Transcription of Love Maine Radio #334: Joseph K. Loughlin and Kate Clark Flora + Nancy Thompson
You are listening to Love Maine Radio, hosted by Dr. Lisa Belisle and recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a writer and physician who practices family medicine and acupuncture in Topsham. Show summaries are available at Lovemaineradio.com.
Dr. Lisa B: This Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 334. Airing for the first time on Sunday, February 11th, 2018. Today’s guests are Joseph K. Loughlin, the former Assistant Chief of Police for the city of Portland. He and mystery and crime author, Kate Clark Flora co-wrote the book Shots Fired. Our next guest is former Center for Grieving Children President of the Board, Nancy Thompson who lost her middle child, Timmy, to suicide at the age of 18. Thank you for joining us.
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Dr. Lisa B: Joseph K. Loughlin is the former Assistant Chief of Police for the city of Portland and a published author. Kate Clark Flora is a mystery and crime author who has published 18 books. She and Loughlin recently co-wrote the second book, Shots Fired, which came out this past October. Thanks for coming in today.
Joseph K. L: Thank you.
Kate Clark F: Thanks for having us.
Dr. Lisa B: You’re okay if I call you, Joe?
Joseph K. L: Sure.
Dr. Lisa B: All right. I’d like to start with reading a quote that’s towards the end of your book, Shots Fired and this was in an address to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, “Too often, law enforcement gets scapegoated for the broader failures of our society and criminal justice system.” These words were echoed by Dallas Police Chief, David Brown, speaking at the memorial for the officers assassinated in Dallas, “Every societal failure, we put off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental health funding, let the cop handle it. Not enough drug addiction funding, let’s give it to the cops. Here in Dallas, we got a loose dog problem, let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, give it to the cops. Policing was never meant to solve all of these problems.” The first quote, “Too often, law enforcement gets scapegoated for the broader failures of our society and criminal justice system,” was by Former President Barrack Obama. That’s a very big statement to have in your book.
Joseph K. L: It is a big statement and it rings true because, actually, 70% of the time that officers spend on the street is negotiating from one thorny situation to the next and dealing with all of our societal ills that are left at the doorstep. Like the Chief of Dallas said, whatever it is, mentally ill, drugged, deranged, we’re dealing with that all the time. Police spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with those types of issues and often with no good answers. Where do you bring this person?
This is closed, how do I take care of this mom or these kids that have been taken away from the family and all those things. For me, as a police officer who spent 30 years in the business, to watch this country scapegoat the police as the problem was the motivating factor for me to write this book of police officers with Kate in the worst possible situation as deadly force which, by the way, nobody wants to be involved in. I think the rhetoric and the pervasiveness and understandings have been pushed out over and over again and have confused our society. Back to what you just expressed and what the President have expressed is true and we often scapegoat the police for the broader societal ills.
Dr. Lisa B: Kate, what was it like for you to work on a project that can be very grim at times?
Kate Clark F: Well, it’s my fourth grim project. Actually, I think it’s a really interesting question and one that people ask me a lot. Between writing fictional police and real police, I spend about 15 years now spending time with police officers talking about homicides but particularly talking about their lives, talking about the impact of the job.
Part of that came out of my early friendship with Joe, we’ve been friends for about 20 years. I think that I stand in the feet of the civilian, I’m the person who asks the question, “Why this? Why that?” Then I have, overtime, evolved into becoming the person who gives voice to something that a lot of police officers don’t have an opportunity to do. In our collaborations, of course, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Dr. Lisa B: It is an interesting time to be a police officer because it seems as though we are, in some ways, doing to police officers what we did to people returning from Vietnam.
Joseph K. L: I can’t believe you said that.
Dr. Lisa B: You can’t believe I said that?
Joseph K. L: No, because I’ve been expressing that. What’s happening to police in this country and what we need to know and recognize is that people today are very, very different from the ’60s and ’70s. The training, the policy procedures that we have now, the scrutiny that’s on, the individuals and the organization is intense and pronounced. Every officer out there knows that he or she could be front page news and painted in a terrible picture the next day.
I know I’m digressing but it’s the notion that any police officer wants to be involved in a deadly force incident is far, far from the reality and from the truth. You expressed that perfectly and I remember saying that when I was motivated to do this work and had to bring Kate in because it was so massive and I had so many officers I talked to.
I was like what’s happening to the police in this country today is very similar to what happened to our soldiers and military personnel that came back from the Vietnam War. Think about that, it was a horrible time in our country and people were throwing paint on them, urine and they couldn’t wear their uniforms and imputing everyone as this one big entity of a problem.
10 years later, we all come together and say, “Well, we’re sorry. We didn’t realize what really happened.” Well, too late, the damage is done. The damages have been done to the profession of police in this country and we are suffering consequences now. I can go into that but that’s a great statement because I’ve been saying that from the inception, from the thought of this book.
