Anatomy Of A Hospital Bill

For too many people in the United States, the scariest part of a hospital visit can have more to do with anxiety about the potential bill than with their precipitating health problem. Will my insurance pay? How much will this cost? Can I even afford to be here? Will I need Chapter 11 because I am uninsured?

Fortunately for me, at age 72 I’ve never had any really serious health issues. After going on Medicare seven years ago, however, I’d been constantly wondering about the coverage and the costs. As a career journalist I’m the curious sort by nature. And, as a retired journalist, I had plenty of time for analysis when I recently got the chance to dissect a hospital bill for myself. I’ve found the exercise to be both enlightening and confusing, in some ways raising more questions than it answered. Nevertheless, the dissection of my hospital bill might be interesting to others who have had similar concerns.

My issue occurred January 31, 2019, when I visited a neighborhood emergency room for what must be a fairly common concern. I had some chest pains I could not understand, and, given my family history of heart ailments, I decided to err on the side of caution. My concerns turned out to be a false alarm, but I did spend a night under observation before a cardiologist concluded I likely had only strained some chest muscles lifting weights earlier in the day. I know I received an IV line, some blood work, several electrocardiograms, a chest X-ray, aspirin and breakfast. 

In discharging me, the doctor advised, “Go ahead and order breakfast before you leave. You paid for it.”

Uh-oh, I thought. Is he hinting about a bill for me?

“OK,” I said. “I’ll have the omelet.”

Once my bills arrived, I had what I suspect is the normal reaction for most of us: Checking the bottom line for the amount I would owe. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my total due to the hospital—a $50-copay. Then I did something that might not be so routine. I reviewed the amounts above my tab. Total charges: $15,344. Insurance discounts: $14,495.23. And, insurance payments: $798.77.

Intrigued, I called Methodist Hospital and requested an itemized statement. I could see $800 as a fairly reasonable cost for my night of observation in the ER. But I had trouble imagining what they had done to generate $15,344 in ER services. I also wondered why they would just discount so much of that total for me.

A separate bill from the ER doctor prompted a similar moment of curiosity. That bill totaled $1,992 but left me owing just $106.56 after deductions for insurance discounts. Altogether, the doctor received a little less than $200 for observing me, and that seemed like a reasonable fee to me as well.

Of course, my itemized statement from Methodist listed a number of alien codes and multi-syllable words that made little sense to a layman. But I deciphered them well enough to satisfy my curiosity, plus I called the billing department with a few questions. The associate on the phone was polite but also a tad confused herself about why I would want to know anything beyond my $50 bottom line.

“I’m just trying to be a savvy consumer of health care services,” I told her.

The largest single item on my bill was $4,336 for something called a “CTA chest noncoronary,” which she described as some sort of a scan. The next largest charge was $2,480 for the ER visit at a Level IV facility. Next in line was a $792 fee for 12 hours of observation.

They charged $754 for the chest X-Ray and another $704 for 100 ML of 300 MG Iodine solution. They hit my account for three EKGs at a cost of $657 each—or, $1,971. A pair of comprehensive metabolic panels rang another $582 apiece—or, $1,164. And they charged $335 for a “B Natriuretic Peptide.”

From there the charges decreased to amounts less than $300 for a variety of things, including $174 for a 0.4 MG Nitroglycerin tablet.

I concluded that both Methodist and Medicare had taken very good care of me. And I was impressed to see that Medicare chopped that bill down to a more realistic $798.77 by extracting a 95-percent discount. I’ll say that again: Medicare received a 95-percent discount!  Medicare can do this NOT because it is a bully to the hospitals but because it knows the actual cost of all things medical and refuses to give hospitals more than a reasonable upcharge.

“Medicare collects troves of data on what every type of treatment, test and other service costs hospitals to deliver,” wrote Steven Brill in A Bitter Pill—his meticulously researched article comparing a number of hospital bills in detail to determine “how outrageous pricing and egregious profits are destroying our health care.”

He wrote: “Medicare takes seriously the notion that nonprofit hospitals should be paid for all their costs but actually be nonprofit after their calculation.”

Under the law, Brill noted, “Medicare is supposed to reimburse hospitals for any given service, factoring in not only direct costs but also allocated expenses such as overhead, capital expenses, executive salaries, insurance differences in regional costs of living and even the education of medical students.”

After all, Medicare cannot survive itself if it runs the hospitals and doctors out of business by undercutting their actual costs. And the hospitals cannot survive without the huge amount of money generated from treating Medicare patients like me. In every sense, it seems like one of the business world’s purest examples of a symbiotic relationship.

