Devil in Dover

A year later, in January 2003, two board members quit amid an acrimonious fight over the high school renovation project. Bonsell called Cleaver and convinced her to join the board. He had known her since he was a boy. He used to buy candy at the 5-and-10 store she owned on Dover’s Main Street. Even though Cleaver quit school in the eighth grade, Bonsell said she would be a good addition, touting her business success. The board also appointed Bill Buckingham, a fellow Christian fundamentalist and outspoken retired police officer and prison guard. Buckingham, in his late fifties, had been unable to work since suffering a back injury while breaking up a prison fight some twenty years earlier. To combat the chronic back pain he experienced from the injury, Buckingham had developed a then-secret addiction to the painkiller OxyContin. But he bore his faith openly. On the lapel of his sportsjacket, he wore a pin in the shape of the Christian cross bearing an American flag. At the time, Buckingham was caring for his eighty-year-old father, who was dying of lung cancer. Three months after his appointment to the board, Buckingham and his wife, Charlotte, sat together as his father gurgled and gagged until, finally, he stopped fighting and took his last breath.

“I just felt so stinking helpless,” Buckingham told me later of those hours next to his father’s bed. “Here was my dad suffering and I couldn’t do anything. I don’t believe in euthanasia, but if he would have said, ‘Shoot me,’ God help me, I would have done it. We do that much for a damn dog. Why not a human being?”

Seeking reassurance, Buckingham asked doctors if his father had suffered in his final moments. But doctors couldn’t give Buckingham what he needed. They could only say they didn’t really know.

Buckingham admits this changed him. A year later, in March 2004, he checked himself into a rehabilitation treatment center for his OxyContin addiction.

Dover sits apart from York County’s political machine. On election nights, the Democrats gather in the county seat of York at Sam & Tony’s, a small storefront Italian restaurant, while the Republicans convene at the considerably more posh Yorktowne Hotel. But in the days before 2004, Dover candidates and their supporters usually waited out the results in their homes. Often, they just went to bed and would find out who won in the morning.

Still, most Dover school board members took their jobs seriously. Meetings were held twice a month at North Salem Elementary School in a brightly lit cafeteria painted with murals of dancing vegetables and cartons of milk. At long tables, board members debated the minutiae of educational matters with rigid adherence to parliamentary procedure. Often the debates became nasty and personal. Occasionally, a board member proposed adopting a policy that would promote Christianity, but fellow members always drew the line. Before he stepped down in 1999 to become a township supervisor, Alan Bonsell’s father, Donald, had pushed unsuccessfully to have a Bible displayed prominently at all board meetings as a symbol for Christian guidance.

Still, despite their differences, board members, for the most part, were able to work together. They frequently shifted alliances based on their commitment to an issue, rather than their politics. When board member Casey Brown’s husband, Jeff, replaced Donald Bonsell on the board, some assumed the couple would present a united front. In his first vote, Jeff Brown opposed his wife’s meeting-schedule motion.

Following the 2001 election, the board tilted sharply right. Then, after Buckingham was appointed, what had been a series of isolated expressions of faith evolved into a closed-door campaign to restore God to the classroom.

Privately, Bonsell and Buckingham spoke of plans to require creationism to be taught alongside evolution. They complained to the school district’s superintendent, Richard Nilsen, about the teaching of “monkey to man.” They used taxpayer dollars to send Mike Baksa, the assistant superintendent, to a Christian college- sponsored conference on teaching creationism.

In closed-door planning meetings, Bonsell told administrators and board members he wanted the teaching of evolution to be balanced “50-50” with the teaching of creationism. He sat in Superintendent Nilsen’s office and discussed his views about American history. He talked about his belief that America had been founded as a Christian nation and that nothing in the First Amendment precludes schools from teaching about God. Buckingham gave Nilsen a list of complaints he had about the ninth-grade biology textbook, including the fact that it contained a picture of Charles Darwin.

The science teachers whispered about the rumors they’d begun to hear that board members planned to target their biology curriculum. The teachers also knew, just as their colleagues across the country knew, that evolutionary theory had become an increasingly touchy subject because it contradicted the fundamentalist Christian worldview. Across the country, right-wing fundamentalist leaders rallied their constituency, emboldened by Bush’s support of “faith-based” agendas.

