Journey to the Edge of Texas Chapters 19 and 20

Support

TO   NAVIGATE   THROUGH   THE   STORM that churned my waters, I have acquired an umbrella of professional and lay support reaching beyond the usual confines of what is called a support group, a gathering of people to discuss their illness.
To use the generic, the broader group includes doctors, accountants, lawyers, parents, relatives, and friends — and a support group.
When I was sinking at the office, Bob Cooper, a certified public accountant, threw the first lifeline. He had through a breakfast meeting of professionals become aware of a small law firm that fought for workers' rights, and he gave me a clipping on that firm.
I sought counsel and they, Coane and Associates, took my case. Early on Bruce Coane, the chief, described himself as a workaholic, but our course proved him above all else patient. At least six manic episodes requiring hospitalization — in a period of four years — intervened between his accepting the case and our going to trial. More than once the court set a trial date, and I got sick and couldn't appear. Finally, the judge said to make a tape for my appearance, if my mania coincided with the trial date again.

THE LEGAL EFFORT PRODUCED a positive side effect. Asked to participate in the preparation of my case, I regained self-esteem and felt I belonged in society. My lawyers always accepted my calls and welcomed me to their offices, where I was invited to sit on dispositions of witnesses. Come each Christmas, Coane boosted spirits further with an office party featuring live music. We finally went to trial and as has been told, lost. But I needed lawyers on other occasions. First, I applied for Social Security Disability. No doubt my filling out the paper work at the Social Security office while manic helped. And with Coane's effort I was approved on the initial request, an unusual happening.
My luck got worse, but legally not bad. I was run over on the sidewalk. The driver hit a large crack in the concrete near my home and whacked me from behind, throwing me on the hood. I was out for several hours and in therapy for a shattered pelvis for weeks. The driver's insurance paid a minimum, but the city balked on its responsibility.
Meanwhile, I had another manic episode, and in the midst of litigation, I changed lawyers, from the Coane firm to Steve Petrou, the lawyer who led my discrimination case in court, but who was now independent. My action cannot be explained with any complaint against Coane. They would not accept my phone calls while I was at Rusk, which is reasonable, and that may have precipitated my abandoning ship.
Petrou took the city on, and in mediation won a settlement.
And later, when my mother became terminally ill with cancer, he was called upon again to draw up a will that established a trust for me. It was feared that if the money went directly to me, I could lose it all in a manic spending spree.
Judy Nickles, a paternal cousin five years my junior and a special education teacher who was widowed in a plane crash, was asked to act as trustee and accepted, although the position paid nothing and she was going against the advice of her lawyer. A third lawyer had a hand in the will. Being in my mother's hometown, Alan McNeill would handle the probate, and when he took a look at the will, he recommended a codicil to clarify a passage.
We also bobbled with professionals with the taxes of the trust. A nationwide accounting firm figured our taxes the first year. By the second year, Cooper, my CPA, took another look and said because distribution of interest income was made to me, I, not the trust, should pay the taxes. Since the trust had a higher tax rate than me, amended returns would mean a refund of several hundred dollars.
Beyond the professional support, my parents all along buoyed my finances, seeing to it that I did not fall below my basic standard of living.
A staunch supporter from the beginning of my employment troubles was Kay York, the founder of the Depressive, Manic Depressive Association in Houston. She encouraged me in the lawsuit, and I learned many practical things about my illness in the support group— things doctors don't have time to tell you in twenty- or thirty-minute appointments with them. It probably was where I acquired the courage to talk openly about my health, where I learned how the words of circumstance sounded.
These people and others in this book have effaced stigma, have emboldened me.

Chapter 20

Risperdal

NO  RESTRAINT, I'm rising out of the chasm.
On Risperdal.
Huffin' and puffin' from the roundhouse.
Let's celebrate.
It is the longest period without a psychotic episode in the twenty-five year history of my manic depressive illness.
For five years, since getting on this extraordinary drug at Rusk State Hospital in March 1997, I have been free of demons and am now removing the monkey from my back in society and the workplace.
The world may come crashing down yet, as it did in 1988 when this ugly force evicted me from the office and a wonderful friend from my home, but my doctor and I are shoveling coal to the engine until it does.

THIS D O C T O R is Dr. Ranjit Chacko at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. And he is fending off the detractors as soon as I present them. For a brief spell I saw a county doctor in order to obtain this expensive medicine without cost. But she cut my dosage by 25 percent, and I rushed back to Chacko. He said her action was "playing with fire."
"It's working," he said, looking up from his desk, on a recent visit.
Later, my neurologist noted that my right hand was shaking at rest, a Parkinson's motion. He wanted me to drop the Risperdal at once, saying it was the contributor. I reported to Chacko, who explained that it was a minimal Parkinson's effect and that the drug to replace mine had not been tested on manic depressive patients.
"I won't do it, I won't do it," he said when asked if I should change.
He has seen my manic behavior where others who try to manipulate the drugs have not. He knows how serious and deep my psychosis can be. I think I can speak for him, too, and say how grateful we are
for something that works. The others just don't know.
But Chacko didn't start us down the road to giddiness over our success, though it is to his credit to have maintained drug and dosage since not long after I began taking it at Rusk. A doctor there, whose name should be chiseled on a building or something—yet remains anonymous—prescribed it about midway through my hospitalization for one of my worst episodes.
I had walked the streets for a month, writing nineteen bad checks, including one for a tomato. In my final act this time, I had thrown a drink from a glass into the face of someone who I thought was attacking me at the Four Seasons Hotel. I was thrown down and restrained until police came and took me to Ben Taub Hospital.
I asked for transfer to Rusk. Its old buildings remind me of a college campus. To some its program may sound like pampering, a little soft—but we aren't criminals. And some who live at or near street level may need a massage. The older woman who picked up butts was memorable. She was so smooth on the dance floor. (There were two dances weekly at the recreation building my first go-round.)
I'm getting away from the doctor whose meritorious service has ignited my flight to old strengths. However, it's the whole setting that provides good treatment, so let me continue a tad in this vein. I've been to Rusk twice, and it had more classroom work the last time. First time, we had horticulture classes down at the park where the magnolias and fig trees grow. At the fishing lodge, the supervisor served up peach cobbler. Just a small lake, but pleasant.
Oh, I got aggressive once in the cafeteria. I couldn't get a fork to eat the messy soft taco that they served as finger food. Disgusted, I dumped the attendant's loaded tray at his feet. For this, I was hauled before one of the doctors to explain, and he ordered me a bologna sandwich "without a fork," the attendant explained.
One makes some friends during a five-week stay. There was a woman who had an extensive hangup about espionage—certain countries she couldn't visit, all that. Still, the company at smoke breaks was good.
Surprisingly, I talked to the doctor trimming my toenails longer than I did the psychiatrist. Yet, the latter came up with this miracle. It was something to sip coffee over at the cantina, decorated at holidays.
Meanwhile, the big rub with Risperdal is money. After a disagreement with the county, Janssen, the manufacturer, supplied my needs because my income was under $15,000 a year. With the distribution of interest income from a trust set up in my mother's will, I no longer qualified. But the income is still small, and if my drug bill continues at $5,400 annually in the United States, that's $108,000 over the next twenty years. That will erode substantially the principal in the trust.

Journey to the Edge of Texas Chapters 13 and 14

Verdict

K A L M A N S:   "We have one more witness, Your Honor." The witness took the stand.
"Would you state your name for the record, please?" Kalmans asked. "Ernest J. Williamson."
"Mr. Williamson, by whom are you employed?"
"The Houston Post."
"How long have you been there?"
"Since 1971."
"What was your first position with The Houston Post?"
"I started as a copy editor."
"And at that time, did you come to meet Mr. Leatherwood?"
"Yes, sir."
"What position did you assume when The Toronto Sun purchased the paper?"
"That happened in 1983, and I became managing editor."
"What job do you presently hold with The Houston Post?"
"I'm now executive editor; I was named to that position in 1988."
"What are your responsibilities as executive editor?"

