Tales from the Emergency Room (11 page)

About a month later, New York State asked to have my old plates returned. I know not why. Luckily, I still had them in the trunk and mailed them back to New York. When I returned to New York, I had to do all this over again but it was not so easy without my uniform!

The Escape

One of the first stories I heard upon my arrival at the prison was about an inmate who escaped. He stole a car from the driveway of the house nearest to the entrance to the prison grounds. There were two cars there, a black Ford and a white sports car. Naturally, he stole the flashy car. He was finally arrested on the Pennsylvania Turnpike after the car was spotted from a police helicopter. Had he stolen the Ford, he would probably still be at large. When I asked about escapes sometime later, my Colonel noted that when one has every day for many years to think up ways to escape it is not surprising that sometimes a prisoner actually does.

A Moving Experience

Dr. C. was a surgeon at the Medical Center. He also ran the dermatology clinic. When he finished with each prison inmate he always said, “Go, and sin no more!” This amused all of us greatly.

Dr. C. had been a physician in an Italian section of Boston. One night arriving home, he was so exhausted that he pushed himself up the stairs on his rear end. By the time he got to the top of the stairs he had decided to quit private practice and to join the Public Health Service. He had had a very large practice and maintained a huge house filled with antiques, oriental carpets, inlaid wooden pieces and paintings. He and his wife had no children. So, he wound up in Springfield awaiting the arrival of household goods to be installed in the very large house he would live in while at the prison. Early on we were all invited to his house for a party. I was puzzled by the fact that there was so little furniture visible. Here a chair, there a rug, an occasional lamp was all. It seemed that on the trip to Springfield, the moving van fell off a bridge into a creek. Since it was a military move, all the damage was fully covered by insurance. One can hardly imagine the cost of repairing all the furniture, but it had to be done, soaked rugs treated, veneers repaired, etc. Thus, every so often a repaired piece would arrive at Dr. C.’s house to be placed just where it was meant to go. Eventually it all got done but it took a year or more.

A Southern Friend in a Small World

On my very first day at the prison, the incoming group of officers was being shown around the premises. At one point I found myself alone with another doctor, Dr. Dan Dunaway while we waited for an elevator to return for us. He looked at me and said, “Did you mash da button?” It took me a moment to decipher this remark and I replied that I had indeed pushed the button. Dan’s family and ours became very good friends while we worked together. He kidded me, among many other things, about the teabag that I often carried in my breast pocket. And I kidded him about his accent. Several years later when we were planning to visit the Dunaways in Memphis, Dan’s wife Virginia said that when we got there she would have some friends in to sit around and listen to us two talk! Virginia grew up in Magnolia, Arkansas—pretty southern if you ask me—and I eventually took care of a very generous White Plains Hospital benefactor who had also grown up in Magnolia and knew Virginia’s family.

Another time, in Bath in England, Peggy and I were having tea next to a table where two ladies were seated. Striking up a conversation, we discovered that they were from Memphis and that while they did not know Dr. Dunaway, they surely did know Virginia who by then was greatly involved in Memphis affairs.

Eventually, over their southern parents’ objections (the grandchildren might become northerners) the Dunaways wound up for a while in Indianapolis. We still visit one another and continue to enjoy kidding each other.

A Psychiatric Friend

Another friend of mine, Alan, was a psychiatrist. His wife was the daughter of Sigmund Freud’s medical doctor who had fled to America and became a psychiatrist. He insisted that if Alan was to marry his daughter he would have to be psychoanalyzed. Then, Alan decided to become a psychiatrist which required another psychoanalysis. Finally, he wanted to become a child psychoanalyst and for this he needed to be psychoanalyzed again. (His wife usually underwent psychotherapy each time her husband was psychoanalyzed, presumably to help her cope with whatever changes to his personality the analyses produced.) Alan’s comment? “Anyone who has to be psychoanalyzed three times ought to have his head examined!”

Once, while Peggy was in labor, Alan accompanied me to the dentist for a root canal. He insisted the whole time that I was experiencing “sympathetic labor pain.” I wasn’t. Sadly, this lovely man and excellent young physician died only a very short time after we left the service.

