"CAN YOU TELL US YOUR FULL NAME?"
Petrou asked the next witness.
"Martha Liebrum."
"And what is your position with The Post right now?"
"I'm assistant managing editor. My duties include the features department."
"Were you at one time in charge of The Houston Post Sunday magazine?"
"Yes, I was. I was editor of the magazine that lasted from 1974 to 1988. The editor decides what's going into it, assigns stories to writers, edits some material that comes in, selects the presentation, design."
"Was it a good magazine?"
"We thought it was a wonderful magazine."
"Was it well written?"
"We won prizes."
DO YOU RECALL ANY CONTRIBUTIONS from Carl Leatherwood ... ?" "Yes."
"Were there a number of contributions from Carl?" "Yes. In one year he wrote a lot and a little in the year before that and the year after that."
"I'd like to show you some exhibits that we have entered into evidence here. Do you recognize this?"
"Yes, I do. It's a cover story that Carl wrote on going down the Rio Grande in Big Bend."
"Who took that picture?"
"Carl."
"What did you think of this picture?"
"Oh, it was beautiful. He took great photos."
"What did you think of the writing here?"
"I think it's very fine. It was very good."
"Okay. I want to show you another exhibit. Do you know what that is?"
"Yes. It's an article that we ran in the magazine called Texana. It was a standing column that appeared almost every week, and Texana was about travel in Teas. This happens to be about the Hill Country."
"Who wrote this article?"
"Carl."
"What did you think of this article?"
"It was fine, very fine."
"And do you recognize this article."
"Yes. It's another article of Carl's. It was published January 1986."
"The reason I'm asking you about it in particular is because—first of all, were you aware that at the time that Carl wrote some of these articles, he was experiencing some mental health conditions?"
"I don't know if I was aware or not to be honest."
"Did anything that he did whether he had mental health problems or not, did that affect his writing in any way?"
"No."
"I want to ask you if you were aware that just before this article was published that Carl was in the hospital for about a month?"
"I don't remember, honestly."
"Did you edit Mr. Leatherwood's stories?"
"Yes, I did."
"And did you heavily edit them? Were there—how much did you edit them?"
"Very little, very little. I mean, most feature stories require some editing. Even our best feature writers need some and he had some but not a lot."
"Were you also in charge of overall features at the time?"
"Uh-huh."
"This weekend section here, is that something that you would have been in charge of?"
"Yes."
"And is this considered a feature here?"
"Yes. It's a cover story on fall."
"Who wrote that cover story?"
"Carl did, in November '86."
"Did you recall telling Carl after you saw the story that this is lovely writing?"
"I'm sure I did."
THE POSTMAN KNEW IT.
"Oh, man, I've been waiting for this all summer," he said, high-stepping across the intersection of Sugar Hill and Tanglewood.
The Boys of October were in the Astrodome that day, but the letter carrier alluded to something else. He could have borrowed a quote used by Mets Manager Davey Johnson, and proclaimed, "This is as good as it gets."
Autumn was here, in Houston. The message was written on a cool breeze, carried by songbirds and later delivered with flair.
 |
| There are about 2,000 kinds of mushrooms (upper left) in the Big Thicket. Nearby a wagon train rolls near Winnsboro in Northeast Texas. (upper right) A boy and his dog hike (lower left) at Lost Maples State Natural Area in the Hill Country. Youngsters feed seagull on a cruise to see Whooping Cranes at Arkansas Wildlife Refuge. (lower right) |
Not that that's all there is. Nature belies the cynics who, narrowly focused on the foliage, say we have no vibrant change of season, True, wild creatures must hustle less to prepare for winter in forests only spotted with brilliant color. The area is, however, the darling in fall of bird lovers and mushroom fanciers on a national scale. And the beaches have special appeal.
A statewide ramble in autumn can open up the biological wonder of Southeast Texas or a park in north Harris County that has built a display appropriate to a blissful Indian summer. Down on the middle coast a record number of whooping crane chicks are arriving. And out in the Hill Country are the makings of a traditional downhome trip through brightly painted woods.
THE PADDLE SHOT OUT of my hands and away from the canoe. Current widened the gap between the two as an autumn sun set on Village Creek about 100 miles east of Houston. I now coveted sage Wyatt Moore's past practice of carrying two paddles when hunting ducks on Caddo Lake in northeast Texas.
