Student (F-1) for Extension of Stay. They were all approved with remarkable swiftness, signed by a succession of Johns and Cynthias and Joes, busy bureaucrats who most likely never met the enigmatic young German and accepted what he had written on paper as the truth.
By then Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter—a.k.a. Chris Kenneth Gerhart—was in search of the ultimate document, one that could keep him in America forever: a marriage certificate.
CHAPTER 3
Becoming American
I knew him as Chris Gerhart,” said Todd Lassa, who was a student at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee when Gerhartsreiter arrived in January 1981. “I was twenty-two and taking film classes. We both were. One of the classes I had with Chris was a class in film noir. He told me he’d spent the previous semester at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. He befriended me.”
Lassa, a writer for Motor Trend magazine, recalled, “He had a German accent when I met him. It wasn’t anything he was trying to hide. He was living in a suburb of Milwaukee, Elm Grove. I went there once. He invited me into the house, an upper-middle-class house, which is the way I saw him. I can’t remember if he said it was his parents’ house or his aunt’s. But there was nobody else there. It would have been a very strange house to rent. It cost quite a lot. Maybe he was house-sitting.
“He and I and another classmate went out for beers a few times, so it was surprising when he asked me to be the best man for his wedding in a civil service in Madison,” said Lassa. “This is after I knew him three or four weeks. But I said, ‘Sure, I’ll do it.’”
The lucky bride’s name was Amy Janine Jersild.
Chris Gerhart had met Amy through her younger sister, Elaine, who must have seemed a miraculous gift to him. She was the twenty-two-year-old daughter of a hardworking middle-class couple, Arthur Jersild and Bertha M. Geiger Jersild, of Elkhart, Indiana. He had met Elaine through a church group. She was not a beauty, but she was very spirited and vivacious. More important, she was an American citizen and thus had the power to obtain for Gerhart what he wanted most at this juncture of his life: a green card, which grants permanent resident status to an alien who marries an American.
Chris broached the subject of marriage with her, saying that he wanted to stay in America to avoid begin drafted into the German army, where he would surely be put on the front lines, directly in the line of fire in the cold war against the Russians. Elaine sympathized—the cute, friendly, and diminutive Chris Gerhart would seemingly have no chance on the front lines of any war—but she had no intention of helping him. Though Elaine wasn’t game, she said that maybe her older sister, Amy, might be.
I called Elaine Jersild to get an explanation of what happened next. She responded immediately, sunny, cheerful, but as soon as I mentioned Chris Gerhart, her tone turned cold.
“Honestly, hon, I must say no comment ,” she snapped, adding, “I thought this was over, but I guess it’s not.”
Amy Jersild, however, could not refuse to comment. She was subpoenaed for the trial in Boston, where all the reporters and spectators in the courtroom eagerly anticipated her entrance. Finally, we would hear evidence from someone who had actually known the strange young man in his early, unstoppable years in America.
When Amy Jersild Duhnke walked in, the media pack looked at one another as if to say, That’s her? She was fifty, weathered and gray, with a long white braid snaking down the back of her drab business suit. The toll of spending several decades in the food service industry—most recently as a cook in a Milwaukee restaurant called the Twisted Fork— was etched in the deep wrinkles of her face. It was impossible to imagine her as the first wife of the budding bon vivant.
One would expect that the sight of his first wife reemerging in his life after thirty years would elicit
By then Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter—a.k.a. Chris Kenneth Gerhart—was in search of the ultimate document, one that could keep him in America forever: a marriage certificate.
CHAPTER 3
Becoming American
I knew him as Chris Gerhart,” said Todd Lassa, who was a student at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee when Gerhartsreiter arrived in January 1981. “I was twenty-two and taking film classes. We both were. One of the classes I had with Chris was a class in film noir. He told me he’d spent the previous semester at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. He befriended me.”
Lassa, a writer for Motor Trend magazine, recalled, “He had a German accent when I met him. It wasn’t anything he was trying to hide. He was living in a suburb of Milwaukee, Elm Grove. I went there once. He invited me into the house, an upper-middle-class house, which is the way I saw him. I can’t remember if he said it was his parents’ house or his aunt’s. But there was nobody else there. It would have been a very strange house to rent. It cost quite a lot. Maybe he was house-sitting.
“He and I and another classmate went out for beers a few times, so it was surprising when he asked me to be the best man for his wedding in a civil service in Madison,” said Lassa. “This is after I knew him three or four weeks. But I said, ‘Sure, I’ll do it.’”
The lucky bride’s name was Amy Janine Jersild.
Chris Gerhart had met Amy through her younger sister, Elaine, who must have seemed a miraculous gift to him. She was the twenty-two-year-old daughter of a hardworking middle-class couple, Arthur Jersild and Bertha M. Geiger Jersild, of Elkhart, Indiana. He had met Elaine through a church group. She was not a beauty, but she was very spirited and vivacious. More important, she was an American citizen and thus had the power to obtain for Gerhart what he wanted most at this juncture of his life: a green card, which grants permanent resident status to an alien who marries an American.
Chris broached the subject of marriage with her, saying that he wanted to stay in America to avoid begin drafted into the German army, where he would surely be put on the front lines, directly in the line of fire in the cold war against the Russians. Elaine sympathized—the cute, friendly, and diminutive Chris Gerhart would seemingly have no chance on the front lines of any war—but she had no intention of helping him. Though Elaine wasn’t game, she said that maybe her older sister, Amy, might be.
I called Elaine Jersild to get an explanation of what happened next. She responded immediately, sunny, cheerful, but as soon as I mentioned Chris Gerhart, her tone turned cold.
“Honestly, hon, I must say no comment ,” she snapped, adding, “I thought this was over, but I guess it’s not.”
Amy Jersild, however, could not refuse to comment. She was subpoenaed for the trial in Boston, where all the reporters and spectators in the courtroom eagerly anticipated her entrance. Finally, we would hear evidence from someone who had actually known the strange young man in his early, unstoppable years in America.
When Amy Jersild Duhnke walked in, the media pack looked at one another as if to say, That’s her? She was fifty, weathered and gray, with a long white braid snaking down the back of her drab business suit. The toll of spending several decades in the food service industry—most recently as a cook in a Milwaukee restaurant called the Twisted Fork— was etched in the deep wrinkles of her face. It was impossible to imagine her as the first wife of the budding bon vivant.
One would expect that the sight of his first wife reemerging in his life after thirty years would elicit
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