Ex-Skinhead Tells Students Jail, Oklahoma City Bombing Changed Him

Frank Meeink works at a shop in Philadelphia, refinishing and delivering antiques. But the 22-year-old has another job that consumes much of his energy: erasing his neo-Nazi skinhead past--speech by speech, tattoo by tattoo.

The word “skinhead,” once emblazoned on his knuckles, has been wiped away with laser surgery. Gone also is an image of his former skinhead girlfriend tattooed on his right arm. The swastika on his neck is next.

And with confessional speeches around the country, he hopes to make up for deeds that include producing a public-access program to spout hatred of nonwhites and non-Christians, recruiting teens to the neo-Nazi movement and landing in jail after beating a man.

“God has definitely made an example of me,” he says. “God has made me do this.”

On Wednesday, his mission brought him to Moorpark High School. His tattoos might have set him apart, but garbed in baggy jeans and a brown T-shirt, Meeink could easily have been mistaken for one of the students he addressed in two assemblies dedicated to tolerance.

The Anti-Defamation League in the San Fernando Valley, however, organizes his speech appearances and vouches for Meeink’s transformation.

“This is not someone who’s trying to break into show business,” said Keath Blatt, director of the San Fernando Valley league. “We know his message is sincere and he’s out here for the right reasons.”

Although Meeink’s past has been a lesson in hate and violence, he now pushes for understanding and harmony between races. He has lost track of how many courts, schools and organizations he has spoken to in the last three years about his experience.

The school invited Meeink to speak as part of its International Week to celebrate diversity and explore differences in cultures and religion, said Principal John Macintosh.

It all began when he was 13 and a “skater-type-punk-rock kid,” Meeink said before the attentive Moorpark audience.

“I really wasn’t wanted by my parents; my mother or my father,” he said. Both had remarried and left him feeling as if he was a mistake. His cousin belonged to the neo-Nazi skinhead movement and began giving him literature written by White Aryan Resistance’s Tom Metzger.

“It looked cool,” Meeink recalled thinking. “I looked like I belonged to something.” Pretty soon, he said, “I started really full-heartedly believing it.”

Beginning as a junior Ku Klux Klan member, he later joined others in Philadelphia to form a skinhead organization called Strike Force.

He told how the group threw two Cambodian fishermen into the river and tried to prevent them from getting out by throwing stones and train spikes at them. The Cambodian woman with the fishermen ran to her car, which two skinheads turned over. Later they found out the woman had a miscarriage after the incident.

“For a long time it was a bragging point,” Meeink recalled.

By the time he was 16, Meeink had attended Aryan Nation rallies. He moved to Springfield, Ill., and began recruiting for Aryan Nation, appearing on the local public-access cable channel with props such as a swastika flag, a Nazi helmet and a Confederate flag.

At one point, his group kidnapped a member of a group that called itself Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. Meeink recalled hitting the guy on the head with a gun, knocking out his front teeth, throwing his head through the wall--and also putting a tarp on the floor so the blood wouldn’t mess up a new carpet.

Eventually he was arrested; he went to prison in 1992 for assault.

It was jail that changed him, Meeink told the students. There, in Bible study and sports, he met black and Latino men and learned to grow out of his prejudices.

When he left prison, he left his past behind.

“I just couldn’t do it anymore,” he said. “I truly learned that by not talking to someone for the color of their skin, you could miss out on talking to the greatest person in the world.”

It was the Oklahoma City bombing that prompted him to do more--to go to the FBI with information about neo-Nazi groups, Meeink said.

“I remember seeing the little kids dead and knowing my friends could have been the ones to do it,” he said. Although he doesn’t know whether friends of his were ever involved, he said he wanted to give the FBI an edge on what the skinhead groups are like.

Through the FBI, Meeink got in touch with the Anti-Defamation League, and thus began his new life telling his story so others can learn from it.

He has organized a hockey club in Philadelphia called Harmony Through Hockey for 11- to 13-year-old kids of all races, both boys and girls. He considers this his crowning achievement. Behind hockey masks, he says, it’s difficult to tell what race or even gender a person is, he says. And he likes it that way.

Moorpark High students gave Meeink high marks for giving a meaningful lesson in a dramatic way. They said Meeink’s speech helped them to understand how people can get sucked into movements such as these.

“He was just a regular guy, like any of us,” said junior Andrea Cabriales.