since his family moved to the Curtis Park Projects, Ronnie Lyle had hung around with seven other boys in the neighborhood, three black and four who called themselves “Chicano” back then. Through the years, the boys moved so gradually from innocent childhood play to mischievous acts like raiding the sunrise service breakfasts that it didn't seem to them like they were doing much of anything wrong. And they always stood up for each other.
Ronnie learned early about the importance of protecting his companions. When he was eight years old, a bigger kid had walked up to his big brother Bill and threatened him with a stick. Heeding his mother's admonition to always walk away from fighting, Ronnie turned and ran, not walked, for blocks before looking back at his brother, who was being thrashed vigorously with that stick. When he got home that afternoon, his mother gave him a severe whuppin’ for not protecting his brother.
“Your brother's fight is your fight,” she told him. “Don't start no fights, but don't run from one, neither.”
Ron laughs now, “I couldn't win. If I fought, I got whupped; when I ran, I got whupped.” But the lesson had been learned. And it was reinforced a few months later when family friend Pastor Roland Martin took the three oldest Lyle boys aside and gave them preliminary lessons on how to stand their ground with bullies—how to keep from running away. As it turned out, Pastor Martin's lessons carried the brothers through many a scuffle.
Roy Tyler and Ronnie did their best to protect each other from the time they were in fourth grade, when a couple of older boys had jumped Ronnie, and Roy had charged in, arms waving. The “code” was born that day, the promise to fight when attacked and to always defend each other. Gradually other boys came into the fold—Conner Hill, Beau Peat, Phillip Dawson, Russell Perron, Gerald Wade, and finally, Roy's younger brother Sonny Boy, but the code never changed. Ron's most vivid memories of those elementary school years are of his friends honoring themselves by taking care of each other.
By the time the boys reached early adolescence, it seemed a natural progression from fighting to committing misdemeanors, like selling newspapers they lifted from porches. But it was only a couple of years later, when Ronnie and Roy moved into petty theft, resulting eventually in their incarceration at the Buena Vista Correctional Facility, that his friends got scared.
Ron doesn't make excuses for his behavior back in those days. “I had good parents. My dad had three jobs to try and make it better for us. I didn't understand how important that was, and I got caught up in stuff I shouldn't have. I wasn't thinking.”
An even more difficult question is how the kids from Curtis Park proceeded from what was labeled “juvenile delinquency” to serious trouble. Even today, Russ and Ronnie deny ever being in a gang as defined by current standards. They talk about how they represented different races and ethnicities, that they never had colors and never named themselves. They were just friends. But when Ronnie was indicted for first-degree murder at age nineteen, some of his old friends were at the scene, and the crime was reported as gang related. No one could believe that the Lyle family was involved in the worst thing that had ever happened in their neighborhood.
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Ronnie's parents, William Henly Lyle and Nellie Louise Lyle, were both born in Dayton, Ohio, to families that were steeped in a traditional African-American culture, even though William's mother was white and his father claimed Native American blood. Work was hard to find after the Depression, and both families struggled, even after William and Nellie were married in the late thirties.
By the time Ronnie was born as their third child on February 12, 1941, they were living with Nellie's parents, and William was helping the family make ends meet by working in what their children now call a “brothel/casino.” Nellie's father was a preacher who had, years before, set about building his own church, “literally brick by brick, layer by layer.” But both of her parents, far from disapproving of William's job, welcomed the extra income.
William and Nellie already had six children in 1946, when everything changed. Their oldest child, Barbara, died of rheumatic fever, the catalyst for William joining the rest of the family in being “saved.” He left his job and began his ministry in Holiness Church, a Pentecostal denomination that followed even stricter rules than the church of Nellie's family, demanding behavior that was the antithesis of everything William had seen in the brothel/casino. He became the strongest voice for reform in the community, and his success as a minister was confirmed when in only two years, he was appointed one of twenty-five ministers to the Ohio District State Council.
A few months later, William had a dream that began a family tradition. He told Nellie about the vision that came to him, of coming to a city near a mountain and building a church there. He believed that God wanted him to “find them, teach them, guide them, and save them.” Within a few months, the message in the dream was confirmed by two church leaders, Bishop Davis from Kansas and Bishop Bass from Ohio, who met and agreed that Pastor Lyle was chosen by God to pioneer a church in Denver, Colorado. He was directed to start his church from scratch.
Both William and Nellie were certain that the move had been determined by God because it came out of a dream, and they never had any doubts as to their purpose. In 1949, with seven children in tow, including eight-year-old Ronnie, the Lyles left Dayton behind, took a bus to Denver, and never looked back.
With Nellie's help, William did establish a church in Denver, though it would be four more years before that church had a physical home. The Lyles never lost their faith in Biblical tenets, one of which was to “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth,” and they would eventually have eleven more children. Nellie always said that they were blessed to have such a large family, and she made sure that each of the brothers and sisters, as soon as they could talk, learned to recite in order the first and middle names of those who eventually became the nineteen Lyle children, an accomplishment they never lost.
It is difficult to imagine how William and Nellie cared for their family in a four-bedroom brick house in the projects with all the attending laundry and cleaning, not to mention feeding. The oldest brother, Bill, suggests that to understand what it was like, the outsider should think of the children in “sets,” with the older group caring for the younger all the way down the line.
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On a Saturday afternoon in September 1955, the Lyles gathered as they did every week in the small living room—William, Nellie, and Bill on the couch, thirteen-year-old Ronnie holding baby Phillip on the rocker, and all the other children sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Nellie called on each child in turn, beginning with Bill: “Tell us about your week.” Every one of the Lyle kids looked forward to this weekly review of their lives, and most prepared in advance the best news they could remember. Bill probably reported on his grades in school, almost always good. Ronnie was more likely to tell about neighborhood sports in which he excelled, often a pickup basketball game. And Nellie always encouraged the appointed speaker before she moved on.
“Good for you. Kenny!” And on through Eddy and Michael and Donna and Sharon and Joyce and Raymond as each related highlights—passing a math test, showing a drawing, even singing a hymn. At the end, Ronnie tossed baby Phillip a few inches in the air and got a happy squeal in return. The whole family laughed, and William let the sound die down before he announced the scripture for the week, maybe even the passage upon which his Denver church was founded:
Acts 2:38. Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
And with that, the family dispersed, each to his and her assigned chores for the week.
Nellie
