Wounded Royal Oak Post Office Worker Recalls Terror of Shootings, Management's Role

Twenty years ago, Clark French was in the middle of the when he heard shots fired at the other end of the building and began to run. He only got about 10 feet away when he was shot from behind by Thomas McIlvane. 

McIlvane, 31, had been fired from the post office in 1990 for insubordination. He filed an appeal and had just learned his dismissal was upheld in an arbitration hearing. Seeking revenge, Mcllvane shot four people and wounded four more before taking his life on Nov. 14, 1991.

McIlvane's bullet went through French's liver, gall bladder and colon. After 10 surgeries, French said his body has recovered but he still suffers from nightmares and the trauma of the conditions that were in place at the post office two decades ago. He still can’t get over it, he said Monday morning – 20 years to the day of the deadly rampage.

Clark was among with postal workers inside the building, away from the eyes of the media. Originally, there was to be a ceremony next to a at the southeast corner of the building as a living memorial.

“Twenty years is a long time. My wife has been fantastic and I had a really good therapist. We talked a lot of things through,” said French, who did not return to work at the post office after the shootings. “I think when it gets harder to talk about it is when I talk about what happened prior to the shootings and the way management acted. The idea that there were people that wanted this result and got what they wanted. There were people pushing McIlvane over the edge.”

On that sunny Thursday morning in 1991, French said he was trying to get out of the facility when he was shot.

“I thought if I lay down, it was just too easy for Tom, so I kept running. As long as I was a moving target I thought I was better off,” he said. “My goals were very short term at that point. When I got shot I just wanted to get around the corner and then when I made that corner I just wanted to make the next one. When I got there, I wanted to get to the hallway and then I wanted to get out the door.”

When he reached the bottom of the steps in the rear of the facility, French recognized McIlvane’s car and ran to the other side of Center Street on the east side of the post office. His next goal was to lay down behind a short concrete wall that separates a parking lot from the street.

“When I did that Tom was shooting Keith Ciszewski at his window,” French said. “There was a woman Keith helped get out and she broke her ankle on the way out. When I saw the glass breaking and I heard the shots I thought he was shooting her because she was stumbling in the parking lot.”

Ciszewski, a labor relations specialist, was shot in the head and died instantly. The woman he was trying to get out the window survived.

French said he kept running. He eventually collapsed one block away near 11 Mile Road and Main Street and was picked up by an ambulance.

French said he cannot help but hold McIlvane accountable for his actions. “He did pull the trigger. He’s the one that had the gun in his hand,” he said. “I can’t absolve him, but I do know that he was pushed.”

French said he believes there was an effort on the part of management at that time to "push buttons" and try to get people to make mistakes so they could fire them on the spot.

“This was a game that they were playing, and the game that they were playing with McIlvane was a dangerous one. And it finally got out of hand,” he said.