He Wanted the Moon (25 page)

From there, my father wrote the following letter to his old friend and faculty advisor at Harvard, Dr. James Howard Means. It was Saturday, May 19, 1945.

Dear Dr. Means,

Life here on State Farm is not exactly an entrancing experience for more reasons than one, but it has taught me a lot about people “and things.” I was arrested in front of Copley Plaza on charges of stealing my own car (now in Gretta’s name). I was of course taken first to Boston police station and then thrown in a cell at Newton police station where I went berserk and became as wild as a jungle beast, tearing the plumbing out and raising Hell in general.

After transference to Westborough I grew vastly worse and “tore the place to pieces,” was put in a straight jacket and beaten unmercifully. Arrived at State Farm Prison Hospital three days later with Ecchymoses from head to foot—my nose bruised and swollen, my left eye black down to middle left cheek.

Here I am among a lot of patients and assorted criminals and as usual my psychiatrists and lawyers claim they can do nothing for me. My lawyer, Talcott M. Banks Jr of Palmer, Dodge & Co. wants me to leave Massachusetts permanently—and I have become reconciled to this fate. I came back merely to see my children and friends. Oh boy what a pack o’ trouble! So I guess it’s goodbye forever to dear ol’ New England. I’ll try out Texas or Michigan again. There are plenty of pretty girls in Texas and elsewhere. I’ll marry again and have more chicks and
maybe I’ll pine less for my daughters, who bind me to New England, where I want them to stay.

Please write or come to see me.

Ever sincerely,

PERRY

Dr. Means replied on June 1, 1945:

Dear Perry,

Many thanks for yours of May 19th. I had heard the unhappy news that you had been transferred to Bridgewater. It’s most unfortunate, but I fear inevitable, if you cannot manage to get under cover voluntarily in the brief space of time that free choice remains to you during the prodromal stages of an attack, that you will be treated more or less as you have been this time and others. I suppose society just isn’t organized to deal with the kind of problem your case presents when you enter upon a manic phase of your disease.

About going to Texas, I don’t believe I can advise you wisely. It seems possible that a totally new environment there might diminish the chance of relapses, but one cannot be sure.

As I see it, you are suffering from a chronic malady, characterized by remissions and relapses, cause and specific treatment for which are as yet quite unknown. Dr. Tillotson thinks electric shock treatments offer something. I just don’t know. Aside from that, I think regardless of where you are, the important thing is to have constant psychiatric control. If you could bring yourself to let your psychiatrist tell you when to get under cover, and obey him, you might spare yourself and your friends, a lot of grief. One thing you could do when you are discharged is to go on the water wagon for life. But you haven’t been willing to do this, and no one can force you.

With kindest regards,

HOWARD MEANS

It was the last time my father ever heard from his loyal friend and advisor. Like so many of my father’s friends and colleagues, Dr. Means was no longer able to maintain a connection with someone so unstable. My father’s mental illness had finally severed their many years of close friendship.

From this point on, my father entered a period of marked isolation. For the next three years, he remained institutionalized in various hospitals in Massachusetts. Eventually he was transferred to Butler Hospital, a much smaller and well-respected sanatorium in Providence, Rhode Island. By now, the records make obvious that he was severely ill.

Butler Hospital, 1948–1949

The patient spends a considerable amount of time talking to the other patients about murder and explained to them how legal murder could be accomplished.

At one time he told his physician of an experiment he had performed in which, through the action of delta rays, two ten-pound cats were combined into one cat weighing ten pounds. When asked to explain this, he said, “I don’t know about this. I’m just telling you the facts. This is what we did.” When asked to explain this further, he said that this was most secretive.

The patient’s paranoid ideation concerns abstract matters, systematized into what he calls “neo-physics.” In this system various types of rays can be made to fuse the bodies of 500 men into one body, or fuse a male and female animal into one hermaphrodite animal. Also, as relates to himself, he at times states that he was in a “super-intelligence” service of the government during the late war fused into the personality of other men, and in this capacity saw action on all the great battlefields and was in all of the enemy capitols. Through these experiences he, or one of the many personalities that had been placed within him, was wounded and killed numberless times.

