BillLindau

Meeting Patty Duke

Patty Duke: A real white knight
Published in The Moore County Independent, Oct. 12, 2006
SPECIAL TO THE INDEPENDENT
I remember little of "The Patty Duke Show" except for the theme, "...You can lose your mind/when cousins are two of a kind." and loved this woman's heart-rending performance as the drugged-out Neely O'Hara in "Valley of the Dolls." Now I have fallen in love with Patty Duke all over again, after her speech Sept. 30 at Sandhills Community College.
Duke didn't talk so much about her career as she did her own ordeal with bipolar disorder. It was a story about her the moviegoing public didn't know at the time. And I got the feeling she was not aiming to plug her new book as to speak up on the plight of people with bipolar disorder and other psychiatric maladies.
And there are a lot of those people.
I honestly believe her speech in the Ruth Pauley Lecture Series was the best news assignment I've ever had.
It wasn't just meeting a movie star, it was the unexpected reaction to her speech that had me so gobsmacked. At her question and answer slot at the end of her speech, a number of people in the audience spoke up and said they suffered from bipolar disorder themselves. One had a relative who needed treatment for it; another said she was being treated for schizophrenia.
I think, about 30 to 40 years ago, a lot of these people would've kept it a secret and taken it to their graves. Now, undergoing mental therapy does not have the stigma it once did, not among the more enlightened of us; in fact, people who decide to seek such help often receive a pat on the back from their friends and relative. And we know there are plenty of people who don't seek treatment that certainly need it.
People with psychiatric disorders deserve all the support and encouragement they can get as they deal with their problems. And Patty Duke showed how much she was behind them with her speech.
She showed you don't need a horse and a suit of armor to be a white knight. With her work with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), her lobbying of Congress and her own candid autobiography, "Call Me Anna" along with "A Brilliant Madness", she is indeed a white knight.
Come to think of it, there are a lot of people who wouldn't have talked about their therapy until the night they came to Patty Duke's speech.
"I think a lot of them felt encouraged by that first person," a fellow audience member told me. "And that kind of started the ball rolling."
Just before the first of those patients admitted her disorder, I asked a question of my own during that question-and-answer period. But it was about her sons McKenzie and Sean following in their mother's thespian footsteps. She said something like, "Oh, boy," and then talked about how she was proud of them and how she loved playing with her grandchildren.
At first I was going to ask how much of her own situation she put into the character of Neely O'Hara. But then I figured there was too great a chance of that question sounding somewhat less than tactful so I stuck to a show-business question.
During the questions that followed, I came up with something I wanted to say to her at the reception that followed in the college's Kennedy Building. (I knew she did not have time for a full-blown newspaper interview, and figured I'd be lucky if I got to talk to her at all.
Everybody went there and she signed copies of both her books. I did not buy one of her books (I did the next day, though), but she signed my program for me. I told her I was the one who asked the question about her sons.
"Oh, that was you," Duke said with a sly grin.
"It was," I said. "I also want to tell you that it was great that those people had the courage to speak up about their illnesses. You know, I underwent therapy myself, when I was 20 and then a few years ago. I wanted to carry it to my grave."
"Thank you," she said. "It's not something you should carry to their graves."
Then she asked me my name and signed my program.
It wasn't much of a conversation, and she must have talked to hundreds of people that night.
But what happened the next day was equally surprising.
I attended her Oct. 1 appearance at the Pinehurst Village Hall. I wasn't after another autograph, but I sat in the assembly room for a few minutes.
Just as Patty was coming to the podium, she looked at me, waved and said "How you doing?"
I'll never forget the smile she flashed at me as long as I lived. I wish I'd gotten a photo of that instant.
And I'll never forget the great, relieved feeling after my little confession to her the day before.
In the past, the only people outside my therapy teams were my very small family and five highly trusted friends (maybe not even that many). Now I don't feel like hiding it. I won't go into any more detail about my therapy, but I don't care who knows about it.
As long as they cut me some slack, such as hiring me or becoming my friend.
When I was 20 years old, I would never have dreamed of admitting I underwent therapy to a beautiful movie star.
Some people who read this may think I was out of my mind.
That's fine. You're all entitled to your opinions.
But I'll never forget what happened when I saw Patty Duke.
And I wouldn't trade the wonderful feeling that came over me for anything on God's Green Earth.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 11:45 AM