He did it mostly for "bushwhacking," what they called his method of duck hunting up there where the season drifts through a little earlier.
Bushwhacking meant he would see a duck, drop his paddle instantly, and go to pumping shot "I used to carry an extra paddle in the boat," Moore said, "and then if a duck jumped up, I could just forget about the paddle I was paddling with. Later, I would take the paddle in the boat and retrieve the one that fell off in the water."
Over in the Big Thicket, literally up a creek without a paddle, I looked at Chico, a Boston terrier who had propped his front paws on the port gunnel to stand watch. He had the answer to our predicament. So I dog paddled belly down on the stern to retrieve the paddle.
Village Creek runs through a biological crossroads of international merit, with plant species converging there from all directions. The tangle of vegetation has long been called the Big Thicket. Portions are in a national preserve, though most of this creek is not. At most bends in the creek white quartz sand invites a picnic or camping.
I paddled toward a sand bar draped with willows, toward a cypress-darkened slough that widens into a pond, toward remembrances of youth. A cypress swamp had existed behind the sand bar. The wind didn't penetrate the tangle there, and the mirrored surface of the water, where an ancient age seemed to hang as real as the Spanish moss, kindled awe.
As I reached my stamping ground, twilight was fading in the western sky, abbreviating the journey, but I embraced an autumnal reward. The crisp air quickened strokes, worked in conjunction with primeval craft and starlight to rejuvenate the soul.
Al Schotz, the director-naturalist of the Big Thicket Museum in Saratoga, stalked seasonal forest colors with me under a blue sky the next day. Transplanted from upstate New York where the trees put on a splashy show, he found amazing things here.
"During the fall, most of your mushrooms are out," he said. "There are about 2,000 different kinds of mushrooms in the Big Thicket. That's unbelievable. And that's not including molds; that's just including what people would picture a mushroom as being."
We encountered several species of amanita mushrooms, very poisonous fungi, capped in deep orange and white. "The amanitas are most beautiful," my guide said. "They come in almost every color of the rainbow." One half-foot giant deserved the moniker "Big Daddy."
"Because of the humidity and warmer climate, people can find mushrooms on New Year's Day," Schotz said. "They come in all sizes and shapes. One looks like a turkey's tail, and that's what we call our official Thanksgiving mushroom here in the Big Thicket. Anyone interested in mycology—this is the place to be."
He noted earlier that "people have more of a chance to see wildlife during this time of year because of the cool, and the animals are out and about getting prepared for the winter months." Our steamy summers keep most animals nocturnal then.
A squirrel had built a nest perhaps sixty feet up in the limbs of a tree. "Squirrels are beginning to store up acorns and pecans, and they put them in their special hiding places," he said. "And then they try to come back and find them. Fifty percent of the time they can't find their storage area." In our mild temperatures and without snow on the ground it doesn't matter so much.
Some creatures do start to slow down. "Snakes seek refuge at about 60 degrees," Schotz said. "Honeybees cease to fly under 54 degrees. When it is below 54, they stay at their hive and they rotate—the ones on the outside will go inside to get warm, and vice versa."
Also coloring the area were red-seeded magnolia cones, purple American beautyberries, goldenrod, dark purple sweet-gum leaves, an orange tint of. cypress, redheaded woodpeckers, yellow foliage on white ash and red on swamp maples. "What's different around Southeast Texas than say up in Michigan, where the leaves all change at once and are spectacular, is here one tree will change and then another, like a sequence, not all at one time," Schotz said.
INVERSELY, THE CHANGE to a duller color in bird color heightens interest in an autumn phenomenon on the Texas coast of continental importance.
"The thing in animal life to naturalists down here that signifies fall more than anything else is the migration of birds," said Carmine Stahl of Mercer Arboretum and Botanic Gardens, and Jesse Jones Park and Nature Center, both in North Harris County. "The little woodland songbirds come through here and head on to the tropics. One of the world's largest concentrations of wintering waterfowl is out here on the prairies around Katy and Hockley, and in Jefferson and Chambers counties."