"I'M   R E S P O N S I B L E for the whole shooting match. The city desk editor works for you. The photo department editor works for you. The business department works for you. The librarian works for you. In addition, I assumed a lot more budgetary responsibilities, a lot more decisions on personnel, administrative things, but the big new responsibility was managing the budget."
"Mr. Williamson, did you have over the years or develop over the years any kind of a personal relationship with Carl Leatherwood?"
"Oh, yes. We became very good friends early on."
"Did you have any out-of-the-office relationship with Mr. Leatherwood"
"Yeah. We had some really interesting experiences. We went sailing quite a bit on Carl's boat. I remember spending a great day on a Hobby Cat out in Galveston. That was the best of the sailing trips, I think. We had a rather ill-feted trip in a canoe down Buffalo Bayou. I say that because I don't remember being in the canoe. I remember carrying it a lot. The only water we saw—I think we tipped it over. And I was sick for about six months after that, and Carl used to tease me about it.
"And we played a lot of tennis together. Even invited me over for dinner, my family, once. One time my father came in from California —it was during the holidays—and I think I had two tickets to go see the high school playoff game and I couldn't go, so Carl was gracious enough to take my dad. And my dad still talks about it because there was a guy named Earl Campbell running around for Tyler High School."
"Did you have occasion to come to know Mr. Leatherwood's father over the years?"
"Yes, sir. I don't know the exact date but I think the first time I met him, he came and watched Carl and me play tennis."
"And over the course of years, have you had occasion to talk with him periodically?"
"Yes, sir."
"I want to direct your attention to the year 1980, Mr. Williamson, and ask if you had occasion to play any part in the move of Mr. Leatherwood to the business wire?"
"Yes, sir."
"And why was that?"
"We thought it would be a less stressful job for him."
"Why did you feel that way?"
"Basically, the pace on the business desk isn't as frantic as the pace on the main copy desk. There's less stories to choose from. There's not as many pages to fill. The work load isn't nearly as great. And it was a lot easier to supervise because there was only two or three people doing that."
"Now, over the course of years that you and Mr. Leatherwood worked together, you then became aware of the mental illness that he had?"
"I knew he had problems coping on the job, yes."
"And how did you learn of those?"
"I knew there were times he was hospitalized."
"Did you have occasion—to periodically receive messages on your computer about Mr. Leatherwood's performance?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what types of messages or concerns did you receive?"
"Well, the ones I remember most were the ones in the fall of 1988. The nature of them—there were all kinds of complaints and problems. He seemed to be having trouble doing even the basic skills. Often a story will come over and somebody will say, here, cut this story to ten inches and write this kind of headline, and Carl would give the story back and there were no cuts made on it. He wasn't able to focus on that, apparently.
"During that time, he was doing maybe one or two stories a night when the rest of the editors were doing eight to ten. He was spending a lot of time talking to other editors. Some people said he was being —almost amounted to harassment. The people in the computer room said he was repeatedly calling them to say that his computer wasn't working right, and they would repeatedly come up and check it and it appeared to be working fine.
"There was a period when he called the Associated Press in Dallas and said that there was a virus in their computer system and none of the stories were working properly. That turned out not to be true. It was pretty much one thing after another."
"As the years passed and Mr. Leatherwood's problems continued, did you periodically have occasions to become involved in assisting to get him to the doctor or to the hospital?"
"Yes. Between Edith and me, we would frequently call his parents."
"Over the years, did the degree of difficulty change in your being able to get him to go to the doctor?"
"Yes. It seemed particularly—by the fall of '88, it was almost—I guess we first noticed that aspect of it in '85. But in the fall of '88, it was almost impossible. People first started reporting symptoms or telling us about it in the beginning of October, and by the middle of October, Edith was almost working full-time trying to get Carl to go to the doctor. And there were repeated complaints. I had talked to him and tried to get him to go to the doctor. We called his parents."
"Early in November, we gave him some time off to go see a doctor. He wanted to go see a doctor in California because he thought the doctor could help him. His dad was going to go with him. So we thought he went, then a couple of days later he was still in town and said he didn't have the money to go.
"He was trying to see a Dr. Hauser. Edith and I spent a week trying to get ahold of Dr. Hauser. He was working in Huntsville and here both, so he was almost impossible to get ahold of.
"So, yeah, we spent a lot of time trying to get Carl help. The nature of the change, too, he didn't seem—he was much more belligerent, much more antagonistic. He didn't seem to understand what we were saying. He had no idea that he was having problems."
"In late November, Mr. Williamson, did you have occasion to receive a telephone call from Mr. Leatherwood's father wherein the subject matter of a guardianship was discussed?"
"Yes, sir. Carl wouldn't go to the doctor. There was a period when we lost track of where he was. We expected him back on Monday, but we got a call on Monday saying he's in Arizona with his dog and we didn't know whether that was true or not. His father later said he didn't think that was true. At that point during one conversation, the father said he was seeking guardianship and if I ran across Carl or if he showed up, would I please call him."
"In early December, did you have occasion to meet with Mr. Leatherwood in your office?"
"Yes. Late in the afternoon, I think it was either the 2nd or 3rd, I was in my office with Pat Roberson, my administrative assistant, and Carl accosted us in the office and he had a very agitated look about him. He was obviously unshaven, his hair was a mess, he was disheveled. He was clearly out of control. He said he was resigning from The Post, that The Post was racist, that it was sexist, that I myself was racist and sexist, and he was resigning and handed me his I.D. card. I got him out of the newsroom so he wouldn't make a scene, and called his father, and the next thing I knew—it was a couple of days later— Carl was in the hospital."
"I want to direct your attention now to on or about December 24, 1988. Did you have occasion to receive a telephone call from Mr. Leatherwood?"
"Yes. It was on or about that date, a call from Carl saying that he was in the hospital, that he wanted to come back to work. I told him that there wasn't much point in coming back to work over the holidays and that I would see him on January 2nd, which was a Monday."
"Did he come in then on January 2nd?"
"Yes."
"Do you recall your conversation with him at that time?"
"Yes. Yeah, I remember this one very well because it was something I thought about for a couple of weeks and it was pretty agonizing. I told him that I was going to accept the resignation, but that I knew he had financial problems and I knew he was going to have trouble getting back on his feet, so I told him I would make the resignation effective around March 1st. It was just to give him time to earn some paychecks."
"Following that conversation, did you have occasion to call Dr. Blackburn?"
"Yes. Right after the conversation with Carl, I called Dr. Blackburn because I wanted to inform him what had happened so he could arrange whatever support might be necessary for Carl and to keep him apprised of what was going on. I remember quite clearly that after I told Dr. Blackburn what I had done, he said that was a very humane, compassionate thing for myself to do and for The Post. And I guess the reason I remember it so well is because Carl was such a good friend and we'd worked together so long that, while I knew I was doing the right thing for The Post and it had to be done, it was quite agonizing for me. I felt reassured and reaffirmed by what the doctor had said."
"Did you tell Dr. Blackburn that people above you wanted Carl fired?"
"Absolutely not. The only pressure I felt was the pressure on me from the people below me."
"How did the employees in the newsroom as a whole feel about Mr. Leatherwood?"
Petrou: "Objection, Your Honor, hearsay."
The court: "Insofar as you could determine that from their attitude and their spoken words."
"It was pretty obvious from talking to them, everybody liked Carl. Everybody felt sorry for Carl. And in the early days in the '70s and '80s, there was almost a protective cocoon around Carl. By '88, everybody was worried and frustrated and exasperated and tired, and there was no doubt something had to happen."
"Mr. Leatherwood didn't leave The Post on March 1?"
"No. We decided we'd keep Carl in employment, but we decided that we would change his job."
"And why did you make a decision to change his job?"
"We looked for one that was the least possible stressful job we could find. And we felt because the people that he had worked with on the business desk were so—had been so burdened with doing his work and had been exasperated dealing with it, that we couldn't put him back there because that would be really stressful. So we gave him a copy editing job. But then in May, to quote other employees, things had got out of hand, that Carl was unable to do any work, so I sent him home on the night of the 31st of May."
"I want to direct your attention to June 1, 1989, and ask if on that date you experienced any problems with Mr. Leatherwood?"