During Peggy’s labor this time with George, she had a very prolonged and difficult time. I declined the opportunity to be present in the delivery room. I was surrounded by Alan, the neighbor lady and Peggy’s mother when Dr. Bonebrake, the obstetrician, arrived to say to me that they were having some trouble. He whispered all of the sentence except the last word which everyone heard. I asked what the problem was and he replied that he couldn’t get the baby out! Finally, he had to resort to a medium forceps delivery. When I was summoned to the nursery, I spotted our pediatrician just leaving which frightened me. He had been called in to see if he could detect any damage to the baby, the most likely being compression of the facial nerve from the forceps. There was none and George, our real Ozark hillbilly, was safe and sound.

Dr. Bonebrake, the obstetrician also delivered his first set of triplets that day. There were two observation windows available in the nursery. The weight of the triplets was not equal in total to George’s weight, so, naturally, the nurses displayed them in one window and George in the other window complete with the weights of each. My wife refused to view her new baby while there were people there adding up the weights and pointing and laughing over George (11 pounds, 2 ounces) Thus the problem with the delivery. The nurse assisting, a nun, won a case of beer from the doctor for guessing closest to our new baby’s weight.

Popovers

The wife of one of the couples we were in service with liked to entertain, as did we. Early on, Patt had some of Peggy’s famous popovers which she made by the recipe and which she gave to Patt. The popovers were and still are divine when she makes them. Practically every time thereafter when we would have dinner at Patt’s house, she produced popovers. They varied from impossible to fair. On the last time we dined together at their house, Patt once again produced popovers, wonderful ones, just like Peggy’s. When asked how she had achieved this result, she said that she had followed the recipe (finally) to a tee and thus the excellent result.

On our first visit to Patt and Fred’s house there was a pretty little girl running around. This was their biological daughter. They told us however that there would be no more natural children because of Fred’s low sperm count. This was thrown into casual conversation—Peggy and I tried not to look non-plussed. Indeed, they did later adopt a boy. Unfortunately, Fred died shortly thereafter. It was a terrible loss, Fred being a great guy and excellent psychiatrist. Patt went on to be a sex therapist associated with the Masters and Johnson Clinic at the University of Indiana. We are still in frequent touch by card, email and occasional visits. (And we manage to go with the flow with Patt without appearing surprised.)

A Cuban Friend

One of the other doctors at the prison was a Cuban expatriate, Dr. Salas. His English was very good but not perfect. We all eventually got used to “hed-achee” meaning “headache” and “aviabale dosache” meaning “available dosage.”

Vietnam

At the prison medical center I had occasion to hear about the Vietnam War in its earliest stages, in part because I had very high security clearance. Before hostilities got underway, there were soldiers being dropped into the country to see what was what. They were left for up to six months and then picked up by helicopter. I thought how lucky I was to have my “cushy” job, but I followed developments with great interest

The Birdman.

During my years as Chief of Medicine at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners I took care of the Birdman of Alcatraz. He had been transferred to Springfield when the prison at Alcatraz was closed. At the Medical Center he did not do any avian research and he lived in the general population. He came often to my office mostly I think, to chat since he was in apparent good health, in his seventies. He wore his trademark green eye shade.

Remarkably, even though some of his research on birds was a hoax, using the laboratory provided by the government at Alcatraz, he also made some lasting discoveries which are still to be found in ornithology books. He even made some money all of which he spent for legal representation in his many courtroom skirmishes over the years.

Robert Stroud, the “Birdman”, was a federal prisoner because he killed a man, whom, as the story has it, he found in bed with his girlfriend. Alaska was still a United States territory and so his crime was a federal one. Hence, he was sentenced to the federal prison at Alcatraz. Then, near the time he would have been released, he killed a prison guard. Because of that he was sentenced to life in federal prison.