Two of Dover’s biology teachers, Jen Miller and Rob Eshbach, were children of pastors. They would never intentionally teach students to question their faith. But Miller and Eshbach, both dedicated professionals, knew evolutionary theory wasn’t just some hunch. It was the foundation of modern biology. They knew there is more evidence supporting evolution than virtually any other scientific theory. While scientists may debate details of how the mechanism of evolution takes place, there is no legitimate scientific challenge to the theory.

Still, teachers were careful when dealing with students who’d been raised on the Bible and had been taught that acceptance of evolution shatters faith. When students challenged Eshbach in class, he invited them to come back after school. Then, in a quiet classroom, he told them how he is able to reconcile his knowledge of science with his belief in God. He was careful not to proselytize. Rather, he listened to their questions and answered them the best he could.

In his soft, measured cadence, Eshbach shared lessons learned from his father, a Lutheran pastor. He told them that he had been taught that Genesis was never meant to be a litmus test for faith. Rather, he said, he believed it was a story passed down from generation to generation, a beautiful human interpretation of our creation.

As a farmer who breeds beef cattle, Eshbach explained to students that he deals with the principles of natural selection every day. His scientific background has shown him that the Earth couldn’t have been created in six days. He explained that he is not against faith, that faith guides him daily. The students didn’t always agree, but they usually left reassured that, if nothing else, Eshbach certainly wasn’t trying to demean their religion.

In class, Miller and Eshbach kept the discussion focused on evolution. If students continued to challenge them, as they sometimes did, with demands that they present other theories, the teachers told them to talk to their parents and pastors. They avoided the topic of humans and common descent. They brushed over the fossil record. Instead, they spent five days out of the school year lecturing on the concept of how small, incremental changes over time led to life’s diversity.

Miller illustrated those changes by teaching about Darwin’s finches. Charles Darwin, on his famed Galapagos expedition, noticed that the beaks of bird finches on islands with drier climates were larger and better adapted to nuts that thrived in the harsher conditions. Darwin theorized that over time, isolated from the mainland population, those finches became a new species through the process of natural selection. But while students could grasp the concept, they often became overwhelmed at humanity’s relative blip of existence on Earth’s awesome geological timeline. Miller took students out of class and stretched cash-register tape down the hallway. At her instruction, students labeled the different eons and eras and provided examples of life from each period. Miller carefully presented the information in a way that students could see that the age of the Earth made evolution possible.

Still, just as teachers do in other small towns, Miller and Eshbach stepped lightly over scientific truths in deference to the times. American science teachers, fearing religious backlash, have become timid about teaching evolutionary theory to their students.²

Looking back, Eshbach now wonders whether such deference was wise. In trying to appease the concerns of the community’s many conservative Christians, perhaps they made themselves vulnerable to manipulation.

But at the time, few grasped what was happening either in Dover or across the country.

The sign taped to the front of science teacher Bertha Spahr’s desk reads, “I sit on my golden throne and spew forth silver words of knowledge and you will learn.”

Thirty years have passed, but former students, now middle-aged men and women with lined faces and thinning hair, can still recite those words from memory. And Eshbach himself remembers sitting in her classroom when he was a student seventeen years earlier, eyeing the urn next to her desk with a sign that said: “Ashes of problem students.”

Spahr’s message has always been clear. In her class, she’s the boss. Back when she still could, she addressed smartass remarks with occasional slaps to the back of students’ heads. But even without corporal punishment, the tiny woman commanded respect. Eshbach became a science teacher in part because of the education he received in Spahr’s classroom.

When Spahr was a girl in the 1950s pondering her future, her Sicilian father told her she would go to college. She could major in medicine or science, he said. She chose science. When she started at Dover, she was one of only two female chemistry teachers in York County. The other was a nun at the local Catholic school.

Today, Spahr is the head of the district’s science department and still teaches chemistry. She watches out for the teachers under her supervision with a protective, maternal spirit and they, in turn, are fiercely protective of her.

In the fall of 2002, Spahr stepped back into class to discover an empty space at the chalkboard where Zach Strausbaugh’s mural used to be. She barged into the administration office, seeking an explanation. She was told to mind her own business.

