Dalmatian90
04-10-2005, 03:38 PM
Community Of Caring Supports A Final Choice
April 10, 2005
By DAVID OWENS, And JESSE LEAVENWORTH Courant Staff Writers CORNWALL -- John Welles had come to an open door in the late spring of last year.
He stood at the threshold, a connoisseur of fine meats, vegetable grower, master fixer of anything mechanical, accumulator, giver, self-reliant Connecticut Yankee. He was, a friend said, "an unstoppable force of nature," 6 feet, 3 inches tall, 250 pounds, a man who would spread his arms and shout skyward on a beautiful day, "Thank you, Lord."
Now, in the late spring of 2004, the 66-year-old Welles had been reduced by cancer that had rotted his spine, numbed his legs and blurred his sight.
With the promise only of further failure, Welles feared becoming a lump in the bed, a burden. "Just sort of here," as he described it in a phone conversation to a cousin on June 10. "Wondering what the hell's going down. Gray. Cold. Bleak. A bit of light. Basically gloomy. I'm wondering what? Where? How?
"I have to work out this checking out," he told the friend, "make some sort of statement. ... I seem to have to go."
The next morning, a fine, clear day with temperatures that would rise into the 70s, Huntington Williams came to John Welles' home. Williams expected to sit with his ailing friend, talk awhile.
Welles had something else in mind.
Williams didn't walk away, and he didn't try to hide his role in what happened next.
The decisions made by both men that day have sent ripples from Cornwall through Superior Court, through the state Capitol and through the minds of anyone who has ever thought about what he or she might do if faced with so difficult a decision.
• • •
John T. Welles' roots ran deep in Cornwall, according to family and friends who agreed to talk about his life and his illness.
His family owned property in the woodsy, Litchfield County town, and after a tour in the Marine Corps and college he settled into a simple life far different from his upbringing as the child of a New York banker.
Welles grew up in Darien and attended the finest boarding schools, including Hotchkiss in Salisbury. Despite a passion to understand how things worked, he did little to satisfy the demands of his teachers.
"He systematically failed all his courses with malice aforethought," his sister, Barbara Welles Bartlett of Fairfield, recalled.
John Welles eventually obtained an equivalency diploma while in the Marines, and then a college degree in English.
By the mid-1960s, he had settled into the pattern that would define his life: summers in Cornwall, Thanksgiving at his sister's home and winters someplace warm. He'd stay with cousins in Antigua and friends in southern California or Hawaii. He would travel the country, often bartering his mechanical skills for meals and gasoline.
"His idea of expenditures were new boots, new pants, new shirt and enough money to pay his taxes," his sister said.
Welles was known as a mechanical genius. He built his Cornwall house from materials he'd recovered from two houses he took down on a nearby farm. He came by vehicles the same way. His yard was often filled with old vehicles, particularly Volkswagens and Jeeps.
There's a story Cornwall people tell of a visit Welles made to a sunny island somewhere. He came across a broken-down Russian hovercraft. The maintenance manual was in Russian, and no one could figure out how to fix the thing. Welles not only repaired the machine, but wrote a manual, from scratch, in English, the story goes.
Welles was generous with his skills. He was a carpenter, a mechanic, an organic farmer, an expert in alternative energy. An early riser, his door was always open to friends who stopped by to discuss their latest projects.
Welles helped Gordon Ridgway, a longtime friend and Cornwall's first selectman, establish his farm and helped another friend, Ian Ingersoll, get started as a cabinetmaker.
Welles had many friends, but he never married, which his sister attributes to their parents' unhappy marriage and her brother's belief that a woman wouldn't tolerate the life he'd chosen.
"He dated some of the most spectacular women I've ever seen," Bartlett recalled. When she asked him why he didn't settle down with one, he'd respond: "She'll never want to live my life."
Welles also had strong views on a range of issues and wasn't shy about sharing them. "People either liked him or couldn't stand him," Ridgway said.
"Since he didn't marry, he was always right," his sister added. "There was never anybody to argue him down. He was huge, and strong in his opinions. I learned very early not to disagree."
On April 1, 2004, Welles returned to Cornwall from Hawaii. He was suffering from back pain, but attributed it to strain as a result of fixing a tractor engine.
By late May, however, the pain had not subsided, and other health problems were arising. As Welles' legs weakened, Ridgway talked him into going to Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington. Ridgway drove, and Welles, leaning on ski poles, hobbled into the emergency room.