Dr. Lisa B: I was struck by how messy these situations are. You said this repeatedly in the book, that what most of us think of is what we see on television and that is here’s a brightly lit space, here’s a clean shot, the officer can fire at a person’s arm and that’s enough to disable him. What I’m reading about is officers who are falling downstairs and to darkened basements where maybe there’s bomb-making materials, they don’t have a flashlight, they don’t know whether the person’s on drugs. In one particular case, somebody’s being stabbed so people are fearing for their lives. When you’re in that situation, it’s not that different than being in a war time situation where you’re just trying to make the best decision that you can. It’s not probably going to be perfect and it’s going to impact you for a long time.
Kate Clark F: I think that’s one of the reasons that in some of these incidents, we’ve included the voices of multiple officers so that you can actually see that the officer on the left-hand side of the car who’s trying to get the driver out and the guy on the right who’s got a gun in his face and the guy in the rear who’s trying to figure out what role he can play in how to disable the bad guy. All of their precessions are going to be radically different because of where they’re standing and the public doesn’t understand that.
Joseph K. L: Well, you really captured a lot in the way you just expressed it. It’s not TV, it’s not the movies, these things don’t occur on sterile environments, they don’t defy the laws of physics. Usually, it’s in a flash or a blink of an eye when you’re talking to someone like we’re engaging right now, then all of a sudden, someone’s trying to kill you or someone from behind you is trying to get you.
It’s so unpredictable and every case is unique. It happens in cold weather, hot weather, different terrains, dark alleys, stairwells, down in the basements. It’s nothing like what’s presented on TV but the general population is educated and trained by Hollywood TV and the movies. Self included until I became a police officer which I expressed in the book a little bit as well.
I was a very liberal minded college student, I had no inclination of being a police officer by any stretch and that’s where life took me. You’ll learn the realities of things, but all cops will tell you that the general public has no idea what we really do on a day-to-day basis and how the day is punctuated by violence, whether it’s domestic or someone doing robbery or what’s illustrated in the book.
You really captured exactly what I believe society believes. Why not wing him, shoot him in the leg, it doesn’t happen in a clean and sterile environment like this room. Even at the range, at the firing range where we train, if I were to move my hand in a motion like this, good luck trying to hit it, it’s not that slow. In the dynamics that are rapidly evolving in these circumstances, people don’t stand still and present themselves.
There’s no spiffy dialogue before something happens, it happens in an instant and that’s illustrated in the book. That’s what we’re trying to show and the reason we picked deadly force, or I picked it, I had a whole another book going before this about police work, is when I saw the country convulsing into this, in my view, craziness. I just felt I have to do something about this and educate the public. People say it’s good to hear the other side.
There are no sides. The police and the public and the public and the police, we got to bring our society together. We don’t excuse bad cops, poor tactics, horrible situations, terrible mistakes that happen in war and then these violent circumstances but by and large, it’s a very, very small percentage that occurs in the country. Less than 5% of officers ever use their weapon, I never had to use my weapon in my whole 30 year career and that would be the norm for most police officers. People watch TV and Don Johnson in Miami Vice or whatever, going way back, killed 150 people. It’s something absurd and that’s what people think.
Dr. Lisa B: I had a hard time reading this book, not because it’s a hard read but because it’s so tragic. It’s people on both sides that are being impacted, really, for the rest of their lives and their families. It’s whether you’re somebody who’s high on drugs or just committed a crime and you’ve been shot and killed and now, you leave your children behind or you’re the officer who shot the person or you’re the officer that got shot in the face or you’re the officer who died, leaving children behind. Everybody is a casualty when it comes to a shot being fired it seems.
Joseph K. L: We should turn this over to her, this is great.
Kate Clark F: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:11:53]. You can just go ahead and talk about this book and then we’ll go write another one. Really, I think one of the things that people never really understand, particularly if you’re educated by media, is the ripples. One of the things that’s in the book that people don’t really think about is the officer’s family.
The officer is on the front page of the paper with the immediate rush to judgment and then the officer’s children go to school, the officer’s wife goes to work or to the supermarket and everybody has an assumption about what that person did which is not founded in fact. There’s implications for the victim, for the person who was shot, the subject and there’s implications for the officer. There’s implications for the department and for the families but that is all above the community because as Joe says, cops are not them. They are us.
Dr. Lisa B: That’s really important. This idea that these are, you’re calling them guardians within the book, that they are the people who are choosing to put their lives on the line and the families are choosing to be part of this as well. They can take up to three years or maybe the longer for investigation to figure out whether is it a bad cop situation, is it truly the fault of the criminal, what’s going on. By that time, a lot of people have lost interest. We only heard what we first heard and nobody ever comes back and says, “Oh, I’m sorry, I was wrong.”
Joseph K. L: We illustrated that throughout the work and in a deadly force, as I’ve said, there are no good outcomes. Not for the officer, not for the family members of the deceased, not for the community, not for anybody involved in the peripheral, the organization goes through a lot and there’s a disconnect between the individual who’s involved like, “Hey, I don’t want to be involved in this,” and they get ostracized to some degree.
