What thoughts I have of you tonight, Chip Ebert, for I walked down the side streets with a headache, self-conscious, looking at the full moon.
Breath fogging, I unzipped my heavy coat, brushed the snow from my cap and claimed a grocery cart.
There are times when, zombie-ing through the supermarket with a mug of burnt coffee and a cart of Captain Crunch, I dream of surf shops, alligators and women wearing nothing but bikini bottoms. It’s times like these when I chew a handful of aspirin, trace an infinity sign on my frosted glasses and think of nothing but robbery — flames to the tinder of a Midwest mind. As a man of 20, nothing excites me more than the thought of shooting up the local bank and making off with 16K—the going-rate for escape, I’ve been told. It turns me on. And it turned “Chip” on, too.
“Some of it was my own mad money that the wife doesn’t know about, and stuff like that,” Neill “Chip” Ebert III said in a voicemail to accountant Ken Richards.
I thought of Ebert as I grabbed a box of Trix cereal. “Silly rabbit, Trix are for —”
Ebert, clutching Golden Grahams, stood about 20 cereal boxes away. I was startled — not just to see Ebert at the local Kroger, but to see how normal he looked. After reading about his impending conviction, the biggest scandal in the short history of Hilliard Bradley High School, I had expected the man to resemble a Gitmo prisoner — sunken eyes, cheeks reddened by nightly crying, knees wobbling from the weight of cruel justice. Like most Bradley students, I wanted to see the once-proud, chest-puffing athletic director reduced to a frail shadow. I wanted to see him transformed into the pathetic Gollum—loin cloth, pointy ears and all. However, with great sorrow to the community, I must report that Ebert looked better than ever.
“A former Hilliard athletic director pleaded guilty yesterday to theft in office and tampering with records for stealing about $16,000 from a district account,” reported The Columbus Dispatch on Sept. 5, 2014.
Despite his bald head, narrow gaze and long snout, Ebert didn’t resemble Gollum at all; no, he looked more like an alligator, no doubt hiding rows of razor-sharp teeth behind those thin lips. He slithered past me, and—did he nod? Yes, the shameless reptile had recognized my Bradley sweatshirt. I gazed in awe: Here was an American man.
And what is an American man to do, when he’s caught stealing? Move to Florida, naturally.
“Entered a plea of guilty to Count One…Theft in Office…Count Two…Tampering with Records,” said the Judgment Entry of Case No. 14CR-4703.
Shortly after our grocery store encounter, Ebert scuttled south to Lithia, Fl., a small town of 8,000. A short drive from Tampa, the city was named in honor of Lithium, an alkali metal used to treat depression and make nuclear bombs, an element discovered in great quantities at a nearby spring over a century ago.
In the dead of winter, when Ohio’s open fields are scarred by wind and the blacktop is encased in ice, Lithia’s high temperature averages around 70 degrees, its residents zipping light jackets in the early morning, when a chill breeze might whisper. Evergreens are replaced with palm trees, which flourish in the rich soil and soft rains of Lithia.
With most of its homes built less than a decade ago, Bridgewalk Drive looks young and full of hope, with uniform houses, rows of saplings and a strict building code enforcing it all. Immaculately trimmed lawns are dotted with tricycles and flower beds that can’t help but burst with greens and pinks.
Go ahead, close your eyes and take a sniff: Plump hot-dogs sizzle from the year-round barbeques, their spices blending with the shouts of children arriving home from soccer practice and the whoosh of a Frisbee passing overhead. Peer over your white picket fence: There’s a neighborhood block party, and it’s a minute’s walk away at the park square, a monument to community and wealth.
Sparkling minivans, washed by gentle showers, parade by 16219 Bridgewalk Drive, where Ebert, in a robe and flip-flops, stands on his porch, clutching the morning paper. After Common Pleas Judge Michael J. Holbrook dragged him back to Ohio to serve a 30-day prison sentence, Ebert returned to Florida for three years of felony probation and a life of sun in the affluent Hillsborough County. He never had to pay a fine.
As Ebert—185-pounds of hazel-eyed gator—watches the Floridian sunrise, I wonder if he ever mouths the final line of Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas.”
“Today, everything is different; there’s no action,” he might say. “I have to wait around like everyone else…I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”
And with that, Ebert turns around, closes his door and pours a heaping bowl of Lucky Charms.
