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NewsBank, inc. - The Buffalo News - 1999 - Article with Citation
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Headline: PRIVATE WORLD OF A PUBLIC FIGURE
Date: March 14, 1999
Page: A1 Section: NEWS
Edition: FINAL Word Count: 1690
Author: PAULA VOELL
News Staff Reporter
Index Terms: PROFILE
Text:
Walk into the City Hall office of Vincent J. LoVallo, Mayor Masiello's
chief of staff, and you may hear LoVallo barking at a department head.
"He'll tell the mayor, he'll tell anybody, what he thinks," said
Peter Savage, LoVallo's longtime assistant,
A colorful character who is widely respected, LoVallo gets away with
saying things that would be considered rude or crude from others.
"He's the last person you want to see at 8 a.m. when you have a
slight hangover," said one local reporter.
That's vintage LoVallo, though. Always has been, probably always will
be.
But behind that tough facade there's another LoVallo, a vulnerable
guy who fights manic depression.
While suffering periods of depression, LoVallo has skipped showering,
felt too paralyzed to make a decision and folded himself into a fetal
position on the basement floor.
Manic, he flies. As streets commissioner (a position he held for four
years), he went without sleep for days and nights. In his personal life,
he once bought a house without consulting his wife and has purchased TV
sets and a car during spending binges.
"Enough is enough," said Lo-Vallo about his decision to tell his
story.
What he hopes is that the stigma of the illness will be lessened.
That another person, ashamed to go to a doctor, might decide to seek
help. That people will know that it's possible to function, even excel,
in high-profile, stress-filled jobs.
And, maybe, he figures it's time to say out loud what some must have
guessed and others wondered about when they witness his mood swings.
"I'm resigned to the fact that I'm going to take a beating for being
public about this," said LoVallo.
"You know what? I don't care. I feel good about doing it. It's been
hidden too long."
LoVallo -- son of the late Dominic LoVallo, once Buffalo's parks
commissioner -- was interviewed in Room 201 of City Hall and later at his
North Buffalo home with his family. It includes his wife, Sharon, an
assistant district attorney, who, at 29, is 18 years his junior; their
children Sarah, 3, and Dominic, 18 months; and Leah, 19, and Deana, 22,
daughters from a previous marriage.
"It kind of kick-started me to talk about it when I realized how
ashamed people are," he said. "It's just an ailment, like cancer or
diabetes. What are we supposed to do, call people freaks when they have
illnesses?" asked LoVallo, a politico who is well familiar with the
workings and intrigue of City Hall.
He also knows a lot about his condition, which afflicts 1 percent of
this country's population.
He learned the hard way.
While in his early 20s, LoVallo was driving a snowplow for the family
business on the first day of the Blizzard of '77, exhausted after plowing
for 30 days straight.
"As I drove down Kenmore Avenue, I heard on the radio 'You haven't
seen anything yet,' " he said. "I got out of my Jeep and just started
crying."
Dr. Richard E. Wolin, a psychiatrist, diagnosed the disorder, more
recently called bipolar disease. What LoVallo found out was that it is a
genetic condition, a neurobiological disorder caused by an imbalance in
brain chemistry. (LoVallo signed a release to allow his doctor to talk to
the media.) Starting then, 22 years ago, he began taking Lithium.
"That's why my hands shake," he said holding them out to demonstrate
a tremor. He's added the anti-depressant Prozac and Clonazepam, to allay
anxiety.
Early intervention helps, Wolin said, because while initial episodes
are usually triggered by outside stress, "later ones can occur
autonomously, as if the brain, biologically, has learned to have more
episodes."
LoVallo, "Corky" to his cronies, knows he's a lifer with Lithium.
"If I go off, it's a whole 'nother life," he said.
His illness follows a predictable cycle: worst at the beginning of
fall, Christmas, Easter and July 4 -- all about three months apart. "Four
times a year, I'm vulnerable," he said. "I have to be conscious of those
and prepare myself in the best way I know how."
Still, his exuberant mood can be replaced by gloom -- the way a sunny
day in Buffalo is taken over by storm clouds, threatening and immovable.
"You try to dig yourself out," he said, "but you just can't do it."
He talks about how sadly ironic it is to feel joyless on Christmas
morning, surrounded by all he wants -- a loving family, a good job, a
"halfway decent reputation."
"Everyone is opening presents and I don't care," he said. "It's like
(I'm feeling) I don't need to be here."
Before LoVallo accepted the streets commissioner job in 1993, he laid
everything out to Masiello.
"I just respect the heck out of the guy," said Masiello, who has
known him for years but wasn't aware of his condition until then. "Not
everyone has it in their hearts and minds to perform the way he does. I
look at who he is and what he is, not at his problems.
