"I experimented with friendliness by calling hundreds of wrong numbers, pretending to be a sociology student, or anything that would help me draw people out. Out in public I engaged strangers in conversation as much as possible. For example I rode elevators to see how many floors it would take to get the occupants introduced to one another, and even singing songs." |
Born into the rule-governed and conflict-oriented military
via his father, "Army brat" Hunter Adams grew up having many transient
relationships as his family moved many times. Living in places as diverse as
Germany, Japan, Hunter's mother nourished him with love and attention, and
nurtured in him a sense of humor and the intense desire to learn. "Most of the good
in me came from my mother." Hunter easily excelled in school, especially
in math The next year after getting his microscope, Hunter started
entering the All-Europe science fair with projects such as keeping a guinea pig's heart
alive in a special solution. During the next three years he won first place in the
biological science category more than once. "I don't remember when or why science and
math began to dominate my interest. I loved exact, rational problems that, however
complex, had distinct answers. Word puzzles and Shortly after his last science fair project, Hunter's father died abruptly. Coincidentally, it was just after Hunter had spent a week alone with him. "Just as I finally became friends with my dad, I lost him. While I was growing up, my father was away most of the time and when he was home, he generally sat in a chair and drank. Whenever we asked him about the wars he'd fought in, he would start to cry. The week before he died, my father asked me to take several days off work. I had just started my first job and my mother and brother were away. During that week he bared his soul to me in a way he never had before." He told me how World War II and the Korean War had destroyed his spirit. The Korean War was far more devastating to him because issues of right and wrong were not as clear. Even worse, his best friend had buried a grenade in his own stomach to save my father's life. My dad felt guilty about that and about never having been wounded. But the greatest guilt of all involved his family. He apologized to me for not having been a good father." At the end of the week, Hunter's father suffered a heart attack and died within a half an hour after being taken away in an ambulance. The next three
years were very difficult for Hunter and his family. Uprooted from Germany, their home of
seven years - the longest period in any one place, the family was "catapulted into
the civilian life of suburban northern Virginia." For a few months, however,
they stayed with Hunter's aunt and uncle, the latter with whom he became quite
close. My uncle was a wonderful man, a lawyer and an independent thinker in a
society of conformists. He was generous and fun, and he cared for me. We
played chess together and he showed me how various gadgets worked. He quickly became
my surrogate father. Even after we moved to our own house, I spent many hours
talking to my uncle." Hunter didn't express
his feelings and personal suffering, however, not even to his mother. She had the
attitude, "If it's unpleasant, don't talk about it. Rather than mourn, I fought
the system. In the Arlington, Virginia high school I went to, I stood up against
segregation and prejudice and developed a reputation as a 'nigger lover.' I
went to civil rights sit-ins and marches. I would seek out people who believed in
Christianity and try to crush their beliefs with rationality. I wrote articles
against segregation, religious hypocrisy and war." "When I wasn't fighting the system, I was trying to escape it. I joined the jazz club, which consisted of three other guys-all nerds. Sipping beers in Washington clubs, we heard some of the hottest jazz musicians of the '50's and 60's. I went to coffee houses and listened to 'beat' poetry." Hunter also "shot a lot of pool", a skill he had developed well, but his recreation didn't include much dating. "The girls weren't interested in me. When they turned me down for dates, I would think how shallow and stupid they were for going out with what seemed like dumb athletes." Finally one girl, Donna, started dating him. Before his
senior year of high school was over, Hunter had developed stomach ulcers, which resulted
in hospitalizations, a bland diet and prescription drugs which made him "sleepy all
the time." Then early in his freshman year in college, Donna broke up with him
and the uncle he had adopted as a surrogate father committed suicide. Hunter flew