"Yeah. Carl came in—he was obviously in an agitated state. Dick McCann, the news editor, said he wasn't doing the job. I brought Carl into my office and showed him some of the things he had done, and he was very belligerent, wouldn't accept that he had made any errors. I was really unable to talk to him. He was very antagonistic, so I sent him home again."
"You have in front of you Defendant's Exhibit No. 20?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what is that?"
"It's a note from Eileen O'Grady, assistant business editor."
"And did you receive that from her?"
"Yeah. She had told me about this incident right about this time. I told her would she please get me a note on it, and this is the note."
"Would you read the exhibit out loud?"
"During the week of May 30,1989,1 had a conversation with Carl Leatherwood in the newsroom. We talked about exercise routines for a few moments and I noticed he was very animated. As he started to leave, he told me he was 'walking five miles a day to keep in shape for Jane.'"
"Do you know who Jane is?"
"Yes. Jane Baud, business writer."
"Did you have any contact from her during this period of time about Mr. Leatherwood?"
"Yes, sir."
"What was that?"
Petrou: "Objection, hearsay, Your Honor."
The court: "Overrule the objection. Do you want to come up?"
"I had mentioned to you once before that the reports that were generated by the coworkers that came to management is relevant to their reasons for discharging him. It does not fall under the hearsay rule nor the public records rule and that's why I'm ruling—I don't care whether you agree with me or not. I want you to understand it."
Kalmans continued the questions: "Would you tell us about the conversation that you had with Ms. Baird?"
"Jane felt she was being harassed by Carl so much so that she was taking the phone off the hook at home. There was also a period when Carl was bringing gifts in for her children, and there was one episode that upset Jane in which Carl was standing outside her home and looking in her window."
"I want to direct your attention to on or about June 16,1989, and ask if you had occasion to have a conversation with a Kate Thomas about Mr. Leatherwood?"
"Yeah. Kate came into the office that day, was worried and exasperated and frustrated and mad at me because Carl was walking aimlessly and disheveled on Westpark, the overpass right by The Post, and she was worried Carl was going to come into the building. And she was also concerned nobody was taking care of him and he wasn't getting help, so she was totally frustrated as were we all."
"Did you report that conversation to Mr. Jim Janiga [the human resources head]?"
"Yes."
"Did you have occasion to subsequently learn that Mr. Leatherwood had been hospitalized on June 19th?"
"Yes."
"Did you and Janiga meet after Carl got out of the hospital.
""Yes. And finally Jim asked me what I wanted to do. I felt I had no choice but to terminate Carl."
"Why, Mr. Williamson, did you reach that decision?"
"One, he was unable to perform his job duties on a consistent and regular basis. The previous nine months, he wasn't at 100 percent of his capabilities—four-and-a-half months out of that period. He was making a lot of errors in copy, and he was becoming a tremendous burden on everybody he worked with.
"In my opinion as executive news editor, Carl's presence at The Post put the paper at risk. From Day 1 in my journalism career in covering high school sports in California to the University of Missouri to my years at The Post, I've learned that newspapers are kind of a special business. They're in many ways a public trust. People look at us to see how they're going to live their lives and make decisions on how they're going to live their lives. They turn to the business section to see how their stocks are doing. They turn to the sports section to see what time the Rockets are playing so they can watch it on TV, or go to the game. They look in the news section to see how their congressman voted on NAFTA.
"As executive editor, I felt it was my duty to ensure and is at all times to ensure that we're giving the best information we can and that it's accurate and reliable. In Carl's situation, I had someone—I had a friend and somebody I had worked with for twenty years who had impaired judgment by his own admission. Not only did he have impaired judgment, but he didn't know that he had impaired judgment when he had it and it was getting so that we couldn't tell him he had it. I felt it was my responsibility to the people that read The Post, to the people that work at The Post, and to the people that own The Post, to let Carl go; and it was a very painful decision for me and still is."
"Mr. Williamson, do you feel that you could have done any more than you did to attempt to accommodate Mr. Leatherwood?"
"No, sir."
Petrou came forward:
"Mr. Williamson, you said you did all you could to accommodate Mr. Leatherwood; is that correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"There's one thing you didn't do, isn't there? You didn't ask him if he could be a writer, did you?"
"I didn't feel he had that capability."
"I'd like you to take a look at Plaintiffs Exhibit No. 7-B and read it, please."
"'The system failed'? Is that what I'm supposed to read?"
"Just get a feel for it, if you would."
"Okay."
"What do you think of it?"
"Fine."
"Is it good writing?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Were you aware that Carl Leatherwood wrote that?""
"Doesn't surprise me."
"It doesn't surprise you?"
"No."
"It is good writing?"
"Yes."
"Okay. I shall give you a more recent example, 'Grand Times on the River.' And who wrote that story?"
"Carl Leatherwood."
"And what do you think of the writing?"
"It's good."
"Now, I want to show you something even more recent. What's the name of the publication?"
"The Leader."
"What's the name of the story?"
"North Houston's Day Lily Lady."
"Isn't it written September '93,1 believe?"
"Yes."
"Who wrote that story?"
"Carl Leatherwood."
"Who took the picture on the front page there?"
"Carl Leatherwood."
"What do you think of that story?"
"It's fine for what it is."
"Did you detect any errors or bad writing in it?"
"No. It's fine for what it is, actually."
"You know Carl Leatherwood wrote that story just a couple of months ago?"
"Right."
"Mr. Williamson, is feature writing more or less stressful than editing?"
"On a daily newspaper, it can be as stressful."
"But, generally speaking, have you done feature writing yourself?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Are there the same daily deadlines for a feature writer as —do you have to turn out a feature story every day?"
"Not every day, no."
"Okay."
"But certainly more than freelancing once every couple of years."
"But you knew at the time that Carl Leatherwood was not like everybody else, right?"
"Yes."
"And he had some real serious problems, didn't he?"
"Yes, sir."
"And he would have episodes and not make sense some of the time?"
"Correct."
"And you have, I believe, 1,100 full-time employees at The Houston Post?"
"I have 180 myself in editorial. That's more than enough."
"Did the thought ever cross your mind, perhaps we should give Carl a chance to write a little bit?"
"No, sir. I think we're off-base here a little bit. Those articles you showed me were freelance pieces done on Carl's time when he was capable of doing it, with no deadline pressure, when it was convenient for Carl to do that. I put out a daily newspaper."
"As a way of accommodating people who perhaps have a certain disability, have you thought of allowing a person like Carl Leather-wood perhaps to work on a computer out of his own home?"
"No."
"And why is that?"
"Because it gets back, sir, to the fundamental principle of why we're in the business. I have a responsibility to make sure that the editors and the reporters that work for me are capable of making judgments. And a writer who goes out on a story and is doing interviews and collecting information and is writing a story has to be aware of what's going on and be able to make the judgments just like an editor does, as a matter of fact more so, because he knows what the situation is. The difference between judgment required of an editor and reporter— they've both got to exercise judgment."
"Right. I mean, is there any evidence that Carl doesn't know how to interview people?"
"There would be no evidence if he was outside the office that I'd know he was having a good day or a bad day."
"What about with your other reporters? If they're outside the office, would you know if they're having a good day or bad day?"
"Well, yeah. Yes."
"The other reporters, though, don't they send you their stories from wherever they are, Washington D.C., or Austin, Texas? Don't they send it via computer or modem and it appears in The Houston Post?"
"Yes."
"Do you get a chance to review their work?"
"Yes."
"So the distance itself is not a problem, is it?"
"No."
"Even though Carl has had episodes since 1976, would you be surprised to learn that according to a memo of one of his supervisors that Carl did not miss a single day's work for eight years, and four of those years were after 1976."
"No."
"What was Mr. Leatherwood's copy like until 1976?"
"It was okay."
"Did you ever observe it yourself when it was not okay?"
"Yes."
"When was that?"
"I saw a lot of it in 1988. Some in 1985."
"I know it was a tough decision for you to fire Mr. Leatherwood. You told us about that. Do you think, however, the firing violates any policy stated in your handbook?"
"No, sir."
"I'd like you to look at page 7 of Defendant's Exhibit No. 1. Please read it for the Court,"
"It is our policy to provide equal employment opportunities for all employees and prospective employees without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, disability, or national origin."
"Dr. Blackburn said that he felt that you wanted to keep him on the job but the higher-ups above you did not share that feeling; is that correct? In other words, you really wanted Carl to stay with The Houston Post but somebody higher up kept you—"
"That's absolutely wrong. The only pressure I felt was I knew it was going to be tough. I knew Carl was going to have trouble. The torment I had was I knew he had to go and people below me, Carl's colleagues, were exasperated with the situation and frustrated with the situation and we had to do something. There was nobody above me who told me what to do."

