WA - Unidentified Male: "Lyle Stevik", Grays Harbor, 17 Sept 2001 - #4

[LucyOso]

"You Must Remember This" summary from Wiki...the story of Enid Maria, a girl who falls in love with her uncle, a professional boxer. It also is about her family, the Stevicks, and their thriving life in Port Oriskany, a fictional industrial city in upstate New York. The title comes from the song "As Time Goes By", whose first lines are, "You must remember this/ a kiss is still a kiss". The song was also the theme to the film Casablanca (film).

1. Is it possible Lyle is a criminal/on the run. Maybe a RSO who failed to register somewhere. Is it possible he committed a crime, such as molestation, etc. on a younger family member (see theme above). He runs, loses a bunch of weight due to stress, guilt, etc., then ends his own life. No one claims him due to the nature of the situation? Written off by family. Maybe family never reported the situation? Here is an example...but...I doubt it is this guy http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cac/neil-stammer/view

2. Casablanca the movie...is that a clue?

Ideas folks?

You Must Remember This - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[annemc2]

Got to learn how to use the advanced search function - wheee!

Well, I finally purchased and read "You Must Remember This" by Joyce Carol Oates, hoping to find some glimpse of why our Lyle might have associated with this book's character of the same name.

A brief summary of the book can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/02/specials/oates-remember.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I'll quote here a brief section of the aforementined article that specifically mentions Lyle:

Lyle is different. Though he has none of Felix's adrenaline or Enid's single-mindedness, he is memorable. For in Lyle, Ms. Oates has given failure a habitation and a name. We feel the punishing sameness of his routines; we sit with him through the beers and shots that blur them for a few hours. His decline begins when a McCarthyite zealot denounces him as a Communist sympathizer because he keeps books in his shop and knows where the Soviet Union is. Lyle's morale never fully recovers from the police interrogation. And later, when a pretty client rejects his attentions, he all but collapses.

Of note, the character Lyle is not the one involved in an incestuous relationship (in fact he has no knowledge of it), nor does he actually kill himself in the book. However, he does contemplate hanging himself with a rope at least twice during the course of the novel.

Lyle takes solace in the fact that he has a basement in his store where he stores a length of rope behind a packing case. It's his "refuge" and his "sanctuary." He thinks of how people that know him see him as "a vigorous tireless ebuillient soul, a go-getter" but laments that "Lyle Stevick was otherwise, phony and tattered..." His desperate prayer, like that of Lear, was "O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!," and he was extremely worried about thermonuclear war, even going into debt in order to build a bomb shelter in the backyard for his family.

It's difficult to speculate upon why our Lyle might have associated himself with the literary Lyle, especially because Lyle Stevick was one of the more minor characters in the book. In fact he was a middle aged man and father of four. If our Lyle had identified with literary Lyle's half-brother Felix, we would have all kinds of titillating scenarios to wonder about. The only thing that really stood out to me is the underlying current of death throughout the novel. Other characters deal with an attempted suicide, an abortion, a presumed mafia-related murder, serious illness, and deadly and near-deadly accidents and beatings.

I have to wonder if our Lyle really identified with the book's Lyle Stevick, or if he had simply read the book recently and liked the name. :waitasec:

 

[LucyOso]

Got to learn how to use the advanced search function - wheee!

Thanks! Good job finding your previous post. I can never find mine...LOL.

 

[masootz]

Got to learn how to use the advanced search function - wheee!

thanks for that. i still think it might be exactly what you said in your last sentence - it was simply a name he remembered. we all use fake names when we sign up for dodgy web sites and i know that none of mine have personal meaning beyond being something i can remember. the misspelling of the name even indicates to me that it was something phonetic that stuck in his head but may not have been more than that.

to me the address he used is the more interesting bit of information. the fact that the address resolves to a hotel and that it's not a simplistic address you'd consider an obvious fake (thinking "123 main street" or "111 Maple Ave") it had to have been an address he was aware of. the fact that folks at that address don't remember him doesn't mean much to me as had he not killed himself i doubt the people at the hotel in washington would have remembered him either.

 

[True Crime Gal]

Got to learn how to use the advanced search function - wheee!

I'm glad that you did. This quote stood out to me. It could just be me reading too much into it, but:

For in Lyle, Ms. Oates has given failure a habitation and a name. We feel the punishing sameness of his routines; we sit with him through the beers and shots that blur them for a few hours. His decline begins when a McCarthyite zealot denounces him as a Communist sympathizer because he keeps books in his shop and knows where the Soviet Union is. Lyle's morale never fully recovers from the police interrogation. And later, when a pretty client rejects his attentions, he all but collapses.

