Shooting Death of Son Gives Birth to a Commitment

Had you walked in at just the right moment last Thursday night, you might have mistaken it for a well-rehearsed comedy act. There at the microphone was Charlie Blek, affable and smiling and working the crowd like a natural-born ham with a great stage name. Twenty feet off to one side was his wife, Mary Leigh, playing the role of the straight man, telling Charlie to get on with it, that it was pushing 10 o’clock and people wanted to go home. You half-expected her to pull him off with one of those giant show biz hooks after telling him, “Say good night, Charlie.”

Humbled, Charlie relinquished the microphone to laughs, but the Bleks’ repartee camouflages a pain they will carry forever. The matter at hand on this night wasn’t the comedy business but the gun business, which it has been ever since their son Matthew, 21, was shot and killed on a New York City street in June of 1994.

That random act of violence, for which three teenagers have been sentenced, transformed the Bleks’ life from one of suburban tranquillity into whatever it can now be called.

And on this night, in a room at the St. Joseph Center in Orange, some 40 to 50 people listened to a local police chief and two representatives from Handgun Control Inc., discuss various aspects of the gun control debate. This was the third general meeting of a group the Bleks formed last year, Orange County Citizens for the Prevention of Gun Violence, dedicated to their son’s memory.

“It changes your whole perspective on life,” Mary Leigh Blek said the day after the meeting. “We have to be careful when we go to the movies, to try not to go where there’s going to be a lot of violence on the screen. We’re pretty good about selecting films, but then we have to go through all the previews. It sensitizes you to the gun violence culture.”

Charlie’s natural vivacity and Mary Leigh’s reserve make for an interesting combination.

“He’s always been that way,” she says of the ham she married 27 1/2 years ago. “The difference in our relationship now is that I have become more vocal and have gone out in front of groups and spoken. I thought I was more on the shy side, but on this issue, I’m not.”

At the meeting, Buena Park Police Chief Richard M. Tefank told the group the proliferation of firearms in California is immense. There were 600,000 firearm sales in California in 1994, Tefank said, adding that the group could expect a “full-court press” this year by the gun lobby to make it easier to carry concealed weapons in California.

The myriad issues surrounding gun control are so controversial, Tefank said, that some chiefs quit rather than support the California Police Chiefs Assn.’s 1995 position paper supporting firearms registration and a variety of other gun-control measures. The chiefs were hoping to start a “rational dialogue,” Tefank said, but conceded the difficulty because of the passion that gun control debate engenders.

The Bleks know that, having talked to groups as large as 1,200 and as small as 10, Mary Leigh said. And while they would rather let gun-death statistics tell the story, they have accepted that people want the personal side.

“At first, I kind of resented that,” Mary Leigh said. “It’s the issue that’s important. But everyone told us that’s the way it is and that it’s more effective if we talk about our personal story, so we’re playing the game.”

Sandy Cooney, regional director for Handgun Control Inc., has seen other families take up the gun control issue after a tragedy. Sometimes, they’re not ready. Not so with the Bleks, he said.

“I spend more time with the Bleks than I do with some of the paid staffers that I supervise,” Cooney joked. “They’re just driven and committed, in a very positive way. They’re amazing. They’re committed to the issue and spent time studying it and they’ve set up an operation that’s second to none of the ones I’ve been involved with, not only in California but other states.

“Obviously, their motive comes from wanting to ensure that Matthew’s death will not be in vain, but I think even beyond that, although they went into this because of the tragedy they experienced, what they quickly realized is that this problem is enormous and reaches a lot of different levels from the very simple to the very complex. Understanding that, they’ve spent an enormous amount of time studying the issue.”

Watching Charlie behind the microphone, you might almost think he enjoys it. I asked Mary Leigh about that.

“If we weren’t doing this, Charlie would get enjoyment doing something else,” she said. “There isn’t a time that goes by after a big event that there isn’t a big letdown. It’s not as acute as it was before. Before, I’d go out and speak, then get back in the car and cry, to release the tension. Always, there’s the wish we weren’t in this spot because of the reason we’re in it. So, there’s always that regret. But we’re in for the long haul. Whether it’s to the degree we are now, I don’t know. But I think we have a lifetime commitment.”

Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.