ON   THE   SIXTH   DAY   OF   THE   TRIAL, the jury retired. The next day, November 23, 1993, the Galveston paper reported the verdict in a story by Carol Christian:

HOUSTON POST LOSES DISCRIMINATION CASE
The Houston Post on Monday was found guilty of discriminating against one of its former employees, Carlton Leatherwood Jr., who had previously worked at The Galveston Daily News.
An eight-person jury debated about three hours before finding in favor of Leatherwood, who was Daily News city editor in 1966 and 1967. Leatherwood, who has manic-depressive illness, filed the suit against The Post for firing him in 1989 in violation of the Texas Disabilities Act.
"It's satisfying that we could take a mental-illness discrimination case and have a victory of any kind," Leatherwood, 52, said Monday after the verdict.
"There are few mentally ill people who can afford to go to court to begin with, so they often end up in the street or in very low-paying jobs."
U.S. District Judge Hugh Gibson, who heard the case after it was transferred from Houston, will determine the amount of money The Post will be required to pay Leatherwood.
Bruce Coane, one of Leatherwood's attorneys, said Monday that both sides had agreed upon $170,000 for back pay.
Additional claims have been made for attorney fees and future pay, as well as reinstatement, Coane said.
The judge will not make the monetary award for at least 15 days, Coane said. First, The Post has 10 days in which to file a motion for the jury's verdict to be thrown out, and then Leatherwood has five days to respond to the motion.
Leatherwood, who had worked at The Post for 22 years as a copy editor and business wire editor, said he thought The Post would appeal. Neither the newspaper's representatives nor its attorneys could be reached Monday for comment.
In closing arguments Monday at the U.S. Courthouse, Leatherwood's attorney Steve Petrou said The Post had not done everything it could to accommodate Leatherwood's illness.
He said the accommodation best suited for Leatherwood's illness would have been writing feature stories and editorials, tasks he had done in the past "Not a single person who has taken the stand, including (Executive Editor) Ernie Williamson, has found anything wrong with his writing," said Petrou.

The judge would soon overturn the verdict, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals would uphold the judge's decision. By that time, The Post had folded, and Coane advised that even if I prevailed in the Supreme Court, I would not necessarily collect an award. The case had ended, and so had my newspaper career. As Petrou summed it up, a federal judge had said I was too sick to work. At the time, I was both disappointed and in disagreement with the ruling, but I came to realize that the defense doctor, with more hindsight, had best recognized how severe my condition was, how downward its trajectory.



Chapter 14

Chasm

WITH THE LOSS AT TRIAL, the last vestige of daily bread, of social sustenance as I had availed myself for a quarter century disappeared. I had tumbled into a chasm. To survive I was dependent on Social Security Disability and the kindness of aging parents.
It was not a bad life, but neither was it challenging, or imaginative, or inspirational. It was more a relief, that I wasn't out hungry and walking the streets. That's why to utter complaint evokes the feeling of whining. Let it go whimsically, the height of amusement was watching lizards sun on the patio.
To the so-called friend who joked about my job situation, I say it was no joke. Going without work nigh on twelve years, and maybe more after this writing, was a blight on my condition. If the scene under such stringent economic circumstance had ever approached serious romance, it is not too extreme to imagine the partner pulling up short because of a guy too sick to work. Too, your occupation defines you. What is one of the first questions at a party?
My doing without a car for seven years further aggravated the social and work situation. But I resorted to the bus both out of financial necessity and out of fear that I was a danger to myself and others if I drove when manic. First, my uncle had driven into the eighteen-wheeler, and, second, I had spun off a highway once.
Whereas dating had been routine, I managed only a few dates in this state, one to dinner and the movies, where my health problem came up. My guest had experienced the onerous malady in her family and understandably did not answer the call for another movie.
That, however, starts to sound like complaining. It should be clearly stated that my daily life was just an abridgment and also included three vacations, down, of course, from the annual, or greater, foray. I remember a letter writer complaining to a newspaper columnist about only one trip to Oklahoma in so many years, and the newsman rebuked her, saying some don't get any. So, I want it known I'm not an ingrate.
Gary Fortenberry, a friend from the '60s, twice invited me, paid my train fare, to his Pacific Northwest home, so that I could share it and the outdoors with his wife Gail and their daughter Erin. I'm deeply grateful.
The other trip? I paid from a settlement in a pedestrian-car accident for a Sierra Club camping trip in Yellowstone National Park. I suppose I must not pass on without noting the irony of trying to avoid an accident in a car and to then get hit on a sidewalk.

Journey to the Edge of Texas Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Dog Ado

"GOOD AFTERNOON," PETROU said, turning to the next witness. "Can you give the ladies and gentlemen of the jury your full name, please?"
"Marguerete Johnston which was my professional name, and Barnes, which is my married name, Marguerete Johnston Barnes."
"Can you tell us what year you were born and how old you are?"
"I certainly can. I was born in 1917, and I'm now 76."
"And how many years did you spend in the newspaper business?"
"From 1939 to 1985,"
"So is that over 40 years?"
"Yeah."
"In your career as a journalist and writer, did you come across — did you cross paths with Oveta Gulp Hobby?"
"Yes. I was very fortunate."
"Where did you meet Mrs. Hobby?"

WHEN I CAME TO  HOUSTON, I had had what I thought was the most glorious job in the whole world as a Washington correspondent. I didn't want to do anything less. So I offered to teach creative writing at the University of Houston, but I soon got lonesome for newspapers because that's what I liked to do. And my former publisher was a very beloved figure in American journalism and he wrote Mrs. Hobby about me and she promptly had me to lunch and the next day hired me."
"And can you tell us what was your last job at The Houston Post? What did you eventually end up doing at The Post?"
"My last job was assistant editor of the editorial page. Now, I have to tell you I didn't do any editing. I was writing that whole time." "Did you review some editorials?" "I read every editorial before it went to press.”
"Do you remember while working for The Post, running across Carl Leatherwood?"
"Yes, of course, I do."
"And do you remember at one time helping him with one of the very first editorials he ever wrote?"
"That's interesting. I didn't think Carl needed any help."
"But if he testified in this trial that you reviewed his first editorial and made comments about it, would that be accurate?"
"Well, it's very nice of him to say so. I hope I did him some good."
"I would like to show what's been premarked as Plaintiffs Exhibit B."
"Yes, I remember that editorial."
"Who wrote it?"
"Carl."
"What did you think of that editorial?"
"I thought it was excellent."
"Could he become a full-time writer?"
"I don't know why not."
"So he could become, in your opinion, a full-time editorial writer?"
Kalmans: "Objection. He's leading the witness."
The court: "I'm going to overrule the objection."
"I see no reason why he shouldn't. This is a very well-written editorial."
One editorial that was a court exhibit was entitled "Ape and essence." A Rice University professor had taken the trouble to write, calling the piece "erudite."

THE GHOST OF VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN, the fictional scientist who gave life to a ghoulish creature, resides in northern China as Dr. Ji "Yongxiang. Ji has proposed, indeed has already attempted, to produce a near-human ape by fertilizing a chimpanzee with human sperm. He would put this new species to work herding sheep and cows, mining and exploring space and the sea. He also sees the ape-human as a solution to the problem of human rejection of animal organs in transplants.
This futuristic idea leaves itself open to many jabs, but the aspect of reducing noxious labor is as bothersome as any. Consider, for example, the shepherd cast out of the valley and onto the automobile assembly line. Are we really doing him a favor? The job of herding sheep no longer holds esteem as in the biblical time of David. It means hard work and the physical hazards of lightning, bears, hornets and snakes. Worst of all, it isolates the worker from family and friends and from modern conveniences.
But there is simplicity in the shepherd's life. He eats fresh trout for breakfast and bathes in a tub of water set in the sun. Orange paintbrush and towering pines may decorate the herder’s path. He develops a talent with animals—horses, dogs and, of course, sheep—and feels at home with wildlife.
As a spot-welder in an automobile assembly plant the transplanted worker would stand on one spot pushing a button on a welding gun 12,000 times a day. Tremendous noise would rule out wool-gathering. On a night shift he still would likely lose much of his contact with family and friends. His redemption would be a good paycheck.
Admittedly, the change in jobs is conjecture. But in applying scientific knowledge to change the face of the work force, industry must fully consider job satisfaction, the quality of a major part of a worker’s life. In the case of the shepherd, standing under brilliant stars flashing in a blue canopy or standing with a flashing welding gun?
If the point is debatable, if the abolition of human need to herd sheep or to perform certain tasks in space has merit, please consider further. The ape-human would likely share our emotions. Frankenstein's monster did. He yearned for the love and sympathy of cottagers he observed in the German countryside. Airs played on a guitar were so entrancingly beautiful he shed tears of sorrow and delight. Should we enslave in any task the human spirit, even if it is breathed by such a creature? No. The spirit is still human, and we fought a war to end its subjection to slavery.

