User:Chromenights

M. S. Cone. Stands for Michael S. Cone. M. S. Cone is the author of 10 novels. He also worked on and off the old United Press International. And the Associated Press, known respectfully in the journalism field as: U.P.I.  and A.P. He also worked on the Village Voce in the middle 70's as an intern for Jack Newfield. After spending many years, from the age of 6 to 11, at an all Catholic boys school, his Mother, Margaret Fragale remarried and he was brought to live with them in Chicago. His stepfather was an abusive man who drank heavily and often abused M. S. Cone. Cone's reaction was to run away and at a very young age found himself in such places as Longview Texas, Selma, Al, and Miami, Fl. where he took odd jobs to support himself. The police would often catch him and return him home where abuses by his stepfather continued. At 15, he was diagnosed as deslytic by a Chicago school consoler and placed in a 'special ed' class. He seemed to settle in here, and as he often noted in later life: It was because I at last kicked the shit out of my stepfather. True, or not, the Chicago Police file on him show him as a leading founder of an all white Chicago Street gang known as T. J. O., which stood for the Thorn dale-Jarvas organization. The gang was a forerunner to gang violance to come in the late sixties and was considered especialy vilent for its tme; so much so that the Chicago Police maintained a special task force on the gang. One the the Chicago Policee Officers asigned to this tack force was Dennis Ferina, the actor, who at the time was a young Chicago Police officer.