Tulsa plays an important role in ‘Goodbye, Butterfly’

Why am I here? I often asked myself that at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010. I’d just moved to Tulsa, the last stop in a nomadic journalism career that included six newspapers, four states, nine cities and 12 residences in 11 years.

Some of that frantic journey was about working my way up in the industry from a small paper in Independence, Kansas, to some of the better and bigger publications in the country.

To advance more rapidly, I shifted from focusing on writing to working behind the scenes as a copy editor and designer. What made sense to me made little to my father. Time and time again, I would call and tell him about work, including winning awards for sports page design from the Kansas and Virginia Press Association.

“Are you writing at all?” he asked every time I called.

“No, Dad, I’m a copy editor,” or, “No, Dad, I’m an assistant sports editor. It’s middle management.”

“Son, your gift is writing,” he said with the subtle, kind bluntness of a father. “If you’re not writing, you’re betraying your God-given talent.”

I didn’t see it that way, of course. I loved to write but lost some confidence in my ability after working with a couple of grizzled editors. So, I took a step back and worked on the copy desk before moving into roles as an assistant editor and desk chief.

Years later, I realized those experiences on the desk improved my writing. How could it not after reading some of the best sports writers in the Midwest at the Topeka Capital-Journal and Tulsa World and on the East Coast at the Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia?

Aside from a year of writing a sports column on the Page 2 team in Topeka, I didn’t write much from 2003 to 2010. By the latter, I was suffering burnout. I could also see the writing on the wall in the industry, and, at 33, didn’t want to be out of a career.

So, after just eight months in Tulsa, I quit the newspaper business. I didn’t have a job lined up, but I had the old man, who had asked me to move in with him. He knew I wanted to be home.

My only regret about Tulsa is that I didn’t embrace it in the short time I was there. I went to work at the World and came home. On my off days, I watched TV. I’d say such is life, but it really wasn’t much of a life.

For years, I considered that stint in Tulsa just to be a short bridge to coming home. Then, in 2020, the picture became very clear. After nearly three years of struggling to track down any information about the man who killed Brenda Keller for my book, “Goodbye, Butterfly: Murder, faith and forgiveness in a small Kansas town,” I finally struck gold with one source who provided me with dozens of names.

Over the next 18 months, I found about 15 people who grew up with Jon Mareska Jr. Ironically, all of them were from Tulsa, where he spent a few years in the early to mid-1980s. Of course I “randomly” lived in Tulsa.

Tulsa, though not the centerpiece of “Goodbye, Butterfly,” is an important part of the story. When you read the book, you’ll discover that Mareska Jr. didn’t exactly live a charmed life, though his childhood neighborhood, which we visited in 2021, was and is like most other middle class neighborhoods. His upbringing was difficult, to say the least, and most of the friends he grew up with have had sad lives. Some died very young.

That doesn’t justify Brenda’s murder, of course. My hope is readers will see how this man escalated from petty crime to such a heinous act. And much of that is rooted in Tulsa.