There were lighter contributions to the editorial page, take a kiss:

FROM WHAT A TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY professor tells us, the custom of kissing must belong to more civilized peoples. Vaughn M. Bryant Jr., the head of that school's Department of Anthropology, says kissing became a national craze in Roman times, "as commonplace as shaking hands." Among medieval knights, he said, the ability to kiss nicely was a sign of gentility.
But people on the South Seas island of Mangaia only recently learned about kissing. And some, such as West Africans in the mid-1800s, feared it, the professor said. Bryant believes kissing began with a misplaced nose rub in 1000-1200 B.C. in India, where a hob/ man wrote the world's first how-to manual centuries later. Ah, civilization?

And this editorial about a canoe...

A SINGLE JOURNEY WESTWARD from the center of his world ended on a prairie in Minnesota.  But writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, who traveled mostly in and about Concord, Mass., would have enjoyed Texas in the spring in a canoe. In the spring, more than 570 species of native grasses (out of 1,200 in the United States) and approximately 5,000 different native wildflowers burst anew upon the land. A canoe trip on New England's Concord and Merrimack rivers in 1830 inspired him to develop a natural philosophy. And 80,000 miles of streams, more navigable by canoe than power boat, flow mostly through rural Texas.
For those who wish a Thoreauean experience, many of the stated rivers and creeks will do. From the canyon walls of the Rio Grande at Big Bend to the white sand bars of Village Creek in the Big Thicket, and the white water of the Hill Country in between, the canoe will slice silently into a wondrous environment This year two canoeists and a small dog chose the Brazos River between Lake Whitney and Waco to welcome spring.
Bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush already lined the route there. On the river, as the current assisted the paddlers with their pea pod of a vehicle, ducks and blue herons took flight. A warm sun penetrated six feet of clear water where schools of large fish swayed plants and turtles rested on a rock bottom. Springs flowed through thick ferns down a limestone bluff, while trees were greening on the opposite bank.
Read or listen to the rich history of a region, and the mind can see more than the eye. It can feel the presence of the Spanish who named the river, the Anglo-American pioneers in the 1800s who forded Spivey Crossing in wagons and plowed the fields of Smith Bend, the turn-of-the-century campers who left graffiti and the Indians whose garbage has become a dig.
This trip the Brazos canoeists basked in the first full calendar day of spring before a norther pushed through their camp. Winter was reluctant to die. But, as Thoreau said, the life that had lain torpid had begun to stretch itself.

DID   YOU   KNOW  A L s o that Carlton Leatherwood wrote features from time to time?" "I read them, yes." "How were his features?" "Pleasant. An addition to the paper."
"In addition to being a full-time editorial writer, did you feel that he could be a full-time feature writer?"
"Oh, I don't see what we're aiming at, but I knew Carl; he wrote well. At that time I would have said that—"
"That he could be a writer?"
"Sure."

No doubt, she liked the piece on Southeast Texas writer and radio celebrity Gordon Baxter.

     WHEN CHRYSLER CHIEF LEE IACOCCA, 61, married a former airline flight attendant twenty-six years his junior, I thought of Gordon Baxter.
Baxter, also in his seventh decade, is a writer and an institution in Beaumont radio—a teller of tales, he calls himself—whose much younger wife Diane flew for Braniff. His musings occasionally appear in the opinion section of The Post. The first years of the couple’s marriage and of their precocious daughter’s young life were spent in a cabin on Village Creek. That creek winds through the Big Thicket, a heavily wooded and ecologically mixed area north of Beaumont. Some of it has been preserved by the National Park Service.

Gordon Baxter is a writer and a radio celebrity in Beaumont

Ever since I read Baxter's book, Village Creek, I had wanted to canoe by his cabin, maybe meet the man whose love affair with the stream runs a half century. Those fifteen acres in the Thicket have been his Walden, and it is always a pleasure to come in contact with a person close to nature.
Because the Thicket can easily shield a house from view on the creek, I abandoned the idea of canoeing to the cabin and instead drove over. The family has moved into town, to accommodate the accelerated education and people needs of Jenny, but returns to the cabin on weekends.
On the weekend of my visit, Baxter had repaired the leaks in two small pirogues in his home workshop and brought them back to the creek. A pirogue is a boat somewhat canoe-shaped and some are hollowed out of cypress logs. Baxter built these little eight-foot pirogues out of plywood for the two sons of his first family thirty years ago. After surviving repeated rammings in childhood war games on the water, "they had been kinda dormant over the years," Baxter said. Then Jenny became a good swimmer, and she cast her eyes on these pirogues like she was seeing them for the first time."
Jenny had dragged one into the water and impressed her dad with not rolling it over. "They are very tender—ten inches wide at the bottom—and she just sailed out," Baxter said. "She had picked up a big old awkward one-bladed paddle and still handled it OK." Today, Jenny pushed off in the repaired boat with a double-bladed paddle and without the problem of leaks, and her joy shone.

8 year old Jennie Baxter glides through Village Creek in a pirogue

Her dad discovered the joy of canoeing to and from this sand bar in his teens. He and a pal built a canvas boat in the 1930s and drove up to a Village Creek bridge from Port Arthur in a Model A.
"We would come up and launch into the creek and float down the creek, and this was about as far as you could go without getting tired and thirsty," Baxter said. "I would pull up on this sand bar and lie under that line of willows and just lust for the place."
In intervening years the sand bar, white quartz crystal stretching some 100 yards, and its attached woodland, have become a realized dream of Baxter’s youth.
Baxter suggested Jenny and I climb into an aluminum canoe with him to paddle around the sandbar and up a baygall on the property. A baygall is a swampy piece of land in the Thicket with a variety of trees, notably red bay, common bald cypress and May hawthorn. Once you see one, you feel swampland has gotten a bad rap—in truth it possesses an awesome, tranquil beauty. We didn't, however, make it to this one by canoe. "I thought the creek was high enough that we could canoe into the baygall, and it ain't," the creek romantic said. "It’s always changing. I didn't know this [a ridge of sand] was here. It wasn't here last year. This is this year’s surprise."
We sat and talked under the willows on the bank of the little eddy.
"That big blue bird that you saw, that’s the great blue heron." Baxter said. "We may be looking at her daughter, but a blue heron has been here as long as I've been here to notice the creatures. She lives back somewhere in the baygall and feeds from these sand bars."
The heron, to Baxter, is the Spirit of the Holy Ghost Thicket. "Archer Fullingim (the late publisher of the Kountze News) named this place the Holy Ghost Thicket because he said if you stay back in here long enough you begin to speak in tongues," Baxter explained. "Archer was one of the prime movers to save the Big Thicket, he and Sen. Ralph Yarborough. The people who lived here didn't want it to be a park. When the word got out that the world’s record magnolia tree was in the Big Thicket in Hardin County, a group of them went out at night and cut the thing down. The ivory-billed woodpecker was a favorite target of characters who wandered through the woods carrying something to shoot. They got them all down to where they were about extinct, and Archer began to publicize the fact Save the ivory bill woodpecker became his cry. One day one of his neighbors came in carrying his rifle in one hand and a dead ivory-billed woodpecker in the other and dropped it on Archer's desk. He said, ‘Is that what you've been looking for?' It was the first one Archer had ever seen and it was the last one and it was dead."
"I believe the creek will heal you," Baxter said. The clouds riding the warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico closed together on the last rays of morning sunshine. "I've always suspected that there is such a combination of pollutants in the creek that it will shine the aluminum on your outboard motor and also heal minor cuts and wounds. I also vow that the creek heals my mind. I've walked the sand bar in all the ups and downs of my life, in the victories and the tragedies. I've walked the sand bar and cried out, 'Oh Lord, what do you want of me?’ The sand bar is the place for that; it is my sand-floored cathedral ... after a while you begin to know which way to go."
Jenny was between us listening attentively. We knew that for sure later when she asked what speaking in tongues was. Her father had sung and danced on the sand bar to pacify her as a baby. "She had the croup and the colic, and oh, she had a terrible time," Baxter said. "I would take Jenny in my arms—stiff, crying, and flailing her arms—in the middle of the night, and I would take her down the front steps of the cabin and out on the sand bar. We would walk in the moonlight, and I would hold her ear up against my heart so she could hear my heart beating. I walked in a slow, steady, rhythmic pace singing. If Jenny grows up and can remember all the old rabble songs, all of the barroom songs, all of the early day, foot-stomping, Baptist-come-to-Jesus revival songs ... I sang everything I knew to her, and she would grow warm and limp and quit crying ... Diane said it was self-defense that she would stop crying.
Later that afternoon, stopping near Kirbyville to buy juice of the fruit of the May hawthorn, I wished I had asked the Baxters for the recipe for mayhaw jelly. Local residents call the trees mayhaws, and Fullingim had given them his recipe. He had sent his jelly to the White House until he and President Lyndon Johnson got crossed up on politics, my host explained.
I didn't ask for the mayhaw recipe because I was mindful of Thicket mores as set down in Baxter’s purchase of his sand-bar property. He had mentioned to the owners he wanted to buy it, and ten years later they sold it to him. He asked them why they waited so long. "We wanted to wait a little and find out what kind of feller you are," they answered.
How long, Bax and Diane, for a recipe that will curl up your toes on the chair rungs and make your eyes water and your nose run and you will know that there is indeed a God in heaven in all his mystery?