It depends upon the network and the professionals in each police department, but there are no good outcomes in these. It’s piercingly painful events and the worst possible situations. There’s a lot of ripples, as you said, in so many ways. They don’t walk way unscathed and they’re never the same again.
In fact, I have several officers in the book and I’ve talked to dozens and dozens of officers that just, “I don’t want anything to do with this profession anymore. I didn’t sign-up for this. I wish it never happened.” Those are the common denominators. Nationwide, many police leave the profession as soon as they’re involved in this and some never come out of it.
In fact, I did a bunch of interviews where the officers in the middle of it goes, or she, “I just can’t do this anymore,” or they actually start crying, tearing up, going to a trance of like, “I just can’t deal with this.” This is what we’re trying to educate the public about is that this is what you may think and this is what happens to the human beings behind the badge. I’m hoping it breaks a better understanding and starts better conversations in our country. We’re off the track right now and we got to get it back, in all aspects.
Dr. Lisa B: You’re not suggesting that there aren’t perhaps bigger problems within the institution?
Joseph K. L: Of course.
Dr. Lisa B: When we decided to have you on the show, I actually had two separate younger people talked to me about institutional racism within the police force. I said, “Well, I’ve read this book and it doesn’t … ” Obviously, I have very limited experience with this, but it doesn’t sound like he’s saying there is or isn’t institutional racism. That’s not really the point of what you’re trying to say.
Kate Clark F: Yeah, this book was not written to cover all the problems with policing in America. This book was written to say when we’re going to have a conversation about policing and in particular, when we’re going to have a conversation about deadly force and the use of deadly force.
We would just like people who are entering that conversation to understand that the things that we cover in the book, the things that people believe versus what really happens, the speed with which these incidents happen, the long-term implications for the officers. You talk to the officers in Watertown, for example.
The ones who were in the shootout with the Tsarnaev Brothers who didn’t know they were in a shootout with the Boston Marathon bombers. They thought they were stopping two carjackers and then bombs start flying and that’s people who, years later, are just recognizing the devastating damages that that night did to them.
How, in terms of going on with their lives and when they go out, how they feel differently and how they see the world differently and how unnerving it can be. We’re just saying read the book, read the stories and think about this when you are jumping to judgment or when you want to have the conversation. We’re not saying this is the end of the conversation.
Joseph K. L: I deliberately stay out of race because that’s another 22 volume book, that you really have to drill down on. I think, again, perception becomes a reality and I have talked to hundreds of police officers, I’m still involved in the profession and I deliberately stay out of that. Two things that you had said is that when something goes out on the media and it’s played over and over and over again to get into the psyche of the American public, it confuses good citizens.
Whether it’s race or our force which people have very little realistic information on in regard to what police do, in general, every day. Deadly force, there’s no information, it’s TV and movies. When that video comes out, when you see a video of a partial point of the video, you’re not seeing the entire story or the contours of the event.
Look at a football game, how many cameras does it take to determine what happened, by people who are present and looking at it but yet, they got to go to a camera and look at eight different cameras and eight different angles. If you close your left eye or right eye and you take a view, it can be myopic or in the perspective of the officer. There’s a lot more happening in a 365 degree.
I even have people say, “Well, they did it again. They killed another Black guy for no reason,” and I’d go, “Well, wait a second. We don’t know what happened here.” Again, we’re not excusing poor tactics, horrible situations, tragic circumstances but people, I think our society, sees the same six videos played over and over and over again.
I can drill down on each one, I don’t want to get into that. What I want people to do, what we’d like people to do is let’s expand our mind a little bit and have some conversations about the human beings and the reality. Again, it’s not excusing terrible circumstances. Let me keep going, every single year in this country, 60,000 police officers, and that’s only a week, are assaulted in the line of duty.
It’s happened to me many times and many of my co-workers in Portland here and that’s illustrated in the book as well. There are officers that are shot in the face, they’re crippled for life, they have breathing tubes, they got cinder blocks on the head and the list goes on. Thousands every single year, you don’t hear a word. Very similar to our veterans that you don’t hear about. By the way, the veterans, there’s 22 suicides a day.
The same thing happens as pronounced in police work too because you’re exposed to such a undecided society, difficulty environment everyday with no good answers and is punctuated by violence. Back to the original piece of this, we stayed out of the race problem because it is a problem and it’s a perception and realities and all those things, that’s another whole book. That’s not the point of the work. The point of the work is the human beings and bringing us together with conversations. Makes sense?
Dr. Lisa B: Absolutely.
Joseph K. L: Okay, because what you’re saying is pretty good. You capture a lot. I can just go on and on because I get passionate about it.
