My Lobotomy

by Fleming, Charles

  Freeman followed some patients to the grave, and beyond. One file contained a newspaper obituary of a man identified as a “nylon stocking pioneer.” A handwritten notation over his name reads “LOB 384.” Freeman must have been proud of this patient. He clipped several of his obits.

  In response to the cards and letters, Freeman was always upbeat and chatty. “I am retired now and enjoying hikes in the neighboring hills,” he wrote to one former patient in 1967—the year he was finally forced to stop performing lobotomies. “If the end of the world does come soon, I shall have had my fun.”

  Dave and Piya hadn’t brought me to Washington, D.C., to look at Freeman’s files on other patients. They had brought me there to look at the files on me. So, when he thought I was ready, Dave began to hand me, one by one, papers out of the Howard Dully file, and asked me to begin reading them out loud.

  The first one, dated October 5, 1960, began like this: “Mrs. Dully came in to talk about her step-son who is now 12 years old and in the 7th grade. The first time Mrs. Dully saw the boy she thought he was a spastic because of his awkward swing of his arms in walking and a peculiar gait. He doesn’t react either to love or to punishment. He objects to going to bed but then sleeps well. He watches his chances and is clever at stealing….”

  I didn’t really like seeing this in black and white, laid out in a doctor’s reports, but it wasn’t very surprising. I knew Lou thought these things about me. She had yelled these things at me for years. She was always accusing me of stealing things, of being clumsy, of being stupid. Well, I knew the truth about that. I wasn’t stupid, and I wasn’t clumsy. It was a little embarassing to read out loud, but it wasn’t anything new.

  There was more. I was mean to my brother Brian. I didn’t play well with the other boys. I teased the dog. I scowled at anyone who tried to change the channel when I was watching my favorite TV show, and most of my favorite TV shows featured violence. I did a lot of daydreaming. I was defiant. I didn’t like to wash, and sometimes when I was younger I made a mess in my underpants.

  That wasn’t very surprising, either. I remembered being yelled at or punished for all these things. If Lou was going to complain about me to a doctor, that’s what she would complain about.

  Freeman didn’t seem impressed. He didn’t write anything about giving me a lobotomy, or considering me a candidate for a lobotomy. On October 18, 1960, two weeks after Lou’s first visit, he wrote, “I declined to give any statement until I’ve seen Howard, and said I would have to see Mr. Dully first.”

  That caught my eye. Freeman declined to give any statement? Statement about what? And to whom? And he would have to see my dad first? First before what?

  Were he and Lou already planning something?

  Dave and Piya were recording me as I read each page. Barbara was watching me. The notes were harder for her than they were for me. She was crying already.

  I wasn’t crying at all. So far, this was exactly what I had expected—Lou telling lies to Dr. Freeman. There was nothing in the notes to indicate I was anything but a typical kid whose stepmother didn’t like him.

  But the notes and Lou’s campaign against me continued. Freeman reported on November 30 that “things have gotten much worse and she can barely endure it.” I was tormenting the dog, sticking pins in my little brother, and suffering from delusional ideas that everyone was against me. I was stealing things, maybe by breaking into houses along my paper route. Lou had to keep me separated from my brothers constantly, “to avoid something serious happening.”

  Freeman had a solution. Here, for the first time, he makes his diagnosis—“essentially a schizophrenic”—and suggests the treatment—“changing Howard’s personality by means of transorbital lobotomy.”

  Well, there it was, in black and white. Freeman says, out loud, that I need a lobotomy.

  I looked back at the top of the page. The date on that entry was November 30, 1960. It was my birthday. Lou was in Freeman’s office, conspiring to turn me into a vegetable, making the decision that would rob me of my childhood and make a normal life impossible for me. And she was doing this on my twelfth birthday.

  I got a little choked up. I got mad. I got emotional. It was hard for me to believe that anyone, even Lou, would treat a kid like this on his birthday.

  But there it was. Lou didn’t argue. She didn’t ask to have the surgery explained. She agreed to go forward. Freeman said he’d meet with my dad.

  Freeman did, the very next day. His notes for December 1 say he spoke to my dad and told him that I was a schizophrenic and that something had to be done right away. My dad agreed to go home and talk it over with Lou.

  The next entry was dated two days later. “Mr. and Mrs. Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on; I suggested they come in for further discussions and not tell Howard anything about it.”

  Did my dad know what he was agreeing to? Did he know what a lobotomy was? Did Freeman explain what would happen to me? Did he tell my father that his firstborn son could wind up a vegetable, or dead? Did he say I might be a zombie? Or did he tell him—the way he seems to have told all his patients—not to worry because everything was going to be fine?

  Sitting at the table in the archives room, I felt overcome by a terrible sense of abandonment and betrayal. Two days? It only took two days? My father thought about letting Freeman give me a lobotomy, and then gave his permission after only two days?

  I felt overwhelmed. My hands were shaking. Barbara was crying. Piya was holding the boom mike. Dave was asking me occasional questions. The room was quiet. Below us, through the windows, I could see the snowy streets of Washington, D.C.

  Dave continued to look through documents and hand them to me, one by one. I went back to reading.