The associate in Methodist’s billing department told me that patients receive different levels of discounts depending on the negotiations by their respective insurers. Because I carry supplemental insurance, my deductible is small. But I have friends with employer insurance who now pay deductibles as high as $5,000 or more. The billing associate told me those deductibles also figure into negotiations.

But I also have friends who are uninsured, even in the age of the Affordable Care Act. And statistics show that the uninsured generate about 20 percent of all ER visits. What about them? I asked. Calling them the “self-insured,” she said Methodist gives them a 50-percent discount. For a “self-insured” in my case, she said, the bill only would have been $7,672. But I also wondered if a “self-insured” patient would have received the same level of tests and procedures. I’m sure some corners might be cut, but I also see my services as being pretty basic for a night in the ER.

I’m still mystified by the Voodoo accounting that allows a hospital to claim a bill so large it can grant a 95-percent discount without a whimper. But I remain more convinced than ever that adoption of Medicare-style single-payer health care financing or Medicare-For-All ranks as the most efficient system to keep our society on a level playing field with a medical industry that grows more technologically complex on a daily basis.

“Why should a trip to the ER for chest pains that turn out to be indigestion cost more than a semester in college?” asked Brill in his article. “Why does simple lab work done during a few days in the hospital cost more than a car?”

He called today’s medical industry a “gold rush” for firms that provide everything from wonder drugs to that CT scanner that rang up the single largest, $4,336-charge on my tab. Brill’s research showed hospitals usually recover investments on that technology in the space of a year.

With the entire population in a single insurance pool, a single-payer plan would have the power to pay only the real costs of prescriptions, care and hospitalization. I certainly saw Medicare demonstrate that kind of power after my night in an ER.

I realize my example stands only as an “anecdote”—a tree in a large forest of data that may or may not provide an accurate picture of the business of health care. For anyone curious about the broader view of that forest from 10,000 feet, however, I’d encourage a review of Brill’s article and a visit to the web site of a group called Physicians for a National Health Program. They have charts and historical documents that should answer all remaining questions.

But the real question in my example should focus on the true value of the services I received. Medicare believes they were worth $798.77. For the uninsured, Methodist believes they were worth $7,672. Or, should we look at the showroom price like it’s the Memorial Day sale at a furniture store: $15,344?

For the record, during the course of my working life I paid a total of $26,456 into the Medicare program while my employers added another $17,508 for a total lifetime contribution of $43,964 on my behalf. In addition, I’ve paid about $300 each month since 2012 for supplemental policies to ensure full coverage.  

It won’t take many more hospital visits for me to outpace my payments into the system.  But I’m still expecting Medicare to cover my final hospital bill whenever that arrives. And we all know that last bill is usually the whopper. So, thanks again to all you working youngsters for your monthly payroll deductions under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). I’m going to need them. I’m betting you will, too.

Windfall Psychology: The Challenge of Overnight Riches

As the contract Texas correspondent for Money magazine from 1983-1997, I did a lot of research and writing about investing and other aspects of personal finance. And, as the Houston contract correspondent for The National Law Journal during those years, I also encountered many tales of legal wrangling over riches won and lost.

So, in 1991 I relied on my financial and legal sources to help create an article about the related subject of windfall psychology—how regular people handle the rewards and challenges of suddenly finding the pot of gold at the end of some rainbow.

This was the result, published in the December 1991 edition of Houston Metropolitan Magazine. I haven’t been able to update on any of the individuals profiled then, although I do know at least one of them has died. If anyone reading this post can contribute an update, the comments section is there for your consideration. I think the fundamental experiences and emotions shared in this story still reveals a cautionary tale about what might happen when YOU receive your windfall.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Most of us have dreamed of coming into a fortune. For these people, their dreams came true and then their troubles began.

Once upon a time she was a millionaire—for 14 months. Her name is not important now and she’s nowhere to be found. But her story bears repeating, and her boss—a Houston professional who wants to remain anonymous—remembers it well.

“She just came in one morning about 10 years ago and quit,” he recalls. “She said she'd inherited a million dollars and didn't need to work anymore. A million dollars! Imagine that! I tried to help her and told her to be patient but she wouldn’t listen. She was gone.”

He ran into her 14 months later on a street comer where she asked him for a job.