DID   you   EVER   OBSERVE   Carl Leatherwood making big disruptions in the newsroom?" "No."
"Did you ever see him bring his dog into the newsroom?"
"No. Others brought their dogs."
"Pardon me?"
"I'll—if you want to bring a dog to the newsroom, I don't think there were any rules against it."
"Okay."
Kalmans: "Objection, Your Honor. That's obviously not responsive to any question."
The court: "All right."
Johnston: "Sorry."
"After you left The Post, did you continue writing?"
"Oh, yes."
"And are you an author now?"
"Yes."
"What is your book called?"
"Houston, the Unknown City: 1836 to 1946."
"Thank you for coming."
Kalmans stepped closer to the stand:
"Ms. Johnston, when did you leave the employment of The Houston Post?"
"January 1, 1985."
"All right, You have no personal knowledge of anything that went on at The Post after that date, do you?"
"No, none."
"Pass the witness."

     JUDGE GIBSON: "The defense will call its first witness."
Bounds: "Your Honor, at this time we call Dr. Richard _    Pesikoff."
Bruce Coane, a lawyer for the plaintiff: "Your Honor, may we take this witness on voir dire?"
Gibson: "Why would you want to take him on voir dire?"
Coane: "Your Honor, this witness is being called as an expert witness. He does not have any information about relevant facts. It's our position that he is not a qualified expert to testify in this case. His expertise has nothing to do with the issues."
Gibson: "What is his expertise?"
Bounds: "Psychiatry with an expertise in manic and all emotional disorders."
Coane: "His resume as presented to us shows he's an expert in child psychiatry. It has nothing to do with this case."
Gibson: "I overrule the objection. I overrule your request to voir dire."
"Would you state your occupation, please?" Bounds asked.
"I'm an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. I'm in the private practice of adult and child psychiatry, serving about half adults and about half children and adolescents. I'm also a psychoanalyst."
"Okay. Have you ever done an actual examination of Carlton Leatherwood?"
"No, ma'am. I have not met him."
"Have you reviewed any record regarding Carlton Leatherwood?"
"Extensively."
"In what capacity are you here today, Dr. Pesikoff?"
"I was retained to review the records and give a medical opinion of everything I have read."
"How familiar are you with the disorder of manic depressive disorder?"
"Well, very much so."
"You have patients that have been diagnosed with that disorder?"
"Yes, I do. Many."
"Have there been any significant changes in the treatment of manic depressive disorder?"
"In the last few years, because we've had a number of patients who did not respond well to lithium, we've added some of the other drugs which were mainly for seizure disorders. Depakote and Tegretol are two that we use now with a lot more freedom. We try to mix them sometimes to get better results."
"And what does Depakote do?"
"Well, I don't think any of us truly knows what any of these drugs actually do. As a net result, they are given in order to stop the kind of up-and-down, up-and-down manic depressive episodes that these patients suffer with—the mechanism isn't real clear as to exactly how that happens because there isn't any naturally found lithium or Depakote in people's bodies."
"After having reviewed all these records, do you have an opinion about the general diagnosis of Carl Leatherwood?"
“Yes, I do."
"What is your opinion with regard to the general diagnosis of Carl Leatherwood?"
"I would agree with the diagnosis that I read in Dr. Ranjit Chacko's report from Methodist Hospital this last month. I think he has a bipolar illness. I think it's severe. It's been present for about seventeen years now, to the best of my figuring. It's been a terrible illness for him. I do think bipolar manic depressive illness is a proper diagnosis."
"You say that you think he has a severe case of this bipolar disorder. Has it always been severe?"
"I think it's been getting worse and worse. He started out, typically, like many patients do in their thirties, with his first episode. He’s had thirteen, I counted thirteen, hospitalizations up until this October. I may have missed one. That's a lot of hospitalizations in seventeen years. That's a pretty severe illness when you're in and out.
"And during that entire period, Mr. Leatherwood has had different degrees of contact with doctors. It's not like he hasn't gone for help. I mean, he's certainly tried to get help. And in spite of that, his illness is so malignant and so significant that it has continued—keeps breaking through. He has periods when he's okay, even some periods when he had a couple of years he was all right. Then he goes down and down and down. It has an unfortunate downward course and it's not been possible—I've read all his records—for us to stop that in the state of medical science today."
"Based upon your expertise, do you have an opinion about the general course of treatment that's been given to Carl Leatherwood?"
"I think it's been—he went through a series of different diagnoses. I don't think he got on to lithium until the '80s. I think that was fortunate. At least it appeared to be a fortunate breakthrough for him, but even that hasn't really helped. I think his illness has continued to be a severe illness that's been downwardly focused. Maybe his symptoms have changed, according to the chart, but there's certainly little doubt in my mind that it's a manic depressive illness at this point."
"Is there some point in Mr. Leatherwood's course of this illness that you believe he has started his downward approach that you're talking about or has it always been downward?"
"The first, I guess, twelve years, thirteen years, he had eight or nine hospitalizations. It's always been a severe illness for him. And as I read his symptoms, he had these terribly psychotic episodes where he would become very confused, lose his contact with reality, and need to be in a hospital for a period of time, and that has continued up until the present."
"Is that unusual for that type of course to be taken for this type of illness?"
"Unfortunately, that's not unusual at all."
"But there are people who have bipolar disorder who don't have this spiraling down; is that correct?"
"Thank goodness. Most of the patients that we have who are manic depressives have, let's say, a mild or a medium severity of this disorder. And they may have one or two hospitalizations where we really do pick up on it and they may go years without any problems. There are a lot of factors which influence whether or not you're going to be a pretty good patient. Some of it's biological. Some has to do with your support system, you know, your husband, wife, kids, things like that, the kind of job you do and so forth. But most patients, if they take their medicine, if they're complying patients, if their illness
doesn't interfere with their ability to know they need their medicine, have a milder course than Mr. Leatherwood has had."
"But in your opinion, Mr. Leatherwood is not in this category of mild?"
"No, he's not. He's not for a number of reasons. He's had too many episodes, very severe illnesses. And one of the worst things about his illness is that when he starts getting ill, he believes he doesn't need his medicine. Of course, at that point, he stops his lithium. You can read his records. He comes into the hospital with almost no lithium in his blood system, which tells you he's stopped his medicine. Of course, then it just gets worse and worse."
"Specifically, I'd like to turn your attention to the fall of 1988. Are you familiar with the hospitalization that Mr. Leatherwood had in December of 1988?"
"Yes, I am."
"He was hospitalized in the middle of December 1988; is that correct? Is that your understanding?"
"Yes, it is."
"Do you have an opinion about when this episode actually began?"
"From the best I can read, it was building up for a couple of months before—September-October. That's what is referenced in the various notes in the chart."
"Is there any significance to the fact that Carl Leatherwood was involuntarily hospitalized for the first time in this particular episode in 1988?"
"It speaks to what I'm saying. The fact that the illness is getting worse, his ability to see himself is deteriorating. He's already, at that point, out of contact with reality. You can't reason with him. You can't just say, Carl, you're not doing well; you've got to go in the hospital. He can't hear you. My patients tell me when they are in that state, Dr. Pesikoff, I can't hear you. I can't reason with you. You don't make any sense to me. I don't see anything wrong with me.
"So you would, therefore, need to go to the authorities, down to probate court, get a court order, and have the patient picked up and involuntarily confined. That would be indicative of a worsening of his illness and a loss of insight into his illness."
"In your opinion, was this episode more severe than the previous episodes he had?"
"It seemed to be more so, yes."
"Based upon that, would this episode have been perceived by other people around Mr. Leatherwood?"
"Absolutely."
"At what point in an episode such as this does a patient lose their ability to reason or have judgment?"
"In severe versions of manic depressive illness, the window of opportunity, to use a familiar phrase, for a number of my severe patients, is one to two days. And they call me—they say, I was up all night, I'm pacing, we've got to do something. That's that one or two days. I get their husband or wife—I'm just thinking of a lady in particular—down to my office. We get a lithium blood test that day and we start to pump in more medication and try to avoid—I'm not always successful in keeping this kind of patient out of the hospital."
"If the patient is not able of their own accord to notice that there's a beginning of a problem or if they don't have someone around like a husband or a wife who lives with them and notices those sorts of things, what is the possibility that you're going to catch them within that window?"
