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Stigma of Bi-Polar takes a Hit

In this week’s edition of People magazine, the well known actress, Catherine Zeta Jones, made public that in April of this year, she had checked into a mental health clinic in Connecticut and subsequently been given a diagnosis of Bi-Polar II, which consists of times of depression and episodes of mild mania.

Another actress this week, Demi Lovata, said that while she did not know Ms. Jones, her actions in making her story public was “so brave…and so difficult”.

And so it is, and that is part of the problem. Catherine Zeta Jones said there were millions of Americans suffering from this illness, and she was just one of them.

I know from the many talks and seminars I present, that a number of people, attorneys and paralegals, as well as their friends and families, suffer from all sorts of depression. Some seek help, including therapy and medication. Others do not. One reason people are hesitant to seek help is that they are concerned about what others may think of them. They are embarrassed. They do not want to admit, even to themselves, they are not well. And so they pretend…and often the illness gets worse, depriving them of living happier and more productive lives.

Long ago, when it was first suggested to me that I see a doctor (psychiatrist), I resisted, even breaking my first appointment. I was admitted to Duke Hospital for a week and subsequently got a diagnosis, in part, somewhat similar.

If you have ever come to one of my programs, you know that I speak pretty freely about this time in my life. It has been helpful to me to continue to do so. But it took a long time for me to get to that point. It was not easy.

Only when it becomes easier for people… only when it is not seen as “brave and courageous” will we have really begun to fight back against the illness of depression and its cousin…being bipolar.

It will be very nice when one day I can ask a group of people if they would be willing to seek help for mental issues they might be having, and they all raise their hands and say “yes”. Until then, I applaud those people, well known, who are willing to make their lives public in this way.
 

Rags

Last Tuesday evening, before I drove to Charlotte for a Continuing Education program on early Wednesday morning, I stopped by the gas station at Five Points in Raleigh, my usual filling up place. After pumping gas, I slowly began to drive off when I saw this fellow stooped down beside his car, checking the air in his tires.

Keeping my car running, I got out and walked over to him. He stood up, smiled and gave me a big Hi-Five, and asked if I remembered him. His first words were “It’s been a long time…sixteen years.” I smiled back and said yes it had, and how was he doing.

I don’t know his real name, only the name he wanted everyone to know him by…”Rags”. I had met him during the early winter of 1994, at Wake Correctional in Raleigh, where both he and I were serving time. We were in the same dorm, though he was on the other side. We really never spoke much until early one morning as I was getting ready to leave for work release in Robert Morgan’s law office, he stopped me and said he had hurt his left hand very badly the day before in an accident while on work release himself.

Rags was going to the prison doctor that day but wanted a second opinion by someone in private practice and asked if I knew anyone. Because my son Jeff had had a previous hand and wrist accident, I did know someone who was a Raleigh specialist in such matters, and so I gave him his name and told him to look the information up in the phone book. That’s all I did. It couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes at most.

Rags took my advice, went to see the specialist I had mentioned, and his hand was saved, eventually as good as new. He had not thought he would ever be able to use it properly again, which bothered him as he wanted to be an electrician one day. My last day at Wake Correctional, Rags came up to me, and using his now repaired left hand, signed his name to a yellow pad I was carrying. And he said “thanks”.

At my first book signing at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, there were lots of people, friends I had known for years, some lawyers and many professional people. And there was Rags, standing in line with others, waiting to buy his copy of my book.

The last thing Rags said to me last week was “Sixteen years…I’ve been a good boy. I am never going back”. Rags is now a successful Raleigh electrician.
 

This past Sunday, I went to an annual fund raiser for the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle with my long time friend Jill Staton Bullard, who co-founded the Food Shuttle in 1989.  The idea was born one day when Jill and her good friend Maxine Solomon were at a local McDonald’s and saw the staff throwing out food that was not used.  Thinking this was not acceptable, Jill and Maxine decided to start a non-profit business shuttling food that was to be thrown away to groups who could use the food and give it to the hungry among us.

 In 1989, they distributed 750 pounds of food from just 3 food donors.  In 2009, they distributed 6.2 million pounds of food from over 200 food donors, and it is anticipated that this year, they will distribute 6.7 pounds of food from over 220 food donors. 

