Journal of Sacred Work

Your first day of school, Your last day of work. Your birth date. The day your mother died.

Many dates are paintings in the museum of my heart. Some I stand & enjoy. Others I wish I had never seen & cannot avoid.

Each time we truly look the same paintings are different because we are different. 

July 1, 1983 my first day as CEO of Ohio's largest hospital, Riverside Methodist, is the date of a painting I love. I felt like a comet racing across the sky unaware that the universe will set it on fire.

This morning, I realized that on July 1, 2022 I will be twice the 39 years I was then. All the days between taught me to celebrate successful moments as ways to survive defeats that are sure to accompany those who work in courtrooms & hospitals.

Just three weeks later, while waiting to meet Don Ayers, President of Columbus' second largest hospital, Grant Medical Center, I heard a terrible thud outside the window of the first floor Administration office. A suicidal patient had broken an 8th floor window & jumped to his death. This tragedy should not have happened. The weight of responsibility rose. 

When Ayers arrived he said, "I hope this is not a bad omen." 

It was.

For him in terrible ways*. For Riverside in others. 

Six Months Later

At 4:30 p.m. on December 30, 1983 fellow employees Patricia Mattix & Joyce McFadden were finishing their day's work in a research lab fifty feet from where I sat. Holiday decorations & music lingered. 

Minutes after Joyce left for a break an intruder forced Pat to lie face down on the linoleum floor. Her hands & feet were tied behind their back. Stabbed multiple times, she died quickly. Her body was stuffed into the lab's freezer.

At 5:00 p.m. Dr. Ed Bope, Family Practice Director, entered my office. "Erie, one of our employees has been murdered," he said, his face pale. 

"Are you sure she's dead?" I asked. 

"You don't need to be a doctor to tell she's dead," he continued. "Come with me."

Telling my assistant, Elaine Jenkins, to call security I made the short walk to the lab with Dr. Bope.

In the seven years before entering hospital leadership in Toledo I served as a trial attorney & federal prosecutor. I had been trained to deal with crimes & criminals. Neither I nor the hospital had been prepared  to deal with this murder scene. 

Lying on the floor of the lab lay a blood-drained body. It was not Pat.

Fate had returned Joyce from her break too soon. She had come face to face with Pat's murderer. He tied up Joyce, stabbed her fourteen times & left her to die in a pool of her own blood. 

A bloodless body looks more mannequin than human, making the truth even more surreal. 

Compared to today's headlines of workplace violence, hospital-based murders were rare in 1983. We had plans for every kind of emergency except something like this.

More unimaginable tragedy lay ahead.

As if following a crazy calendar with six month disaster cycles, in the summer of 1984 a prisoner being treated in Riverside's basement lab stole his guard's gun & took hostages.

How do you lead a hospital amid such nightmares?

In "Self Portrait," David Whyte challenges himself & us:

….I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

Coming next. Part III: The Riverside Curse? The Team that Turned Tragedy Into Triumph 

-Erie Chapman

For more on the murders & their sequelae consult my book, Radical Loving Care. 

*After I became founding President of U..S Health Corp. (OhioHealth) we acquired Grand Medical Center & Don Ayers was displaced. In 2008 he & his second wife were convicted of multiple counts of fraud. He was sentenced to 15 years & was not scheduled for parole until this year.