Bill's Career and Tragic Death

My husband Bill retired from the Air Force, completed his Masters degree, taught college english for a few years, then moved to Denton to work on his Ph.D. in linguistics. He was very handsome, and had been a very jolly, happy, and fun person to be with. He had charisma, and everyone always noticed him. But as time went on he became very depressed and pessimistic. He said he only wanted to observe the world, not participate in it. This led to a suicide attempt on Christmas Eve 1969. He said he did it to leave the family his life insurance. After he got out of the hospital I thought he needed his family to be closer, so we sold our house in Dallas and moved to Denton, where he taught English at NTSU. But things didn't really get better. He was in a constant state of depression, probably due to a bad heart condition and resulting poor circulation to the brain, from which he died two years later. Unfortunately for us, one month before he died he dropped all his life insurance, "so that he wouldn't attempt to leave that to his family by another suicide attempt", he said.

Bill was a very brilliant man who got bachelor's and masters degrees while in the service, and who nearly completed a Ph.D. in linguistics before he died. He had taught English at the University, edited a few books, and was good with our three children. Soon afterwards, on a day when he was moving his mother to a different floor in a Dallas nursing home, his car broke down on the way home. Some of his English students picked him up on the highway, and then their car broke down. Sheriff's deputies stopped at the car and took everyone to the county jail. Bill had had a heart attack while jogging on the road. But the deputies thought he was drunk, and did not get him any medical attention. He died a few hours later without regaining consciousness. His head was badly bruised from being kicked while he was unconscious in what they called "the drunk tank". He was already unconscious when they put him there, and a doctor should have been called. There is much more to this story.

Details of the horrors, and a federal case I filed against the sheriff for a wrongful death will be posted later on a link. Bill died because sheriff's deputies, who mistook a heart attack for "being drunk", locked him up without ever getting him medical assistance. There was a great scandal about this. I filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the sheriff in Federal Court. However, my attorney backed out of the case a few months later, saying the lives of his wife and son had been threatened, should he continue with the case. (But he may have quit because of money, because we found that the sheriff had put all his property in the names of his wife and brother, and the county bond for the sheriff was only $1500!). I took the money - I had already spent more than that on depositions, and I had three young children to think about.

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Scandal, Survival and New Life

The kids and I had a tough time surviving, and many tragedies intervened. The first problem was money. I only earned $160 a month as organist director at St. David's Episcopal Church, and that was $10 too much to qualify for AFDC or any other financial aid. It sure wasn't enough to buy food or pay the mortgage and utilities for a family of four with no insurance. Then there were the hospital bills and funeral expenses, plus the costs of the negligent death lawsuit.

There was daily scandal in the newspapers and on the radio about Bill's death. The children were extremely disturbed - they were all in elementary school - ages 8, 9, and 11. I received numerous death threats and harassing phone calls, and became very depressed. People threw raw eggs on my car, ruining the paint. Our bank account was frozen for many months. I found it incredible that it took the government nine months to pay us any benefits. My husband had paid for social security every year since 1937, had served in the armed forces 24 years, and had retired with a service-connected disability and numerous war time service medals, including two Purple Hearts and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Yet we did not qualify for any military survivors benefits! (The law was changed about that some two months later, but it never applied retroactively to us.) However, the government finally coughed up a monthly Social Security benefit for the four of us, calculated at $13.90 per month each, all sent in one check, but rounded down to the lowest dollar for each person. So they deducted $.90 cents four times, taking $3.60 from the one check. I was appalled. I could see them rounding down the family benefit check ninety cents, but not four times! Especially since it was so meagre for the family of a war veteran who had paid social security for thirty-five years.

Those were our poverty years, and I felt a special call from God to write a book about the truth of injustice in America some day. This website may be a beginning in answering that call.

We lived on government "commodities" for a few months (absolutely horrible!) I used to bake the cornmeal in the oven to kill all the bugs, then pick them out with tweezers while the kids were in school. Everything I cooked with this tasted really horrible, if not from the bugs, then from the baking. Canned meats were pure fat only. My kids are in their mid-thirties now, and still talk about how terrible those "commodities" were!

To pay the mortgage I rented out three of my four bedrooms to some Korean students. I slept on the floor for two years, and the kids rotated turns sleeping in the twin beds or on the floor with me.

One of the Koreans raped me as I was grieving in the living room about one a.m., just three weeks after my husband's death. I didn't scream because I didn't want to bring my children downstairs to that sight, especially just after their dad's death. It all took place in just a matter of a few seconds, but resulted in a pregnancy. Isn't life fun! I found out later that the man who did this had also fondled both of my young daughters, ages 8 and 12. Of course, I made him leave my home immediately, but I didn't tell the children what had happened to me until years later.

I told my pastor about it as soon as I found out I was pregnant, and he told me I must terminate the pregnancy at once. He said, "You have no other choice." At that time, because of Bill's death in the jail and my lawsuit against the sheriff, we were in the daily newspaper, usually on the front page, plus TV and radio commentaries. I was told I should protect my children from any further scandal. But it was hard to do, because I had been praying for another baby for several years, and it was really hard to realize that I would never be able to have another one now. What happened next was very difficult. One more small angel in heaven!

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Roe versus Wade!

This was a difficult decision for me with my Catholic background. I had never thought I would terminate a pregnancy for any reason. In fact, I had prayed for another child for several years. But the thought of seeing a black-haired slanty-eyed Korean baby next to my blue-eyed freckle-faced children was intolerable - especially when I heard the rapist had fondled my two daughters. I thought of the years ahead. There was no doubt that my children would have known who the baby's father was. I felt the most important thing I could do for my children's emotional well-being was to terminate this pregnancy. This baby would have been born exactly ten months after my husband's death, and I didn't think I could explain that to my twelve year old daughter, nor to a jury, nor to newsmen in the pending federal case. We were in the news constantly. My personal wish was to keep the baby, but protecting my children from further psychiatric damage due to scandal was a greater priority. At that time in history women were always blamed for that type of occurence, especially in the Texas courts. Texas is where they execute women, and if they can't do that, they tear her reputation to shreds in the courts. I saw this happen in many cases where women sued about rape. Their character was always torn to shreds.

My pastor left on a month's vacation a few days later, and assigned his young inexperienced vicar to handle arranging a "clergy-recommended" termination of pregnancy due to the rape. Unfortunately, that brings up 'Roe versus Wade' - a Dallas case, which was pending before the Supreme Court. The nearest large city to Denton was Dallas. There was a group of doctors in Dallas that performed therapeutic abortions in cases of rape or incest when recommended by clergy. But because of the pending case before the Supreme Court, they decided not to do this any more until after a decision was reached. My young vicar was told they were going to do only one more case, and that there were two applicants - a lady in Ft. Worth and me. After a five day wait, they decided to choose her. I had to find another way, and this was another traumatic story, to be detailed in a future link.

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