Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father Page #7

- Hello?

- Hi.

Or "Mommy with baby."

We'd bring him up to the prison

for a weekly visit.

That was astounding.

Imposition.

Each week,

they would drive two hours

to the jail where Shirley was

so that she would be able

to see her son

and to follow

the visitation rights,

because just as Kate and David

wanted visitation rights,

they had to honor

Shirley's visitation rights.

And in the winter.

But the weather, needless

to say, in Newfoundland.

The weather here is terrible.

To make that journey was awful.

Only Kate and David would have

done it, really, I think.

Nobody else would have done it.

The one guard, the one day,

said to Kate and David,

speaking to Zachary,

"Zachary, I hope some day

you will realize

how brave and courageous

your grandparents are."

Like, I think if I could be

a quarter of the grandma

that Kate is,

I'd be such a success.

You know,

seeing them with Zachary.

Just to see the looks

on their faces, Kurt,

when they'd have him, you know.

You know, to see them so happy.

And then, you know,

that ended, didn't it?

Now crossing the east coast

of the U.S.,

I was almost to you.

I pulled off the main road

for one last stop,

a small-town utopia

where your dad had spent the

last four months of his life.

It was here that I would find

the only people

who knew what he was like

as a doctor,

just days

before they would graduate

and scatter to the winds.

Latrobe is famous

for Mr. Rogers.

Of children's TV fame.

Rolling Rock beer.

It's the birthplace

of professional football,

though some would argue that.

At Strickler's Pharmacy,

I'm told that the banana split

was invented here in Latrobe.

And Arnold Palmer.

Mr. Palmer's a very important

figure in this community.

This is a community where people

don't even lock their doors.

Your dad's door

was directly across the street

from the hospital,

giving him

a 30-second commute to work.

And I said,

"Can I call you 'Andy'?"

And he goes, "Actually,

I don't like Andy."

He said,

"You can call me 'Andrew,'

you can call me 'Bagby,'

you can call me 'Bags'."

I never did.

Ten minutes after I arrived,

Dr. Bill DiCuccio picked me up

to show me around town.

His class, it was Bill DiCuccio.

And after hanging with Bill

for a short while,

I completely understood why.

This is yours to take with you

in your travels

to remember

the Chief Resident's office.

They were like Mutt and Jeff.

They were Tweedledee

and Tweedledum.

Bill was just devastated, as

we all were, but especially so.

I think Bill had spent more time

with him.

And I know there was

a third-year resident, Clark,

who was quite close with him.

He was this surgical resident

from Syracuse.

Being a former surgical intern,

that's a big deal.

They're all about cutting,

and what we do

is a little bit different.

It's more about people.

I would say to him,

"Now, you go out there

and you listen to the heart

and you talk to those people

because, you know, people talk.

They're not just unconscious

all the time."

Your dad also had an office

visit every Monday afternoon

at the last place

he was ever seen alive,

a clinic in the small town

of Saltsburg,

a beautiful 30-minute drive away

through the country,

past a lovely spot

called Keystone State Park.

He was already,

just within a couple of months,

already getting patients to call

and specifically ask for him.

Hi. I'm Dr. Bagby.

People trusted him

when he walked into a room.

'Cause medicine's

a little like being a detective.

Has anyone else in your family

experienced this?

When you think of people

who have passed,

you can't help but paint

a rosy glow around them.

More than half of it

is being able to get a story

out of somebody.

It's not what's happening

in this case.

I'll always be grateful to him

because he diagnosed

my nephew's cancer.

He diagnosed it early enough

that he was able to get

complete treatment.

He was really pretty outstanding

at this stuff.

He was told

he may never have children.

He just has a newborn baby.

He always told me

that he wanted to practice

in a town the size of Latrobe

and be like the doc of the town.

Know everybody,

know everybody's family.

And we really thought

he'd found heaven.

But we packed our bags,

went to bed,

'cause we knew we were leaving

the next morning.

And we stayed in the upstairs

spare bedroom of Andrew's house.

The next morning,

we saw him off at 6:30.

And as I say,

that's when I noticed

he was blinking

for the first time.

And he did that

when he was a little boy

when he was nervous

or worried about something.

Just blink.

Blink, blink.

And I wanted to say to him,

"Oh, Andrew, what's the matter?"

He stood up.

And I remember he looked at us

such a long time.

But he came over and

he kissed me and kissed his dad.

And then he got halfway

into that room

and he came back

and kissed us again,

and we went with him and he

kissed us again at the door.

And then he got

across the hospital there,

down that alley and just went...

And he was gone.

That was the last time

until we saw him dead.

And I can remember

Andrew saying,

"If I die tomorrow,

all I want you to do is sit

and toast a beer to me."

Do you remember that?

When his parents had finished

cleaning out his apartment,

they gave me his last beer.

We have one bottle remaining.

We're gonna crack Andrew's

last Fuller's ESB right now,

and Kurt and I

are gonna sip it together.

A little toast to our friend.

To Andrew, my good friend,

I can't wait to see you again.

And then, of course,

the unthinkable happened again.

They let her out of jail again.

And we had to give him back

on January 10, 2003.

Shirley was out of money

and out of a lawyer,

so she wrote directly

to Judge Derek Green,

who responded

through his secretary

with instructions

on how to write her own appeal

of his decision

to incarcerate her

while awaiting an order

from the minister of justice

to surrender her to the States.

I have a few friends

who are judges,

and there's no way

they would ever have responded

in the way that judge responded

to Shirley.

She did and was let back

onto the streets by...

Judge Gale Welsh.

Judge Gale Welsh.

Welsh refused to even consider

Prosecutor

Mike Madden's argument

that Shirley's appeal

was frivolous,

even though multiple

Legal Aid Commission attorneys

had reviewed her appeal

and refused to waste their time

representing her.

And if you could have seen her,

I knew that we were going to be

seeing Shirley Turner walk free

the minute that woman walked

into the room, Judge Welsh.

She was almost fawning with

Shirley Turner, as I saw it.

"Oh, Dr. Turner," she said.

"I recognize

that you're not represented

but also know that, as a doctor,

you're quite capable,

so I'm going to run...

Dr. Turner,

I'm not trying to exclude you,

however the argument

would work to your benefit.

That's why

I'm particularly interested

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