  Then I found the big lie.

  It was just another page of Freeman’s notes. But there was something wrong with it. The date was wrong. The first entry was dated November 30, 1960. The second and third were dated December 1 and December 3—the dates that my dad visited Freeman and then made his decision.

  But the next entry was dated November 7, 1960. It was on the same page as the previous dates, but this date was out of order.

  “Mr. Dully came in with Mrs. Dully today to talk over Howard’s forthcoming operation,” Freeman wrote.

  I learned from Mrs. Dully, when Mr. Dully was out, that Howard is suspected of having beaten his baby brother nearly to death since the infant was found in its crib with its skull fractured and its chest caved in and was barely saved from death. Mrs. Dully says she heard this from Mrs. Heaton who claimed that Mr. Dully himself had told her of it at the time of his wife’s death; he said Howard hated the baby which he identified with the death of his mother; since Howard was only five years old at the time this seems rather likely.

  What? Me? Beat my baby brother Bruce? It was a lie—a terrible, ugly lie.

  Why was the entry dated wrong? Why had Lou told Freeman the story when my father was “out”? Why hadn’t Freeman asked my father about it when he came back? He would have told him it wasn’t true. Who was Mrs. Heaton? When had she told Lou this story? How could my father have told Mrs. Heaton the story “at the time of his wife’s death,” since she died when Bruce was only twelve days old?

  And why—the biggest question of all—why had Lou waited so long to tell Freeman? For almost two months she had been trying to convince him that I was dangerous and crazy. If she believed I had beaten my infant brother nearly to death, why in the world would she have waited this long to tell it? Was she telling it now as a final nail in my coffin, to make sure Freeman had enough against me to justify a lobotomy?

  Or had Freeman gone back and added this information after the lobotomy? Was he trying to protect himself by putting down some evidence to prove I was a lunatic? Was that why the date was wrong?

  My head ached. I put the pages down. I got choked up. I couldn’t go on reading.

  For years and years I had wondered whether there was something I had d
one, some terrible crime I had committed, that made me deserve the lobotomy. There was a lot I had forgotten, a lot that was lost in the foggy aftermath of the surgery. Had I forgotten this, too? Was this the horrible thing I had done that made it necessary for them to hurt me?

  Now I had the answer—and the answer was no. This was a lie. It was the biggest lie I ever heard. I never attacked Bruce. I knew that. He was a little infant, so retarded he didn’t know his own name. Why would I hurt an innocent little baby like Bruce?

  And why would Lou and Freeman conspire to hurt an innocent little boy like me?

  I put the papers away and I broke down. I started crying. I said to Piya and Dave, “How is a twelve-year-old kid supposed to stand up to something like this?”

  They turned off the recording equipment and gave me a few minutes to collect myself. I cried for a while.

  It was terrible to read. That was it? That was all they had? That was all I had done? Even if it had all been true—and most of it, especially the things about me hurting Bruce, was lies—would it have justified my own family letting a doctor stick needles in my head and scramble up my brain?

  When I had collected myself and we were done with the documents, the archivists asked if I wanted to see Freeman’s tools. I said I did. Dave and Piya were surprised. They asked me several times if I was sure. Wouldn’t it upset me to look at the doctor’s instruments—to see, perhaps, the very leucotomes that had been used on me?

  I said it wouldn’t. They brought out the tools.

  There was a whole box of them. Inside the box were about ten or fifteen instruments. One of them appeared to be the very first leucotome. It was the Uline Ice Company ice pick Freeman had used on his first patients. The others were more sophisticated variations, as Freeman did more and more lobotomies and perfected his technique. They were all made of heavy steel. They were about eight inches long. They had thick handles and sharp blades.

  I held one in my hand. It was horrible to think a medical doctor would really stick this in a person’s brain and slide it around.

  But it didn’t upset me to hold it. I felt its power, but I was not afraid of its power. I was no longer afraid of Freeman, or of what had happened to me. I had seen what they did to me, and why. It no longer had any power over me.

  We left the archives building and walked back across the capital in the snow.

  The following day, Dave and Piya took me to interview Dr. J. Lawrence Pool. He had been a colleague of Freeman’s in the early part of his career.

  There wasn’t much I could ask him that related to me. He had known Freeman long before I came into the picture. Besides, he got angry at us during the interview. Dave kept asking him the same question, and asking him to say the same thing over and over again. In the broadcast, you could hear him say, “I dedicated my life to brain surgery,” but it sounds like “braaaaiiiiin surgery,” like he was Bela Lugosi, because Dave kept making him repeat the line.

  But the interview was very helpful. Here was a medical colleague who was willing to say on the record that Freeman’s methods offended him. “It gave me a sense of horror,” he said. “How would you like to step into a psychiatrist’s office and have him take out a sterilized ice pick and shove it into the brain over your eyeball? Would you like the idea? No!”

  Dave and Piya seemed pleased. We had done good work. We had some good interviews in the bag. They were willing to let me and Barbara go back to California and recover.