Could it be that the character stuck with him because he saw himself as failure personified? And the McCarthyite / Communist sympathizer draws parallels, in my mind, with the post-9/11 anti-Muslim sentiment--but then again, he was found less than a week after that horrible event, so I don't know if that could possibly tie in. Maybe it all got much worse for him after 9/11 happened?

Thanks for sharing this again!

tcg

 

[Roselvr]

thanks for that. i still think it might be exactly what you said in your last sentence - it was simply a name he remembered. we all use fake names when we sign up for dodgy web sites and i know that none of mine have personal meaning beyond being something i can remember. the misspelling of the name even indicates to me that it was something phonetic that stuck in his head but may not have been more than that.

to me the address he used is the more interesting bit of information. the fact that the address resolves to a hotel and that it's not a simplistic address you'd consider an obvious fake (thinking "123 main street" or "111 Maple Ave") it had to have been an address he was aware of. the fact that folks at that address don't remember him doesn't mean much to me as had he not killed himself i doubt the people at the hotel in washington would have remembered him either.

Totally agree!
What if Lyle Stevik is his real name?

Thanks! Good job finding your previous post. I can never find mine...LOL.

It's not hard as long as you have an idea of what you're looking for. Easiest is to click your own name in a post to view your post history. You can also go to the post or section you need & use the advanced search; put in user name & a keyword or 2.

 

[shadowdancer]

Interesting discussion!

I haven't received my book yet, but it strikes me from the previous post about the book, that our UID might have identified with Lyle Stevick, simply because he contemplated suicide and the feelings that he was experiencing might have resonated with our UID.

If the UID read this book and felt that Lyle Stevick's feelings mirrored his own, then its easy to see why he would identify with the character.

I really have a love of reading, so the worst that can happen is that the book turns out to be totally irrelevant, but I enjoy reading it anyway. Its £2.80 well spent either way!

 

[curioser]

Re: the book

I have not read it, but I have been reading about it. It doesn't strike me as a book a young man would be drawn to, to read for leisure. I wondered if this book would have been assigned reading at the high school level. Sure enough, in the amazon comments there is someone who says this book was assigned to his 15yo daughter (and he didn't think it was appropriate). Sooo, I wonder how many schools may have used this book in the 90s- I have no idea how to even begin a search like that, though. Maybe the character of Lyle stuck with him, and he identified with him because of the suicide plans. Further, maybe there was some kind of inappropriate relationship in his family that he felt guilty about not preventing?

 

[im1096]

JCO's fictional town is Port Oriskany - in upstate NY. I don't know if this has been considered but I wonder if Lyle could have come from upstate NY. Searching the missing in that area looks like it will be time consuming. Further, although Port Oriskany is fictional, there are other places named Oriskany and it is a street name some places as well. If this has been covered already I apologize - I must have missed it in reading through the threads.

 

[FindYou]

I think the address, as Masootz and others have said, is significant. After doing a bit of research I found that the hotel went up in 1995, which means that there could have been something there beforehand. I can't find any data on the property to suggest one way or another, but my guess is that if there was something there, like a residence for instance, that Lyle is possibly in some way connected to it. Could even have been his childhood home - I know a lot of people who still identify with that first house they lived in. That would make sense for why the people at the hotel didn't recognize him - because he had been there before it was built.

 

[dotr]

I think the address, as Masootz and others have said, is significant. After doing a bit of research I found that the hotel went up in 1995, which means that there could have been something there beforehand. I can't find any data on the property to suggest one way or another, but my guess is that if there was something there, like a residence for instance, that Lyle is possibly in some way connected to it. Could even have been his childhood home - I know a lot of people who still identify with that first house they lived in. That would make sense for why the people at the hotel didn't recognize him - because he had been there before it was built.

Welcome to Ws FindYou, thanks for the interesting post !

 

[rosesfromangels]

Reading the synopsis of the referenced book I get the strong impressions of our Doe identifying with feelings of complete desperation. Being trapped. The out or escape is suicide. The relief is looking at the rope. Sounds like childhood abuse, a broken and sensitive, isolated soul.

all random thoughts.

 

[masootz]

I think the address, as Masootz and others have said, is significant. After doing a bit of research I found that the hotel went up in 1995, which means that there could have been something there beforehand. I can't find any data on the property to suggest one way or another, but my guess is that if there was something there, like a residence for instance, that Lyle is possibly in some way connected to it. Could even have been his childhood home - I know a lot of people who still identify with that first house they lived in. That would make sense for why the people at the hotel didn't recognize him - because he had been there before it was built.

great point that it could have been significant to him earlier in life.

 

[masootz]

as a thought experiment i challenge you guys to do the following -

make up a fake name for yourself and then google it. i think you'll find that almost any name is connected to something, whether it has anything to do with the reason you chose that name or not.

i chose -

1) bob goldblatt - there's a lot of them. one is an executive for nbc
2) jim hobgood - a basketball player in virginia
3) rob zinger - vice president at a mortgage bank

my point is that it's possible our guy chose that name for a reason, however it's simply not necessarily true. even if there is a hidden meaning it likely not be obvious and probably won't help us figure out who he really is.

