belief in the imminent end of the world and its persistent door-to-door proselytizing. Much of Middle America sees Witnesses as nuisances at best, demonic at worst -- someone to shoo away from the front door, and keep out of the neighborhood.

If there is any good in individual Witnesses as they march along our sidewalks in their white shirts and skinny black ties, we don't see it.

But Michelle Genz, writing about a little boy who loves bats, makes it impossible not to see the good. She makes it impossible not to see Matt as someone who, despite an extreme theology, is as understandable as our best childhood friend. Someone who can see in an unjustly scorned and persecuted winged mammal a creature very much in need of a champion, very much like himself.

It is not the kind of story that will win a prize, or change the world, or make it any easier to figure your taxes.

It is a story that makes me proud to work here.

Memo: FROM THE EDITOR
Section: TROPIC
Copyright (c) 1989 The Miami Herald