  The Food Shuttle now distributes food to 7 counties, those being Wake, Durham, Edgecombe, Chatham, Orange, Nash and Johnston.  They do this with 14 refrigerated trucks and over 36,000 volunteer man or woman hours.

   Clearly, the Food Shuttle has proved to be a successful idea and venture.  But this note is not just about what they have done.  It is about the present and what still needs to be accomplished. 

    In the 7 county region in which the Food Shuttle works each day, there are more than 53,000 children that live in poverty.  In the United States, according to statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture, 1/5 of all food in this country goes to waste each year.  Approximately 130 pounds of food per person ends up in a landfill, and incredibly the value of lost food is over $31 billion.  But the saddest part is that with this food, approximately 49 million people could have been fed.

      The Food Shuttle now has a program called “Back Pack Buddies” that provides food to deserving children for the weekend during the school year at the approximate cost of $350 per child.

      And…the Food Shuttle has started community gardens to help and assist people to grow food that can be distributed to those who need it.

       It was an amazing experience to see so many people who contribute so much to help those who are hungry.  You can see them yourself and learn more about Jill and the terrific work she and others do by visiting their website at www.foodshuttle.org.

The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry to reopen a church in suburban Brooklyn, arrived in early October excited about their opportunities.  When they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work.  They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve.
 
They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc. and on December 18th were ahead of schedule and just about finished.  On the 19th, a terrible tempest – a driving rainstorm – hit the area and lasted for two days.
 
On the 21st, the pastor went over to the church.  His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit.  The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home.
 
On the way, he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity so he stopped in.  One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, ivory colored, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors, and a Cross embroidered right in the center.  It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall.  He bought it and headed back to the church.
 
By this time it had started to snow.  An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus.  She missed it.  The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later.  She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc. to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry.
 
The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area.  Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle.  Her face was like a sheet.  “Pastor,” she asked, “where did you get that tablecloth?”  The pastor explained.  The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG, were crocheted into it there.  They were.  These were the initials of the woman, and she made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria.
 
The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten the tablecloth.  The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria.  When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave.  Her husband was going to follow her the next week.  She was captured, sent to prison and never saw her husband or her home again.  The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth but she made the pastor keep it for the church.  The pastor insisted on driving her home as that was the least he could do.  She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job. 
 
What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve.  The church was almost full.  The music and the spirit were great.  At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return.  One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn’t leaving.  The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war.  He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety, and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a prison.  He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35 years in between.
 
The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride.  They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier.  He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman’s apartment, knocked on the door and then saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.
 
Happy Holidays!!

                These last two months at Wake Forest has been a time in winter.  Four people, one a former wife and mother, another a long time Registrar, still  another a great lady in her own right, a former prisoner of war in a Japanese camp during World War II, and then most recently, a beloved and renowned teacher and writer of Christian Ethics at Wake Forest, responsible in part for the sit-in demonstrations for integration in Winston-Salem in 1960 and the eventual integration of Wake Forest University a few years thereafter, all died within thirty days of each other.

                They all came from diverse backgrounds.  But they all knew each other, and they were all friends.  The first to go was my own mother, former wife of the College’s Chaplain and local campus pastor in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, on August 31, after living a full, productive and happy life in and around Wake Forest, both in the town by the same name and then, after 1956 and the college’s move to Winston-Salem, near what many of us still call the new campus.  Mary Dyer, wife of longtime Dean of Students, and a great friend of so many students, died the same day.  Margaret Perry, the wife of Dr. Percival Perry, the longtime Professor of History and Dean of the Summer School, and then Registrar and helpmate to so many students, followed on September 4.  And then, in late September, Dr. MacLeod Bryan, better known as Mac Bryan, teacher of religion and ethics and writer of many books on those subjects, passed gently away. 

                The only one of these four to be written about in a newspaper editorial was Mac Bryan who was described by the Winston-Salem Journal as someone “with a mustache as white as his hair…a soft-spoken freedom fighter”.   He once helped to engineer the “first sit-in victory in North Carolina”.  He was a fierce fighter for equal justice and kindness for everyone. He was quite simply a great man.

                But the other three, in their own quiet ways, were also great. They didn’t make the news, but they affected a lot of people.  Their attributes were kindness, humility, understanding, patience and much courage.  Not a bad epitaph. 