“She said she had spent it all and had nothing but her clothes,” says the woman’s former boss. “I asked where it had gone and she said she wasn’t sure. She had bought new cars for a couple of boyfriends. She’d bought another new car for herself after her first new car was stolen. She’d bought all kinds of things and spent a million dollars in little more than a year.

“But you know, she really wasn't depressed about it,” he says. “She didn't have it long enough for it to make much of a difference. Her attitude was like, ‘No regrets.’ She hosted a year-long party and the party was over.”

Who among us hasn't wished at one time or another for a windfall? And who among us hasn't heard stories like the one above, wondered if they were true and smiled smugly that the same sort of misfeasance could never happen to us? Lord, it wouldn't have to be a million. Maybe some long-forgotten uncle could die and leave a few hundred thousand dollars. How about some contest or poker game that would generate enough to retire those debts and start anew? Some of us might even welcome a little accident without much pain or permanent injury, after which an insurance company would cough up enough to make the litigation disappear.

In Houston it happens more often than you know. From time to time, of course, you read about such things in the newspaper and see pictures of the fortunate recipient grinning from ear to ear. Afterward, however, you hear little more. And there are dozens of people whose good fortune never makes the headlines. Some of them are still around. There are threads of continuity throughout all of their stories.  They all saw their windfall as the end of their troubles. In reality, it turned out to be just the first step in a new and uncertain journey. Some have managed to make it work; others have blown it and wondered why. Nevertheless, along the way they all learned some universal truths about people, money and even themselves.

“Money is a tremendous responsibility,” says Mike Robertson, a first vice president at Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc. “For many people, getting a windfall can be like going out to run a marathon when you haven't been jogging for a long time. You'll drop dead.”

While handling accounts for several clients of personal-injury attorneys, Robertson has seen many sides of windfall psychology. He’s personally escorted blue-collar millionaires on shopping sprees to The Galleria, hoping it would help them exhaust the urge to spend before it seized full control. He’s counseled windfall recipients and helped them devise a budget after carefully inspecting their homes and possessions to determine their needs.

He knows a family that saw $350,000 dwindle to just $25,000 in four years, and a woman who allowed her entire family to move in with her after getting a windfall—including a daughter who divorced her husband just to come home to her wealthy mom. One investment banker says he knows a man so wary of banks he's stashed $125,000 in cash in cardboard boxes around his house.

“Some people just lack knowledge, and others have dreams that have not been fulfilled,” Robertson says. “Some are too weak to say no, and they really have a problem when everybody comes around. The fact is, it takes a lot of effort to manage money, and some people spend it just to get rid of it. Some become hermits and some become paranoid. What I’ve learned from watching all this is how important it is to not let money control you. Put it in perspective and learn patience.”

That's a view from an outsider. But there are plenty of Houstonians around who have their own insights about windfalls. One with a long-term perspective on windfall psychology also happens to be the only Houston newspaper reporter who ever struck it rich while covering his beat. As a young man without a college education, Jim Bishop joined The Houston Post in 1963 as a copy messenger. By 1966, he’d talked his way onto the staff as a police reporter, and management there had him pegged for bigger things.

But Bishop's break, if it can be called that, came in a way they hadn't planned. It occurred Oct. 19, 1971, when he raced to the southeast side of town to cover a railcar explosion. He arrived just in time for the second blast; it left him hospitalized with second and third-degree bums all over his back. More than 50 people, including Bishop, sued the railroad. He returned to work at The Post and began plotting a new course for his future. By the time his $100,000 settlement was wrapped up in October of 1974, he had already relocated his wife and two children to tiny Montrose, Colo., on the western slope of the Rockies, ready to retire on an amount that in those days seemed inexhaustible.

“That money was my ticket to become a mountain man,” recalls Bishop, today the managing editor of The Victoria (Texas) Advocate. With a laugh, he compares himself to Jed Clampett and the Beverly Hillbillies. “I felt I could do whatever I wanted.”

His mood started to shift as soon as the check changed hands in the lawyer's office in downtown Houston. The $100,000 had already shrunk to $55,000 after legal fees and hospital bills, but it still looked plenty big. By the time Bishop hit the elevator, he was convinced everyone around him was just waiting to take some more. On the plane ride back to Colorado, he repeatedly opened the envelope to make sure the check was still there.

He recalls, “There was a paranoia that was almost consuming until I got it home and in the bank.”