Dr. Lisa B: Well, one of the things that, as I was reading the book, I was thinking about my work as a family practice doctor, my father’s work as a family practice doctor, my mother’s work as a teacher. I think don’t think it’s dissimilar in that you take all commerce, somebody crosses the threshold. At least, if you’re teacher or if you’re a physician and you deal with whatever it is in front of you. It’s not necessarily straightforward and it’s not necessarily as simple as, “Oh, here’s a urinary tract infection,” that you’re just going to give antibiotics to. There’s webs of things, you’re dealing with so much back story to so many of these situations. As a police officer, you’re not even in a safe environment necessarily, you go to wherever you’re needed to go and you do whatever they asked you to do. That’s probably about as sub-optimal as any job I could think of.
Joseph K. L: Well, you’re thrown into, again, rapidly evolving circumstance. 911 calls comes into this building for instance, with somebody, I don’t know, breaking all the windows out with an ax and going crazy and chasing people around. Now, by the time you get there, things have changed. You may think you’re going in to this environment here or the person has moved over there and there’s all sorts of damage.
You just don’t know, on any given call, what’s going to happen. Now, I’m painting an extreme case but most of the cases we talk about in this book happen on routine calls, a noise complaint, a routine arrest, a check-in on someone, a typical car stop. They explode into these insane cases with violence.
My point is you just don’t know on, any given day, what police officers negotiate each day. Let’s say there was a horrific accident out here when we all get out of the show here. People are dying and dismembered or something like that and everybody here in this room sees that, that’s going to affect you for the rest of your life.
That maybe the first call of the day for the officer and then he or she is going from one difficult situation to the next, trying to calm down. Abused kids, the list goes on and there’s a cumulative effect on the individual overtime. That’s another part of this book too is let’s do something for the holistic health of officers.
In the end, we talked about solutions where we can infuse some funds and money and create good employee assistance and good peer support networks which, by the way, it’s like 5% of police departments have that nationwide. Any profession that values bravery and stoicism, it’s put along the side.
Just like our veterans, you need to take care of the mental health and the emotional components of the job. Don’t you want good officers pulling up and trying to make informed decisions? It’s pretty tough. It’s a tough, tough job. Now, I think more than ever, I think we’re experiencing something in the profession that I haven’t seen since I’ve been involved in this.
Dr. Lisa B: Kate, were you surprised by some of the things that you found? It’s relatively recent that employee assistance programs have actually come on the scene, even the training is somewhat inconsistent. Some officers know a lot about weaponry and some officers don’t have quite as much knowledge. When you were writing this book, did you find things that you thought, “Oh my goodness, I never would’ve guessed that.”?
Kate Clark F: Not so much. The last book that I did was a Maine game warden’s memoir and after he had spent 25 years in the woods, he said he’d probably pulled 200 bodies out of the woods. He’d gone to New Orleans after Katrina. Because I’ve been doing this for a long time, I was much more focused, I think, on trying to make sure that the impact part of the story stayed in the book. When our editor would say, “I want to cut this here,” I would be saying, “No, because the things that the officer says about his life after this in the next three paragraphs are the critical ones.” What we’re looking for is not simply the incident but the resonance, the impact. I don’t think I was surprised. Joe, what do you think?
Joseph K. L: Well, you have experience now. You’ve been doing it for a long time.
Kate Clark F: I’ve been doing this for a while. I see one of the roles that I play as being a civilian spokesperson for saying this is a world we don’t know about. I act as a translator, so for me it wasn’t as surprising as it might otherwise had been if I hadn’t been doing this for 15 years. I think it should surprise and have impact on readers.
I think they should be saying I had no idea because, as he says, on Miami Vice, on TV shows constantly, the officer shoots somebody next week and the week after and the week after that. Even when I’m writing fictional cops, I’m always thinking about what’s the actual impact of having seen this thing or been in this situation. I think that’s important for the public, for all of us to understand. I shouldn’t say the public, I am the public.
Dr. Lisa B: Are we getting to a place where we are doing better at having conversations across disciplines? I guess what I’m specifically thinking of is we know that we have a drug problem, we know it’s a worsening drug problem. As a doctor, I deal with this all the time whether it’s a baby who is born from an addicted mother or whether it’s the family of a person who committed suicide after not being able to kick an addiction or the patient him or herself. Then you’re from the police force, you have a different view of this, the public has a different view of this. Are we getting better at having conversations?
Joseph K. L: We need to get better. We need to get better nationwide because critics of the police conveniently dismiss that the job is inherently dangerous and also, they dismiss statistics and the reality of the work and that’s what this is about. I think we really need to get a lot better. There’s a lot of talk but not about this. Police are ubiquitous, they’re everywhere.
The drug problem, that’s what people are focused on right now. The narcotics and the heroin problem is pronounced. It’s in front of us, we see it everyday. You see an officer sitting in a car or in the open-air, you don’t know what they’re doing, they’re just having a cup of coffee or writing a report maybe.
You have no idea where that person had been. He just might come from a SIDS death, a baby died or a horrible death scene or something really violent. We need to have these conversations and that’s why this book is about the extreme circumstances. Again, going back to where the nation convulsed into this craziness.
In the words of the president, scapegoating the police for all the other problems. Let’s look over here and not here. 17,250 murders in this country, deaths are up 20% from when I started doing the book. That’s a problem. How about two women a day are killed by spouses and guy violence? That’s a problem.
