 |
| DICK LEARY |
 |
| DICK & RUBY LEARY |
IF IT WEREN'T FOR BAD LUCK, I'D HAVE NO LUCK AT ALL
By the time we get to Week 52 of this writing
exercise, everyone will probably be sick of my stories about my grandfather,
Dick Leary. You're probably already wondering if I have no other ancestors
about which I could write. But of my ancestors I've studied so far, he
lived the most colorful life of any, and in my opinion, had the most
misfortune.
I wrote last week's essay topic,
"Lucky", about using a transcript of my grandfather's interview for
his job as a Prohibition agent to help me fill in some details of his life.
One detail was an event that most likely led to his poor health for the
next four years, and ultimately his premature death.
I had always been told my grandfather died of
stomach cancer in 1928 at the age of 35. The death announcement in the
newspaper offered the explanation that the extreme climate change of his being
transferred from the Philippines to Siberia had caused him to contract some
unspecified illness. However, his death certificate stated the official
cause of death was "Toxemia", with a secondary cause listed as
"Acute Yellow Atrophy of the Liver". Another doctor who
examined him about two weeks prior to his death speculated he had "cancer
of the pyloris [sic] from long continued irritation from recurring duodenal
ulcers."
When I started looking through family papers, I
found my grandmother, Ruby, and later my mother, had held on to a an old
yellowed folder of papers belonging to Dick Leary which included, among other
things, correspondence with the Veterans Bureau as it was known then, as well
as letters from various Veterans' hospitals. The papers were in pretty good
shape, but not in any particular order, and were secured at the top of the
folder with a two-prong metal fastener, the kind where the ends fold down
towards the middle, with the little slides to secure them.
I disassembled the folder and painstakingly
sorted out the various papers in date sequence. The earliest was in 1922.
The latest, in 1939, was addressed to my grandmother, who was at this
point near death herself, cloistered in a tuberculosis sanitorium near Fort
Smith, Arkansas.
As I went through the letters and forms, I saw
that bureaucratic red tape and the postal service being what it was at the
time, correspondence oftentimes crossed in the mail, or frequently reached my
grandfather's last known address after he had moved on.
To begin at the beginning, when he was
discharged from the Army in 1919, his "condition when
discharged" was listed as "Poor" with no explanation, and he was
discharged with only a 5% disability, evidently for losing the tips of one or
two fingers in an accident in the Philippines. Then there follows a 3
year gap in the paper trail.
It picks up in November 1922 when a doctor at
the Health Dept. in Bakersfield, CA certified Dick is a "disabled
ex-service man and unable to perform any labor". I have no idea to
whom the paper was addressed or why it was completed, although it may have been
for the purpose of securing additional disability compensation from the
Veterans Bureau. There were several occasions throughout when he wrote to
the Veteran's Bureau to inform them he'd been unable to work, and asked for
increased compensation. Then the paper trail again goes dark until August
1924, when the Veterans Bureau authorizes his travel from Omaha, NE to
Waukesha, WI for hospital admission.
Just a few months later, in October 1924, he
was hired by the Narcotics Division, IRS, and was assigned alternately to
Baltimore, Boston, and El Paso offices. He asked to be reassigned from
Boston back to El Paso because he developed "severe laryngitis and
pharyngitis". In transit from Boston to El Paso, he had to detrain
in Atlanta, and was treated for 3 days by a local doctor for continuous
vomiting, diagnosed as "intestinal toxemia". By March 1925,
only 6 months after he was hired, his superiors in the Narcotics Division at
IRS in El Paso, TX, advised him to resign without prejudice due to poor health.
His immediate supervisor commented on his unique qualifications for the
job and the high quality of his work.
In 1925, because of recently passed legislation,
the Veterans Bureau added psychoneurosis (referring to shell shock, I
presume), to his diagnosis. In the summer, Dick wrote to the
Veterans Bureau, from William Beaumont Hospital in El Paso, where he had been a
patient for several weeks. He had been informed he "must have an operation to
include removal of the appendix and gall bladder". He asked to be
transferred to a Veterans Hospital near his mother's home in Niagara Falls for
the surgery, not wanting to cause undue worry to her.
He traveled from El Paso to Niagara in August,
but upon arriving was so ill he saw a local doctor and had emergency
surgery. However, after the operation he said he found the diagnosis
of his condition was not correct, as he "continued to vomit continuously
and was again hospitalized". At this point the doctor admitted he
didn't know what was wrong with him, and was afraid he wouldn't recover.