Through the course of the year you can usually see more species of birds within a hundred miles of Houston than anywhere else in the United States, he said. "It's one of the best birding places in the country."
Kay McCracken, a birder of note in Corpus Christi, pays tribute to what we can find in our own backyards. "Your area is really a bit more spectacular than ours in the fall—it has been lately, not always."
In Texas, one begins to see the broad-winged hawk migration over the Piney Woods in August and then around the coast, she said, and it funnels down through the point of Texas into Mexico. The birds number in the thousands. But autumn migrations aren't as concentrated in the bird world as those in the spring. "The birds aren't in any big hurry in the fall, and they take their time," she said. "They may linger in a spot that has food for four or five days. In the spring they refuel every time they stop and keep going to their breeding places."
Though the Houston area has its thrills, for birders like McCracken, the biggest attraction on the coast is near her home, in the Coastal Bend of the state. It is the wintering habitat of the only wild flock of whooping cranes.
The cranes start their 2,600-mile migration from western Canada for the area adjacent to Matagorda Island in September.
This year, the first whooper hit the Texas coast in mid-October and most will have arrived by the end of November. The population of the rare birds has swelled to an estimated 115 because of abundant water at the breeding grounds in Canada. It is the highest number in the flock since their survival became a conservation cause.
The cranes literally stand head and shoulders above other birds. Measuring fifty inches high, they are the tallest birds in North America. Wings span seven feet from black tip to black tip. The adults sport red faces, the youngsters rust heads.
"We had 96 leave last spring to go north," said Dave Blankinship, whooping crane biologist of the National Audubon Society. "They had a very good reproductive year."
One bird died of natural causes in the spring migration, but about twenty young birds were produced and lived to begin the journey southward. That's a record, too.
"Of course, there’s a good chance that some of those birds may get lost from one cause or another during migration," Blankinship said, "but we certainly are looking for well over 100. The increase in the young is primarily due to favorable weather conditions, water conditions on the breeding grounds."
At the time of our conversation, red tide was considered a serious potential threat to the whooping cranes.
"So far there hasn't been any concentrations of red tide up in the area where the cranes winter," Blankinship said. "We know that the organisms and their toxins are concentrated in shellfish like oysters and clams. Clams are a major food item of the whooping cranes.
"Fortunately, when the cranes first arrive here, they feed primarily on crabs, and it is not until later in the year that they really turn to clams as a greater part of their diet. In winter the water level drops and the dams become more available. But it's a situation where conceivably only one or two clams would be enough to cause a crane some real problems. They will eat a clam if they come across it."
 |
| A girl fishes at sunset near ferry landing at Galveston. |
'TIS THE SEASON IN GALVESTON. A monarch butterfly flutters among the sun-drenched hibiscus blooms and palms outside the dining room at The San Luis Hotel. Strollers, both beachcombers and baby carriages, meander unscorched and uncrowded down the beach. Rooms cost less. There are those who fish under a harvest moon. Others dance on a skateboard or a wave or a paddlewheeler. A tour of the seawall in a little surrey is a pleasant thing, if attention to staying above the steep rocky shoulder is not diverted too long by wonderful bodies and sandcastles.
As do the songbirds and butterflies, the snowbirds come and migrate down the coast. Snowbird is not a good analogous term for the people visiting through the winter from the north. The real ones stay home and frolic in the snow.
 |
| A monarch butterfly alights on a hisbiscus blossom (above) also on the island. (Below) Red berries on dogwood in the Big Thicket. |
Probably, the most brilliant leafy display accessible within weekend driving range from Houston can be found around the western Hill Country town of Utopia. The peak of bigtooth maple color will have probably passed by now, but another species vies with it in autumn dress, the Spanish oak on which the golden-cheeked warbler depends for caterpillars to feed its young in summer.
Bee Garrison, whose roots in the hills go back to early settlers, was anticipating "beautiful leaves" near her ranch and recommended sightseeing on roads running from Utopia to Garner State Park and from Leakey to Vanderpool, "a beautiful drive anytime." People coming over in late November and early December may not see any maples, but the oaks are "so pretty," she said. "The only thing that would ruin it would be if we get a lot of rain and a lot of wind."