Within hours, doctors discovered that Welles was suffering from advanced prostate cancer that had spread into his bones, particularly his spine. The disease, in its advanced stages, weakens the vertebrae and brings "a gnawing, agonizing, toothache kind of pain," said Dr. John Taylor, a urologic cancer specialist and assistant professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center.
Welles spent about a week at Charlotte Hungerford. The machines fascinated him and a steady stream of visitors delighted him. But the first radiation treatment was enough.
"That's all I want," Bartlett recalled her brother saying. "I'm out of here."
Welles went to a nursing home, but quickly grew weary of life there. Welles, Ridgway recalled, decided he didn't want to wither away in that sort of place.
A few days into June, Welles was back at his house in the Cornwall woods. A team organized by friends Lynn Norton and Margaret Cooley provided around-the-clock care and companionship, paying Welles back for his generosity over the years. Throughout the day, people would stop by visit.
"You wanted to soak him up, you wanted to be around," Cooley said. "There were never not people around."
Despite difficulty walking, Welles refused to give in to the illness.
"You had to stay out of Johnny's way," Cooley recalled. "He didn't want to be cosseted one tiny bit."
At the same time, Welles was confronting the reality of his disease. He told everyone he would not become an invalid, reliant on others. At one point, the discussion turned to catheters. Welles said he didn't know what a catheter was.
Norton explained it to him, and Welles laughed, saying, "No way."
"John liked living like John," Ridgway said. "He didn't want to live as half-John. There was nothing halfway about him. He was going to end it on his terms."
"He said to me on the phone, `I have lived a really good life and I have done what I wanted to do and I'm ready for the next phase,'" Bartlett said. "`I'm going to go while I still know what I'm doing, before this stuff gets into my head.'"
The disease progressed rapidly that final week. Welles' vision began to blur. Bumps formed on the back of his neck. But the personality that had endeared him to so many endured. He still had his broad smile, his sense of humor, his Yankee frugality and his passion for food.
In a June 8 conversation recorded by his cousin - transcripts of which were provided by others - he talked about a "door opening and a door closing."
"I'm torn because there's some really good things in the icebox," he said. "I've just had a really good melon and a really good tomato. Now I just need one strawberry, one blueberry, one raspberry, one cantaloupe. I'll have one at a time. And then that's it. I can go out with a grin."
That same day, another friend, Gary Cruse, came over and the two sang spirituals. One was "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
But the cancer was winning. Welles knew he might soon lose control.
"I think I'll probably do it alone," he told his cousin.
"Not violently, because that would be cruel and unfair to everyone else. I'd like to be clear, conscious. Sit at the table and belt back a few pills. ... Then compost the corpse and divide up the tools."
The uncertainty of pills, however, changed his mind. During his tour in the Marines, Welles had come to appreciate the efficiency of firearms.
"A gun is a sure safe thing and ... an efficient way to painlessly kill," he told his sister.
The evening of June 10, Lynn Norton said Welles decided June 11 would be his last day. Norton, who had the watch that night, lay with Welles in his bed, rubbing his back. The relationship, she said, was special, but strictly platonic.
"He said, while we were lying in bed, `If I just lie here and let my breathing get really shallow, maybe I'll just slip away.'"
Welles got up at about 12:30 a.m., had a glass of wine and smoked his pipe.
• • •
At dawn, the birds started to sing and Welles said, "Well, it's another day. Get up and make the coffee."
"I knew he was going to end his life that day," Norton said.
Two men, both close friends of Welles, arrived in the morning and Welles asked one of them to retrieve a handgun that was under a chair. He wouldn't do it.
"I couldn't do it either," Norton said.
Huntington Williams was scheduled to take over from Norton that morning, handling the 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. shift. It was Williams' first time on the scheduled watch, and Norton said she had never met him.
But as soon as Williams arrived, the two began talking about Welles' decision to end his life.
Welles had been close friends with Williams' wife, Rebecca, a Cornwall native who was active in town affairs. Welles watched as she endured, and ultimately died of, cancer about 10 years earlier. He also saw how Williams cared for her through her ordeal.
"That's how John knew how horrid cancer was, because of Becky," Bartlett said.
"I don't want to live like that," Welles told his sister.
Although by all accounts Williams didn't know about Welles' plan before that morning, Norton said she feels Williams' arrival was preordained. He was the right guy at the right time.