In mid-August, he finally "took matters in my own hands and had my mother
bring me to the Mayo Brothers". According to Dick, "it is
apparent that it is largely a nervous condition...<my> disability is
considered a psychoneurotic condition". And in the midst of this, he
was exchanging correspondence with the IRS about being reinstated, although
that never came to pass.
Whatever his condition was mid-September at the
Mayo Clinic, he was able to make his way to Silver City, NM. This is
where he met my grandmother, Ruby, who had traveled from Louisiana with
her sister who was seeking treatment for tuberculosis. My grandparents
could not have known each other too long before deciding to marry on Nov. 11,
1925. Then early in 1926, he was admitted twice, in January and in
March, to the Veterans Hospital at Fort Bayard, NM, checking himself out the
2nd time "against medical advice".
From here, he and my grandmother wandered
westward, and the next correspondence was addressed to him in Palo Alto, CA in
May 1926, then in August in Sacramento. My grandmother gave birth
to my mother in Sacramento on August 31, 1926. With the birth of my
mother, and his health issues, I guess he thought it would be wise to have some
life insurance, since he received some correspondence from the Veterans Bureau
about action needed to reinstate his insurance. Dick also received some
personal correspondence later in 1926 from former IRS co-workers, both of whom
offered their regrets to hear of his "condition" and "ill
health".
In early 1927, he received a notice from the
Veterans Bureau addressed to him at my grandmother's parents' home in New
Orleans. I've been told that my mother and grandmother lived for a time
with her parents.
In May 1927, Dick was on the move again, as
there's a note from doctors in Texarkana, AR/TX attesting to Leary being under
their care for 4 days "on account of painful neuritis; given three
hypodermics of 1/4 gr morphine each day". He later received
correspondence at two different addresses in Dallas, TX.
In October, he once more was admitted to a
Veterans Hospital, this time in Muskogee, OK, again checking himself
out AMA after two weeks. Then the next correspondence is addressed
to him in Silver City, NM.
In March 1928, he returned to his mother's home
in Niagara Falls to live with his mother until he died in August. I
suppose the cost and time involved to travel from New Orleans to Buffalo, and
perhaps having no one to care for my mother in her absence, prohibited my
grandmother from making the trip for his funeral.
In June, a few months before his death, the
Veterans Bureau had written him that their records showed that he never
submitted an application for the reinstatement of his life insurance (which
would have been for $5,000), which had been lapsed since his discharge from the
service in 1919. Since there's earlier correspondence on this subject, I don't
know why he didn't follow up. It's possible that he submitted a request
and it got lost, or that it never caught up with him, or between new family
responsibilities and his poor health, it just slipped through the cracks.
After Dick died, Ruby tried for years without
much success to get survivors' benefits for herself and my mother. She
engaged lawyers, Congressmen, and the American Legion to fight on her behalf
with the Veterans Bureau. But to no avail. The Veterans Bureau did
not agree that Dick's disability of neuropsychosis was the cause of his death.
The exact words from their letter to Ruby were,
"direct payments of compensation terminated by his death and as it was
decided that the veteran's death was not due nor incident to his military
service, death compensation is not payable to his dependents including
yourself. You are also advised that...the veteran permitted his insurance
to lapse...It is, therefore, regretted to advise you also that no insurance is
payable in this case." (This whole statement is so distasteful!)
However, because of legislation only
referred to as the Act of June 28, 1934, Ruby was eventually awarded $30 from
the date of the passage of the law, and $22 from August 31, 1944, when my
mother would have turned 18.
Dick's disability pension was based on losing
the ends of two fingers and a "nervous condition". He stated in
his IRS interview that he was in a couple of skirmishes in Siberia, and there's
evidence that he was disturbed by loud sounds, such as fireworks.
In that 1924 job interview, Dick also described
the following event. "While in Siberia, my horse struck a large
hole, and as I went to quit him, I slipped under him, and he fell on top of me,
full weight. I was ruptured, and that resulted in an operation.
They invalided me home, and I have finally worked out of it."
Except, of course, he hadn't.
I have little doubt that this accident resulted
in his recurring illnesses. Perhaps the operation he had before
being sent home was botched in some way, or perhaps the injuries were just so
severe that he was never able to totally recover. Why this wasn't a
service related injury, and why it was never explored as a cause of all his
illness is beyond me.
