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Population

Remember Red (and why population matters to me)-6-2011

“Speak Truth to Power”

Saying of the Religious Society of Friends

 

Leonard “Red” Bird was one of the first people we met after moving to Durango in 1976; he sold us an old Scout. Earlier this month our community said good-bye to him in a stirring memorial service.

For years I held Red up as a role model. He got a rough start in life, but became one of Fort Lewis College’s most revered professors. After auditing his class on Shakespeare, a doctor friend said that Red was the best professor he had ever had.

On a clear Saturday morning a couple hundred people gathered at the College’s amphitheater for a beautifully orchestrated series of remembrances of Red’s life. My cool concrete bench was never uncomfortable as each speaker illustrated new facets of Red’s complex life. Fortunately there was much laughter to help dry our inevitable tears.

Here are some highlights. Red and his half-sister, Jan Marini, grew up in a single bedroom house in southern California. The boys slept on cots in a garage with a dirt floor next to the house. Red’s father disappeared when he was young. The day before Red’s uncle left for the military, he took Red aside and told him that now he was the man of the family; Red was only eight years old.

Describing their reasons for joining the Marines, he wrote about his tent mate Washington (a black man from Alabama) and himself. “Eighteen-year-old high school dropouts who had been in trouble with the police, Washington and I had not joined the Marines in quest of world peace; neither of us had ever given the subject a moment’s thought. Our motives were other. I had joined because I had been expelled from the eleventh grade less than halfway through the year; … because I was lost and didn’t know what to do….”

Red found himself along with other Marines in the Nevada desert before daybreak too close to a nuclear test explosion. His haunting description of a mourning dove caught by the blast was read from Red’s 2005 book “Folding Paper Cranes: an atomic memoir”. “…the torn dove flops and twitches. We smell the stink of charred flesh. Melted eyes ooze gray pus, and from the throat of this scorched, twitching dove bubbles nothing but a faint ‘sqwick sqwick sqwick’.”

That detonation made Red sterile. That was not the worst of what he would suffer from that brief atomic experience, however. In his sixties he contracted a deadly form of cancer, multiple myeloma, likely due to radiation exposure.

Red’s life took an abrupt change when he shared a tent in Japan. His tent mate suggested that he should finish high school with a GED, and then inspired him to start taking college classes. He earned his doctorate on the GI Bill.

“Folding Paper Cranes” also describes the devastation we caused in Hiroshima. I had not thought of him in this way, but someone at the memorial service described Red as a peace activist. What a change—from Marine to pacifist!

Dr. Bird was an independent thinker and activist. He looked at our society, detected inconsistencies with his beliefs, and spoke up. In order for his voice to be heard, Red made a major sacrifice. He decided to have painful and risky treatment of his cancer in order to warn us about the destructive power of the atom. More than any other reason, he wanted to finish writing “Folding Paper Cranes”.

Sometimes we need reminders of who we are, what we believe and why we do what we do. Red’s memorial service served that purpose for me. Listening to a summary of his life, accompanied by gentle flute music and followed by a beautiful dance performance, I remembered how my interest in human population started.

Fifty years ago, as a senior in high school, I vowed to dedicate my life working for peace. The obvious path was as a politician, but I realized that I lack political aptitude. Science was more to my liking, and Albert Schweitzer one of my heroes. Knowing that high population density can lead to war, I headed toward medicine to work on family planning.

Red probably didn’t plan on being a college professor when he was in high school. His sister told us that, at one time, his goal was to be a second-hand car salesman. I am glad that our first encounter helped him realize this goal—and started a friendship of more than three decades.

© Richard Grossman MD, 2011

Categories
Durango Herald Medical

Mourn—5-2011

One morning last month I was on my back with a needle in my arm donating blood when my cell phone rang. It was news that my sister had been hospitalized in New Jersey with internal bleeding. She had received four units of blood.

Fortunately I was able to head east a couple of days later to be with her and her husband, David. Clara had had bad health all her life. She had spent much time sick as a child, often in the hospital. She developed a disease of her muscles that caused gradual but serious weakening over the past decade. This is in addition to other health problems, including asthma and two types of painful arthritis.

We spent a few days last June with Clara and her husband in Princeton. It was clear that her health was deteriorating and that she needed hospital care. I stayed with her a couple of hours while the admissions clerk searched for a room. Finally I had to leave to catch a plane to Europe where we sang with the Durango Choral Society.

Clara did not live at her home in the intervening months. She spent weeks in the hospital, then a rehabilitation center, then assisted living center. She was fortunate to find a wonderful woman who stayed with her during this time as her aide. Lidiya, an immigrant from Ukraine, entertained Clara with stories of her past, her family and her culture. Clara told me joyfully about the longest trip that she had taken for months to visit Lidiya’s home in northern Jersey. Lidiya took her mind off her pain and misery—what an angel of mercy she is! Lidiya wrote about Clara: “She really was a gracious lady and very interesting person. Also lovely, sunny and sweet.”

What I feared was true. Clara’s husband, David, and I were walking into the hospital when we encountered one of her doctors. This kind man showed us on the CT where the blood had collected, and also how damaged her lungs were. The scan also showed other signs of deterioration caused by the aging process and disease. She was not the beautiful older sister I had known as a kid growing up.

Surprised to see me (she didn’t know that I was visiting), Clara smiled briefly, but her energy and strength were short-lived. I could see marked decline since we were last together in the fall. Clara was bedridden and barely moved except to turn her head to talk. At mealtime she needed both hands to lift the small bowl of soup. She ate very little. She was in a private room at the end of a hall, she said, because the pain was so severe that at times she screamed out loud. I didn’t need to be a doctor to know that her condition was dreadful.

David told me that Clara had asked about hospice care a year and a half ago. Hospice was not appropriate then, but the time had come. David and I talked it over, and then I suggested to Clara that it might be appropriate. She agreed.

Her doctor agreed that Clara’s condition was hopeless, and that comfort was the best that he could offer. He talked it over with her, determined that she was alert enough to be able to make the decision, and started her on narcotics. The next day I received a call that my dear sister had died.

Writing runs in our family. Our mother decided in third grade that she wanted to be an English teacher. Our father wrote dentistry texts and Clara was a freelance writer. She wrote many articles for magazines and newspapers, as well as two published novels. I was always interested in science and did ok in English in school. Clara gave me a remarkable opportunity twenty-five years ago: did I want to try writing for a new magazine, Women’s World? I submitted a trial article and was selected to compose some of the Gynecologist Columns. She occasionally offered suggestions to improve my writing. Soon I realized that with the word processor I could reach many more people than by just seeing patients in the office. In other words, the pen is mightier than the speculum!

On Clara’s suggestion I approached the Herald with an idea for a book, which turned into this column. Sixteen years later people are reading it both here and outside of Durango.

Please join me in thanking my sister for empowering me to write. Please also join me in mourning her years of illness and recent death.

© Richard Grossman MD, 2011