  Maybe now that there was no urgency, I could take my time heading home. My idea was to go slowly by train and see the country. I love to see things. Barbara and I have seen prairie dogs wave to us in Utah. I’ve seen elk standing by the tracks in Colorado. The time I spend on trains is a great opportunity to think, rest, do nothing, and work on my computer. I like to be alone just to think, and I don’t get a lot of opportunity to do that. When I’m at work, I’ve got people around. When I’m home, after work, I’ve got family around. When I’m on a train, I have time to be alone and think.

  But when it came time to go, we were given plane tickets and told when our plane was taking off. There wasn’t time to argue about it.

  It wasn’t so bad. We met some people on the flight who were nice and understanding. They talked to me and calmed me down. It wasn’t a bad flight. The plane didn’t crash. I got home.

  As soon as Barbara and I were back in California, Dave and Piya started talking to me again about interviewing my father. Because of what we had read in the archives, we had to interview him. And it had to be me who did the interviewing. They were building the whole broadcast around me now, and everything depended on my voice. I had to interview my dad.

  I didn’t want to. I mean, I really didn’t want to. I was afraid to.

  But Dave and Piya were very persistent and very persuasive. I struggled with the decision for months, but I could see they were right. The radio program would be all wrong without it.

  So that spring I wrote my dad a letter. Or, rather, Barbara wrote my dad a letter. I was trying, and I couldn’t get anywhere with it. Barbara said she’d give it a shot and see what came out. What came out was beautiful:

  Dear Dad,

  I am writing you this letter because I know this is something that I know is hard to talk about for the both of us. I have gotten my records on the operation I had as a boy and I have some questions to ask. I have not asked them before this out of love for you, and I am afraid that asking will change your love for me. I was able to get the records by working with a company called Sound Portraits, and they are doing a story about me and others who have had this operation. I am the main character of the story.

  I don’t know if you know the complete story that was in the records, but I have interviewed people that have had the operation and doctors that could assess the operation. I would like to sit down with you and discuss what you know or feel about the operation. The records indicate that you were against it and that you basically were coerced into agreeing to have the operation done. The doctor that performed the operation was looking for someone of my age to perform the operation on and Lou was looking to fix something she felt was a problem. I know that I wasn’t a perfect child, but the operation has haunted me all my life. Now that I am 56 years old, I need closure.

  I have always loved you and would never do anything to hurt you. Please consider my need to discuss this and know that this is not about judging you as a father. This is just about understanding what happened to me as a child and how it has affected me as a man.

  Along with the letter, we sent copies of every single document from Freeman’s archives. I photocopied everything. I wanted him to see the whole thing, and not think later that I had blind-sided him.

  I also sent him information on Dave Isay and Sound Portraits. I wanted him to know this wasn’t some fly-by-night guy who was going to make “The Lobotomy Man from Mars.” I wanted my dad to know this was a serious, award-winning radio documentarian.

  Also, he needed to understand that we were going to make the documentary whether he participated or not.

  I didn’t have high hopes. Over the years I’d tried to ask my dad questions about what had happened to me. He was never willing to talk. His answers were always short and direct. He made it clear that the past was dead and buried and he wanted it to stay that way.

  Four or five days later, we had an answer. My father sent me an e-mail. He said yes, he would be willing to talk with me. He said he didn’t know how much he really remembered about that time, or what it was exactly we were going to ask him about, but he said yes.

  This was a big surprise, and a big relief, but—this meant I was going to actually have to interview him. On some level, maybe I was hoping he’d say no and I wouldn’t have to face him. Now I had to face him.

  It was December 2004 before Dave and Piya could come back to California. They flew in, and we scheduled the meeting with my dad.

  They had booked a room at the Pacific Hotel, on El Camino in Mountain View. Barbar
a and I met Dave and Piya there, and looked at the room where we were going to do the interview. Then Barb waited there while I went to pick up my dad.

  It was only a few blocks, but it was a long ride. I hadn’t seen my dad in several months, since before he had agreed to do the interview. Like I said, things between us hadn’t been that tight. So the drive to the hotel was a little tense. I was on edge. I was nervous. My stomach was in knots. Did we talk? I can’t remember. I told him I was glad to see him. I asked him about Lois and about his health. He seemed nervous, too. We didn’t say anything about the subject at hand.

  When we got to the hotel, we went straight into the interview. Dave and Piya recorded us greeting each other, like we hadn’t said hello already. Then I made the introductions.

  “I’m here with my dad,” I said. “I’ve waited for over forty years for this moment. Thank you for being here with me.”

  “I’ll tell you anything that needs to be answered,” my dad said.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’re here to talk about my transorbital lobotomy. How did you find Dr. Freeman?”

  “I didn’t. She did,” he said. “She took you. I think she tried some other doctors who said, ‘Nah, there’s nothing wrong here. He’s a normal boy.’ It was the stepmother problem.”

  So, he was going to lay it all on Lou. I pressed him a little.

  “My question would be, naturally, why would you let it happen to me, if that was the case?”

  “I got manipulated, pure and simple,” he said.

  “Did you ever meet Dr. Freeman? What was he like?”

  “I only met him, I think, the one time. He described how accurate it was, in that he had practiced the cutting on literally a carload of grapefruit. That’s what he told me.”