Soon after, Bonsell met with Baksa, the assistant superintendent, to talk about creationist claims against evolution. Bonsell wanted biology teachers to teach those claims, even though the scientific community gives no credence to them. He argued there were huge gaps in the fossil record. He talked about the Piltdown Man, a 1912 discovery in a British quarry that some speculated at the time could be man’s “missing link.” Creationists frequently point to the fact that the Piltdown Man was later determined to be a fraud, as an example that the evidence for man’s evolutionary history is a hoax. But scientists point out that one false claim doesn’t discount the rest of the fossil evidence, which, despite Bonsell’s misguided belief, is extensive.

Baksa, caught in the middle, visited the science teachers’ classes over lunch. He related Bonsell’s concerns. He told them about Bonsell’s plan that creationism should be taught alongside evolution. Bryan Rehm, a physics teacher, laughed at Baksa before realizing the man wasn’t joking. Teachers began asking questions about what they were hearing. In a memo, Dover’s principal, Trudy Peterman, asked about the creationist conversations and challenged the administration. Nilsen, the superintendent, dismissed the woman, saying she had a habit of exaggerating, and later he gave her a bad performance review.

The teachers grew increasingly alarmed. Rehm, no longer amused, sensed where things were going. Though board members hadn’t targeted his physics curriculum, Rehm saw the gathering storm as an attack on academic freedom. He often went home at the end of the day and ranted to his wife, Christy, an English teacher in a neighboring district. At first, Christy was unconcerned. The Rehms often talk shop, holding long discussions about education and policy. When Bryan got frustrated, he frequently launched into sarcastic rapid-fire tirades. But as the months passed, Christy began to hear bitterness creep into her husband’s rants.

Bonsell, meanwhile, grew tired of sending administrators to meet with teachers and met with them himself. During one of the meetings, Jen Miller sat across from Bonsell and nervously assured him that the chapter she taught on evolution only covered “change over time.” She told him that they didn’t teach about origins of life, but rather origins of species.

Bonsell told the teachers that his daughter would be taking biology that year and he didn’t want her learning about human evolution. He told them that he was concerned that teachers could be accused of lying to students if they taught them something that contradicted their faith.

The teachers understood Bonsell’s message. Teaching evolution could be dangerous. Fearing retribution, Miller stopped using the timeline in the hallway and began teaching solely from the textbook.

While board members only spoke privately of their desire to inject creationism into science class, occasionally they hinted at their religious motives in public. In the fall of 2003, as the U.S. Supreme Court was about to review the constitutionality of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, the newly appointed Buckingham urged the board to adopt a resolution in support of the two words.

Buckingham’s behavior that night foreshadowed what would take place half a year later. He argued that this country was founded on Christianity. People of other faiths were free to come to this country and worship any way they liked, he said, but if they begin to infringe on the country’s “Christian values,” they should go back to where they came from.

Over the next few months, Buckingham, as head of the district curriculum committee, and Bonsell, now president of the school board, turned their attention to the purchase of a new biology book. Unhappy with any book that taught students about evolution, Buckingham gave Superintendent Nilsen two DVDs put out by the Discovery Institute, an organization that advocates for intelligent design. In the DVD Icons of Evolution, writer Jonathan Wells criticizes many aspects of evolutionary theory, including the idea that natural selection could be responsible for the change of one species into another over time. In Unlocking the Mystery of Life, creationist Dean Kenyon makes the case for intelligent design through a discussion of the complexity of DNA.

At the end of the 2003-2004 school year, as teachers prepared for summer vacation, Assistant Superintendent Baksa asked them to watch the movies in between packing up books and papers. Bryan Rehm watched a few minutes and was disgusted by how the documentaries misrepresented the scientific facts. He polished up his resume and began to look for a job outside Dover.

Looking back, Barrie Callahan says she can’t believe how naïve she was that she didn’t see it coming. Before she joined the school board, Callahan took it for granted that people accepted evolution. Then she spent ten years as a board member, listening to her colleagues rail about the demise of Christian values. She tries to sift through her memory, but the remarks about prayer and the Bible and creationism run together and she is unable to pick out specific conversations. But she hasn’t forgotten their views.

“They’re a mystery to me,” she recalls. “I’ve never been around people like that.”

Then, in June 2004, the behind-closed-doors discussions of creationism were finally aired at two public meetings that would become central to Dover’s battle over intelligent design. It started at the June 7 meeting, when Callahan stood up and asked when the ninth-grade students were going to get new biology textbooks. For the past couple of years, there had been too few books to go around. Students were forced to share copies.

