David Romprey--First Essay

Many of us are still in shock at the sudden death last evening of David Romprey of Salem (OR), a tireless mental health advocate, faithful father of his two children, Maxwell and Eleanor, and a friend to dozens of people within and without the mental health community. Though others knew David far better than I, he and I crossed paths in a very significant way within the last month. This and the next essay tell you about the last day of his life, a few impressions of David gleaned from talking to others and my own observation, and then the nature of David's and my special conversation a few weeks ago.

I begin, however, with an eerie type of admission. Last week I wrote an essay bemoaning the premature death of so many talented men of late. In that essay I noted the birth year of the men: (1) Tim Russert--1950-2008; (2) Tony Snow--1955-2008; and (3) Prof. Randy Pausch--1960-2008. I closed my first paragraph of that July 25 essay with this sentence:

"I wonder which accomplished young person, born in 1965, will die in the next few weeks..."

Now I know the answer to my musing. It would be David Romprey, born in 1965. David hadn't yet achieved the national recognition of the others, but he was an award-winning advocate for more humane treatment of mental health patients. [here is an article about David's passion for mental health reform]. He himself had spent time in the Oregon State Hospital in Salem for bi-polar disorder, which led to his discharge from the military in 1991. What he witnessed there was so deeply burned into his consciousness that he knew, after he was discharged, that he had found his life's calling. And, indeed, even in the last month he had been appointed to a special job in mental health services for the State of Oregon in which he would be working to empower residents of state facilities to take responsibility for their lives and prepare to live "out there" in society.

He couldn't wait to begin his new job, which was to start Aug. 4. A sign that David felt that this new position was going to solidify his gains as a mental health advocate as well as give him a powerful platform for continued reform, was his appointment letter we found last night at his home--lying atop the frying pan on his stove. It was symbolic to us of the fact that his passion for mental health reform even was more important than eating. That was the kind of person David was.

David's Last Day

His effervescent personality, engaging intelligence, and disarmingly honest manner helped him accumulate dozens of friends, friends with whom he would keep up through work, his gym, a few downtown coffeehouses and frequent dates and parties. He was especially solicitous of his two children, whose lives were for him not simply an extension of his own life but were occasions for him to take pleasure in the unfolding of, as it were, precious flowers or the burnishing of valuable jewels. On the last day of his life, perhaps even sensing something unusual was going to happen, David called and had signficant conversations with both children, along with several other important people from his life.

I share the circumstances of his last hour both because I know some of them and want to try to explain what is known at this point. The principal thing that all the evidence points to at this juncture is that David suffered an "episode," as the officer called it, perhaps a massive stroke/heart attack, while driving his car from downtown Salem to his home near 12th and Chemeketa St. NE and died around 6:10 p.m, on Wednesday July 30. He was with his friend Patty from about 5:30 to 6:00 p.m. to help her celebrate her birthday. Patty told me, in fact, that David called her on the spur of the moment earlier in the day and said he wanted to meet her before another date he had a little after 6. So, Patty and David met at a downtown restaurant for a snack and conversation. Patty told me that he was his typical ebullient self--happy for Patty's birthday (though Patty might not have felt the same way!), happy about his kids, happy about the new job, happy with the way his life was flowing. Everything seemed "normal," according to her.

He then drove towards his home, a little under a mile due East of downtown, along Chemeketa St. He was found in his car just East of the intersection of 12th and Chemeketa, within 100 feet of his home, and his car had spun around so that it was lodged next to a fire hydrant, after having mounted a low curb and had bent an electrical box near the sidewalk. Tire marks in the plantings show that the front wheels of his car "skidded" as they tried to get traction in the dirt, possibly an indication that his foot remained on the accelerator. There was very little "impact" of the car on anything, and so it is almost impossible to think that the "impact" caused death. As one friend remarked to me last night--even David's way of leaving the world was "so David;" he didn't hurt or even inconvenience one living thing.

At David's House

Patty received a call from the officer who investigated the scene at about 7:00 p.m. The officer had found David's cell phone and called the person most recent on David's call list--which had been Patty. Patty called me and we hustled off to his place, to try to piece together what is always, when tragedy strikes, a bewildering set of facts. Upon our arrival at David's place we found his long-time friend Renee, who had let herself in. For the next few hours we talked, looked over David's stuff, and reminisced.

Of the many things that could be said (e.g., about David's housekeeping skill, for example, or his small collection of historical sports memorabilia), I will focus on the thing that struck me most of all. That thing was the extent and variety of David's library and reading. His bedside reading was a magazine article on "William Booth's Officers," a reference to the founder and guiding light of the Salvation Army. David took his religion very seriously, though he had shucked off what he felt were some of the more debilitating parts of his Fundamentalist past.

But then I looked at some of his other well-fingered books. Who would have such a collection as the following: The Complete Book of Puppet Theater, The Book of Popular Science, Howard Zinn's The Twentieth Century, a book on medieval Europe, two volumes of a biography of Lyndon Johnson, and then, perhaps as a concession to "reality," The Idiot's Guide to Business. Next to each other were Gray's Anatomy and Hans Kung's classic "anatomy" of Christianity, On Being A Christian. Several other "classics" and popular books graced his shelves, and one easily got the impression that David's mind, though sometimes afflicted, was sharply honed and capacious and ready to engage the world and his faith with intelligence, skill and imagination. I was left wondering how David had time to do everything from reading to working to keeping up with kids and friends. Then, it dawned on me. He didn't spend a lot of time cleaning house...

Conclusion

Going through his books and some papers led me to reflect back to our conversations earlier in July about a special subject--his tortured family history. The next essay tells about a remarkable conversation David and I had about four weeks ago.

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