Loss of first child led man to find outlet in white pride groups
By Aaron Aupperlee
The Jackson Citizen Patriot
RIVES TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Two years ago, he led a white pride march from Loomis Park to downtown Jackson.
Six months ago, he abandoned the white supremacy movement.
On April 15, he was baptized.
Five days later, Chris Simpson sat in the waiting room of a skin and vein clinic, waiting to start the long and painful process of having his tattoos, most replete with Nazi or white pride iconography, removed.
“Hate will blind you to so many things. It will stop you from having so many things,” Simpson said. “It consumes you.”
Simpson, a 38-year-old garbage man and former Marine, has given up on hate. It is a decision he made for his family, for his wife Misty and his children, 9-year-old Cody, 7-year-old Kayleigh, 5-year-old Nikolaus and the 2-year-old twins, Tyrsson and Aeric. It is a change that has left Simpson feeling better these past six months than he has in the last 12 years.
“He’s just a lot happier,” said Simpson’s wife, Misty. “Happier all the time, when we’re out; when we’re at home; especially when we’re helping people.”
The March 21, 2010, white pride march from Loomis Park to E. Michigan Avenue perplexed, angered and offended many.
“This type of ignorance has no place here,” read the sign of one protester at Loomis Park.
Simpson led the march. Nine supporters followed him. More than 100 protesters followed them. Simpson said protesters spit at him, threatened him and called him a racist, a bigot, a honkie, a cracker.
“We did what all the other races did. We tried to have a march that said we are proud to be white,” Simpson said, recalling the march.
Even without the tattoos, which sprawl down his arms and up his neck, Simpson’s presence can be intimidating. At 6 feet and 245 pounds, he fills out clothing with authority. He does not think his tattoos draw notice, but they are hard to miss.
“PURE HATE,” is tattooed across his knuckles. His forearms read “BLOOD” and “HONOR.” There are four battle axes in the shape of a swastika on his left shoulder with the words “Supreme White Power” over them. There are several wolf’s hooks, a Nazi symbol. The iconic lightning bolts associated with Nazi Germany’s Schutzstaffel, the SS, are above his right wrist. There’s a Nazi war bird on his chest. There are tattoos of a Valkyrie, a Viking, and Thor with swastikas drawn in his helmet. Some of Simpson’s tattoos are specific to the white supremacy movement, some to his former devotion to Norse mythology. Some are for his family. Some are “very stupid,” he said. Some, like a sun and wizard, are meaningless. Some, like his Marine Corps tattoo and one in memory of his daughter, have deep meaning. There are 42 tattoos, he thinks. An explanation of them all takes several minutes.
Simpson was a member of Battalion 14, a white pride group with supporters in Michigan. The group had a zero tolerance policy on drugs and violence. It did not allow any illegal behavior, Simpson said. The group sought to help white people, donating baskets of formula and supplies to mothers of newborn babies and helping children on dialysis. Battalion 14 bought Christmas gifts for needy families. In their 12 years with various white pride groups, Chris and Misty Simpson estimate they donated more than $15,000.
“All to help people,” Simpson said. “We didn’t preach hate. ...For us, it was just about taking care of our own.”
Simpson’s involvement in the white pride movement began in a place of pain, frustration, anger and confusion. On April 28, 2000, Chris and Misty Simpson lost their first child, Alexis Nicole. Born with Open Spina Bifida, a build-up of fluid in the brain, clubbed feet, and no intestines or stomach, Alexis lived only two and a half hours.
Recently married and struggling to scratch out a life in Danville, Va., Alexis’ death sent Simpson reeling.
“I was feeling a lot of anger and hatred, and I was confused,” Simpson said. “I just built up this hatred, or what I thought was hatred.”
He paused.
“Yeah, it was hatred.”
Simpson directed that hatred, with the help of a white pride group in his community, at people of other races. Simpson looked around his community and believed that other races were succeeding at the expense of white people.
In Alexis’ honor, Chris and Misty Simpson started a group dedicated to helping white couples who had just become parents. They donated diapers, wipes, baby powder, clothes, blankets, bottles, formula and more, Simpson said.
The group sought to change the image of skinheads, showing people that white supremacists were not just a bunch of violent thugs. The group dissolved; other groups sprang up; Chris and Misty Simpson joined. As a former Marine, he was drawn to the brotherhood aspect and comfortable within its paramilitary structure.
The white pride movement gave Simpson a place to direct his anger and frustration. He viewed stories in the media through a white vs. black lens. Increasingly, he thought whites were becoming targets. He called this a “racial awakening.”
The family moved to Michigan and become involved in Battalion 14, helping hundreds of children. Helping was addicting, the feeling Simpson felt after donating a high.
But with this altruism came a dangerous sense of pride. In promoting the white race, he degraded others. He was against inter-racial marriages, worried it would dilute the purity of races. There were anti-Semitic videos he is not proud of making. There are the words “PURE HATE” tattooed across his knuckles.