A few months later, he stopped by the local Oldsmobile dealership, where he picked out a new set of wheels and felt the thrill of saying, “I’ll just write you a check.” Instead of finding a financial planner for investment advice, he contacted a realtor and quickly became the owner of a small clothing boutique—and a mortgage, less $10,000 down on the note. Naturally, he decided to change the look of the place and spent another $10,000 on inventory.

Still feeling on top of the world, he exercised a philanthropical urge. He helped a struggling saloon singer keep his mobile home by loaning him $1,000: “It felt good to drive to the bank and just hand him the money. Here I was, 30 years old and acting like a brainless teenager. I actually thought he was going to pay me back.”

Meanwhile the locals were just waiting to pounce. The big spender from the city watched in horror while the hometown department store signed exclusivity agreements with some of the boutique's suppliers. Retail competition was stiff, too. Business dropped, and 18 months after collecting his $100,000 windfall, Bishop relished one ironic accomplishment: “We didn't have to declare bankruptcy. But we were broke.”

In the years since, Bishop has been divorced and remarried. He’s knocked around at several newspaper jobs and worked in corporate public relations in Houston. Briefly, he even drove a delivery truck to make ends meet. Many a time he’s wondered what might have happened had that windfall not sent him spinning down the path toward excess—what might have happened if he'd just been a little more patient with good fortune.

“I’m happy now,” he says. “But I learned that greed is a stronger part of human nature than sex or anything else. That’s what runs the world, and I’m still bitter. When you have a little money, some want to get it and the others are jealous. I’m not nearly as nice a guy as I was before I got my windfall. I went through it thinking I was a smart human being. It taught me how little I really knew.”

Bishop's windfall was small change compared to the payoff last year for Roger Sims, a 42-year-old Houston CPA. Court sanctions prohibit him from disclosing the final amount of a settlement that followed a jury's verdict Nov. 22, 1989, awarding him $31 million as compensation for being wrongfully terminated from a job with Kaneb Services, Inc., now of Dallas. To derail an appeal, both sides agreed on a lower figure to close the case. Even after legal fees and expenses, he says, the payout has enabled him to completely restructure his life. But it hasn’t come without costs.

“I got physically ill,” says Sims of the day he accompanied his attorney, Julius Glickman, to the bank to oversee the transfer of funds. “I couldn’t talk. I got nauseous. My voice was cracking and I started to cry. I couldn’t think straight. It was more money than I ever expected to have in my life.”

That payment also followed five years of turmoil and struggle for Sims, who had risen at Kaneb to become its youngest vice president. As the executive in charge of corporate taxes, Sims faced a moral dilemma in 1985 when presented with a tax return containing questionable deductions—like use of the corporate jet for a trip to the Cotton Bowl. He refused to sign the return and was fired. Later, after speaking out against Kaneb management at a stockholders' meeting, the company filed criminal charges, alleging Sims had tampered with computer records.

His lawsuit plowed fresh ground on certain aspects of wrongful termination law, and the $31 million verdict—including $19 million in punitive damages—ranked as one of the largest in the country that year, prompting some experts to call it “outrageous.”

Sims could have settled the case for $1 million prior to trial, but declined because he wanted to be vindicated; he wanted to prove he was right and Kaneb was wrong. The trial and verdict satisfied that wish. And the subsequent settlement to prevent an appeal has him set for life—and probably a little beyond, if that’s possible.

“I’ve had it long enough now to be able to handle it,” says Sims. “Being a CPA is a definite plus compared to what happens with a lot of people I read about.”

Sims had worked to build a little accounting practice in Alief, but his five-year battle with Kaneb was costly. His second marriage crumbled as soon as he traded the corporate job worth about $100,000 per year for the struggle of a new practice that did not reach the $50,000 mark until 1988. He rang up $70,000 worth of legal expenses, plus another $12,000 for the criminal case. Living on credit cards and borrowed money, he added another $25,000 to the tab he had to liquidate with his windfall. He’d also had to send his daughters to live with their mother in Colorado.

Immediately he paid his debts and then simply gave away to his partners his stock in a company that provides doctors for emergency rooms. Sims has also set up an investment company called The Resolve Group. He's put some of his money in short-term liquid funds and a smattering of rental properties, and has exercised a passion for music by becoming the manager of a local rock group called Zen Archer. He bought a Mercedes—paying with a check—and still makes mortgage payments on his $150,000 home. And he’s back in court on what appears to be another precedent-setting case.