Why are we talking about what’s going on inside the inner cities and the terrible dysfunction and the hopelessness. These poor souls that live in these inner cities and then the police are put in an impossible situation with people who are in impossible situation. They’re not good outcomes. That’s the point of the book, let’s open our minds a little bit.
Expand conversations and not conveniently dismiss like, “Look, the cops did it again,” and go back to the ’60s or ’70s, a lot of people have a tendency to go back in time and think of the police in those terms or in terms of Hollywood. I really don’t think we are getting better, I think we’re getting better when something’s in front of us but from my perspective, I think the police are dismissed frequently.
People have parts and pieces of information from social media or from a reporter, “Yup, this is what happened tonight. We’re investigating it.” You’ll never going to hear anymore about the case which even when we pull up, as a commander that pulls up on a deadly force incident that I’ve been involved multiple times in.
It takes us time to figure out, hours and hours and hours to figure out. “Well, Kate was there,” “What do you mean Kate was there?” “Well, Dr. Lisa was there too,” and wait a second, it just takes a long time and then it takes protracted, multiple investigations from various sources.
From the attorney general officer, district attorney to internal affairs to use of force teams and policies and procedures. There’s a lot, lot more to this. Hopefully, going into the human dynamics behind these things and the humanity and the piercing and painful events that happen, I hope this does and we both hope this breaks better understandings.
Dr. Lisa B: I’ve been speaking with Joseph K. Loughlin, the former Assistant Chief of Police for the city of Portland and a published author, along with Kate Clark Flora who is a mystery and crime author who has published 18 books. Thank you for being here.
Kate Clark F: Thank you, Lisa. I wish we had another hour.
Joseph K. L: Thank you.
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Dr. Lisa B: Nancy Thompson is an insurance agent who lives in Cape Elizabeth. In 2004, her son Timmy took his life as a result of depression. Since that time, both Nancy and her husband have been speaking publicly about the loss to save other lives. Thanks for coming in.
Nancy Thompson: Nice to be here, thank you for having me here.
Dr. Lisa B: You have a picture of your son, Tim.
Nancy Thompson: I always take him with me.
Dr. Lisa B: Yeah, he’s sitting here with us. As someone who has a son who is now 24, I just remember this age so vividly and I remember just the sense that how could anything really go wrong in life. They’re so energetic, they’re so full of life and yet it did for you. Even looking at your son, it just makes my heart break as a mom.
Nancy Thompson: Well, thank you. He was an incredible kid. Lots of energy, loved by all, wonderful, wonderful soul. Always had a smile on his face and was the first one to seek out if somebody was not up to par. If they were down and out, he’d be the first one, he’d be the class clown to make them laugh or make them smile or put that long arm around them. He was 6’3″, 175 pounds, long and lean. Just a loving, loving kid.
The sense that Timmy had, he’s very sensitive so he knew when other friends were struggling. He was the go-to kid. Just always, always fun so never, never in my wildest dreams that I ever imagined that he had this internal struggle called depression, that comes on so suddenly and so strong like a ferocious illness that just takes over.
It takes over your mind and he’s still there in that body, he’s still there in that façade but yet, the mind changes so quickly and so dramatically. To my husband, Tim and I, we’re really struggling to try and help him and it was a very short period of time. It’s a time of, like you said, excitement, high school.
They’re coming out sideways because they’re all nervous about which college they’re going to go to, where their friends are going to end up. It’s just very exciting. It’s on the last of all of the things that they’ve done for four years in high school. Suddenly and slowly, his personality started to change just towards the end of the school year.
He turned 18 on May 1st and was so excited about being a true adult and just going out into the world. I could just see a couple of times, he had just grabbed me in the kitchen, I was always grabbing him by the waist because he was so tall and pulling him in just to give me a hug before he left. I could just see in his face, it was different.
It wasn’t Timmy. We knew he was struggling a little bit but didn’t understand the whole process of depression and how it can take over your personality. We started to ask questions, try to get him into a doctor. He had been attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity since childhood and all the teachers would say, “Oh, don’t worry about it.
He’s got a lot of energy. When he grows up, he’ll be a CEO of a company. He’ll be in sales because he’ll have that energy. He’ll coral that energy and he’ll go out and do something wonderful in the world.” We got him to age 18, we got him through the school system, graduating from Cape Elizabeth High School, we did all those milestones. Then, all of a sudden, he started to change. In May, in June and literally, we’re fighting for his life.
Dr. Lisa B: It’s not a easy thing to get help for something like this, is it?
Nancy Thompson: Gosh, no. No. One of my good friends is a psychiatric nurse. I didn’t even think in my own mind to pickup the phone and ask her and say, “These are the types of signs that I’m seeing.” He’s being restless, he wants to stay up at nighttime, he’s sleeping in the daytime where Timmy never slept in the daytime, the eating patterns had started to change. This is all within just a couple of weeks of time. People rack it up for senior summer, they’re busy, they’re not getting sleep, they’re running on empty. In hindsight, everything is perfect but the perfect storm was ahead of me and I didn’t understand what that perfect storm was, with all of the stressors that he had going on in his life at age 18.
