Where Were You On December 16, 1960?
Written: Jul 15 '08 (Updated Jul 15 '08)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: About overcoming problems, finding answers, and forcing society to wake up and smell the coffee.
Cons: But are we really prepared to wake up and smell the coffee--and respond?
The Bottom Line: On December 16, 1960 while we were liking Ike, loving Kennedy, doing the twist, and preparing for the holidays, something sinister was happening to twelve year old Howard Dully...
|
|
|
| AinsleyJo's Full Review: Howard Dully and Charles Fleming - My Lobotomy: A ... |
Where Were You On December 16, 1960?
Many of you reading this were probably not even born at that time.
Me?
I had just turned eight four days before with the usual "Happy Birthday"-type fuss being made over me by my loving family and friends.
Actually, I was very spoiled, because I not only had a party at home for a handful of friends and loved ones, but I also had a party at school so that my teacher and classmates could also celebrate with me.
At school, we ate cupcakes (sometimes accompanied by extras such as pillow mints and assorted nuts) and drank punch, after which we played games.
There were no presents given--but, although I always loved opening presents (at my home party) just like any other kid celebrating turning a year older, it was never really about the presents (at either place) as much as it was about the presence.
It was just tons of fun to celebrate a milestone with special people!
It was also around this time that we had our school-wide (first through eighth grades) Christmas pageant that we had been rehearsing since late November.
Our 1960 Christmas pageant included among other things classmate, Rodney Knowling, pretending to play on a wooden flute while the sound was provided by an older student (not sure, but I think it was Joyce Carpenter from fifth grade) playing on a flute-a-phone.
Rodney was dressed a little bit like Robin Hood, and he was supposed to be some messenger of good news named Greensleeves.
Our entire class sang the lyrics that went with his little tune a little bit later in the pageant--a beautiful song about Baby Jesus called What Child Is This?
Susan Elrod--a sweet third-grader with a beautiful voice who was the older sister of my classmate, Warren--got to play Mary. She acted as if she were holding Jesus in her arms, but the "baby" was really her microphone, used to fill the Fall Creek Heights Elementary gym with her solo.
The song Susan sang was called Mary's Lullaby, and it had a similar melody (though not an exact match) to Faith Of Our Fathers.
I don't know if our pageant took place on December 16 or shortly afterwards, but I do know that, on that date, our never-to-be-forgotten hard-to-please was exactly a month-minus-one-day away from celebrating his first birthday!
We were experiencing our last days of the Ike we liked in the White House and anticipating what it would be like to have the Kennedy Family in our First House.
Our soon-to-be President was so young and handsome (born in 1917 just like my own dad), and he and his beautiful wife actually had kids even younger than I was.
It would be fun having kids in The White House!
1960 was the year when three new sitcoms made their debut:
The Andy Griffith Show
The Flintstones
and
My Three Sons
The top ten songs for that year were:
1. Will You Love Me Tomorrow - Shirelles
2. Georgia On My Mind - Ray Charles
3. Only The Lonely - Roy Orbison
4. Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go - Hank Ballard & the Midnighters
5. Stay - Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs
6. Chain Gang - Sam Cooke
7. Spoonful - Howlin' Wolf
8. Shop Around - Miracles
9. The Twist - Chubby Checker
10. Cathy's Clown - Everly Brothers
and, profitwise, these five movies were winners at the box office:
"The Apartment" - Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray; Best Picture
"The Battle of the Sexes"
"The Magnificent Seven" - based on "The Seven Samurai"
"Psycho" - Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh; directed by Alfred Hitchcock
"Spartacus" - Kirk Douglas
December 16, 1960 was a very happy time in the world I knew.
I had no way of knowing that--as I was enjoying the excitement of this festive and beautiful time of year--there was a twelve year old boy out in California getting instruments that resembled knitting needles inserted into his head via the eye-sockets and moved around randomly for the purpose of scrambling his young brain!
This procedure--something called a transorbital lobotomy--had been done to young Howard Dully after he'd been knocked out by electroshock charges. Dr. Walter Freeman was the one who performed this procedure.
Dr. Freeman was an old hand at performing lobotomies--including the prefrontal one done on President Kennedy's sister, Rosemary, when she was twenty-three years old.
Before the procedure, Rosemary was mildly-retarded but still was a very normal young society woman in most ways. After the procedure, she ended up requiring full-time care for the rest of her life.
Although it's true that some patients--for one reason or another--actually benefited from having this done, most of them didn't.
Sure! It might have "cured" whatever kinds of anger, depression, tension, etc. that had been going on with a patient before, but it also usually left said patient more dependent on others for a very long time--many times, indefinitely.
And, yes, there were several patients who didn't survive the procedure, period.
One thing that stood out when Howard was reading through the doctor's notes was that--even as gung-ho as this man had been when it came to performing lobotomies (to the point of being in-denial about what a dangerous failure this procedure actually was)--there seemed to be some hesitancy there when it came to his doing this to Howard.
In the end, though, he finally became convinced that performing the lobotomy would be for the best.
But why?
And that, too, is what Howard wondered when he began to explore his past and try to get some answers to his questions.
It seemed as if one person led the campaign to get Howard lobotomized, and that was his stepmother.
This wasn't surprising in itself considering that she had never liked Howard right from the first--but why had anyone paid attention to her demands?
One note provided a clue--one that Howard didn't want to believe: that he had intentionally slammed his infant brother to the floor so hard that he had broken several bones in his tiny body!
Howard didn't remember doing this--although he might have felt that he had grounds to, as it was this baby's birth that had created the complications from which his real mother had died.
Did he do this but then block it out of his mind?
There were so many questions needing answered--and several of the people who would have remembered had either already died or were still around but getting up in years.
I'll say no more about this page-turner true story but would highly recommend that you read it a.s.a.p. to find out how such a horrible thing took place so close to Christmas in a Mayberry world; to be moved and inspired by Howard's journey; and to come to realize--just as Howard ended up doing--that the facts behind his story not only needed to be found out but, also, shared, because this story definitely wasn't simply all about him...
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
AinsleyJo
|
|
Member: Ainsley Jo Phillips
Location: Anderson, Indiana
Reviews written: 269
Trusted by: 220 members
About Me:
I'm hosting a write-off: http://www.epinions.com/content_5362983044
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.