It was the early summer of 1956, and yellow Mayflower moving vans were parked all over the magnolia tree lined campus in Wake Forest. As soon as the last graduation class marched out of the Chapel, the loading of the vans began and the long trek, years in the making, to the Reynolda campus in Winston-Salem began.

Most of us were in elementary school, or perhaps middle school as it now might be called. We moved with our friends, almost all of them, to the new campus. We were temporarily housed in faculty apartments while the new building of homes on the campus adjacent Faculty Drive took place.

Our parents were professors, teachers and preachers. They were heads of departments and the secretary to the President of the school. Over time, we all went to public schools in Winston-Salem, most often Reynolds High School, which at time, allowed you to start in the 8th grade. But we all remained Wake Forest. Most of us all lived on the same street. That is where we continued our growing up. That is who we were and are.

Now, it has been 54 years this summer since we moved. Most of our parents are no longer here. The college has become a proud university, and there are new professors and teachers and other families now live in our houses. But for a short time, on November 6, before the Wake Forest-Boston College football game, many of us are getting together again since those years long ago.

It truly will be special. Folks are coming from everywhere…Ohio, Washington, D.C., Athens, Georgia, the Outer Banks, and many places in-between. To get to see most of your childhood friends again in one setting is remarkable.

Those of you who attended Wake Forest in the early years in Winston-Salem may recognize some of the names – Reece, Drake, Webster, Hylton, Gay, Gentry, Jones, Brantley, Layton, O’Flaherty, Long, Barrow, Preseren, Brown, and many others.

You can go home again.

                Several people have written about the Change of Plans that was posted on August 30, about the postponement of Stacy’s and my California trip and my Mother’s illness. I wanted to update that note and let you know that Mother passed away in the early hours of Tuesday, August 31.  I will just say here that Mother was the best.  She will always be remembered as such.  She will be missed.

My trip to California and back across country with Stacy has been postponed.  My mother, who lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is not doing well, and the prognosis for her recovery and long term survivability is not good.  So during the middle of last week, we regrouped, and Stacy took the red-eye home to Raleigh, getting here on Saturday morning.  We picked her up at the airport and went straight to Winston-Salem, so she could see her grandmother.

I wanted to write this brief note so that if you were expecting a lively and interesting post on the blog on my website, you would understand why it is not there.

Many people wrote to me last week, expressing interest in our trip cross country, and we are disappointed not to be making it.   But God had other plans.  Thanks.

            For almost all my life, after the age of three, I have been associated with Wake Forest, either as a kid growing up on the old campus in Wake Forest, North Carolina, moving with my family to the new campus in Winston-Salem in 1956, going to school there in the sixties Except for a brief respite in Chapel Hill for three years of law school, I have been devoted to all things “old gold and black”. 

            I remember the fall of 2006, when our football team started winning and amazingly didn’t stop until we beat Georgia Tech in the ACC Championship game in Jacksonville, Florida.  I couldn’t help but remember when I was in school, we had the longest losing streak of football programs in the nation. The band used to play the fight song when we made a first down.

            But that is not the story here or the purpose of writing this note.  In February, 2006, a young man, not quite fifteen years old, Luke Abbate, the younger brother of a Wake Forest football player Jon Abbate, was tragically killed when another teenager, driving some boys home from high school football practice, crashed his car after driving more than 90 miles an hour.  Jon did not want to play football any more.  But he finally decided to play that fall, and his parents attended every game.

            At the end of each game’s 3rd quarter, he would look for his parents in the stands and raise one hand with all five fingers extended.  His parents did the same back to him.  You see, the number “five” was Luke’s high school number, a number Jon now wore for Wake Forest. 

            It wasn’t long before more and more fans, and eventually most everyone in the stadium did the same, including the players on the other team.  And Wake continued to win…even after losing through injuries a number of their best players.  It was as if the 4^th Quarter belonged to them.

            And now there is a movie named “The 5^th Quarter” which just recently premiered at the Long Island International Film Expo. It is set to be released this fall.  The physical setting for much of the movie is Wake Forest, and it is a film in part about football. But it is of course much more than that.  It is the story of rising from the ashes of tragedy and making something good come out of it all…not the winning of games, but the winning of life.  You can check out a brief clip of the movie by going to the Wake Forest website that is www.wfu.edu.