Dr. Lisa B: Having worked with 18 year olds for a long time as a doctor, they’re not always interested in getting help or interacting and talking about things that are hard. Actually, I think I know a lot of adults this way too but to be an 18-year-old and sometimes not even have the words.
Nancy Thompson: Independent. Thinking they could figure it out on their own. Looking back, most of his friends, they were so devastated when Timmy took his life because they had no idea, the internal struggle that he had. Just like his family. We’re a really tight family, we ate meals together, we were together, the seven Thompsons were glued together so his four siblings would have done anything in the world.
The kids said that they would’ve been with him 24/7 if they had to and I tell everybody, I would’ve strapped that kid to my back, I would’ve carried him 24/7 had I known six weeks after we started to think that he was having some problems. I wouldn’t have let him out of my sight. As it turned out, he ended up taking his life in our own home while all seven of us were there, trying to help him. We were there together, right at the very end.
Dr. Lisa B: It’s been almost 14 years. It’ll be 14 years …
Nancy Thompson: This July.
Dr. Lisa B: This July but it’s still really …
Nancy Thompson: It’s there, just like yesterday. Yeah, but a lot has happened in almost 14 years. A lot of good has come as a result of Timmy Thompson. I’m not afraid to talk about Timmy and that’s why I take his picture with me everywhere I go because I want people to know that this could happen to their child. I want people to know that a great kid like this could struggle with depression and it could happen to their own family members. We started lots of kitchen table conversations through the years for struggling teenagers.
I wanted parents to ask the questions, see how their kids are, check-in with their kids and we always had an open door policy in our house. All of Timmy’s friends came after we lost Timmy and I said, “I didn’t want a fall out. I didn’t want another kid to take their lives, I wanted them to talk to their own family members but if they weren’t comfortable, come and knock on my door. My door is open.” I would get kids coming in at midnight.
I’d be sitting in my pajamas in my den, looking at pictures of Timmy at midnight and I’d see these eyes peering in and my husband and I would wave them in. They were checking in with us and we were checking in with them, then they come in and talk. That’s all they wanted to do was talk. I think a lot of the times, family members don’t have that opportunity to talk. They don’t really see what’s going on with their kids because they’re so busy with life.
Dr. Lisa B: Where did Timmy fall in the line-up? Was he the oldest, was he the youngest?
Nancy Thompson: No, middle. Middle. I had two daughters, Molly and Emily, they were 14 months apart and then two and a half years later, I had Timmy. He was this bounding energy and I had a harness on that kid from the minute he was 18 months old. You only have two arms but when you get your third child, you have to grab them and pull them in. Then two years later, we had Russell and then another two years, we had Hailey. Three girls and two boys.
Dr. Lisa B: Do you think that there was something about being a middle child that made him more likely to try to take care of himself a little bit?
Nancy Thompson: Probably. Being the first male too, independent. Yeah, no, he was the center of the family because he did bring so much energy to the family. We love the energy because we’d be sitting around and not doing anything, he’d be the first one to say, “Come on, let’s go out. Let’s go outside and play. Let’s shoot some hoops. Let’s do this, let’s do that.” All of kids were pretty athletic so we spent a lot of time outdoors and they all skied and they all played basketball and they all played soccer. I spent my life in a minivan taking them everywhere, but I loved every minute of that. The travel soccer where we’d go to Maryland or Pennsylvania or wherever. Not just my own children but all these other kids so it was a busy, busy time. He added a lot to that energy and it was a lot of fun.
Dr. Lisa B: You talk about him being very tuned in to other people, sometimes people who are sensitive and tuned in to other people, they end up carrying burdens for others as well. Do you think that happened for him?
Nancy Thompson: I totally agree with that. I think in his mind that he didn’t want to be a burden to his family. I think as he was thinking about that and thinking about the life that possibly he could have with his emerging mental health issue, that I think that he thought, in his mind, “I don’t want to be a burden to my family.”
I would give anything to go back and have that conversation with him and say, “Tim, that’s what families are all about. We’re here to support each other.” It’s not only my immediate family but again, I come from a large Irish-Catholic family in Boston with eight kids and my dad was a police chief in the town.
We did a lot of things and having a large extended family who loved and adored him, the ripple effect through the family was just immeasurable because all of a sudden, one minute Timmy was here and the next minute, he was gone. It wasn’t just the impact on our small nucleus, it was the extended family and then the community.
When we lost him, it was just incredible the amount of people that came out because they knew that he really was a great kid. You know how everybody has their moments but he really, truly was a good boy. That’s what a lot of people wanted to pay tribute to that, that he was a kind soul and he was very sensitive.