Several times while in seclusion he claimed he was a horse and at other times would roar like a lion. Only once was he assaultive, when in a moment of panic he suddenly hit two attendants. He immediately apologized profusely and asked to be secluded. Other than this his destructiveness was in terms of his own clothing that he would rip off.

He once explained a hemorrhoid that he had developed as caused by Communist super-intelligence service beaming rays from many miles off at his rectum, and the converging beams squeezed out the hemorrhoid. He considered that since no one in the hospital was responsible for his difficulty, they could not have been expected to prevent him from being harmed.

My father stayed at Butler for one year, after which time he was released to his family in Dallas for a brief period of freedom. In September 1949, he decided to pack his bags and begin walking across the state into Mexico, where he was determined to start his life over. A week later, he woke up in the hospital, severely beaten, but with no recollections of events. After he had recovered, he hitchhiked south, until he reached Galveston’s city limits. The police found him, disheveled and bloody, walking along the highway, whereupon he was soon transferred to Galveston State Hospital.

Galveston State Hospital, 1949

Dr. Baird’s stay in the hospital was a long, rough and rugged one. It was punctuated by frequent moves from the disturbed ward to the open floor and back to the disturbed ward. Almost immediately after coming into the hospital, Dr. Baird’s behavior became quite frankly psychotic and he was placed on electro-shock therapy three times a week and deep insulin comas every day.

For a while, Dr. Baird seemed to be doing very fine with his treatments. However, suddenly he relapsed again, began talking about people walking in the hall in just a certain manner that was intended to annoy him. He also spoke of how they communicated signals to one another by the way that they shuffled their feet.

From here on he went back again to his frankly psychotic behavior. Altogether Dr. Baird received about 60 full-hour insulin comas and received a total of 33 electro-shock treatments. After this very extensive course of treatment, Dr. Baird’s clinical presentation was certainly no better than it had been when he first came to this hospital, and it was felt that further treatment with electro and insulin shock would be useless.

It was finally decided that lobotomy was the only procedure that could possibly help this patient’s psychosis.

So began the concerted campaign by the doctors at Galveston to persuade my father’s family to agree to a lobotomy. During the fall and winter of 1949, a series of letters (preserved with his medical records) went back and forth between my father’s family and his doctors at Galveston. The doctors’ advice was that my father should undergo a lobotomy as soon as possible. My grandparents were initially opposed, but my uncles were easier to convince. My father had been subjected to every other treatment available, from cold packs and straightjackets to insulin-induced comas and electric shock therapy. On December 15, 1949, my father’s brother, Philip, wrote to the doctors at Galveston: “My feeling is that we have done everything we can do and if your operation is successful it will be a momentous occasion for all of us.”

My uncles signed the consent form, with my grandparents’ approval.

They must have felt they had no other choice. My father’s medical records during the weeks leading up to his surgery make clear that his mental state was as compromised as ever.

Galveston State Hospital, 1949

September 18—Can tell very interesting but slightly fantastic tales. Seems eager to display medical knowledge but in most of discussion will suddenly switch conversation to Aztec history.

October 23—Apparently having delusions. “There was a great catastrophe last night. There is water everywhere and Galveston is apparently floating away. It has broken away from its foundation, you know it is only an island, and we are floating away out to the sea.” Patient is very upset about this. He is very disarrayed in his dress and is very concerned about us floating away.

December 7—Very confused this morning. Has talked about being on a boat, various different sports, asking us to make arrangements for a racehorse so he could enter a jumping contest in New England.

December 19—Playing dominoes with other patients. Quiet today. Apologetic to excess at every mistake he makes. Wrote prescription for rash on another patient. Patient was playing dominoes with another patient when he started crying quietly.

December 20—Patient is confused and appears agitated. Doubles up his fist as if he’d like to hit someone. He threatened attendants in kitchen this a.m. Chases attendant with a fork.

December 22—Helped nurse make beds.