"Hunt" Williams, his neighbors say, is a man who cares about people. He'd go early to the Episcopal church to turn up the thermostat. The 74-year-old retired teacher serves on the local volunteer ambulance squad and responds to almost every call.
"No matter the time of day, no matter what the weather is, no matter what else is going on, I can count on Hunt," Skip Kosciusko, a leader of the town's ambulance corps, said.
Added Ridgway, "Hunt isn't a guy to walk away from a difficult situation."
But Welles wanted Norton to leave first. It was a guy thing. He was trying to make it easy for everyone, Norton said. She gave him a big hug and a kiss and left.
Williams - who declined to be interviewed but whose actions that day are laid out by authorities in court records - walked Norton to her car.
"John needs to do this," she told Williams. "Are you able to do this with him?"
Williams said that he could "honor John's wishes."
Williams returned to the house and the men talked some more about Welles' decision. Though weak, Welles retrieved a .38-caliber revolver from a paper bag in his bedroom.
"The gun was in bad shape," Williams said later, according to court records. "John had a hard time getting the cylinder open, so I opened it for him. I looked through the gun to make sure it was clear and clean. I ran a bore brush through the gun to clean it. I then gave it back to him."
Welles loaded six bullets into the gun, then asked Williams to carry it outside for him while he struggled out with his walker. After several days of gray, drizzly weather, that sky was clear and blue.
The two men then talked about the best place to aim the weapon. Williams and Welles shook hands, and Welles lay down on the ground.
Williams walked down the driveway.
Welles called out, asking if Williams was still nearby.
Williams assured Welles that he was, and, as he was about to say, "God bless," he heard the crack of a single gunshot.
Williams walked back into the house and called 911.
The state police, recognizing the case to be an assisted suicide, which is illegal in Connecticut, called in detectives to conduct a full investigation that resulted in a charge of second-degree manslaughter. On Thursday, Williams was granted a special form of probation in a move that largely brought the criminal phase of the story to a close.
When police arrived on the scene that day, Williams freely answered the officers' questions and explained what happened that morning.
He ended his statement by telling the police: "This is what John wanted. I had a comfortable feeling that this was right for him, knowing the man."
April 10, 2005
By DAVID OWENS, And JESSE LEAVENWORTH Courant Staff Writers CORNWALL -- John Welles had come to an open door in the late spring of last year.
He stood at the threshold, a connoisseur of fine meats, vegetable grower, master fixer of anything mechanical, accumulator, giver, self-reliant Connecticut Yankee. He was, a friend said, "an unstoppable force of nature," 6 feet, 3 inches tall, 250 pounds, a man who would spread his arms and shout skyward on a beautiful day, "Thank you, Lord."
Now, in the late spring of 2004, the 66-year-old Welles had been reduced by cancer that had rotted his spine, numbed his legs and blurred his sight.
With the promise only of further failure, Welles feared becoming a lump in the bed, a burden. "Just sort of here," as he described it in a phone conversation to a cousin on June 10. "Wondering what the hell's going down. Gray. Cold. Bleak. A bit of light. Basically gloomy. I'm wondering what? Where? How?
"I have to work out this checking out," he told the friend, "make some sort of statement. ... I seem to have to go."
The next morning, a fine, clear day with temperatures that would rise into the 70s, Huntington Williams came to John Welles' home. Williams expected to sit with his ailing friend, talk awhile.
Welles had something else in mind.
Williams didn't walk away, and he didn't try to hide his role in what happened next.
The decisions made by both men that day have sent ripples from Cornwall through Superior Court, through the state Capitol and through the minds of anyone who has ever thought about what he or she might do if faced with so difficult a decision.
• • •
John T. Welles' roots ran deep in Cornwall, according to family and friends who agreed to talk about his life and his illness.
His family owned property in the woodsy, Litchfield County town, and after a tour in the Marine Corps and college he settled into a simple life far different from his upbringing as the child of a New York banker.
Welles grew up in Darien and attended the finest boarding schools, including Hotchkiss in Salisbury. Despite a passion to understand how things worked, he did little to satisfy the demands of his teachers.
"He systematically failed all his courses with malice aforethought," his sister, Barbara Welles Bartlett of Fairfield, recalled.
John Welles eventually obtained an equivalency diploma while in the Marines, and then a college degree in English.
