A remarkable story surfaced in Phoenix last week. Maybe you heard or read about it. But I have the inside story as to how it came about.
You probably know that retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor left office to take care of her husband John, who has Alzheimer's. John lives in a facility near Phoenix that cares for patients with dementia. When he first moved there he was depressed, and his health was declining. That part of the story was, of course, out of the public view -- a family's private grief.
But sometimes strange things happen in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Sometimes they form emotional and even romantic attachments to other patients. These "mistaken attachments," as they're called, occur fairly frequently, and families rarely talk about them.
But the O'Connor family has lived a public life. The justice herself was open about her bout with breast cancer. And so, when KPNX-TV's
Veronica Sanchez was working on a story about mistaken attachments and coincidentally came across John's story, it was nothing short of heroic that this public family would allow the private story to be told to focus the public's attention on something that was, until now, a hidden shame.
I hope you will read the interview I did with Veronica and KPNX special projects producer Bert Sass. How did they make sure they told an important story without sensationalizing it? First you may want to watch a couple of versions of the story.
Here is a link to KPNX's story.
Here is a version of the story by NBC Nightly News (see the "New Chapter for O'Connor" link under the Tuesday, Nov. 13 section).
Here is USA Today's story, along with a related
opinion piece.
Q. How did you find this story?
A. Sanchez: In two words -- dumb luck. I had set up a story about mistaken attachments at another Alzheimer’s nursing home facility in Phoenix, but at the last minute all that fell apart. The woman helping me set up the story referred me to the Huger Mercy Living Center. Before that, I was ready to pull the plug on the whole thing. The director at Huger told me she had two families willing to speak on camera but that only the sons would be doing the interviews. When I pressed to speak to the wife in question, that’s when I discovered the wife was Sandra Day O’Connor. I dropped the phone. The rest is history I guess.
Q. I would imagine many people would recoil from the story idea, saying it is too personal to report. Others would have dismissed it as impossible to nail down. What was your gut reaction when you heard about it? How did you think through the question of "why is this news?"
A. Sanchez: Well, I dropped the phone, so that pretty much captures my gut reaction. I called the director back several times before the shoot to make sure we had permission from Sandra Day O’Connor and all the other families involved (I would have done that anyway), but I honestly didn't believe it until Scott O’Connor [Sandra Day O'Connor's son] was sitting next to me. The question of whether this is news or "too personal" is very simple for me. The family said they wanted to bring awareness to the reality of Alzheimer’s, that they are not alone. From the moment the camera rolled, that was our objective.
Sass: Certainly Sandra Day O’Connor is still a public figure. Her family’s involvement obviously changed the approach to this story -- but not its primary message. We wanted to do a story on a specific condition of some Alzheimer’s patients. I don’t know that we would have pursued the O’Connor family for this story if they had not stepped forward to be part of it. Granted, it is a more interesting story because it involves a former Supreme Court justice, but Veronica reported the story in a way that would also provide a public service as the O’Connors asked.
Q. How did you go about verifying the story? What obstacles were in the way, and how did you overcome them?
Scott was our sole contact. He had direct permission from his mother. I trusted that. ... The director at Huger gave us permission to shoot anything we wanted. And when we weren’t sure of something, we asked. Bert did a tremendous job assuring the family of our intentions.
Q. This story would not have happened without the O'Connor family's help and permission. Why did the family cooperate?
Sanchez: Awareness. I believe in my heart that she wanted to tell this story. Otherwise we wouldn’t have ever gotten through the front door.
Q. What ethical concerns did you have about showing Mr. O'Connor and Kay, the woman with whom he struck up a friendship? How did you make the decisions on what to show or not to show?
Sanchez: We had some concerns. First of all, this story is hard for a logical person to understand. We didn’t follow Scott and his father all day long, only for a few minutes really. He was there to visit his dad, so at some point I decided to turn the camera off and allow the two a visit without the cameras. The picture with John and Kay holding hands was tricky, but it was happening right in front of us. We got two or three shots and moved on. Scott seemed OK with it, but I could tell he didn’t want us to overdo it, and I don’t think we did. We kept our distance out of respect.
Q. How has the public reacted to this story? How has the family reacted?
A. Sanchez: There’s been a tremendous amount of reaction from very positive to very bad. The family says they got incredible feedback from the Alzheimer’s community and that it was all positive. I feel we did our job.
Sass: Scott told me he was satisfied with the way Veronica and photojournalist Garrett Wichmann handled the story and that he received positive feedback from others in the Alzheimer’s community. However, he did say that one family member heard about the story after the fact and disagreed with the decision to go public because he thought it should be a private matter. I’ve heard that some blogs had the same opinion but were not aware of how willingly the O’Connors participated.
Q. What were the biggest lessons you learned from this project?
A. Sanchez: Humility. To tell this personal story is a privilege. I felt a lot of pressure to not only be accurate but super sensitive, which as you know is sometimes hard to do in general news.
Sass: It proved to me that we can do a story that is potentially sensational and yet handle it with sensitivity. Veronica, Garrett and our promo producers carefully walked the line in the way they did the story and the promo.
Also, I was pleased and impressed that other Gannett stations, NBC and
USA Today all apparently took seriously our appeals for sensitivity in handling the content we had originated. From what I’ve seen, they did just that, even though the network and
USA Today did their own versions of the story.
I like the way the USA Today opinion piece sums up its admiration for the O'Connor family's decision to go public with the story:
As the baby boom generation ages, more Americans are going to have to face the challenges of Alzheimer's. Already, about 5 million, most older than 65, are living with Alzheimer's. Someone develops the disease every 72 seconds. Without a cure, 7.7 million Americans are likely to suffer by 2030 and as many as 16 million by the middle of the century.
Caring for them is an enormous challenge. A patient changes slowly — from mild forgetfulness to a range of behaviors that can include aggression, drastic personality change and eventually forgetting those closest to them, as O'Connor's husband has done.
Romance with others at care facilities is not uncommon. It was central to this year's movie Away From Her, starring Julie Christie. O'Connor's reaction is a model for dealing with it. "Mom was thrilled that Dad was relaxed and happy," Scott O'Connor, 50, told a Phoenix TV station. Away From Her ultimately conveyed the same message, but delved into how painful, and difficult, that can be.
Other prominent people have helped expose Americans to the tragic and complex realities of Alzheimer's. Ronald Reagan bade a dignified farewell and retreated from public life when he learned he had it in 1994. Former first lady Nancy Reagan has appealed for more embryonic stem cell research, one possible avenue for slowing or curing the disease.
O'Connor's Supreme Court opinions more often than not reflected a concern for how laws applied to real life. In 1994, when she talked of coping with a mastectomy, her openness encouraged others to face another frightening illness. Though retired, her decisions are still making a difference.
Dear Al, I had wondered how this important story came...