Dr. Lisa B: It is possible to be all of those things and have depression. Depression it’s a biologic process so I’m not sure everybody thinks about it that way. There’s such a stigma that is associated with mental illness, better than it used to be, we’re talking about it more and we’re realizing it more. I have talked to patients who have, for years, suffered with anxiety and depression and don’t want to talk about it with anybody else because they feel embarrassed somehow. Somehow it makes it so that they want to be positive, they want to help everybody else, they want to carry the burdens for other people and they can’t. It feels like a dark place inside of them. Did you ever get that sense with him?
Nancy Thompson: No, not at all. Not at all. Again, because it came on so suddenly and so quickly at the end of his senior year, that we didn’t have enough time to deal with the depression that had come on so suddenly. I do, when I talk, I hope that by talking about it and being very public about depression, that people will understand that there are people out there to help.
Don’t be afraid of this crazy stigma about mental illness. We all have issues, we’re human. When you talk about it, I just hope that people will have a better understanding. Stop the stigma, be the voice. My youngest daughter, Hailey, has moved to Richmond, Virginia and she’s going for her Master’s. Obviously, her life was changed.
It turned upside down but she’s gone into social work and here’s this little sixth grader who lost her big brother who she adored and now, she’s 26 and going to get married in July. She speaks like me. At the top of a mountain, she spoke in front of a thousand people at a walk and he gives us the courage to go out there and go talk about it.
If we tell our Timmy story, that will save lives. I can’t tell you how many people talk about the stigma of suicide and how afraid they are. The more times you talk to people, the better off you’ll be because you are de-stigmatizing it. People can talk about heart issues or cancer like nothing, but they can’t talk about depression.
That’s one of the things that I tell everybody, I’m going to go to my grave talking about getting rid of the stigma because it’s silly. You will save a life. Put an armor on somebody if they’re struggling. Pickup the phone for somebody, access services, get to know your local support services.
They know it. Your first responders are the people that know when people are struggling. Just go the extra mile for people and I think this place would be a lot better if people weren’t so close-minded about mental health issues.
Dr. Lisa B: Why do you think that they are?
Nancy Thompson: Again, the stigma. People feel like there’s something wrong with me if I have dark periods or something. There’s got to be something wrong with my family. Every family has issues, every family. Nobody’s perfect. It’s amazing the stories that I’ve heard through the years of just the simple acts of kindness that people have done when people are in a dark place, that have saved lives.
Literally saved lives. Opening doors for somebody who is just going to go and take their life because they were so tired of the day-to-day struggle that they had and that person that opened the door and said, “Hey, how’s your day?” snapped them out of it. I’ve heard so many stories from so many survivors, little acts of kindness made all the difference in the world that snapped them out of whatever it was, their thought process at that time.
Dr. Lisa B: We’ve been talking more about the depression, talk to me about the suicide. If depression has a stigma, suicide has that in spades I think. It’s such a final solution and I think all of us struggle with that.
Nancy Thompson: Sure. Well, obviously people take their lives, they’re not in the right frame of mind. We all know that. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Usually, it goes hand-in-hand with somebody who’s struggling with some sort of depressive state and that’s why if somebody is suicidal or if they got suicide thoughts, don’t leave them. Be with them until you can access services that somebody will be there, some professional can help you.
A lot of people will claim that their suicidal and people will leave them unattended and they should have somebody there at all times. You’ve always got to have somebody. If they are tending to talk about suicide and there are enough professionals there, again, the first responders, most of them are trained on crisis intervention training.
They all have these wonderful training models and they are there to help. I think a lot of times, we have to have more people that will be open to helping one another. I think that there’s a fear there that they don’t want to extend themselves. Number one is stay with that person until you can have a professional help you.
Dr. Lisa B: What’s just so striking to me is you said that everybody in your family was home. You all were with Timmy and it almost seems as if you were living what you’re telling me other people should live and still, you went through with this. That is just heartbreaking really.
Nancy Thompson: Yeah, it was. He had gone up into our bathroom and my youngest daughter, when the hair in the back of your neck goes up, she kept checking on him and we were moving him around from his bedroom, downstairs to upstairs. He had the high school pad downstairs in the basement because it was like a rite of passage when you’re going off to college that you got to have a downstairs suite.
He said to me a couple of days beforehand, “Mom, it’s too dark in the basement. I think I want to come upstairs.” We’re all moving his furniture upstairs and we’re shuttling up and down and taking care of all of his clothes and his furniture and painted the room because we knew he was struggling.
He went into our bathroom and Hailey had checked on him just 30 seconds beforehand. The week before, our attic door had broken and we heard bang and we thought it was the attic door coming down, that had broken. It was Timmy, he had shot himself on our bathroom. We had no idea that he had gotten a hold of a gun but he did and it was devastating for all of us. He had a plan in place and it was a difficult, difficult time for all of us.
Dr. Lisa B: It sounds like you were doing everything that you could do.