In December, fighting within the organization and what seemed like total reliance on the Simpsons to finance the group’s activities, caused Chris and Misty Simpson to call it quits.
During a shopping trip to Wal-Mart, one of his children looked down an aisle, then up at Simpson and said, “Daddy, you can’t go down that aisle. There’s a n----- down there.”
“It was time to make a change for them,” Simpson said of his children. “I don’t want them following that path.”
Soon after, the owner of the liquor store across from the Sherman Oaks mobile home park told Simpson what he needed to hear. Ronnie Noocha, an Iraqi Chaldean, liked Simpson. He knew Simpson had a family and worried about the hate he harbored.
“It’s still on your shoulders, and they let it go,” Simpson remembers Noocha saying to him. “He said what I already knew. It was just something I needed to hear from somebody else.”
He told Simpson to get rid of the hate.
“That has never prospered for anybody,” Noocha said of Simpson’s hate. “I am proud of him. I told him it’s good for you; it’s good for your family.”
Simpson went home and talked to his wife.
“We cleaned our house of it,” Misty Simpson said. “This wasn’t for us anymore.”
Chris and Misty Simpson started a new group, ACT, Americans Coming Together. The couple turned their attention to the Jackson Interfaith Shelter, helping anyone in need. They donated winter jackets and hats. They baked cupcakes for Valentine’s Day. They prepared several trays of lasagna for dinner one night in March. They bought bus tickets for people at the shelter to use.
On April 15, Simpson stood in the baptismal pool at New Horizons Community Church. He wore a white tank top and white shorts, tattoos on full display for the congregation.
Pastor Jerry Lyon placed his hand on Simpson.
“God I know that there are things from his past life that need to be buried. And God, today we enjoy the opportunity. We take glory in that opportunity to bury that old life and to say to you God, I am a new creation in Jesus Christ,” Lyon prayed.
With Simpson holding his nose, Lyon lowered him back into the water. The congregation applauded. Simpson rose and gave Lyon a hug.
Simpson’s baptism came about a month after he and family watched the movie “Courageous,” and decided to attend New Horizons. The movie, produced by Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, follows the lives of four police officers who excel at their jobs but flounder in the task of fatherhood.
Simpson connected with the movie, both out of his desire to be a police officer and his fatherless childhood. His father and stepfather were not part of his life. His grandfather, the man he looked to as father, died of leukemia when Simpson was 11. It was then that Simpson turned his back on God.
After watching the movie, Simpson noticed the sign out in front of New Horizons inviting people to come watch the “Courageous” movie for free. An omen, Simpson and his family went.
Within a month, he was baptized. He attends a Bible study. Prayers start meals and end days. His children, once picking up on Simpson’s racism, now model his Christianity.
Simpson tapped his feet and looked around the lobby of the Skin and Vein Center in Fenton. A bus-load of people surrounded him. They were participants in the Freedom Ink Tattoo Removal program, a free service offered by the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation to help people remove prison or gang tattoos. James Phillips, the re-entry service manager who runs the program, invited Simpson to participate.
“This is one of the vehicles that people can use to make changes in their life,” Phillips said.
Tough looking men went into an office and came out only minutes later with large bandages.
“I’m not nervous at all,” Simpson said to Phillips.
Tattoo removal takes years. A single tattoo can take several treatments to disappear. A laser tells the body the ink is a foreign object, said Amy Sowers, a nurse with the clinic since 2006. Simpson wanted Sowers to blast off all the tattoos from his arms. When she was done there, he wanted her to start on his stomach, his neck and his legs.
Sowers started on the “H” of “HATE” scrawled across the knuckles of Simpson left hand. She dragged the laser across half of it.
“Oh, that sucks,” Simpson said two seconds into it.
Twenty-four seconds later, the first pass was done. The skin instantly swelled up pink.
“We are not going all the way up the arm today,” Simpson said.
“You see why I told you we needed to start small,” Sowers responded with a laugh.
Sowers hit tattoos on Simpson’s knuckles, the top of his hand and both wrists. Simpson lasted about 20 to 30 seconds before asking for a break. His first treatment lasted 10 minutes.
Simpson said it felt like someone poured acid on his skin. He could feel something burning.
The disappointment on Simpson’s face, however, was obvious. Of the 42 tattoos covering his body, his first treatment targeted four. Once the swelling went down, most of those tattoos came back solid. Simpson took delight in the few missing flecks of ink.
But there is plenty to be excited about. Simpson hopes to undergo another round of tattoo removal later this month. His family still attends New Horizons Church, and his wife, despite a fear of water, was recently baptized. Chris and Misty Simpson disbanded ACT and started a new group aimed at helping people. It’s called RAC, Random Acts of Christ.
“Well, that’s a start. This is going to be a long process,” he said. “But you know what? It’s going to be worth it in the end.”
