How to tell a true story

Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.
---Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

Yesterday in Temple an 87-year-old wheelchair-bound woman was left in the back of a nursing home van during the heat of the day for four hours. She died, sadly, and I was assigned the follow-up story today.

I kind of stumbled into something that ended up being big news when the Temple P.D. released a much of the information about the incident this morning. The TV news crews were there; all the Central Texas papers are running this story dom tomorrow; the AP even assigned a reporter to cover it by phone.

By about 5 p.m. I had a very straight-news story ready to go, based entirely on police reports, because no one associated with the story would call me back or comment on record.

Then I got lucky.

I was going down the phonebook, calling every funeral home in Temple to see which one was in charge of arrangements. When I struck upon the one, the family was actually at the home. Through the funeral home representative, I not only got a picture of the woman, which went straight out on the AP Wire, the granddaughter even wanted to drop it by the office. To top it off, she didn't mind being interviewed.

So tomorrow, my little Temple Daily Telegram story will go out, and it will probably be the only one in print on Wednesday that has a quote from the family. But that's not why this was such a lucky break.

Today, during my interview with the granddaughter, I got a glimpse of what it's like to tell a real story. Not just numbers from the latest budget, or where the next highway will go, but one of the ever-so-tragic, ever-so-beautiful stories of human existence. Because the woman who died loved everyone she met, her granddaughter told me, and because the driver had also treated her lovingly for the last two years. She was perfectly happy living out her final years comfortably at a nursing home, with her family nearby, stuck in a wheelchair, but not really caring. The granddaughter told me that the last time she saw her grandmother was the day before she died. She had taken her grandmother a straberry malt, which she said was the best malt she'd ever had. Then she wanted her granddaughter to paint her nails for her, because they had chipped and she had a doctor's appointment the next day.

To think that, because of the actions of someone who cared for her sincerely and who will no doubt be devestated by his actions, this woman died in a parking lot, trapped in a shuttle van, slowly suffocating, succumbing to the heat, it breaks my heart. But as the granddaughter told me about her last visit, her watery eyes looking far away even though it was only two days ago, she was smiling.

And I don't know what to think of this story, because it makes me feel all kinds of mixed up inside, and yet, I have a feeling that's why it strikes me as so true, because I've been reading Tim O'Brien and, as he says

In a true war story, if there's a moral at all, it's like the thread that makes the cloth. You can't tease it out. You can't extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, there's nothing much to say aobut a true war story, except maybe "Oh." ... Often in a true war story, there is not even a point...

A newspaper article could never really do this story justice, with its stylistic limitations and its obligation as a keeper of public record to every fact great and small.

But I'm exhausted. I worked all day. Here it is, my attempt. I hope I came close, for this woman's sake, for her family's sake, for the story's sake.

By MATT WRIGHT

For more than two years Hazel Forsythe had the same routine before doctor appointments.

She would get into the Sunrise Oaks Health Care shuttle van, aided by her regular driver and a wheelchair lift on back, and meet her daughter at Scott and White Memorial Hospital. An hour or so later, they would wait together until the van picked up Ms. Forsythe and took her home.

The driver, Ms. Forsythe's granddaughter Cherri Robinson said, was always "very loving toward her, helping her to get out of the van."

But now Temple police are investigating criminal charges against that driver after he left 87-year-old Ms. Forsythe trapped inside the vehicle for more than four hours Tuesday afternoon, Sgt. Brad Hunt said Wednesday.

Ms. Forsythe was pronounced dead by Justice of the Peace G.W. Ivey at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, shortly after the driver found her slumped over in the back of the van.

The district attorney is waiting for autopsy results before deciding whether to file charges, Hunt said. Heat was likely the cause, he said, since the van was left in an uncovered parking lot with the windows up during the hottest part of the day.

According to a release from the Temple Police Department, the driver — who police would identify only as a 49-year-old Temple man — told investigators that he picked up Ms. Forsythe from Scott and White at around 12:15 p.m. She was the only passenger on the trip back to Sunrise Oaks.

At the nursing home, the driver parked the van and went inside to attend to "personal matters," the report said, leaving Ms. Forsythe in the van. He then left the property in his personal vehicle.

The driver said he returned to work at about 4:30 p.m. and drove the van to Scott and White to pick up another patient. Upon arrival, he discovered Ms. Forsythe still inside the van.

At that time, Hunt said, the driver apparently panicked and began to drive back to Sunrise Oaks. He called the nursing home on his cell phone while driving, and administrators there advised him to pull over and call authorities.

The driver could face charges of injury to an elderly person, criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter. Injury to an elderly person and criminally negligent homicide are punishable by up to two years in state jail. A manslaughter conviction carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Police are not investigating any criminal charges against Sunrise Oaks Health Care.

Ms. Robinson said that although her grandmother had been confined to a wheelchair, she had no other serious ailments.

"Her doctor's report yesterday was the best one she's had in a long time," Ms. Robinson said.

Ms. Forsythe began living at Sunrise Oaks in 1999, she said. Her daughter visited her three to four times a week, and other area family members would stop by occasionally. Ms. Robinson said there were never any problems with the nursing home before Tuesday.

"She was very happy. I just saw her Monday afternoon, and she was in such good spirits," Ms. Robinson said.

She said the actions of the driver, whose name she did not know, were inexplicable.

"(The driver) parked in a regular parking place (instead of the passenger drop-off area), went in and talked to them about something, and then left. I don't understand his thinking of what could be so important that he would just forget," she said.

She also had questions about the nursing home's procedures.

"She left at 10 o'clock in the morning, so they didn't check on her for lunch, they didn't check on her when it was time to give her medication. Why did nobody even notice that she wasn't there?"

To her knowledge, the family has not spoken with the nursing home since the incident and no one from Sunrise Oaks has tried to contact them.

Calls by the Telegram to the nursing home were not returned Wednesday.

Ms. Robinson said her grandmother was a friendly woman, who loved being with her family. After Ms. Forsythe's husband died in 1971, she moved from Cleburne to Troy in 1987 to be with her only daughter.

"She loved everybody. I don't think she ever met a person she did not like," Ms. Robinson said.

She feels lucky to have visited Ms. Forsythe one last time.

"I stopped and bought her a strawberry malt. I took it to her, and she just lit up like a little child. She said it was the best malt she'd ever had.

"Her nail polish was chipped, and she was going to the doctor the next day, so she wanted me to redo her nails. So I redid her nails for her, and we just talked for about an hour and a half," Ms. Robinson said, smiling as her voice tightened.

"It was wonderful."

Graveside services for Ms. Forsythe will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 14, in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Cleburne. Visitation for Ms. Forsythe will be Friday, Aug. 13, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Heartfield Funeral Home in Belton.