Nancy Thompson: Yeah, we were. We really were. We were all with him and as I tell all these kids, I think in life they think that the problems that they have at the time are so difficult, that they’re not thinking as adults would. That they’re so severe at that stage that they don’t think clearly enough because obviously, their brains aren’t as developed as adults. Those small problems that they have as teenagers are so dramatic and so large that they can’t conceptualize getting through that problem. I think he just worn himself out. He had some relationships with some friends and he just thought this was his way of checking out.
Dr. Lisa B: You talked about your youngest who’s now … ?
Nancy Thompson: 26.
Dr. Lisa B: 26, getting her Master’s in social work. How are your other kids doing?
Nancy Thompson: They’re all doing really well. My oldest daughter, Molly, is expecting baby number two. My second oldest, Emily, is in South Korea with her husband, the military, has two children. My son, Russell, is at UNIM, thriving in his job and Hailey is in Richmond, Virginia. They’re all doing really well. The tightness that we always had got even tighter after we lost Timmy. It was almost like now the six of us were here against the world and we got really, really tight. It was nothing that we didn’t hold back from each other because I was nervous, not only for my husband and I, but I was nervous for the other four. I couldn’t imagine going through life losing a sibling and not being able to vent that and not being able to have that security from one another.
Dr. Lisa B: You’ve really maintained this positive energy in your life. You served on the board at the Center for Grieving Children and you’ve been associated with the Junior League of Portland for a long time. You obviously do a lot of speaking about Timmy and about your family’s experience and your experience. What have you learned as a result of all of this?
Nancy Thompson: I’ve learned not to be afraid. I think from all the years that I’ve volunteered with the Junior League of Portland helped me because I volunteered in so many different capacities, working with lots of non-profits in Portland. I knew where to go to, we were instrumental in helping the Center for Grieving Children setup their organization and give them some money early on and provide volunteers.
That was a no-brainer for me. I love the center and the center is just an amazing place. It makes people whole again and I had my entire family, neighbors, friends, whoever was in the house within 48 hours, we were at the center. Patricia Allen who used to work at the center was there and was the facilitator in our deepest, darkest hour.
They were there and if I hadn’t been involved in our community, I never would’ve been able to access services right away. I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m one of the lucky ones that had services right away. Then, that gave us the strength to move on but it’s easy to talk about Timmy because he’s the one who’s giving me the strength and the courage to do it. He really has.
I actually ran for public office early on because there was a vacancy and I figured maybe if I ran for office, I could possibly do some legislation for the state of Maine so people wouldn’t be so nervous talking about suicide. As it turned out, I lost. I ran not once but twice but it was a phenomenal experience.
I got to meet so many people in Augusta and I really was able to sharpen my skills in advocacy. One thing led to another and LD 609 was created and now, all the public school systems throughout the state, every person that gets a paycheck from the state of Maine. We had a school bus driver, a cafeteria worker, secretary, a teacher, admin, they all have to have some training in suicide prevention intervention and awareness.
Now, people are talking about it. Not afraid to talk about it. All they have to do is just refer out and it’s a referral. I’m hoping that those referrals would save lives. I think they have. There’s a video channel, they did a video and they show it every year. There’s a lot of really good people that are in the school systems, that have been talking this talk and walking this walk.
They’ve seen these kids come and go and it’s broken their hearts to see a lot of them not be productive members of society because we’ve lost them to suicide. They get it and they’re very appreciative. I get a tap in the shoulder at church or I get a tap in the shoulder while I’m in the Old Port, I get a tap in the shoulder no matter where I am. They say thank you and then that makes all the difference in the world.
Dr. Lisa B: I encourage anybody who is having difficulty with depression or thinking about suicide or knows anyone. You don’t have to be a doctor, you don’t have to be a healthcare provider, if you know that somebody is struggling, please do try to access services. There are a lot of people who are out there who are able to help and really small gestures can make a big difference. Please listen to what Nancy has been talking about and take it seriously because this is something that we are all in together. We all need to work on this together with the people in our community. I’ve been speaking with Nancy Thompson who is an insurance agent who lives in Cape Elizabeth. In 2004, her son Timmy took his life as a result of depression. Since that time, both Nancy and her husband, Tim, have been speaking publicly about their loss to save other lives. Thank you so much for coming in.
Nancy Thompson: Thank you for having me.
Dr. Lisa B: You’ve been listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 334. Our guests have included Joseph K. Loughlin, Kate Clark Flora and Nancy Thompson. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit Lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign-up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as Dr. Lisa and see our Love Maine Radio photos on Instagram. Please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio, we welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, let our sponsors know that you have head about them here. We are pleased that they enabled us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, thank you for sharing this part of your day with me. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is brought to you by Maine Magazine, Aristelle, Portland Art Gallery and Art Collector Maine. Audio production and original music are by Spencer Albee, our Editorial Producer is Brittany Cost, our Assistant Producer is Shelbi Wassick, our Community Development Manager is Casey Lovejoy and our Executive Producers are Andrea King, Kevin Thomas, Rebecca Falzano and Dr. Lisa Belisle. For more information on our production team, Maine Magazine or any of the guests featured here today, please visit us at Lovemaineradio.com.