"Is he high strung? Yes. Is he moody? Yes. But I'm a bottom-line guy
-- are you doing the job? And he is, in exemplary fashion."
So it hurt LoVallo when he realized he had to abandon the streets
because it took too much out of him. "Now I can go home and relax and not
have to worry about snow," he said. "But I miss it because I feel I'm
good at it. When I was commissioner, I think people got their money's
worth."
Now, as buffer between the mayor and the rest of the world, he's
still in a hot seat. He gets to it by 7 a.m. and says he seldom misses a
day of work.
"I come in," he said. "There are people to see. Work to get done. A
city to piece together. If you stay home, you just dwell on it," said
LoVallo, who sometimes speaks about the problem as if it belongs to
someone else.
On days when he's in a fog, he knows he's slower at making decisions.
"Even at half speed I'm better than most at full speed," he said.
"I'm not bragging. It's what I feel is a fact."
LoVallo admits that he feels cheated knowing that some jobs, mayor
included, are out of his reach. "But I also feel fortunate to be in the
position I'm in," he said.
Most of his ranting and raving, veteran observers say, is about
running a responsive government. Department heads called into Room 201,
for one, are told to drop excuses about providing service and to "just do
it -- now."
LoVallo thinks his creativity gets fired up from being bipolar.
"If I'm on a high, look out," said LoVallo, who has been known to
stir up a barbershop gathering, a movie theater lobby or an audience. "It
just keeps coming, whether it's work or pounding somebody into the ground
verbally."
Savage, LoVallo's assistant, says LoVallo is an impatient guy who is
a quick take on issues.
"He likes to get things done -- boom, boom, boom -- and go on," he
said. "He's the quick hit and I fill in the pieces."
Savage is often the brunt of LoVallo's zingers, including being
called "Fatso." His favorite retort is to tell LoVallo, who has a paunch,
that he's "the man who has no mirrors."
LoVallo's worst episode -- the only time he was hospitalized -- came
in 1995.
While streets commissioner, he spiraled into a deep depression and
ended up in Bry-Lin Hospital. He relates how other patients did a double
take when he appeared on a television newscast.
He assured them: "Yeah, that's me."
As the LoVallos -- who appear to be a solid team -- look back, they
understand the dynamics that put him there: skipping medication, job
pressures and concern about Sharon, pregnant then with their first child.
"We didn't do a lot we could have," said Mrs. LoVallo. "Maybe it was
ignorance, maybe denial. We're more together now."
During the pregnancy, she was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder
which could potentially affect the baby. (Today, Sarah is a bright and
charming 3-year-old.)
"I went to 10 doctors, but Vinnie hadn't been to see his doctor in a
year or two," she said. "Then, right after the baby was born, he came to
the hospital and I knew he wasn't right."
He was coming off a winter when Buffalo had gotten pounded with snow.
"It was a war out there," he said. "That was my snow. Those were my
streets."
When he began pacing the floor at night and was sick, they knew they
needed help. After LoVallo was hospitalized for two weeks, he understood
that he had to make changes.
"As you get older, you realize there's no fooling around," he said.
"This is not a game. You will bring a lot of people down with you."
Now, when he takes medication, gets enough sleep, eats well and sees
his doctor, he keeps the worst symptoms at bay.
"I would say that in the last few years he is doing well, very well,"
said Wolin, his doctor.
Before they were married six years ago, LoVallo presented his future
wife with a book on manic depression.
But it couldn't prepare her for his retreat to the "foxhole," a
basement room with an easy chair, a television, a computer and a pantry.
Or making decisions alone, as she once did.
While she cuts him some slack, she won't let him slide as far as he
did. He has to take his medicine.
"We support him, but he has to do his part," said Mrs. LoVallo.
He's down from five cups of coffee to two. He drinks bottled water
instead of having a Diet Pepsi and Reese's peanut butter cups for lunch.
He still smokes two to three packs of cigarettes a day, however. "My
doctor wants me to give these up," he said, "but I told him he can't have
everything."
At the end of a long conversation, Mrs. LoVallo added: "I would hate
for anyone to think this is all there is to Vinnie. It's just not.
"He's a warm, funny, compassionate guy -- and sometimes he's a weenie
-- but this disease isn't all there is to him. It's not everything you
are as a person."
Graphic:
Mayor Masiello
BILL WIPPERT/Buffalo News
Vincent J. LoVallo, chief of staff for Mayor Masiello, talking about his
mental illness.
Copyright (C) 1999, The Buffalo News
Accession Number: 9903140188
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