Hunters also find wild turkeys and a lot of white-tailed deer for the Thanksgiving table in those hills. It is an old custom.
"We served wild turkey for Thanksgiving when I was growing up," Garrison said. "We grew or found wild everything that we ate back then. Momma used to take venison and fry it up like chicken fried steak, put it down in fifty-five-gallon crocks, a layer of fried meat and a layer of melted lard, until she had the crocks full. Then you would still be having venison steaks long after the hunt. Sometimes they would kill a deer out of season to make jerky, to cure it in the heat of July and August. They would hang it in strips on a tin roof or on a clothesline."
Pecans are another bountiful harvest as smoke begins to rise from the hunters' campfires. Native and cultivated pecan trees grow on the northern edge of the Hill Country around San Saba. "At one time we were the leading state in the union in native pecans," said John Lipe, horticulturist for the Texas Agricultural Extension Service. "It is said there are 500 miles of waterways in San Saba County. All of the rivers have wide bottoms, and pecans grow native in the bottoms. The estimate is 90,000 acres of native pecans just in that one county alone."
Hal Borland, a naturalist of national eminence, and others within the state have written bizarre accounts of the pioneer harvests. "For many years only wild pecans came to market," Borland says. "The method of harvesting those wild ones now seems unbelievable. Nut-gatherers went through the woods, chose the largest, heaviest-bearing pecan trees, and when the nuts were ripe they cut down the trees. Then they put boys to work picking the nuts from the fallen giants. And that was the end of those pecan trees, forever."
When I first mentioned that story to Lipe, he could not believe it either. "Sounds like one of those Aggie jokes," he said. "Obviously, it's a lot easier to shake the pecans from the tree. To chop the tree down is a lot of work."
AN EARLIER PEOPLE returned home to north Harris County in autumn to apparently gather nuts in a more civilized way. The Akokisa Indians would live on clams and oysters in area saltwaters and then paddle their cypress dugout canoes back up Spring and Cypress Creeks to gather acorns and hickory nuts, hunt, and spend the winter.
The Akokisa traded hides with the Spanish and French from the beginning of European exploration in the 1500s. The tribe's population may have peaked at 3,000 but was decimated by diseases carried by the explorers. When Anglo settlers began trickling over from Louisiana in the 1820s, few of the natives remained.
"We have been developing a typical pioneer homesite of that period at the Jones park," Stahl said. "We have built a log cabin, a smokehouse, and other outbuildings—shed, corn crib, chicken house."
And the small group of Indians around then are not forgotten. A replica of their living quarters has been constructed. It is an oval hut of poles shingled with palmetto fronds which grow in the state from here to the Big Thicket, and in other isolated stands. "The fronds shed water very nicely," Stahl said. "Sometimes the Indians added furs for warmth in winter."
The park also contains the largest cypress and magnolia stands in Harris County along almost five miles of paved trails. Foliage color of the other trees may not measure up to the past because of "a bit of an unusual fall this year," Stahl noted. "One reason is that we had a long period of drought this summer ... that condition caused a great many trees that normally do color up for us to lose their leaves early."
But the dry spell followed by an extended period of rain also produced some forest color unusual for this time of year. Observed Stahl, "We have had more spring flowering trees blooming this fall than I can ever remember."
ONE HOUSTON PHOTOGRAPHER has chased autumn colors from East to West Texas. "It's flaky," said Blair Pittman, who has pursued the traditional image of fall with more determination than most, and found it. He stayed for two weeks waiting for it in the Guadalupe Mountains. Residents near the mountains on the New Mexico border kept saying that it wasn't right yet, and he had to get back to Houston. "We came back, and they called five days later to say, *Hey, it's perfect, it's perfect.' I caught a plane and flew back up there. And it was perfect."
OKAY," PETROU SAID, poised to ask Liebrum more questions. "Do you recall that at one time Carl asked you if he could be a full-time feature writer?"
"I don't honestly remember if he did."
"Is it possible he may have asked you?"
"He may have. We don't have very much turnover in the features department. So whenever there's an opening, a large number of people in the room usually ask. Feature jobs are considered to be good jobs."
"Could Carl have been a full-time feature writer?"
"I doubt it."
"Why is that?"
