Emily figured she was backed into a corner. She borrowed $500 from a loan shark, gave it to Harvey outside the courtroom, then watched as he handed it back to her in front of the judge.
Her divorce was granted on the grounds of cruel and inhuman treatment.
Immediately afterward, Emily returned to the loan shark and repaid her $500--plus $50 interest.
It wasn't long before Harvey was talking about attending Dallas Theological Seminary, known even then for its purer-than-pure fundamentalist teachings.
Gathering dust in the library of Dallas Seminary today is Harvey Cutting's master's thesis. The slim blue volume is dated May 1951, and graded "A."
I started reading the typed, onionskin pages, and something immediately caught my eye. Cutting was writing about predestination--the Christian doctrine that some people are "saved" and destined for heaven no matter how much they sin. Specifically, Cutting quoted the great theologian John Calvin. A man's salvation, he wrote, "...cannot be moved or altered by any storms of the world, by any assaults of Satan, by any changes, by any fluctuations or weaknesses of the flesh."
I seized on those words--I thought I'd found the key to understanding the real Harvey Cutting. The entire paper was a rationalization for the evil he'd done, while still claiming his status as a minister, and as a member of God's "elect."
My theory brought back some memories to my grandmother. The divorce had gone through in 1947, and soon after, Harvey began harassing her about their daughter Joanne. He needed to get into Dallas Seminary, but there was one problem: The school generally didn't accept divorced students, and would do so only after interviewing the ex-wife. Surely, Harvey didn't want that to happen.
But he had a card to play. He threatened to sue for custody of Joanne unless Emily wrote a letter to Dallas Seminary stating she was at fault in the divorce.
This time, Emily refused. How Cutting managed to get into Dallas Seminary, no one knows. Emily says no one from the seminary ever called to get her side of the story.
Emily retained custody of Joanne without a fight, contrary to Cutting's Kramer vs. Kramer fantasies. She eventually remarried, and her new husband adopted the girl. Cutting would never see his daughter again until she was an adult.
The Rev. Cutting you see today is the inevitable result of a life that emphasized form over character.
But surely, I hoped, he wouldn't go so far as to lie about his first marriage, which ended so long ago. Surely he'd come clean--admit to some flaws, some mistakes. "We were so darn young," Emily says about those early days. "I have forgiven him. The thing is, my heart is so tender. I'm so afraid of bringing hurt on Harvey and his wife. But he has to be exposed, I know that."
As for me, I didn't know whether I should feel anything for this man. He is my grandfather, but that blood tie doesn't buy a place in my heart.
Yet I found myself getting extremely nervous when I dialed the Rev. Cutting at his Sun City home in February. His second wife answered; Cutting came to the phone moments later.
I can't say exactly why, but I didn't have the heart to tell him I was his granddaughter. I identified myself as a reporter; my name brought no recognition. (He'd obviously made the family connection by the time his lawyer called me a day later, however.) I heard Cutting's voice for the first time; smooth, seemingly eager to please.
He quickly refused comment on his daughter's book, and referred me to his attorney, Skip Simpson. "I'm sure you'll find
him a delight to talk to," Cutting said.
"One other thing," I said. "The Boston Globe said that your first wife divorced you because you were abusive toward her. Is there any truth in that?"
"Well, the...the Denver Post talked to her--talked to my daughter by that marriage--and discovered that that's hardly the truth."
He was referring to my mother--who'd never talked to the Denver Post.
"But...uh...that's, uh, we, uh, we would just vehemently deny that that, uh, has any validity to it whatsoever," he added.
"So there was no abuse in that--"
"Absolutely none," he said, cutting me off. "Absolutely not. But, uh, I'm not an expert in the area of recovered memory therapy..."
He continued with this abrupt change of subject, referring me again to Simpson. I felt myself getting angry.
"OK. But when you said 'absolutely none,' you were talking about the first marriage, right?" I asked.
"No, what I'm talking about...the program Linda has been through, it's called recovered memory therapy."
"Right," I said. "I'm not trying to badger you here or anything, but I just want to make sure I'm clear on this. As far as your first marriage, you said there wasn't..."
"There was absolutely no abuse whatsoever."
"OK," I said. "So whatever your first wife is saying--that it was abusive--that isn't true."
"Yeah," he replied.
Must have been a memory slip.