“Kids are kids and ex-wives are ex-wives,” he says with a grin. His child-support payments have grown from $900 to $1,500 without a hitch. But his second wife, from whom he was divorced in 1987, filed a lawsuit seeking her share of his Kaneb settlement as community property. Houston divorce heavyweight Earle Lilly, who is representing Sims in the suit, has offered him some advice.

“Earle predicted I’d have a lot of people asking for money,” says Sims. “He told me to either say. ‘No,’ or just give it to them. ‘Don’t loan it,’ he said, ‘or it will cost you friends.’ He was right.”

Despite an elaborate system for dodging solicitors and “old pals,” Sims has been subjected to a steady parade of panhandlers. Some former business associates wanted $15,000—just to live on. One man called to congratulate Sims on his victory and begged him to do his tax work. Flattered, Sims invited him over, only to hear a request for a $25,000 investment in a company to import wooden cars. Others called to say they, too, had filed wrongful termination suits; the common question was, “Would you help?” He offered moral support. Meanwhile, brokers and insurance salesmen “came in droves.”

Though Sims rejected the pests, he nevertheless found a humanitarian role for his good fortune: He read about someone in the newspaper being evicted and made back payments for that person. He won't discuss any other acts of generosity because boasting, he says, would cheapen their value. But he does smile warmly when explaining one advantage of his windfall: “I’m sick of people taking advantage of me. So it makes me feel good when I can help people who really need it with some Good Samaritan type deeds.”

After one year as a millionaire, Sims says, “I’ve learned there are a lot of people

looking for the easy way out. It’s reaffirmed my faith in friends. I really appreciate those who accept me as Roger Sims and not just someone they can use. And I have more respect for people who work.”

Dewayne Morrison is no accountant. But he too is wiser about windfalls, having won the richest prize in bass-fishing history--$500,000 for a 10.526-pound large-mouth hooked during last year’s Big Sam Big Bass Super Derby. The 34-year-old Deer Park air-conditioning repairman was orphaned as a youth, passed from relative to relative and ended up in high school in Pearland. Despite the cultural gap separating him from Sims, Morrison has learned some similar things about the people in his life since hitting the jackpot.

“The parasites and hustlers started calling,” he says. “I just told them the money had been invested and hung up.”

Actually, he's still waiting to get most of it. Only the first check, for $200,000, cleared the bank. Of that, just $50,000 belonged to him. He gave the rest to three acquaintances who had helped him raise the $400 entry fee—25 percent apiece, as agreed before the contest. Morrison learned too late that fishing-contest protocol would have the backers collecting only half the prize, and even then not until all the money had been paid.

“I paid them anyway,” he says. “When I took the $50,000 check to one of them, I asked for another $65 in expenses I hadn't figured on. They got mad and slammed the door in my face.”

Another neighbor who had once been his friend ignored Morrison until news leaked out about the missing $300,000. Says Morrison, “They came over then and made fun of me. I guess they were just jealous until they learned I didn’t get it all. The way it’s been over $50,000,1 can’t imagine what it would be like if I ever got a million.”

He and his wife have paid off some debts. They exorcised the urge to splurge with a trip to Gallery Furniture, where Jim “Mattress Mac” Mclngvale welcomed them like celebrities. Morrison also gave each of his children a $100 bill to blow. They've stashed enough to pay the tax bill—and to finance a lawsuit against the contest. That action could net the Morrisons more than the contest did, because Morrison has charged that the scandal derailed lucrative opportunities to endorse fishing products in bass magazines. He thinks maybe the past year has prepared him for a larger check if it ever comes.

“At least I’ve had a training course in windfall psychology now. If I had to look back some day and saw I had nothing left, I’d be mad at myself,” he says, noting that memories of his troubled youth have bolstered his conservative outlook. “I’m sensitive about creating shaky ground for my family. I had enough of that when I was a kid.”

Morrison has his dreams. If he ever gets all the prize money, he’d consider moving to a place where he could pursue bass fishing as a professional guide. And he’ll tote along the moral of his windfall: “If you make a deal you stand beside it. Maybe I live in an old-fashioned world where if you do what you’re supposed to do, people will, too. But I feel like I’ve been true to myself and that gives me confidence. And now I know that in bass fishing anyway, I can compete with the best.”

Perhaps the last word should come from a professional investor who also knows the thrill of collecting on a windfall. Allen Baker is an account executive with Dean Witter who plays poker for a hobby. Last year, he won $260,000 in a single exhilarating day in a preliminary at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. For someone who can earn $100,000 when the stock market soars, the pot wasn't all that big. But it did help Baker focus on a principle that sooner or later affects everyone, whether they count their windfall in chips or emotional currency.

