Baltimore 28 Arrestee Nick Becker's background

They live in the northern, most affluent section of the [Calvert] County [MD] in a
neighborhood of comfortable homes sprinkled among farm fields. Nearby
Northern High School is surrounding by acres of corn and hayfields and
faded red tobacco barns. School buses jostle with tractors for space on
the roads.

Becker [Nick's dad], who has had trouble sleeping since the episode.[Successfully stopping

his highschool's graduation prayer] "We were going to
see our son, who excelled in high school, at his graduation, and what we
ended up with was total humiliation. We're not prepared for this. It's
painful, whether Nick was right or wrong. It's painful to see your child
called a lone malcontent and atheist, splashed across the papers." The
sight of her son in a police squad car was too much. "I just collapsed and
started crying," Patti Becker said.

But when he reached adolescence, he grew more subdued. He
would sit in class, occasionally muttering sardonic comments.
"People just pretty much looked at him as very bizarre but also kind of
funny," says Michael Kelley, who taught Nick math for four years and was
the teacher closest to him. "He's very creative. Comes up with ways to
express things that are not just interesting and mathematically accurate
but very funny."

Becker tried to get another video - a fright movie parody about a family
that got chopped up and put in the bathtub - aired on local cable-access
television; it was rejected. "It didn't make sense," says the program
director at Jones Communications, which is more accustomed to airing
zoning board meetings sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

Becker tore through the math curriculum, taking two math classes every
year until he exhausted the school's offerings. In his senior year, Becker
and two other students ran a Web page to help students with calculus.
A problem Becker wrote for the Web page displays his sensibility: He's
smart - and a smart aleck.

"A 20-lb bag full of severed thumbs is dropped from the second highest
floor of the Sears Tower, 1542 feet above the ground. The top floor was
rented out for a Narcoleptic Rabbi Association (NRA) convention . . . (a)
Find the position and velocity functions for dem thumbs . . . (b) How long
does it take for dem thumbs to smash into the pavement below in a
disgusting, bloody mess?"

When his school newspaper, the Patriot Press, asked seniors where they
would be in the fall after graduation, Julie Schenk, the student who had
hoped to deliver the graduation prayer, wrote, "I will be majoring in
Elementary Education and minoring in German at Salisbury State
University." [By contrast] Becker wrote, "I don't remember. I locked the plans
in the safe and I forgot the combination."

Cal Thomas, a syndicated columnist, checked out Becker's Web site and
compared him to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenage gunmen in the
Columbine High School shootings. "Why is God the only idea banned from
government schools, while the demons that produce the beliefs of a Harris,
a Klebold and a Becker are tolerated, protected, even promoted?" Thomas asked.

One November day in the 11th grade, Becker refused to stand for the Pledge
of Allegiance. "I don't think there's any point in making us stand up
while someone recites rhetoric," Becker says.

He was sent to the principal's office and threatened with an in-school
suspension. But that evening, he sent an e-mail to the American Civil
Liberties Union, which sent a fax to the school the next day, informing
administrators that they could not require Becker to stand for the pledge.
Principal George Miller apologized.

Becker wasn't delicate in victory. He posted a story about the episode on
his Web site in which he called the flag "the cloth on a stick."

Becker calls his critics "close-minded" people who live in a "backwards,
backwoods place."

"He definitely has strong opinions and although he looks for tolerance
from other people he doesn't necessarily give it himself," says Kelley,
the math teacher. "I always thought it was ironic - that he wants
something that he himself doesn't want to give. He's just so overwhelmed
by his convictions."

After the prayer was dropped, the teenager was triumphant. "They could say
all the stupid stuff they wanted, but I won," he says.

"Don't give up," says Becker, who plans to study computers and film at the
University of Maryland. "When something's wrong, don't sit idly by,
complaining. One person can accomplish stuff."

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Becker is being portrayed in some quarters as a modern-day Thomas Paine and
a martyr to the First Amendment. But a visit to his Web page reveals a disturbing anger.

Here's one of his little ditties. It's called "My Dad Can Go to Hell.''


I'm gonna speak, I'm gonna yell
My f---ing dad can go to hell,
You find it such a f---ing shock,
your mind's closed with a master lock
Yeah I know it's pretty sick
it's a joke you fascist pr--k
what would uncle Stevie think?
or all those other sheltered dinks?


What a touching Father's Day sentiment.

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