"Well, general feature writing is different. He has a specialty. His specialty was traveling in the state of Texas. He wrote really well about travel. He wrote nice features about people in the state of Texas, but that's not a job that we were funded for. A general feature writer has to report, interview, cover a wide variety of subjects from abortion to new clothes, I mean, there's just—it's very broad. He had a particular interest that he was good at, reporting at."
"All right, but for some of these features stories he did interview people, did he not?"
"Uh-huh, yes."
"He could go out and interview people; isn't that right?"
"He certainly could go out and interview the people he interviewed."
"And some of them you thought were wonderful pieces, right?"
"Right."
"Okay. Do you recall ever approaching Mr. Peter O'Sullivan, I think, at the time? Was he the editor in chief?"
"Yes."
"Do you recall approaching him on Carl's behalf and asking whether there could be a spot for Carl as a feature writer?"
"I don't believe that I ever did that. I don't remember that at all."
"If Carl has testified that you did that, would he be mistaken?"
"I believe he would be. I don't remember that at all. This is the first time I've heard that."
"Are there free-lance writers?"
"Yes."
"What's the situation today with being a free-lance writer? Can you get something published in The Post as a free-lance writer?"
"A very few articles are bought anymore, and it's true with all newspapers. We have a staff and we use staff material to fill up pages. We just don't need free-lancers as we once did."
"It's hard for someone to make a living being a free-lance writer?"
"I think it's hard anytime for anybody to free-lance as a writer."
"No matter how good their writing is?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Do some writers sometimes write at home, at their computers at home?"
"Yes. But a full-time staff person would not work from his home."
"At this point you don't have any full-time staff people working at home, you say. But if somebody was disabled, and had some kind of health problem where he could work at home out of his own computer that did not require him to report to the office, could that person work out of his home?"
"Theoretically."
Bounds takes up the questioning.
"Did you ever have occasion to see Mr. Leatherwood bring his dog into the newsroom?"
"One day, yes."
"Was there a disruption?"
"Well, it was a spectacle I'd say. I guess we'd call it a disruption."
"You were asked a question about whether or not a person as a staff feature writer could work at home. You said that that was theoretically possible. Is that what you said?"
"Because people all have home computers now, we have had writers every so often say I'd like to work at home, you know, da-da-da, I need to keep the kids or whatever; and it works sometimes and then other times they have to be in the office."
"Do you think it would be reasonable or practical to have a staff writer full-time working from their home?"
"It's not desirable actually, because we think that the writers need to be there and they need to feed off each other. They give each other ideas. They discuss their stories. Operating in a vacuum is not the best way to do good feature stories."
"You said that in your opinion Mr. Leatherwood could not be a staff feature writer. Why is that?"
"As I said, he has a specialty and that's what he's demonstrated and that's what his interest is, that's what he's good at. We would not hire someone who did not have background with a lot of—showing a lot of range, and he does not show a lot of range."
"People with chronic illnesses, are they being accommodated at The Post?"
"We have new ones, you know. Now, with the computers, we have that carpal tunnel syndrome and that is a problem, yes. It's very accommodating."
"Currently?"
"Currently."
PETROU: "WE CALL DR. ARCHIE BLACKBURN.
"Tell us basically what you do for a living?" "I'm a psychiatrist and am full-time at the VA Hospital and the medical school, Baylor."
"Are you also a medical doctor?"
"Yes."
"Do you know a patient by the name of Carl Leatherwood?"
"Yes, I do."
"When did Mr. Leatherwood become your patient?"
"I first saw him in December of 1988 and saw him until I went back to full-time in the Medical Center in June of'92."
"Do you recall where he was working when you first saw him?"
"He was working at The Post."
"Okay- Were you able from talking to Mr. Leatherwood to determine how important the job was to him?"
"Well, I did certainly learn that the job was very important to him, and my recollection is that he had been there for twenty-two years, and it was extremely important to him. I guess that I came to know that after he lost the job, which was perhaps six months after I had been seeing him, and his clinical condition, of course, worsened considerably at that point.
"From examining Mr. Leatherwood and reviewing his medical history, do you know if he ever deliberately stopped taking his medication?"