“The accomplishment I felt was in beating the other players; that's what was in my heart,” he says. “When you win that thing, they give you the money and a gold bracelet. Everybody asked me how it felt to win all that money. Nobody asked me how it felt to beat all those other players.

“All of us are a little insecure, and whenever we win something, we doubt ourselves. We wonder if it was luck or something else,”  he continues, and notes that successful people are the ones who can focus on the chore at hand: “The game now is to make that money grow.”

Forensic Hypnosis: A Tool Or A Trick For Law Enforcement?

Here’s an article I researched and wrote near the end of my freelancing career in 1996 about the controversy surrounding attempts by law enforcement to use hypnosis as a tool for investigations and prosecutions. Although a couple of the sources quoted here have died, it appears the basic conclusions on the controversy of forensic hypnosis remain about the same as I discovered in 1996, according to a 2016 article in the Journal of Law and Criminal Justice.

My article was published in a quarterly magazine for the Texas Highway Patrol Association, appearing in the summer edition for 1996.

HYPNOSIS—UNLOCKING THE MIND

Twenty years ago in Chowchilla, California, 26 children aboard a school bus were abducted by masked men who herded them into vans and hid them underground in a rock quarry.

Although the bus driver and two students managed to claw their way out of the hideous grave, they couldn’t recall pertinent details about their abductors. Hypnotized and told to imagine himself lounging in a chair and watching the event on television, the bus driver simply read the license plates on the vans.

Timely disclosure of those numbers closed the case, making it a well-publicized event in California law enforcement annals.

Nevertheless, 20 years later, hypnosis has still not gained mainstream status as an investigative tool. Today it’s little comfort for law enforcement to know that the legal guidelines for hypnosis still remain murky; the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to provide absolute guidelines on the subject of witness hypnosis and laws differ from state to state. Several factors, such as declining membership in the 19-year-old ISIFH (International Society for Investigative and Forensic Hypnosis), indicate that hypnosis has less impact on criminal investigations now than a decade ago.

As a result, law enforcement agencies must use hypnosis with extreme caution. They need advice from their local prosecutors before they ever ask any witness to be hypnotized. Otherwise, they risk jeopardizing their case in court, since juries may view witnesses’ memories as having been tampered with. Hypnosis is tricky business both technically and legally, but it can also be an invaluable tool. Knowledge of some of its standard guidelines for use can provide officers with useful tools on difficult cases.

The Professional Battle

“My experience is that it’s being used less frequently because prosecutors don't want their cases compromised,” says Alan M. Goldstein, an associate professor in forensic psychology at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “If used correctly as an investigative tool, it is a technique of last resort. It’s a tool with a downside. Court decisions have limited more and more the use of eyewitness testimony of witnesses who have been hypnotized.”

Nevertheless, Goldstein's use of hypnosis helped solve a series of rape cases in New York last year and demonstrated the investigative power of the tool. Hypnotizing a traumatized woman who could not provide a description of the man who had raped her twice because she had blocked the assaults from her mind, Goldstein asked her to try to recall details.

“Through forensic hypnosis, she recalled a ring he wore and his cologne,” says Goldstein. “But she also remembered watching him run away. She said he ran as if he were a runner.”

That sent investigators thumbing through the pages of local high school yearbooks, reviewing photos of track stars. The process prompted identification, arrest, and the solution of five other similar cases.

With the power to turn a witness’s quick glance into a critical clue, it’s no wonder that many investigators have championed hypnosis. But a combination of aggressive court battles and scientific research into the hypnotic process have produced a division among participants in the hypnosis arena. Exuberant fans like Paul Kincade, former president of ISIFH, blame a couple of prominent researchers for reining them in: the late Bernard L. Diamond from the University of California at Berkeley and Martin T. Orne of the University of Pennsylvania.

Diamond, who used hypnosis to assess the mental condition of Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan, had contended that hypnotized witnesses are incompetent to testify. And restrictive guidelines devised by Orne in a New Jersey case have become the standard for forensic hypnosis in most states, according to Goldstein. Orne is currently sidelined by illness and unavailable for interviews.

“It used to be a very active area,” says Irv Gullen, director of the Institute for

Forensic Psychology, an independent organization in Oakland, N.J. “But ten years ago data started to emerge that the information was unreliable. Although there were dramatic instances, it was more the exception than the rule. It’s now done as a last resort. Courts are reluctant to accept it unless it can be corroborated in another way.”