home to his uncle's funeral and soon after dropped out of college extremely depressed. While in the hospital, Hunter did what he knew well; he talked to people and made friends. He noticed that the major difference between himself and the other patients was that they didn't have people in their lives who loved them as did he. The profound lonliness of one patient provoked a "spiritual awakening" wherein Hunter "awakened to the power of love". He saw that it is having loving, caring people in one's life is what makes for happiness, rather than intellectual challenges. It was this patient who gave Hunter his nick name "Patch" which Patch assumed. After leaving the psychiatric hospital, Patch became "a student of life, of happy life. I wanted to know everything possible about people and happiness and friendship." To glean the wisdom of centuries, he began reading classic works in liturature such as those by Plato, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Franx Kafka, Nikos Kazantzakis (author of Zorba), Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, Bertrand Russell, Walt Whitman, Ayn Rand and Emily Dickinson. He also began engaging people directly in most creative ways. "I experimented with friendliness by calling hundreds of wrong numbers, pretending to be a sociology student, or anything that would help me draw people out. Out in public I engaged strangers in conversation as much as possible. For example I rode elevators to see how many floors it would take to get the occupants introduced to one another, and even singing songs." Patch applied for pre-med school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. however the admissions people required he take several months "to get myself together" before enrolling. This he did most creatively. He went to work as a file clerk and established a life-long friendship with a fellow file clerk and college student who had also temporarily dropped out. "Louis was my partner in fun and we gve each other the courage to be goofy in public. From the very first day we decided to make filing a 'happening' and egged each other on. We drove to and from work wearing kid's aviator helmets with little noisemakers that went 'vah-roooooorrr.' One day we wore gorilla suits and we sang the file information. Another day, when anybody asked us for a file, we replied in a high-mass Gregorian chant; 'Which file do you waaa-aant? Nurtured by levity and love, I blossomed." In the fall of 1964 when Patch finally entered pre-med school, he continued his huge amount of reading and his living experiments. "To better understand different facets of society, I went to local neighborhood bars several nights a week and wouldn't leave until I had, or tried to have, everyones story. I went to KKK and Black Muslim meetings. I became more involved in civil rights and started thinking about bigger and bigger social issues. Thankfully my earlier antiwar articles helped establish my conscientious objector status with the military so I didn't have to go to Viet Nam." By the time Patch entered medical school in 1967, he was confident in his wisdom on the importance of fun and friendship in human health and well being. And as the movie Patch Adams portrays so well, he was appauled at the lack of both. He talked about the medical model, a hierarchy where the "doctors supposedly knew all the answers and ordered others around, often rudely, and patients were called by the names of their diseases." Doctors didn't work together for personal or professional benefit and any personal contact with a patient was expressly prohibited. This environment provided a great context for Patch to develop his vision, by contrast. "Joylessness prevailed, not only on the hospital wards but in the classrooms as well. I realized that most of these health care professionals suffered from the same emptiness, loneliness, and boredom described in the works of great literature, and what had led others to psychiatric hospitals." Despite conplaints from his professors, Patch connected with patients through creative play and befriended them. "I felt the magic each time patients freely offered their vulnerability and trust. It felt natural to sit beside them, open myself to the same vulnerability, and share my life with them." Remember that scene in the movie where the room was full of balloons? In fact, that was Patch's first date with his wife Lynda. "I filled my arpartment with balloons from floor to ceiling. With twenty or so people in the room, no one oculd see anybody else, but whenever one person moved, everybody could feel it. It was a circus of sensations. She went back to the dorm and told her friends; "I just had the strangest date of my life. I think I'm going to marry this guy." They were married in 1972 and later had two sons, Lars and Zag. So what is Patch's vision and where does it stand? In essence, Patch's vision is to establish a healing, healthy, caring and creative community. "I envisioned a community where people could actively participate in rebuilding their lives, and re-establish love of self and of others -- the most potent therapy of all. A farm with a primary school, a library, dormitories for as many as 300 patients, and facilities for artists, craftspeople, and other skilled individuals. We would have gardens to make the community self-sufficient and a range of projects, such as building tree houses, to make work a joyous game." With emphasis on creativity, Patch wrote: "Rigidity will be frowned upon and spontaneity rewarded. Love of self, others, the environment, and life will be our by-products through experiencing life as a joy. We will have a community where joy is a way of life and love as the ultimate goal." Shortly after graduating from medical school, Patch and friends set up a medical practice at his three-bedroom home in Arlington, Virginia. In various locations, from Arlington, Virginia to farms in West Virninia, we lived what was in effect a pilot program for our dream of a free, full-scale hospital and health care community." This they did for 12 years. Early