By the time I met him, plans were underway to have him released to live with a woman in Oklahoma. Except for visits to court with his lawyers and watching television, he had no knowledge of the outside world, so that careful attendance on him was deemed necessary for his survival after his release. Unfortunately, he never made it out of prison. He died of a heart attack one night in November, 1963. I was summoned to the hospital, pronounced him dead and arranged for an autopsy in two day’s time.

Many years later, “Squeaky” Fromme took a pot shot at President Gerald Ford. My oldest son was in high school and the class assignment for the next day was to find out what everyone’s parents were doing when President Kennedy was assassinated. My son asked his mother first at the dinner table. She replied that she had just hung up the phone after talking with Mrs. Dunaway and was on her way back to the kitchen when she heard the news. “Oh, never mind,” was my son’s response. Then he asked me what I had been doing. I said that I was doing an autopsy on the Birdman of Alcatraz when the assassination took place. He looked wide eyed at me and said to his mother, “He can’t have made that up that fast!” And, indeed, I hadn’t made anything up.

While I was standing with the Medical Director and the Chief of Surgery at the autopsy table, an announcement about President Kennedy came over the intercom. We were shocked of course, but my Colonel indicated later that at least now Paris Match and many other news services would stop calling him at all times of day and night about the Birdman’s demise. He never got another call on that subject.

And my son had the most startling story to tell in class the next day!

The end of the story is that, mercifully, I was on leave when Burt Lancaster showed up to begin his preparation for the movie “The Birdman of Alcatraz”.

Christmas Cards

A very sad moment for me came during my service on the acute medical ward in the prison hospital. One day, checking on the patients, I found myself in an old timer’s room. It was Christmastime and there were several Christmas cards taped to the wall. I commented on them to the patient who told me that they were from his children. Later, I learned that each year the patient, a lifer, sent himself cards, put them up and explained where they came from to anyone who asked. I am quite sure that he had long since lost any connection with his family and this was his way of dealing with the loss.

Mickey Cohen

While he was a prisoner in the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Mickey Cohen, famous bad person, had his head bashed in as part of a contract on his life. After initial treatment there, he was sent to the prison in Springfield mainly to be kept under observation and to recover as much as he could. It turned out that he recovered remarkably well. Around this time two books came out about gangsters in one of which Cohen was written about. One day I accompanied him down the hall while he was carrying one of these books. I picked the wrong title to ask him about and his reply was that he most certainly was not reading that book because that one was about “criminals”!

Once, while Cohen was a prisoner at the hospital, he had a visitor. This rarely happened on the wards and was always preceded by a “heads up” from security. Not this time though, for some reason. I came out of my office heading for the elevator when I encountered an unescorted, tall, shapely and very pretty woman. She looked slightly disoriented and so I asked what her business was there. She had come to see Cohen and proceeded to have a visit with him in a closely observed area. Later, Cohen was paroled and, I presume, was able to take up with his girlfriend once again. The lady in question starred in a1977 movie. She has been quoted as saying that she was Mickey Cohen’s girlfriend. She eventually went to jail for failing to “snitch” on the Mob and wrote a book about her experiences. She streaked Hollywood Boulevard once during the height of the “streaking” fad when she was in her 50s.

The Salute

One hot summer morning in Springfield I was on my way into the prison wearing my summer tan uniform and carrying my brown paper bag lunch. As I neared the wide stairs that led up to the main entrance, (a government building like so many others with a wide expanse of steps and an imposing façade), a taxi pulled up to the steps. Without looking I knew that several guns were trained on the vehicle. (No guns were used in the prison, the guards were unarmed. But the perimeter area was closely watched from the guard towers in this maximum security prison facility.) Out hopped a young man, a Marine in full dress uniform. Spotting me, he snapped to attention and to my astonishment, saluted. I had never been saluted before and I had no idea what to do so I casually sort of waved at him, touching the brim of my hat. He continued to stand at attention. When I got near enough to him to ask he said that he was there to visit his brother. And I offered this piece of advice as we climbed the stairs, “Please, whatever you do, don’t salute anyone while you are visiting here!” It seems amusing to me now but as far as I knew, no one on duty would have had the faintest idea how to respond to a salute.