Bestselling Author and Mental Health Advocate
(6-25-20) Nineteen thousand viewers watched a special Father’s Day program last week hosted by One Mind President Brandon Staglin on Facebook. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to discuss how Kevin’s mental illness impacted our relationship. If you missed it, here’s the program. You can watch more of Brandon’s Brain Waves interview series at One Mind.
(6-22-20) If you publicly call for better mental health services, you will begin getting emails from individuals seeking help. Here’s a recent example that I received from a Florida mother. Because her son is an adult and will be in court Wednesday for a competency hearing, I have chosen to delete their names. If you believe you have helpful advice, post it on my Facebook page.
Pete,
It’s a call no one wants to get.
“Your son has been arrested and is in jail.”
The person on the other end of the phone was saying my son had been charged with battery of a law officer, resisting arrest, and harm with a deadly weapon.
I replied: “Are you sure you have the right person?”
My son had never been violent before and certainly did not carry a deadly weapon. I handed the phone to my husband.
Our son has a mental illness and it has been getting worse. More recently, he began going into restaurants to order a meal and drinks, and then leave without paying the bill. When he remembered he owed money, he would go back the next day and pay his debt. When I asked why he did that he had no answer.
(6-21-20) Being a father is one of the most important and enjoyable roles in my life. I am blessed with having a blended family of five sons and two daughters. I am also a son. My father was a fabulous role model. He died in 2015 but not a day goes by when I do not think of him. I will pause today and think of all fathers, especially those who have Alzheimer’s or some form of dementia.
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Father’s Day found me with a man who often doesn’t remember who I am, although we have spent much of his 93 years together. My father has dementia.
Five years ago, I persuaded my parents to move from Spearfish, S.D., into a second house that my wife and I own that doubles as my office. Leaving a community where they were well-established was difficult. But they enjoyed seeing grandchildren, spent Saturdays at garage sales and played Upwords with me at lunch time. It was good.
I first noticed little things. Forgetfulness, confusing names. It’s part of aging, I thought.
A year ago, my parents’ world narrowed. A retired minister, my father began hurrying from church, afraid he might say something foolish. No more garage sales, no more word games. In October, my mom felt severe back pain. Cancer. My father slept next to the hospital bed that hospice delivered. They celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in November. Three weeks later, she died. I learned then that she had been covering for him. At her funeral, he asked if I was enjoying “the party” and said he was sorry that my mother had missed it.
(6-19-20) Brandon Staglin interviewed us for a One Mind Facebook page program that will air today in preparation for Father’s Day. Here’s the press announcement.
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“There is a huge portion of our community that doesn’t necessarily want two officers showing up when they call about a situation with respect to behavioral and mental health,” the mayor said in an interview Sunday. “So this is a new path forward for us that has been illuminated because of what we’ve learned during these times. Look, there’s political will; there was not political will to make this huge of a step three weeks ago.”
Tulsa Historical Society photo.
(6-15-20) Back in 1982, I interviewed Scott Ellsworth, then a young doctoral candidate who’d written a book about the 1921 race riot in Tulsa. As a child, I lived for several years in Oklahoma, graduated from college there, and ultimately worked at the now-closed The Tulsa Tribune newspaper. Because of my Oklahoma ties, I convinced my editors at The Washington Post to let me write a story about Ellsworth’s book, Death in a Promised Land, the first definitive account about that horrific massacre.
BILL WILLIAMS once asked his father why he had come to Oklahoma. “Well,” the old man replied, “I came out to the promised land.”
During the early 1900s, Oklahoma had become a land of opportunity for blacks. Tulsa in particular had developed a thriving black business district that had become so prosperous that in 1913 it was known nationally as the Negro’s Wall Street.”
The Williams family had played a major role in making that black business district successful. Bill’s parents, John and Loula, had come to Oklahoma in 1902 when the area was still known as Indian Territory. They were looking for a place to settle and Tulsa seemed like a prime spot. Jobs were plentiful in the oil boom town. Fortunes were made and lost in a single day. By 1920, the Williams were among the richest black families in Tulsa. They owned a garage, confectionary, boarding house and the first movie house for blacks in the city. They called it the Williams Dreamland Theatre.
On the night of May 31, 1921, all that began to change. The land of promise turned ugly for blacks. Bill Williams, who was 16 at the time, remembers waking to the sounds of gunshots. His father was firing out their apartment window at a gang of white men who were trying to break into the building and loot it.
During the next 24 hours, Tulsa experienced one of this nation’s worst race riots. An estimated 270 persons, including some of the city’s most prominent blacks, were killed. More than 1,000 homes owned by black families were destroyed. The black business district was devastated.
Pete Earley is the bestselling author of such books as The Hot House and Crazy. When he is not spending time with his family, he tours the globe advocating for mental health reform.
As a former reporter for The Washington Post, Pete uses his journalistic background to take a fair-minded approach to the story all while weaving an interesting tale for the reader.
