Stu Bykofsky: Recalling that bloody weekend, 38 years ago
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By Stu Bykofsky
Philadelphia Daily News
Daily News Columnist
THE TRAIL of yellowed newspaper clippings tell the tale of a terrible summer weekend a long time ago. At 8:45 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 29, 1970, Fairmount Park Guard Sgt. Frank VonColln, 43, was talking on the phone in a stone guardhouse in Cobbs Creek Park when he was shot five times and killed. Comfortable in his office, VonColln wasn't wearing his gun. His murder had the earmarks of an execution. No one later convicted of his murder was executed.
A few minutes earlier, Officer James Harrington, 38, had been shot in the face as he sat in a patrol wagon 75 yards up a steep asphalt driveway from the two-story, stone guardhouse.
Just 24 hours later, a few blocks away, two Highway Patrol officers were shot during a traffic stop.
Elsewhere in the city, three more officers were shot.
In 48 hours, the yellowed clips told me, one cop was murdered and six more were wounded.
As the manhunt for the cop-killer roared through a frightened city, police talked of suspected "revolutionaries," perhaps connected to the Black Panthers.
It was so long ago, some people have forgotten Frank Von-Colln, the father of four, gunned down in cold blood.
Those who haven't forgotten gathered under thick, threatening gray clouds yesterday morning outside the door to the guardhouse, which is today the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center. FOP Executive Board member Bob Ballentine remembered that weekend as "criminals on a mission to kill police officers."
Guests ranged from the mighty - Mayor Nutter - to the humble - kids from the community center, located in a hollow near where Catharine Street intersects the park. Members of the VonColln family, including a cousin, Mark VonColln, a Northfield, N.J., policeman, were there, with politicians, press, white-shirted police brass and blue-shirted members of the Philadelphia Police Department family.
On a muggy morning when sweat mixed with tears, they dedicated a plaque to the memory of VonColln - the 53rd marker laid on or near the spot where a city cop gave his or her last measure of devotion. The ceremony was about memory, but also embraced love, respect and some bitterness.
Old wounds are still wounds.
Two of the speakers know the neighborhood well. Mike Nutter grew up eight blocks away, and heard sirens of ambulances rushing wounded police to Misericordia Hospital that weekend. Lawyer Seth Williams lived in a house directly across the street from the guardhouse driveway. He and his father, Rufus, both knew VonColln. That's why Williams sponsored this plaque, meaning he paid for it.
The cops "were kind to the children in the neighborhood," Williams said. Recalling the mounted unit, stabled at the guardhouse, he said, "They were like knights protecting our neighborhood."
When the "misguided men with a twisted political agenda" ambushed VonColln, Williams said, "they killed a piece of the neighborhood that night."
They did more than that. They created domestic terrorism and made Philadelphia police fear that they were marked for death by unknown assassins in the guise of "revolutionaries."
As I read through the yellowed clippings, another event came into focus - a famous picture, taken by Daily News photographer Elwood P. Smith of a group of six male Black Panthers being searched for weapons and stripped, two with buttocks exposed, by Philadelphia police. It was published Aug. 31.
A common, often repeated belief, is that then-Police Commissioner Frank L. Rizzo was on the sidewalk, directing the search. He was not there.
What is often forgotten, what I had forgotten, is the context. VonColln was dead, three others were shot and the manhunt led to two shootouts between police and Black Panthers. Three more cops were wounded then.
You may not like the cops' tactics, but are you surprised that they thought they were at war?
Police weren't under attack only in Philadelphia. Cops across the nation felt threatened, "desperate" in the words of columnist Tom Fox.
They may have felt the icicle of fear, but it didn't stop them from doing their jobs. Two of VonColln's children - Kurt and Barbara - followed their father into the police family and became cops. When yesterday's ceremony ended, a few minutes before the rain began, I wanted to ask VonColln's children a few questions. Not surprisingly, they were surrounded by well-wishers, by people who wanted to shake their hands, or take a picture, or grip them in a hug.
I stepped back. That was more important than my questions. *
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07-10-2008, 10:12 AM
Sgt. Frank VonColln