in those years, Patch, his wife Lynda and 13 friends who had been working together, toured Europe for 11 months "in a royal blue, 1952-vintage bus. We spent this time exploring human closeness and all the ways we could make our relationships tight and solid." The intimacy and openness we developed on this trip were important for the next stage of our work. Twenty of us lived and worked together for years." Back in their communal home, hours were given to intakes about every aspect of a patient's life, both to learn what affected the person's health and to build a relationship with them. "There were no waiting rooms. Being there was the therapy. To us, medicine was, and is, the relationship between healer and patient. We farmed, kept goats, and explored play in many forms. In any given month, hundreds of people would visit us, drawn by word of mouth, either for medical care or to participate in the activities with which we explored the enriching potential of play. Some 'office visits' lasted from a few minutes to five months. Treatment took place in the course of daily life as we took walks, did the dishes or played together. We operated an organic farm, a wide variety of arts and crafts projects, and a recreation program." "An important part of our health message was that people need people. With a staff of 15 to 20, including at least two physicians, we lived under one roof, virtually forgoing our private lives. Each staff person played many roles: farmer, cook, mechanic, clerk, nurse, doctor, artist. Our learning to live cooperatively and happily inspired many of our patients to seek closer communitty ties after returning home. I believe people got what they came for and their eyes were at least partially opened to the healing power of intimacy." It was during these 12 years that they established the Gesundheit Institute. "We chose the name because it makes people laugh, and thus become open to healing, and because literally translated, Gesundheit means 'good health." This was in 1979 when Patch and his wife Lynda left the community (which remained) and moved to Arlington, Virginia to concentrate on fund-raising and a limited medical practice. In 1980 Gesundheit was able to puchase the 310 acres of land in West Virginia as home base to Gesundheit, and all the reality of the vision seemed close. Three years later, they chose to abandon their 12 years of media silence and actively seek publicity - something they had feared would misrepresent and trivialize what they did by focusing on personalities rather than ideas. Publicity helped a lot, however. "I started getting invitations from all over the country, from medical schools, churches, community centers and universitites." By 1984, Patch made the decision to quit seeing patients all together so as to focus on fundraising full time. This was truly "FUN(d)-raising". He clowned and gave theatrical presentations on their project and philosophy of healing. "I drew upon the skits we had improvised at home since the mid-1970's. We made shows about the magic elixirs of life including wonder, nutrition, humor, love, faith, nature, exercise, creativity and community." Grant monies came in to support productions that "spread the news about holistic lifestyles, community, the joy of caring, the joy of service, and the healing power of humor." I taught a class on how to be nutty, at Harvard and Yale and at conferences. At Harvard, 24 medical students got into the costumes I brought and we all ran around the medical school and were nutty. Everyone loved it." Over the years, Patch has raised funds, developed and performed numerous educational and fun shows, many with his wife, and has been in great demand. More than offering enhanced quality of life and free medical care to a relatively few number of people in West Virginia, he has inspired thousands all over the world. Many of these have been medical professionals who today provide care differently from what they did, and who now work in cooperation with alternative health care providers. Many people and foundations have donated money. Regarding the community and hospital facilities, currently there is a 6500 square foot craft and woodworking shop that was completed by a crew of 20 or so from many states, Canada, Italy and Belgium "in hard hats with rubber noses epoxied to the front." They also have built a barn, expanded an Appalachian-style shack that was on the property and added two yurts and other small buildings. The most recent and unusual building is the onion-domed "Dacha" (Russian for country cottage ) to house the five land stewards who live on site year round. It will be complete later this year. Eventually the community will include residential space to house a total population of about 200, with staff living in the same areas as visitors. When I spoke with Patch in late October, he was excited about the then-upcoming movie Patch Adams, specifically because he knew it would bring in funding. While Patch didn't receive much of a fee for the movie rights, Universal studios did give Gesundheit Institute a grant to establish a fundraising infrastructue. This includes the services of a professionl fundraiser for a period of time. Patch said he planned to continue with his own fundraising and that he now could command higher fees.
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