Howard's Radio Premier

So on Monday night my mother and I went to Bellevue Hospital in NYC to attend the premier of Howard’s NPR program called “My Lobotomy”. It was a deeply emotional experience. Psychosurgery.org member Carol Noell was there along with Howard Dully himself. While Carol, Howard, and I have communicated for years, this was the first time we met in person. All of the Sound Portraits staff who produced the documentary were present too, including Dave Issay and Piya Kochar. Jack El Hai, author of "The Lobotomist", was there, as well as Richard Ledes who directed “A Hole in One”.

The most unexpected attendee was the doctor who had assisted Walter Freeman when he lobotomized Howard all those years ago. He was tall, thin and dressed all in black which sharply contrasted with his very white hair. I’m not sure he meant to do it, but he looked like a movie representation of a “bad guy” dressed in black like that. The truth is it took a great deal of character to face such a controversial event in his distant past. It was right that he was there.

Howard is immense at well over six feet tall. That night he was nervous – the venue was full of people who were all interested in what he had to say. It was the first time he was to speak publicly about what happened to him. His bravery is incredible.

While waiting for the program to begin my mom and I talked about my grandmother (my mom’s mom) and the terrible events that led to her commitment and lobotomization. It was good to talk to people who understood the history of the issue so deeply. Carol was amazing as she told about her memories of her mother Anna Ruth. I talked to so many people who had an interesting stake in the issue. One was a woman who worked as a psychiatric nurse and court advocate for mentally ill people. She actually talked about their civil rights which impressed me greatly. By contrast, the doctor who was Freeman’s assistant could only bring up old canards about dangerous schizophrenics who had to be forced to take medication lest they mow us all down in some fashion.

When the program began we sat with our eyes closed and listened. First we heard a voice that sounded like a 1940s radio announcer. It was the only known recording of Freeman’s voice. Then Howard's speaks in a voiceover about his story and the interviews he's about to conduct.

One person Howard interviewed was one of Freeman’s sons, a monstrous person who talked with glee about his father keeping icepicks used in surgery in the back of their cutlery drawer. There was not a bit of decency or shame in his voice. He was oblivious damage his father had done. It was revolting.

Howard spoke to Carol who talked about what her mother, who was lobotomized for headaches, was like after the surgery. It was very sad. Howard also talked to a very elderly surgeon who said he had never agreed with what Freeman was doing – it was brain surgery as an office procedure and he couldn’t stand it. The most emotional interview of all was Howard talking to his father, trying to ferret out why his father let his stepmother do this to him. Even though his father kept dodging responsibility, Howard totally forgave him and told him he loved him. He was a lesson in forgiveness that I won’t soon forget.

I can’t begin to do the program justice. There was so much more. As soon as it’s available I’ll post a link to it.

Afterward a panel made up of Howard, his wife, Jack el Hai, and the doctor who assisted Freeman was available for questions. There were lots of good ones and some interesting facts came out – for example the youngest person Freeman ever lobotomized was only four-years-old. The astonishing reason he gave was “early onset schizophrenia”. Wow.

Also it was established that there was no medical reason for Freeman to have photographed every victim/patient with the icepick in their eye socket.

Not everyone there was hostile to Freeman. Another fascinating attendee was a woman who was lobotomized and felt it had helped her. Her sister stood up and implied that Freeman wasn’t as bad as he was being made out to be. She also implied that it had been an experimental surgery and was justified. Then she did the worst thing possible – she implied that Howard had been made better by the operation, something that made all of us who know that there was nothing wrong with Howard cringe. Dave Issay took the question and stated that it’s clear from the record that there was nothing wrong with him and that the operation happened because Howard’s stepmother had manipulated the situation and Freeman was a willing accomplice. The reasons they listed for lobotomizing Howard were pathetic – “he stares into space”, “responds neither to punishment nor love”, “he won’t take a bath and likes to be dirty” and he dared to glare at his stepmother. He was 12, for goodness sake!

Howard described his life after the operation. His stepmother, disappointed that he hadn’t been made into a vegetable, kept him for five months before she had him shipped off to juvenile hall. Authorities could not keep him there because he had committed no crime, so they sent him to the only place available, Saint Agnew’s Psychiatric Hospital. After being there for 14 months, and being told daily he didn’t belong there because he was fine, the hospital closed and he went back to juvenile hall where he was forced to live until he was 20-years-old. He could have gone to a foster home but his father wouldn’t allow it. After his release he lived on disability, trying to pull his life back together.

Finally, after many years, he got tired of living on disability and decided to try to go to college. He earned an associates degree in IT. Then he started driving buses and was eventually promoted to become a bus driver trainer. It was a moving story.

After the program we all gathered to talk and too soon we were saying our goodbyes. As my mother and I headed back to Penn Station to catch the train back home she said, “All this time I thought we were the only ones.” That isolation is over for all of us, now.

God bless you Howard. You are the bravest man I know.