Callahan is a tiny, tanned woman with blond curls that frame her heart-shaped face. A mother of three, she’s warm and energetic, passionate and giggly. Many school board members couldn’t stand her, perhaps because of her willingness to express her views. One of her former colleagues described her as “bitchy.” Her husband, Fred, a paper company executive, adores her.

Callahan asked the same question each month since she lost her reelection bid in 2002 over the school construction issue. She knew what was behind board members’ reluctance to buy the science textbooks. Callahan also knew that her persistence, and their personal dislike of her, would eventually lead them to say publicly what they had been whispering privately.

Buckingham, as head of the curriculum committee, told Callahan that he refused to approve the purchase of the book because it was “laced with Darwinism.”

Callahan threw up her hands and said what she already knew. “Great. So this is about evolution?”

Buckingham said he wanted a textbook that was balanced by the inclusion of creationism.

Those present that night remember hearing gasps of surprise from the public. Board member Jeff Brown looked out into the audience and saw two local newspaper reporters, Joe Maldonado of the York Daily Record and Heidi Bernhard-Bubb of the York Dispatch, scribbling furiously. Brown groaned to himself and envisioned the next day’s headlines. Brown waited for Bonsell, as board president, to point out that teaching creationism is inappropriate in science class. But rather than contradict Buckingham’s idea, Bonsell, along with another board member Noel Wenrich, spoke in favor of it. Bonsell argued it was possible to teach creationism without it being religion.

Max Pell, a Dover graduate and a Penn State freshman, sat in the audience that night. He hadn’t come to speak but to see his girlfriend, who was a student representative and shared a seat at the table with board members. But Pell was shocked. He took his turn at the podium. Politely, he warned board members that teaching creationism in public school violated the First Amendment. Buckingham looked at the young man. “Have you ever heard of brain-washing?” Buckingham asked Pell. “If students are taught only evolution, it stops becoming theory and becomes fact.”

A week later, at the June 14 meeting, the elementary school cafeteria was filled. People who had never attended a meeting before sat in the audience, concerned after reading newspaper accounts of the proposal to teach creationism.

Buckingham started the meeting with an apology. But rather than temper his previous remarks, he said he couldn’t censor himself in the interest of being politically correct. “Nowhere in the Constitution does it call for a separation of church and state,” he said.

He spoke of liberals in “black robes” taking away the rights of Christians. He challenged residents to “trace your roots to the monkey you came from.”

Residents of the small town stepped to the podium. The line stretched to the back of the room, looping behind the folding metal chairs. Some spoke in support of teaching creationism. Some talked about putting God back in school. Buckingham’s wife, Charlotte, read from the book of Genesis. She said people needed to become “born again.” She asked, “How can we teach anything else?” as board members murmured “Amen.” To a horrified Casey Brown, it felt like her fellow board members were hosting a tent revival.

But others urged the school board to think about what they were suggesting. Bertha Spahr, as head of the science department, told them that teachers tried to be sensitive to creationist views. They recommended purchasing the Prentice Hall-published textbook Biology because, Spahr said, it was “the least offensive book we could find.”

Buckingham dismissed her concerns. “Two thousand years ago, someone died on the cross,” he said. “Won’t somebody stand up for him?”

Christy Rehm watched, aghast, from the back of the room, nine months pregnant and uncomfortable sitting on a metal chair. She had come at her husband’s behest. She heard Buckingham tell Maldonado, “This country wasn’t founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution. This country is founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such.”

Christy’s students come from different religious backgrounds. Though she’s a Christian, she’d never forced her beliefs on them. Wouldn’t it be awful, she thought, to teach students that only her brand of Christianity was right and everyone else was wrong?

The Reverend Warren Eshbach sat quietly listening to the back-and-forth arguments. Earlier that day, he had looked out his window and seen his youngest son, Rob, the soft-spoken teacher, stride up the sidewalk, and thought he had come for a visit or to catch him up on his grandchildren. But Rob Eshbach, fearing that board members planned to attack the science curriculum, had come to ask him to attend the meeting. He knew his father’s strengths at conflict resolution. In Baltimore in the 1960s, he organized civil rights marches and worked to unite the community at a time when racism and riots were tearing it apart.

At the meeting, Pastor Eshbach stood up and addressed the board. He begged them not to do what he feared they were about to do. He warned them they would only divide the town. He warned them they would turn neighbor against neighbor.