By the mid-1960s, he had settled into the pattern that would define his life: summers in Cornwall, Thanksgiving at his sister's home and winters someplace warm. He'd stay with cousins in Antigua and friends in southern California or Hawaii. He would travel the country, often bartering his mechanical skills for meals and gasoline.
"His idea of expenditures were new boots, new pants, new shirt and enough money to pay his taxes," his sister said.
Welles was known as a mechanical genius. He built his Cornwall house from materials he'd recovered from two houses he took down on a nearby farm. He came by vehicles the same way. His yard was often filled with old vehicles, particularly Volkswagens and Jeeps.
There's a story Cornwall people tell of a visit Welles made to a sunny island somewhere. He came across a broken-down Russian hovercraft. The maintenance manual was in Russian, and no one could figure out how to fix the thing. Welles not only repaired the machine, but wrote a manual, from scratch, in English, the story goes.
Welles was generous with his skills. He was a carpenter, a mechanic, an organic farmer, an expert in alternative energy. An early riser, his door was always open to friends who stopped by to discuss their latest projects.
Welles helped Gordon Ridgway, a longtime friend and Cornwall's first selectman, establish his farm and helped another friend, Ian Ingersoll, get started as a cabinetmaker.
Welles had many friends, but he never married, which his sister attributes to their parents' unhappy marriage and her brother's belief that a woman wouldn't tolerate the life he'd chosen.
"He dated some of the most spectacular women I've ever seen," Bartlett recalled. When she asked him why he didn't settle down with one, he'd respond: "She'll never want to live my life."
Welles also had strong views on a range of issues and wasn't shy about sharing them. "People either liked him or couldn't stand him," Ridgway said.
"Since he didn't marry, he was always right," his sister added. "There was never anybody to argue him down. He was huge, and strong in his opinions. I learned very early not to disagree."
On April 1, 2004, Welles returned to Cornwall from Hawaii. He was suffering from back pain, but attributed it to strain as a result of fixing a tractor engine.
By late May, however, the pain had not subsided, and other health problems were arising. As Welles' legs weakened, Ridgway talked him into going to Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington. Ridgway drove, and Welles, leaning on ski poles, hobbled into the emergency room.
Within hours, doctors discovered that Welles was suffering from advanced prostate cancer that had spread into his bones, particularly his spine. The disease, in its advanced stages, weakens the vertebrae and brings "a gnawing, agonizing, toothache kind of pain," said Dr. John Taylor, a urologic cancer specialist and assistant professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center.
Welles spent about a week at Charlotte Hungerford. The machines fascinated him and a steady stream of visitors delighted him. But the first radiation treatment was enough.
"That's all I want," Bartlett recalled her brother saying. "I'm out of here."
Welles went to a nursing home, but quickly grew weary of life there. Welles, Ridgway recalled, decided he didn't want to wither away in that sort of place.
A few days into June, Welles was back at his house in the Cornwall woods. A team organized by friends Lynn Norton and Margaret Cooley provided around-the-clock care and companionship, paying Welles back for his generosity over the years. Throughout the day, people would stop by visit.
"You wanted to soak him up, you wanted to be around," Cooley said. "There were never not people around."
Despite difficulty walking, Welles refused to give in to the illness.
"You had to stay out of Johnny's way," Cooley recalled. "He didn't want to be cosseted one tiny bit."
At the same time, Welles was confronting the reality of his disease. He told everyone he would not become an invalid, reliant on others. At one point, the discussion turned to catheters. Welles said he didn't know what a catheter was.
Norton explained it to him, and Welles laughed, saying, "No way."
"John liked living like John," Ridgway said. "He didn't want to live as half-John. There was nothing halfway about him. He was going to end it on his terms."
"He said to me on the phone, `I have lived a really good life and I have done what I wanted to do and I'm ready for the next phase,'" Bartlett said. "`I'm going to go while I still know what I'm doing, before this stuff gets into my head.'"
The disease progressed rapidly that final week. Welles' vision began to blur. Bumps formed on the back of his neck. But the personality that had endeared him to so many endured. He still had his broad smile, his sense of humor, his Yankee frugality and his passion for food.
In a June 8 conversation recorded by his cousin - transcripts of which were provided by others - he talked about a "door opening and a door closing."
