Scholar's Tower

Dread of impending shame weighed with crushing force on Cheng Guan Lim, Chinese engineering student at the University of Michigan. He was doing badly in physics and math, thought he was sure to flunk out. Soon there would be nothing for it but to leave school, quit his job as janitor at Ann Arbor's First Methodist Church, and take the humiliating news back to his schoolteacher father in Singapore. Finally, one day in October 1955, Cheng disappeared. His friends, including the Rev. Eugene Ransom, pastor of the church, called in police. They found no clues.

This summer Cheng's Methodist friends had another mystery to ponder: strange bumping noises that came out of the deserted church by night. Early one morning last week a pair of private detectives, called in by Mr. Ransom, heard a trap door to the church attic slam. Together with Ann Arbor police, they climbed up, swept their flashlights about the attic. There, crouched above them in the rafters, was Cheng.

For close to four years, according to Cheng's story, the attic had been his home. The bumping noises had been Cheng skipping rope to keep in shape. By day he had slept on the stolen padding of a church pew. By night he had prowled the church grounds, filching food from the church kitchen.

Physically Cheng seemed unaffected by his hermit's existence. But as Ann Arbor police hauled him off to the county jail, his four-year preoccupation with loss of face suddenly vanished. Said he: "I have been a coward. I'm glad I was found."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.