The scientific community began seeing dangerous consequences for the use of hypnosis in the legal process about ten years ago. In 1983, Dr. Orne chaired a special panel of the American Medical Association's Council on Scientific Affairs, a panel that reviewed all scientific evidence on the use of hypnosis to refresh memories of witnesses and victims of crime. Two years of study prompted a conclusion that hypnotically-obtained recollections can involve distortions called confabulations—fabricated details that the subject uses to fill in memory gaps of an event. But as Martin Reiser points out in The Handbook of Investigative Hypnosis, the same problems of confabulation, fantasy and suggestibility occur in non-hypnotic memory recall as well.

The result has been that there are now widely differing rules about hypnosis in each state. Three states reject testimony altogether from previously hypnotized witnesses; 21 allow only those memories recorded prior to hypnosis as admissible; 12 will consider it with a variety of different safeguards on a case-by-case basis; four admit such evidence without condition; and, 11 have yet to develop a hardened rule.

“We had 1,000 members in 1982 but now we’re down to just over 100,” says the ISIFH’s Kincade, who still travels the nation conducting hypnosis seminars and advocating for legislative change that will override the key court decisions.

Marx Howell, a 32-year-veteran of the Texas Department of Public Safety, says, “I think defense attorneys have taken away from law enforcement a viable investigative tool in some cases. I think there are some unsolved cases where hypnosis could develop new leads to investigate.”

Howell, who retired with the rank of inspector two years ago, also serves as vice president of the Texas Association for Investigative Hypnosis and says that Texas officers use the technique about 100 times each year. Initially opposed to its use in the 1970s, Howell became a fan of forensic hypnosis in 1979 when he chaired a DPS task force established to review the technique and establish guidelines for its use. As a result of the committee's work, Texas, in 1988, became the only state with a law that regulates the certification of police officers as hypnotists. He says the DPS has about 35 or 40 officers certified for the technique and he continues to teach it whenever requested. He agrees that officers must use caution because state laws and court rulings differ so widely across the country.

“Hypnotically refreshed recall is a viable investigative technique if used properly,” says Howell. “But if officers already have a suspect or a witness, they shouldn’t normally be using hypnosis to further their case.”

A History of the Tool

Both European and American investigators have employed hypnosis since the 19th century in what Diamond had called “very rare, exceptional and freaky” cases. California officers pioneered more use of the techniques in the 1960s under encouragement from the legendary Martin Reiser, who founded the now defunct Law Enforcement Hypnosis Institute in Los Angeles. Always at the forefront of the hypnosis controversy, Reiser insisted that police officers should be trained in the discipline. But he met with much skepticism, and became so discouraged that he no longer grants interviews on the subject, according to Debra Glaser, a staff psychologist in the Behavioral Sciences Section of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Reiser’s followers contended that hypnosis could remove amnesia and provide valuable information in 60 to 90 percent of cases where it's needed, according to the most recent and comprehensive report on forensic hypnosis, a 1993 report by Louis B. Laguna in the “Campus Law Enforcement Journal.”

Laguna showed that hypnosis plays a role in decreasing inhibitions about volunteered information that can later prove crucial in solving a case. Although few investigators would recommend arrests or prosecutions based solely on hypnotically induced testimony, a study of 400 hypnotic sessions conducted by the LAPD between 1974 and 1979 showed that officers learned vital, new information 67 percent of the time.

Before his death, Diamond charged in an interview with The National Law

Journal that hypnotism became a “fad” and an “epidemic” with the LAPD. He said the department trained at least 10,000 investigators in the discipline. He alleged that this army of law enforcement hypnotists may have contaminated hundreds of witnesses.

Critics and court challenges have drastically reduced law enforcement’s use of the tool. Perhaps the most influential case comes from a 1982 decision by California’s Supreme Court. Known as the “Shirley Case,” after a California rape case in which a Marine was wrongly convicted on the testimony of a victim whose memory had been “refreshed” with the help of hypnosis, its ruling states that anyone hypnotized in an investigation may not testify.

“We still use hypnosis in California in cases that have multiple victims or witnesses—cases in which we can afford to ‘throw away’ one witness,” explains Kincade.

The Shirley case has slowed the use of hypnosis but not stopped it completely, according to Glaser. “We might use it if a detective calls and is absolutely stuck,” she says. “I might be called in to hypnotize a witness but that’s all I can know about the case. My only connection is—I do it.”