"I'm torn because there's some really good things in the icebox," he said. "I've just had a really good melon and a really good tomato. Now I just need one strawberry, one blueberry, one raspberry, one cantaloupe. I'll have one at a time. And then that's it. I can go out with a grin."
That same day, another friend, Gary Cruse, came over and the two sang spirituals. One was "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
But the cancer was winning. Welles knew he might soon lose control.
"I think I'll probably do it alone," he told his cousin.
"Not violently, because that would be cruel and unfair to everyone else. I'd like to be clear, conscious. Sit at the table and belt back a few pills. ... Then compost the corpse and divide up the tools."
The uncertainty of pills, however, changed his mind. During his tour in the Marines, Welles had come to appreciate the efficiency of firearms.
"A gun is a sure safe thing and ... an efficient way to painlessly kill," he told his sister.
The evening of June 10, Lynn Norton said Welles decided June 11 would be his last day. Norton, who had the watch that night, lay with Welles in his bed, rubbing his back. The relationship, she said, was special, but strictly platonic.
"He said, while we were lying in bed, `If I just lie here and let my breathing get really shallow, maybe I'll just slip away.'"
Welles got up at about 12:30 a.m., had a glass of wine and smoked his pipe.
• • •
At dawn, the birds started to sing and Welles said, "Well, it's another day. Get up and make the coffee."
"I knew he was going to end his life that day," Norton said.
Two men, both close friends of Welles, arrived in the morning and Welles asked one of them to retrieve a handgun that was under a chair. He wouldn't do it.
"I couldn't do it either," Norton said.
Huntington Williams was scheduled to take over from Norton that morning, handling the 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. shift. It was Williams' first time on the scheduled watch, and Norton said she had never met him.
But as soon as Williams arrived, the two began talking about Welles' decision to end his life.
Welles had been close friends with Williams' wife, Rebecca, a Cornwall native who was active in town affairs. Welles watched as she endured, and ultimately died of, cancer about 10 years earlier. He also saw how Williams cared for her through her ordeal.
"That's how John knew how horrid cancer was, because of Becky," Bartlett said.
"I don't want to live like that," Welles told his sister.
Although by all accounts Williams didn't know about Welles' plan before that morning, Norton said she feels Williams' arrival was preordained. He was the right guy at the right time.
"Hunt" Williams, his neighbors say, is a man who cares about people. He'd go early to the Episcopal church to turn up the thermostat. The 74-year-old retired teacher serves on the local volunteer ambulance squad and responds to almost every call.
"No matter the time of day, no matter what the weather is, no matter what else is going on, I can count on Hunt," Skip Kosciusko, a leader of the town's ambulance corps, said.
Added Ridgway, "Hunt isn't a guy to walk away from a difficult situation."
But Welles wanted Norton to leave first. It was a guy thing. He was trying to make it easy for everyone, Norton said. She gave him a big hug and a kiss and left.
Williams - who declined to be interviewed but whose actions that day are laid out by authorities in court records - walked Norton to her car.
"John needs to do this," she told Williams. "Are you able to do this with him?"
Williams said that he could "honor John's wishes."
Williams returned to the house and the men talked some more about Welles' decision. Though weak, Welles retrieved a .38-caliber revolver from a paper bag in his bedroom.
"The gun was in bad shape," Williams said later, according to court records. "John had a hard time getting the cylinder open, so I opened it for him. I looked through the gun to make sure it was clear and clean. I ran a bore brush through the gun to clean it. I then gave it back to him."
Welles loaded six bullets into the gun, then asked Williams to carry it outside for him while he struggled out with his walker. After several days of gray, drizzly weather, that sky was clear and blue.
The two men then talked about the best place to aim the weapon. Williams and Welles shook hands, and Welles lay down on the ground.
Williams walked down the driveway.
Welles called out, asking if Williams was still nearby.
Williams assured Welles that he was, and, as he was about to say, "God bless," he heard the crack of a single gunshot.
Williams walked back into the house and called 911.
The state police, recognizing the case to be an assisted suicide, which is illegal in Connecticut, called in detectives to conduct a full investigation that resulted in a charge of second-degree manslaughter. On Thursday, Williams was granted a special form of probation in a move that largely brought the criminal phase of the story to a close.
When police arrived on the scene that day, Williams freely answered the officers' questions and explained what happened that morning.
He ended his statement by telling the police: "This is what John wanted. I had a comfortable feeling that this was right for him, knowing the man."