"I actually thought that he did that originally. That's, I guess, my suspiciousness as a clinician. But I came to understand rather confidently that that was not the case. That he would start having his episodes of manic symptomatology first, and then in the course of that sometimes would terminate his medication or just not be taking his medication."
"I want to turn your attention to the fall and winter of 1988 when Mr. Leatherwood first came to see you. Which hospital was he admitted to?"
"This was Memorial Southwest in Houston."
"In this hospitalization, did he come to the hospital voluntarily?"
"On this occasion, he did not."
"Did he later agree to stay in the hospital voluntarily?"
"He did."
"Were you able to stabilize his condition?"
"Yes, we were. We basically restarted the lithium that he had been on, and we also used a small amount of tranquilizing drug."
"Did you release him to go back to work, Dr. Blackburn?"
"Yes, I did. But his return to work was difficult for him in some respects. His mental state had cleared rather remarkably in a short period of time. But my recollection is that from my office contacts over that period of time, the difficulty for him was associated with the fact that he came to feel rather strongly that he was not going to be allowed to continue in his work, and he was given a new assignment. I don't know the nature of that in terms of details, but he perceived that it was unlikely that he was going to be able to continue to work even though he felt able to go to work."
"And how did this perception of a person with bipolar disorder that he may not be allowed to remain at the job that he's had for twenty-two years, how did that affect him?"
"Well, it was very stressful, very stressful. It had a significant impact on him."
"Do you recognize this exhibit?"
"Yes. This was a letter that I wrote to Mr. Leatherwood's employment. It was to Mr. Williamson who was the executive editor at The Post, and I was simply indicating that the patient was under my care
and had been in the hospital, and in my opinion he could return to work."
"Okay. I want to direct your attention to the second paragraph here where it says 'prior to hospitalization for at least one month, he was seriously disabled by his symptoms.' Does that mean that you felt for at least a month before he even entered the hospital he was having some problems?"
"That was my impression, yes. I would think it was unlikely that he was functioning normally during that period of time before."
"If there are some fellow workers and supervisors that did not know that he was experiencing mental health problems, could they believe that he just wasn't doing his work?"
"That could be true."
"Do you know if around June of 1989, a few months later after that letter, that Mr. Leatherwood was hospitalized again?"
"Yes."
"Okay. I want you to look at another exhibit, a hospital summary. This is for the date 6/19 through 6/24/89. Did he voluntarily come to the hospital this time?"
"My recollection is that this was a voluntary admission. His family and friends and colleagues had been noticing him going through changes and had coerced him into coming would be the right way to say it."
"After his hospital stay, was he stabilized again and was he able to go back to work?"
"My recommendation was to return to work as soon as possible."
"Here, what is Defendant's Exhibit No. 9?"
"This is a letter with my signature to Mr. Jim Janiga at The Houston Post, director of Human Resources. I explained to him that the patient had gone through a change in his mental state, not as severe as before, that he was hospitalized and I had adjusted his medications and that I felt he was ready to return to work."
"And you say there in the first sentence he experienced a hypo-manic mood shift? What does that mean?"
"Basically that is something less than manic. An episode is heightened mood, some symptoms but without significant compromise in the ability to carry on ordinary life activities."
"Is it your understanding that he was not allowed to return to work, and as a consequence of being fired, his condition worsened?"
"Yes. It was a major upheaval for him. The stress had an adverse affect."
"Okay. Did his condition reach a point, Dr. Blackburn, where you had to write letters and fill out forms to his long-range disability insurance company and to Social Security informing them about Mr. Leatherwood's worsened condition?"
"I did."
"In your opinion was there a time after he was fired when Carl Leatherwood was disabled from doing the kind of work that he did before he was fired?"
"That would have been my opinion some months of that particular year."
"When you determined that Carl's condition had gotten worse after he was fired, did you determine that he could be disabled forever, from ever working again?"
"I don't think I ever thought that."
"Could he recover from the firing and at some point in the future resume productive work?"
"Certainly."
"Is it possible for people who have mental health illnesses to work in jobs that are not as stressful as the jobs that they used to have?"
"Certainly. It's always better to work than not to work."
Judge Gibson: "We will resume with your testimony, Doctor, tomorrow morning. I hope you enjoy the afternoon off. The weather is with you."
No comments:
Post a Comment