In 2017, Chuck Orloski’s 27-year marriage collapsed. Chased from his home and broke, he had to take refuge at Lighthouse, a Scranton group home run by a blind, 54-year-old nun, Lindy Morelli.
That Thanksgiving, I took a four-hour bus ride from Philly to stay five days with my friend, Chuck, at the Lighthouse. The rolling hills, clapboard houses and country lanes of Eastern Pennsylvania bespoke peace, solidity and down-home goodness, but the region was actually racked by disappearing jobs, lost dignity, hopelessness and drugs.
On previous trips, Chuck would drive me from the Greyhound station to his home, but this time, he didn’t even have a car, so we had to walk. The Lighthouse was just half a mile away, however, and it wasn’t too cold. I only had a backpack.
The two-story, signless house sat on a narrow residential lane, across from a small Greek Orthodox church, serving a mostly Lebanese congregation. Merely a block away was Main Street, with its handful of restaurants offering mediocre burgers and hot dogs, edible Chinese, decent Mexican, pizzas and Lebanese.
At Lighthouse, I met Steve, an Oklahoman who had the infuriating habit of throwing Chuck’s canned food away, for they were expired, he falsely claimed. I chatted with cheerful Lee Ann, a middle aged woman who attributed her recovery from kidney cancer to an oil-exuding icon at St. George Church. I listened to Lou, who came by often to help out Lindy. A former seminary student, he had never married and lived alone.
My room had been recently occupied by a thoughtful, quiet, middle-aged man who was also a pedophile, it turned out, for one day, cops showed up to handcuff the pervert and take his computer away.
Ministering to all sorts of troubled souls, Lindy doesn’t shun criminals and, in fact, has visited prisoners for decades.
In 1981, a 15-year-old, Joseph Aulisio, murdered two children, aged 8 and 4, just outside Scranton. After his conviction in court, a gum-chewing Aulisio shouted to his family, “It’s party time!” He then mocked the district attorney, “Ernie, are you going to hug me?” Condemned to death, Aulisio got his sentence reduced to life, and is now filing for release after the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life terms for juveniles are unconstitutional. Since the mid-90’s, Lindy has been visiting Aulisio in prison. If ever released, he’d be welcomed into the Lighthouse.
One evening after dinner, Lindy and I retreated to a parlor to conduct this interview. Going in, I already knew about Lindy’s preoccupation with Kevin Tower, a Michiganian convicted of double murder. The details of his case, I only found out later.
Online, there’s only one photo of Tower. It shows a clean shaven, boyish looking man with a flat-topped head, dirty blonde hair and thick neck. There’s “A Prisoner on the Ladder,” an 800-word screed Tower published, presumably with Lindy’s help, at the very obscure Wilkes-Barre Scranton Independent Gazette. Revealing no facts about his own case, Tower merely compares himself to Jesus:
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