My sister recently wrote a newspaper article about me. You can find it by searching the Argus newspaper online or read it here. These are her memories and observations:
HE WAS always different, right from the very start.
And because he was different, his life was destined to be much more difficult than we could ever imagine.
My brother was born when I was 13. My mother was a little embarrassed to tell me and my 12-year-old sister that she was expecting a baby. We knew where they came from by then. But we were excited. A baby in the house! Just what a family with five children needed: a baby to entertain them. This was better than any bride doll we had ever gotten for Christmas.
My brother arrived in August 1959 at the Jones Hospital in Hillsboro. We wanted to go see him and our mother, but you had to be a certain age - I forget the minimum - to enter the maternity ward. We had to stay in the parking lot while she waved from the window. My sister and I decided we would fool the nurses and asked Dad if we could try. He said sure.
In retrospect, I think he may have talked with the nurses beforehand. They must have bit their lips awfully hard not to laugh. My sister and I put on makeup and nylons and pinned our hair up - and I think one of us even borrowed a pair of Mom's high heels. However, I doubt we fooled anyone.
They let us in and we finally got to see our mother. There she was, that poor overworked lady, finally getting a vacation, with her meals served on a tray. We got one quick peek in the nursery, saw our new brother and then the nurses said visiting time was over.
My grandmother told us we would have to help our mother with the baby, and I remember putting my share of his diapers through the wringer washing machine and hanging them out to dry. One more brother came along a year later to keep him company.
Time went by quickly. I helped my brothers learn the alphabet on a chalkboard. They were both smart and learned quickly. The older brother was an excitable little boy, shy and fearful in some situations, but seemed very happy most of the time.
When he started elementary school I left home to begin my own family and became incredibly busy.
I would see my brother at family gatherings but we were no longer as close as we once had been. It was obvious to me that something wasn't quite right, but sometimes you are so close to a situation you regard it as normal.
His teenage years were difficult and my brother dropped out of high school. The social aspect was too stressful and there were questions about whether or not he had earned enough credits to walk with his class, even though others in similar situations had been able to do so. My mother was so mad! However, he eventually earned his GED and began training in shoe repair.
That didn't work out either and for a long time he lived with my parents. He was often depressed and my mother remembered my father sitting with him on the couch, his arm around his son's shoulder, in tears because this strong man didn't know how to help his son.
Finally, my brother met a woman named Bettie Mitchell, director of Good Samaritan Ministries, and got counseling. She worked hard for my brother, connecting him with a doctor who finally gave us a name for why my brother was different: schizophrenia. He got the proper medications, qualified for Social Security Disability - after a lot of paperwork and interviews, moved into a group home in Portland and got a job working part-time at the Oregon Zoo, an agency that generously makes opportunities for those with disabilities.
It's estimated 20 percent of youth have mental problems, with 66 percent of them untreated. My brother, in one of his few pieces of luck, got help. Today he has his own apartment and still works at the zoo.
We've grown closer again since he lives nearby and occasionally visits, shares a meal and does his laundry.
It hurts, however, when I go places with him and others look at him differently because on a primal level there's an evaluation we all unconsciously do when we look at another person.
He talks to himself sometimes, he's shy and still a little fearful. Yet he has done things and persevered when others - including myself - might have given up.
I look at my brother today and I see the smiling, cheerful boy he was. I remember him in my mother's arms as she gazed down at him, her eyes drinking in every feature of his face as she imagined the man he would become.
And he has worked hard to become the person he is. If you see someone like him on the MAX train or at the grocery store - someone mumbling to himself, his hair a little messy, his shirt a little unfashionable - remember that once upon a time a mother had great hopes for him ... and a sister still does.
