The Case of the Ugly Thief

By the time he was twelve, John Wilbert Glaefke was miserably self-conscious about his looks. Playmates, with childish cruelty, called him "big lips" and "bulldog." In junior high, a teacher asked him in front of the class if he had any Negro blood. When he reached the age of wanting dates, the girls looked at him with frank distaste or fear and refused.

In time, John stopped playing with other kids and withdrew more & more into himself. He stayed at home with his mother, brother and three sisters, who, he says, were "all good-looking." After five weeks in the tenth grade, he left school and went to work at a series of jobs that could be done without showing his face much--in shipping rooms, basements and back rooms.

"Beat It." At 23, John got into trouble with the police for stealing a typewriter and a movie projector. At an "honor farm" of Ohio State Reformatory, it was the same old story. Other prisoners avoided him: "I would walk up and watch them when they were playing cards. They let me stand there for awhile and then look up as if they were telling me to beat it." He ran away from the farm, was caught stealing again and sent back to the reformatory.

By the time he was drafted in 1945, John was more or less prepared for the way he was treated in the Army. Other soldiers were not interested in taking him along on parties. When he went out alone, girls, as usual, snubbed him.

Last year, out of the Army, John was arrested again for stealing. He told his life story to Cleveland's Judge Frank

Merrick, who consulted probation officers, psychiatrists and a plastic surgeon.

John was given four operations, spread over eight months. Surgeon Frank L. Meany built a new bridge for his nose and thinned his lips. All his misshapen teeth were pulled and he got false teeth. The usual cost of all this facial improvement would have been around $3,000; John paid only $35 for dental material.

Punching the Wall. Last week John, at 32, was looking much better, and feeling like another man. He was doing all right at his $38-a-week job in a small factory which makes household goods. Like a blind man with new-found sight, he was discovering the normal give & take relationships between normal people. Little things like the good-natured kidding of fellow workers were strange and exciting. He now enjoys meeting people, has made some friends, but has still made no dates with girls. With one or more operations to go, John says: "I'm still no Adonis. But I like the way people treat me."

Psychiatrists are hopeful. that John's new face has given him a new life.*Said Dr. Royal Grossman: "I felt his appearance was a factor in his maladjustment ... He reacted in the only way he knew how. It's like hauling off a'-d punching the wall when you're frustrated. I'm gratified with the way he's getting along up to now. If he lives by society's conventions and laws for ten years I'll know we have accomplished something." Surgeon Meany is more optimistic about a lasting happy ending: "John was an apt case for psychological surgery. His troubles started between the ages of twelve and 15, when he passed the point of childhood anonymity, before which kids don't care much about appearances. He's holding a job and feels like a part of society now."

*Chicago Surgeon John F. Pick reported (TIME, Oct. 13, 1947) that less than i% of 376 convicts released after plastic surgery from Illinois' Stateville Penitentiary got into any more trouble; usual rate for parole violation was 17%.

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