Some think Sgt. Fred V. Worell, left, was the model for the Thug. Albert Syage, a sharpshooter, says his firing pose inspired the Thug's.
Posted on 03/06/2005 11:04:10 AM PST by neverdem
For a bad guy, the Thug certainly has a lot of people eager to claim him as their very own.
An article in The New York Times on Feb. 17, titled "Cops' Favorite Target Thug, but Just Who Was the Guy?" explored three theories within the New York Police Department of possible models for the first "realistic" target, a staple of firearms training for more than four decades.
The target, depicting a husky middle-aged white guy who's kept his hair and is pointing a revolver at the viewer, has become an iconic law enforcement image, used by a wide range of agencies, from small police forces to the Department of Homeland Security.
At the firing range in the Bronx, some believed that a former sergeant, the late Fred V. Worell, was the model for the target, having spent many of his 35 years with the department at the range. He was so devoted to the place that his sons want to scatter his ashes there.
But in the basement of 1 Police Plaza, the press operators who print the target believe it resembles Officer Bruno J. Fulginiti, who retired in 1977 and died 19 years later. Finally, there is the Ernest Borgnine Theory, wherein the artist modeled the target on the tough-guy actor in "McHale's Navy" and "From Here to Eternity."
Since the article's publication, new possibilities have emerged: namely, the Missailidis Theory and the Syage Theory, and the chance that the Thug is one man's head atop another's body, a sort of municipal Minotaur. And while the police artist credited with drawing the target, Richard Kenehan, is dead, the retired lieutenant who knew him best tried to put the matter to rest once and for all.
The Missailidis theory comes from Barbara Sheehan, 53, of Madison, Conn., who remembers being barely a teenager when her father, Nicholas S. Missailidis, an instructor at the range, showed her the big poster on thick paper. "He came home with the silhouette and said, 'Guess who this is,' " she said. Her father retired a captain in 1980, moved to Florida and died two years later, she said.
The second theory centers on a former sharpshooter in the department, Albert Syage, now 75, and living in San Diego. In the mid-1960's, he was a figure of some renown in the department, having shot perfectly, with three other experts, at a target at the White House in 1962. President John F. Kennedy was so impressed, Mr. Syage recalled, that he invited the group up to meet him, and personally poured Mr. Syage a glass of Johnnie Walker Black.
"And he poured a good one," Mr. Syage said. "He had one with us."
So, he said, it did not seem out of the ordinary when he received a call from the bosses asking him to pose for a new target. "They said, 'Would you mind if we took photos of you?' " he said. "They just said they wanted a combat pose."
He would, over the years, shoot at the Thug target many times, and it would have been understandable for him to feel conflicted about doing so, but that was not the case, he said, for one simple reason.
"It didn't look like me," he said. "All I did was pose so they could do the sketch from the photo. He can put on an ugly face, like he did. The only thing that resembles me is my stance and my pose."
A retired police lieutenant, Louis Auleta, 68, said he came on the job in 1956 with a visual arts education, and was put to work alongside Detective Kenehan drawing sketches. The two collaborated on the Thug, he said.
In the first version, the body was unlined, without texture, enabling recruits to easily see where their bullets struck. This was not only distracting, it was far from reality. So Lieutenant Auleta filled in the body with lines and shading, so the hits would be harder to see.
But the face, he said, was his partner's work.
"There was no model," said Mr. Auleta, now a security supervisor at a Manhattan management company. "He made it up. He was great. He could do anything, this guy." He agreed that the target resembled Sergeant Worell, and Captain Missailidis, and even, a little, Mr. Borgnine.
"But Kenehan had no one in mind when he did it."
He was asked how he could be so sure.
"He was my partner," he said. "We worked together every day."
Some think Sgt. Fred V. Worell, left, was the model for the Thug. Albert Syage, a sharpshooter, says his firing pose inspired the Thug's.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.
The target makers to be PC probably need to get with the times--today, it would be more of a gangsta lookin dude--long shirt, baggy pants worn below the buttocks, hat turned 3/4 around, gold chains, holding a semi-auto turned sideways over his head.
Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
Louis Auleta, a retired police lieutenant, said he and another police artist, Lt. Richard Kenehan, created the Thug, the firing range target.
LOL! But to be PC he would still have to be a white male devil driving a white van.
Whose middle name is Wayne. (the thug, not the white van)
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