"Negligible. I can't even catch them with husbands and wives overseeing them. And if you have nobody watching you, that day or two or three, that window just passes by without anything happening and then you're in the midst of that bizarre psychotic period."
"What if a person is employed, could their coworkers be expected to notice that window?"
"I think that's asking an awful lot. I can't even pick it up sometimes. It can flash by. It can happen over a weekend. There's no way. Yes, on occasion, I think you might say something to a fellow employee if they were acting weirdly, yes; but, I mean, as a routine, by the time you try to convince them to go somewhere, that's a very, very unrealistic proposition."
"Mr. Leatherwood returned to work in January of 1989. In Defendant's Exhibit No. 3, there are several pages of Dr. Blackburn's notes following that hospitalization that December. On page 40, could you tell us what you find?"
"1/14/89 shows that he's taking lithium carbonate, 300 milligrams, two tablets twice a day. That's 600 milligrams twice a day for a total of 1200 milligrams. That would be a reasonable dosage of medication."
"Do those notes indicate any problems that Mr. Leatherwood is having?"
"Personally, there's something about parents—some kind of interpersonal conflict between girl friend and his parents and Mr. Leatherwood."
"Throughout these notes, there is again a note dated January 28th where there was a session. February 11th of '89, there was a session. February 25th of '89, there was a session. March 11th. Do you notice in these notes of Dr. Blackburn's anything of particular concern for you with regard to Mr. Leatherwood's condition?"
"Yes. You can watch the quality of the notes change as you get to March llth. I highlighted my series of notes in the middle. It says paranoia recurs, suspicious that some of the stories had been formulated. So Dr. Blackburn in March of that year is writing in his records that once again he's picking up that paranoia in Mr. Leatherwood. And, of course, paranoia is one of Mr. Leatherwood's major psychotic symptoms when he's ill. He's very paranoid. And so it's already there in the March office notes of his physician."
"Based upon your review of his hospitalizations and his conditions this time, do you have an opinion about Mr. Leatherwood's condition during this period of time?"
"I think he's continued to be ill. He has never recovered fully from this severe episode, and by March of 1989, he once again is back in a paranoid state. So it's one long, continuous downward illness with a drop of some recovery and then it's down again and he's falling again."
"In looking at these records, is it your opinion that Mr. Leatherwood in the past had been able to recover a relatively acceptable degree of stability?"
"I guess it depends on what kind of job you're talking about. My understanding is that because of his illness, The Post created a position for him in the '80s so that he could remain with the corporation, so that while he couldn't go back after a few of these hospitalizations, they did try to keep him and they made a new job to fit him. But by '89 after years of this illness, it doesn't appear that he could maintain himself even for a couple of months now without again becoming psychotic."
"Mr. Leatherwood was hospitalized again in June of 1989; is that correct?"
"Yes, it is."
"Do you have an opinion as to when this episode that resulted in the hospitalization in June of '89 began?"
"In December of '88, probably in September or October of '88. It sounds like one long, downward spiral, like a stock that's dropping, then has some little upticks and then drops again. I think he was in the course of a malignant portion of his illness, a tragic kind of illness, and they stopped it for a while in December; but, unfortunately, his health doesn't always respond the way we want it to, and it resumed its downward spiral soon after the hospitalization of December of'88."
"Dr. Blackburn's records reflect a change in Mr. Leatherwood's medication on June 3rd. Could you tell us what the purpose of that change in medication may have been?"
"Dr. Blackburn must have been picking up what we're seeing because he wanted to use one of the major tranquilizers. He was adding Mellaril, which is like Thorazine, Prolixin. And in his notes, he writes, hypomanic episode, meaning that the man is on the cusp already now of a major manic episode."
"How does a manic depressive disorder affect a patient's judgment?"
"Terribly. Terribly. I mean, it's a horrible illness. When you are psychotic, your judgment is centered around your bizarre thinking. So in the midst of the full-blown episode, you don't have any kind of judgment to be a doctor, a lawyer or anybody, a newspaper man.
"During the periods when you're shy of that full-blown illness but you're in a hypomanic state, your judgment is impaired. You rush things. Your speech is pressured. You have trouble sitting still. You have trouble concentrating. You're agitated. You're very irritable. You don't sleep at night."
"Dr. Blackburn wrote a letter on June 29th releasing Mr. Leatherwood to return to his normal duties immediately. Have you read that letter?"
"Yes, I have."
"Do you have an opinion as to whether or not Mr. Leatherwood should have been returned to work in June of 1989? If so, could you please tell the court what it is?"
"I think this is a well-meaning letter, but it is a very misleading letter. I don't think Mr. Leatherwood was anywhere capable of working. I don't know Dr. Blackburn's motivation for writing it other than trying to be nice maybe to his patient; but, A, the man did not have a hypomanic mood shift. He had a manic episode. You don't hospitalize hypomanic disorders—at the price hospitals charge for full-blown manic episodes. This man in no way has recovered from his illness.
"There's nothing in the notes that indicate anything that tells me that he is able to go back to work. Usually what you do with patients who've had severe illnesses is you give them a chance to recuperate. I don't care whether it's a broken leg, a hysterectomy, or psychotic episode, you know. You give people a week or two or three to go home and try to collect themselves."
"Following the writing of this letter on June 29th, Dr. Blackburn wrote a letter on August 11th. I believe you have it.
"That letter, according to Dr. Blackburn's testimony, was written to aid Mr. Leatherwood in obtaining various benefits. That letter indicates, I believe, about the middle of the second paragraph that Mr. Leatherwood is not in his opinion able to continue with his regular occupation. Is that a correct paraphrase of the letter?"
"Yes. He writes, 'Because of these unpredictable episodes and the necessity of hospitalization, I cannot say that Mr. Leatherwood would be able to perform the material duties of his occupation with a reasonable continuity.'"
"Do you think that's a major shift in opinion from the June 29 letter?"
"This is my opinion of Mr. Leatherwood. I agree with his opinion. It's a 180-degree change in direction from everything else that's been written by his physician. I mean, he writes he is disabled with respect to his performance. I agree with Dr. Blackburn. I think the man was disabled for a long time."
"Do you find anything in Carl Leatherwood's medical records to establish any basis for this 180-degree change by Dr. Blackburn in a period of six weeks?"
"No."
"And in November, Mr. Leatherwood was hospitalized again; is that correct?"
"November 1989, that is correct."
"Dr. Blackburn has in his records prior to that hospitalization, a statement that he had received numerous phone calls over a period of about a month from friends and family and others regarding Mr. Leatherwood's condition. Is that unusual to receive those types of phone calls?"
"No, it's not unusual. If you have a couple of friends or wife or kids who are current with you, you may get calls from concerned people telling you that their friend or their spouse is ill. I mean, that certainly happens in my practice."
"If you'd received calls from people such as this, but then you had had a visit with your patient and you did not observe any obvious delusions or hyperactivity or loud behavior, would you dismiss the calls and decide that you were the more competent person to decide about their emotional stability?"
"I think that's naive. I think you see them maybe fifteen minutes or half an hour every month and these people either work with them or live with them and know them and see them all the time in a noncontrolled environment. I don't think you can ignore—what I do is I ask them to come in. I also have them call my nurse, usually, every single day when in the middle of one of these episodes. I usually believe the people who are calling because there's no reason for them to lie to me. Why would they call a psychiatrist and lie to them? These people who are ill slide right out from your hands like mercury. You really have to hold on tight. It's a real challenging piece of work for a physician to do. And if it's looking more and more to me like we're going to end up having to hospitalize this patient, maybe get them in a little bit sooner so they don't end up in one of these severe psychotic episodes."
"If, as in the case of Mr. Leatherwood, the course of treatment is a little bit less controlled than you tend to treat your patients, can the people around them be expected to control Mr. Leatherwood?"
"Don't be misled, even by the fact that I ride tight rein on my patients, I can't always control them. I have patients who I do my very best to control who end up in the hospital. I think the illness is stronger than me, my nurse."
"November 22, 1989, Dr. Blackburn wrote another letter, this time to the Social Security Administration. In that letter, he writes that Mr. Leatherwood has been mostly seriously disabled since September of 1988. Do you agree with this assessment?"
