A Road to Despair

The Columbian (Vancouver, WA.)
December 29, 1994, Thursday

A ROAD TO DESPAIR

BYLINE: By BRETT OPPEGAARD The Columbian
SECTION: A section; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 1468 words

    STEVENSON -- The tires on Ernie and Velma Stewart's four-wheel drive pickup spun wildly, then stopped. The surroundings looked unfamiliar, especially in the foot-deep snow, but Ernie insisted they were just a few steps from dinner at their nice warm Washougal home after an afternoon of bowling.
    He grabbed his bowling ball and hopped out. Velma, his wife, 77, followed.
    The next morning an elk hunter found Ernie huddled in the snow. The 70-year-old had spent the night on the side of the road between Dougan Falls and Stevenson, but Velma was nowhere to be found. Ernie told the hunter she must have made it home.
    On the way back to town, they found Velma. She was lying about 100 yards from the pickup, where she had died of exposure.
    Their nearby truck was equipped with a citizens band radio and nearly a full tank of gas enough to idle the engine and run the heater all night, said Dennis Warren, a deputy sheriff in Skamania County. Even without turning the heater on, they both would have survived if they had stayed inside the truck.
    Unfortunately, the common sense to make that decision was no longer available. Instead, it marked a sad ending to the couple's fight against getting old.
Retirement
    After working at the Camas paper mill for 30 years, Ernie retired at age 59, bought a motor home and had grand plans of becoming a full-time tourist with Velma. His grasp on Ernie's American Dream was firm.
    Time was his. All his.
    At first, he enjoyed the independence. He went fishing and bowling whenever he wanted. No time card to punch. Never in a hurry.
    The bliss didn't last long though. Within months, post-retirement depression set in, then dementia a general term for memory loss due to age. Not only did he feel as though he was no longer a productive person in society, he also was easily confused. Velma started showing signs of dementia a short time later. Their children suspected both had Alzheimer's disease, a specific form of dementia.
    Dr. David M. Smith, Ernie's geriatrics psychiatrist at Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center, said typical symptoms of dementia include memory loss, geographical disorientation and a change in personality.
    During the previous four years, those symptoms had become progressively more severe in the Stewarts. It ranged from misplacing keys to repeating conversations to forgetting where their children lived. By the time Velma was found dead on Dec. 10, they had become complete opposites of their former selves.
    "We tried everything we could to help them," daughter Elsie Janson said. "They just wouldn't let us."
    The children visited two crisis centers and went through several lawyers in an attempt to force the Stewarts to get help. Ernie and Velma wouldn't allow it.
    "Without their consent, we couldn't do anything," Janson said. "At the end, we were the enemy. Mom and Dad thought they were fine. They just wanted us to leave them alone."
    The problem was Ernie and Velma weren't fine. They were lost in a world they could no longer understand.
The symptoms
    When she was younger, Velma took pride in her appearance and the closeness of her family. She kept an immaculate house, dressed well and insisted on a pure lifestyle. In her home, there was to be no cussing, no stealing, no drinking, and the kids were never spanked.
    During the past few years, a metamorphosis occurred. Velma began shoplifting. She eventually had to drive to Vancouver to get groceries because every store in Camas had banned her.
    She stopped bathing every day. Once a week, before church, was it, she insisted. "I haven't been sweating," she told her children.
    The food in her refrigerator rotted. Piles of dirt began to form in corners. The house became a sty.
    Ernie changed, too.
    In his younger days, he was peaceful, quiet, a hard worker. He loved to spend time outdoors or working with wood. He relished a game of cards or a night out dancing with his wife.
    After retirement, Ernie's passions seemed to slowly fade away, said his son, Ernest M. Stewart.
    Recently, swear words had became his father's most common adjectives, Ernest said, and he started to punch his wife.
    Ernie and Velma began spending most of their time sitting around the house drinking and smoking, even though they'd never been much for either. Until recently, Velma hadn't even picked up a cigarette in 25 years.
    Neither wanted to go anywhere. Neither wanted to see anybody.
    If the couple did visit their daughter, they would only stay two or three minutes before saying it was time to go, Janson said. "They'd barely have their coats off, and Mom would say she had to get Dad home to cook him dinner," Janson said. "We'd tell them that we'd take care of it and try to get them to stay, but they just would not stay."
    There were three musts for the new Ernie and Velma: Ernie had to go bowling. Velma had to wear a pink sweater, blue tennis shoes and listen to Elvis, and they always had to be home for dinner chicken legs and vegetables.
    Another visible sign of the Stewarts' decline was their extremely poor driving.
    Ernie often would get lost, and his erratic steering was reported to police several times. Velma began running red lights. At times, both drove the wrong way on one-way streets.
    Last May, Velma turned east onto the westbound lanes of Highway 14 near Interstate 205, smashed into a motorcyclist and kept going. She didn't even stop when a horde of police cars surrounded her. They finally forced her off the road in Camas, more than eight miles away. She was given three citations including hit and run and reckless driving.
    The officers had her car towed, but she paid the impound fee and drove to the grocery store later that night.
    Ernie was nearly as bad behind the steering wheel. After an accident in November, he was asked to retake the driving test, which he failed miserably.
    But he still went home with his license intact. The licensing officer gave him some books to study before a retest.
    "We don't take licenses away on the first try," Judy Manduley, an office supervisor at the Department of Licensing, said. "There are certain procedures we must follow."
    "The person giving Dad the test said he was the worst driver he had ever seen," step-son James Walker said. "But they wouldn't take away his license. If they wouldn't do it, there was no way I could get him to stop driving."
A snowy night
    On Dec. 10, Velma and Ernie were returning from Riverside Bowl in Camas when Ernie missed the turn to go home.
    To get to his house, Ernie needed to get on the Washougal River Road and then turn left on Blair Road. It was pretty simple and something he had done countless times. On this particular afternoon, he blew right past Blair Road, and about an hour later, ended up in Skamania County.
    At around, 5:30 p.m., they turned onto the main road between Dougan Falls and Stevenson a path often impassible in winter, according to police reports.
    They followed that road for more than six miles before the truck became stuck in the snow.
    "Nobody who was thinking properly would have continued," sheriff's deputy Warren said. "They should have turned back."
    After leaving the truck, they both fell several times and quickly reached the point of exhaustion.
    More than 16 hours later, an elk hunter driving toward Stevenson spotted a bowling ball in the middle of the road. He found Ernie nearby, nearly a mile from the truck. A flock of birds helped them locate Velma.
Too late
    Janson said she knew something was wrong that day when she called her parents' house about 4:30 p.m., and they weren't there.
    She had phoned to tell her mother she was coming to get her. She was ready to serve Ernie with a restraining order and take Velma to a foster home. The room was paid for and waiting.
    "The whole thing was almost a joke," Janson said. "We couldn't get any system to support us. They would tell us it's not against the law to get old. It's not against the law to be dirty. They would say we didn't have any rights. If our parents don't want the help, we can't do anything about it."
    The epitome of the family's struggle came with a call to a crisis center in Vancouver. The person answering the telephone told Janson that there was nothing the center could do.
    "I said, So you're telling me I have to wait until something horrible like a death happens before we can do anything,' " Janson said. "She said, Yeah, I guess you're right.' "
    Velma was buried in the Camas Cemetery on Dec. 14.
    After initial treatment for frostbite, Ernie was transferred to the Veterans Affairs medical center's psychiatric ward for testing. Tuesday, he was moved to Hillhaven, an assisted-care facility in Vancouver. He still has his driver's license.