 

[carbuff]

Re: the book

I have not read it, but I have been reading about it. It doesn't strike me as a book a young man would be drawn to, to read for leisure. I wondered if this book would have been assigned reading at the high school level. Sure enough, in the amazon comments there is someone who says this book was assigned to his 15yo daughter (and he didn't think it was appropriate). Sooo, I wonder how many schools may have used this book in the 90s- I have no idea how to even begin a search like that, though. Maybe the character of Lyle stuck with him, and he identified with him because of the suicide plans. Further, maybe there was some kind of inappropriate relationship in his family that he felt guilty about not preventing?

It was common in college-level literature classes but not probably not in most high schools, except maybe advanced level classes. As the father says, not really appropriate for that age level, partly because it deals with issues that aren't really of interest to younger kids.

It was a best seller at the time and many ordinary people read it and talked about it. It was rather controversial in its depiction of the underbelly of American life and became a subject for cocktail party conversations and book club discussions. Lyle is a character someone could have known about without having read the book.

 

[carbuff]

as a thought experiment i challenge you guys to do the following -

make up a fake name for yourself and then google it. i think you'll find that almost any name is connected to something, whether it has anything to do with the reason you chose that name or not.

i chose -

1) bob goldblatt - there's a lot of them. one is an executive for nbc
2) jim hobgood - a basketball player in virginia
3) rob zinger - vice president at a mortgage bank

my point is that it's possible our guy chose that name for a reason, however it's simply not necessarily true. even if there is a hidden meaning it likely not be obvious and probably won't help us figure out who he really is.

That's a good point.

If he had killed himself in 1990, when the book was new and controversial, I would be sure the name had significance. But ten years later it wasn't being talked about much any more and you're right, it might well be coincidence.

i'm not convinced it isn't his real name, or very close to his real name. Stevick (in several spelling variants) isn't that uncommon.

 

[outofthedark]

I never had the book as "assigned reading" in high school. I think we more or so had stuff like "The Outsiders", "Animal Farm" (awesome book, shame about the film version that we watched), Anne Frank's diary, Shakespeare (hated studying his work in grade 9), and "Iqbal: The Novel".

 

[FindYou]

as a thought experiment i challenge you guys to do the following -

make up a fake name for yourself and then google it. i think you'll find that almost any name is connected to something, whether it has anything to do with the reason you chose that name or not.

i chose -

1) bob goldblatt - there's a lot of them. one is an executive for nbc
2) jim hobgood - a basketball player in virginia
3) rob zinger - vice president at a mortgage bank

my point is that it's possible our guy chose that name for a reason, however it's simply not necessarily true. even if there is a hidden meaning it likely not be obvious and probably won't help us figure out who he really is.

I think the name can be very important depending on how hard we want to go with it. It is impossible to deny the name meant something to him - he did kill himself in the way Lyle from the book wanted to and he used it as his final alias.

Now, I'm new so I'm unsure the lengths people go to researching here, but things such as looking for school districts which have taught the book in the past (through something like Google) or perhaps even via collegiate library databases are new leads that can be followed up on. This kind of information could narrow down his location, perhaps. If we can find a school, then we could find the town and if we could find the town we could see about searching for runaways near those locations. Or, I mean, he could have bought it himself or borrowed from a friend. But still, something to think about.

There are also some clues we could use to refine the search as well - he had impeccable teeth so I want to say he would need to have parents who had proper access to great dental care. His accent is hard to place because we don't know exactly what it sounded like, but I've sometimes mistaken Midwestern accents for Canadian myself. (People have spoken about these things before, but placing them in different contexts might jog our memories a bit in regards to new avenues to cover).

And there is also whatever was there before that Rama Inn as I said previously. If anyone knows how I could find some information on maybe what was there, I could try to see if I can't turn something up.

Thanks for the welcome all! :blushing:

 

[MSforsyte]

I think we should be careful about focusing too much on his pressmeddelande accent and that IT sounded Canadian, she Spike to him very briefly and people can sound different than where they are fr.o.m. Im swedish but With impeccably english With a very slight accent and people always have problem placing me. When people guess where I am fr.o.m. I pretty much get the whole world, for instance South Africa, Holland, Canada, France and so on. And Swedish is really a very distinct accent but how would you know if you never met a Swede before BUT Also that accents are rather individual.

The best at this points would be to do a DNA test that determines ethnic background, why arent the LE doing that?? Expensive?

 

[MSforsyte]

And My iPad autocerrect in swedish....sorry!!!