"Yes, I really believe that that is the truth. I think he did in fact write the truth, that the man had been severely disabled since the fall of the previous year, yes. It goes on to say, you know, he was restless, hyperactive, sleepless at times, psychotic, delusional—I think that's all true."
"Based upon your understanding of his job and your understanding of Mr. Leatherwood's condition in 1989, did his condition impair his ability to perform that job?"
"Absolutely."
"Pass the witness, Your Honor."
Witness: "I could get a little water?"
Judge: "Yes."
Coane stepped forward: "Would you like to proceed, Doctor, or would you want to wait for the water?"
"I think we can go on."
"Okay. Doctor, so in your opinion—well, let me ask you this: Is it your understanding that Carl wants to return to work?"
"That's been his position, as best I understand it, that he's wanted to work, yes."
"Okay. And despite his desire to work, it's your opinion that Carl Leatherwood cannot return to work; is that right?"
"Are you talking about at The Houston Post?"
"Let's start with The Post. Yes, at The Post."
"Yes, that's correct,"
"Have you read any of his writing?"
"I've read all his works. All the ones that were in the addendum to the deposition."
"Did you find in reviewing those articles that there was any evidence in there that he was delusional or paranoid or manic?"
"No."
"So in the periods where he's not delusional, paranoid, or manic, you would agree that he can probably perform his job?"
Bounds: "Objection, Your Honor. What he's discussing is writing articles on his free time, not what his job was at The Post."
Judge: "Let the witness do the responding."
"Given the circumstances that you're describing of writing ad-lib articles, I guess, casually with no pressure, no time limits, yes, I think he can probably still write. I hope he can."
"Doctor, at some point in this lawsuit, I was given a copy of your curriculum vitae. Just so we're clear on this, you don't claim to be an expert in the newspaper business; is that correct?"
"That's correct."
"If you had to name one area of expertise in your practice of psychiatry, what would that be?"
"Would be very difficult because I have about three or four areas where I specialize."
"Right. And child psychiatry is one of them?"
"Oh, absolutely. Child psychiatry, adult psychiatry. I'm a board certified adult psychiatrist. I'm a general psychiatrist. I was chief of one of the hospitals for three years. I write on issues of custody in the law. There are a number of areas."
"If you'll glance at your curriculum vitae that you have in front of you there, would you agree that the bulk of your major educational and research interests are in child psychiatry, at least according to your curriculum vitae?"
"I get tapped at Baylor to teach that because there are much fewer child psychiatrists and I often do the TV and public relations work for Baylor because we don't have a lot of child-adolescent psychiatrists, so a lot of my presentations are on child and adolescent. But the six years I spent at the Psychoanalytic Institute, Houston-Galveston Institute, was all adult.
"Let's look at the major educational and research interests on your curriculum vitae. You listed five of them. Would you read them to the jury, please?"
"Adolescence and drug abuse, children and divorce, psychiatry and the law, psychological growth and development in childhood and adolescence, and sleeping disorders in children."
"Thank you. Also on your curriculum vitae here, I count about eight pages of publication, speeches, and lectures that you've given. And would you agree that most, if not all of these, have dealt with child or family psychiatry?"
"Yes, I would."
"You don't have any complaints with Dr. Blackburn's treatment of Mr. Leatherwood, do you?"
"I think I would have kept a tighter reign on Mr. Leatherwood in terms of some of those phone calls that came in. I think I probably would have tried to verify those. I would have probably asked the patient to keep in closer contact with me, rather than every three weeks since he's had such a severe history. And, of course, I am very confused by the variety of the notes and letters that Dr. Blackburn wrote. Otherwise, he had the medications, I think, the ones I would have used. I would agree with most of the other treatment."
"You used the word earlier when Ms. Bounds was questioning you 'disability.' Are you referring to manic depression as being a disability, or bipolar disorder, whatever y'all call it now?"
"Sure. I would call any mental or emotional illness a disability, be disabling, as I think it was here."
"Okay. From your understanding of the case, from 1976 until at least that episode in 1988 that led to his hospitalization, Mr. Leather-wood was able to perform the duties of his job unless he was having an episode; is that right?"
"That's my understanding, yes."
"Okay. So throughout that time, just to make sure we're clear on this, throughout the time of 1976 to 1988, it's your understanding that Mr. Leatherwood had a disability of manic depression, correct?"
"It wasn't really diagnosed that way in the earlier papers. To be fair to those doctors, they didn't call it manic depression. I don't want to change history. They called it schizophrenia, then they called it schizo-affective disorder, then it evolved to manic depressive. If I could change your words and say that he had a major psychiatric illness, diagnosis shifting, but, yes, I would agree to that land of phraseology."
"Okay. Did you ever notice in Dr. Blackburn's notes any comments about work or employment being therapeutic for Mr. Leather-wood?"
"I think he made reference to the fact that that was one area that Mr. Leatherwood actually was drawn to and it was one of his areas of strength, something he derived satisfaction from."
"Would your reading also indicate that the termination was a very distressful thing for Mr. Leatherwood?"
"I certainly agree that to have to be let go from a job is always very distressful, yes."
"Is it particularly distressful for someone in Mr. Leatherwood's mental condition, as you understand it?"
Bounds: "Objection, Your Honor. He's—"
The court: "Overrule the objection."
"I think he's a more sensitive person because he has this illness, and I would agree with that."
"Do you think that some day- in your opinion, do you think some day he could return to a job as a newspaper writer at a major newspaper?"
"I have a crystal ball in my office which I turn to in moments like this. No, I don't really think so. But I think a less stressful job, something that used his intellect and his writing skills, maybe he could do something with it. I would hope so."
"Sir, you're being paid to testify here today?"
"No. I'm being paid for my time and that is all that I have to sell, and I sell my time and my expertise."
"What do you sell your time for?"
"I get $300 an hour when I do this kind of work."
"Your diagnosis of Mr. Leatherwood is bipolar illness, chronic-severe with multiple episodes. Is it really ever possible for anyone with that diagnosis to work in any type of job."
"Sometimes, yes. It's not easy. The general course of those severe versions makes it really hard to do that. You know, if you had a job where you could do it at your own pace and didn't have any time lines and the conditions were ideal, some of the time he might be able to work, yes. I don't want to say that he couldn't work at something sometimes."
"Are you saying that even today he has never recovered from that severe episode of 1988?"
"The answer is I think he's had up and down, up and down—what has occurred has been going down. I think he's probably lucid now, although that's a guess. Dr. Chacko, his present doctor, is a good doctor. I know him. He's getting good care. I'm glad he is at Methodist with Dr. Chacko. He's on a different medical regimen. He's on val-proic acid and lithium now, which is a good mixture. And it looks good. I mean, I can only tell you that for the moment at least—that doesn't tell me—it's three weeks since he was in the hospital, so I'm not good enough about prognosticating. And I'm hopeful that maybe we've gotten a handle on it, but, I mean, that's my medical school talking. I wouldn't stress a job or anything like that right this minute, but he looks lucid to me."
"Do you have any reason to doubt that he enjoys the job of a writer and editor?"
"I think he loves writing. He wouldn't have worked for a newspaper all these years if he didn't love that."
"Do different writing jobs at The Post have different deadline requirements?"
"That's my understanding. I've worked with a number of reporters who've done investigative kinds of work, and they'll take months to put together stories. And then you have people who write about hurricanes and that's real on-the-spot stuff. The answer is yes."
Bounds returned to take up the questioning:
"Dr. Blackburn, have the effects of Mr. Leatherwood's mental illness—"
"Dr. Pesikoff."
"Sorry. I'm so busy listening to everybody talk about—Dr. Pesikoff, I will represent to you that Dr. Blackburn has testified that the reason for the difference between the two letters that you have a problem with, that being the June 29th letter and the August 11th letter from 1989, was his recognition of a severe depression in Carl Leatherwood. Did you find any evidence in Dr. Blackburn's records
of such a depression?"
"There's no mention in the notes of any severe depression."
"Is that something that you think a prudent doctor would have written in the notes if it had occurred?"
"I think if he had thought of it, he would have written it down, yes."
"Dr. Pesikoff, do you have an opinion as to whether or not Dr.
Blackburn did Mr. Leatherwood and The Post a good service?"
"I think he made it very confusing for The Houston Post and Mr.
Leatherwood by writing different letters at different times containing
different information so that it confused The Post, it confused Mr.
Leatherwood, and made it impossible for anybody to get an accurate
picture of his illness."
The court: "The witness is excused."