Her aloof presence stems from the assumption that police agencies should use independent, third-party resources for hypnotic sessions. This ensures that opponents can’t charge that the hypnotist had a stake in the outcome and suggested helpful answers to the witness.

Hope for the Future of Hypnosis

Kincade cites Texas as one jurisdiction where hypnosis continues to play a substantial role in police investigations. That's due to a 1988 ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in the 1967 murder case of an Austin store clerk. Unsolved for a decade, the case came to life in 1980 when a Texas Ranger hypnotized a witness who then selected a suspect from a photo spread.

The result? A conviction and 99-year prison sentence.

The state’s highest criminal appeals court allowed the hypnotically induced testimony by citing an important 1987 U.S. Supreme Court case that had focused on the testimony of a criminal defendant from Arkansas. In that case, a woman charged with her husband's death had undergone hypnosis to recall details of the murder. In the process, she recalled that the gun had discharged by accident. The court denied her right to testify in her own defense about the hypnotic experience, but the nation’s highest court overruled, providing its only real opinion on the use of hypnotism.

If investigators are hesitant to use hypnosis, Laguna notes, they can borrow hypnotic techniques such as “guided imagery” to find critical information. However, Laguna warns that scientists lack data about its reliability, which may make it vulnerable in court. The technique helps witnesses relax and meditate on events without hypnotic trances, allowing them to use their imaginations to return to the day of the crime and re-experience its events and details. The technique varies with each witness depending on the subject's ability to relax and daydream about past events.

Hypnosis and the Subconscious Mind

In the words of PAUL KINCADE

It’s not generally known that the conscious mind is critical, analytical and overly protective. When a person experiences a traumatic event, the conscious mind will delete, distort or generalize the event to make it acceptable to live with.

Take as an example, the case of a police officer who arrives at the scene of an accident to find the paramedics assisting an unconscious driver. When the driver regains consciousness, the officer may ask him what happened. “Geez,” the man might respond, “I don't know. The last thing I remember is seeing headlights way down the road, coming toward me.”

 A lot of things happened between the time the driver first saw the headlights and the time he lost consciousness, but his protective conscious said, “That’s too heavy to live with, so forget it.”

As a result, he suffered a spontaneous amnesia. We also see this phenomenon with victims of rape and other violent assaults. Before the conscious mind puts an experience into memory, it will censor it. However, at the same time, the subconscious mind will record the same event, but without any alteration, and file it away at a subcortical level of the brain stem, below conscious awareness.

A trained hypno-lnvestigator can create a trance state for the victim or witness, bypass the critical conscious mind and retrieve the unaltered version. It should be emphasized that any information retrieved by hypnosis is perceptual and not necessarily factual. This is why all Information, from whatever source, hypnotized or not, must be corroborated by hard evidence. It should be understood that hypnosis is an information-gathering technique, rather than a fact-finding one. It also is a tool of last resort.

Paul Kincade, M.A., served twelve years with the San Diego Police Department as their forensic hypnotist, working with crime victims and witnesses, police officers with problems and the academy's cadets. He is currently a reserve deputy sheriff with the Washoe County Sheriff's Office. He teaches the techniques of forensic hypnosis at three Northern Nevada police academies and at agencies that request these services.

Kincade received a U.S. Congressional Distinguished Services Award and was nominated for the California Governor's Crime Victims Services Award. He was inducted into the International Hypnosis Hall of Fame in May in Pennsylvania.

GUIDELINES

Investigators who decide to use hypnosis should note that:

·       Investigators should use only health professionals or law enforcement that have been trained In forensic hypnosis with no previous knowledge of the case’s facts to hypnotize subjects, To ensure that the hypnotist will ask proper questions, investigators must carefully prepare a memorandum of basics without including opinions to influence the session.

·       They should videotape all contact between the hypnotist and the witness from the introductions to the final farewells to prove that casual comments haven't produced suggestions for recreation of a crime.

·       Only the hypnotist and the witness can remain in the room during the session to prevent inadvertent suggestions from third parties.

·       Investigators should have videotapes of all previous interrogations of the witness, so they can document the changes or additions to the subject’s version.

“You have to get pre-existing observations documented to distinguish between what they knew before and later,” says Goldstein, emphasizing the need for earlier tapes. “The worst thing that can happen to a police department is that they call someone who doesn’t know about forensic hypnosis. Before you know it, leading questions are asked and the prosecutor has to clean up the mess. Some departments are using dentists.”

Investigators like Kincade know that defense attorneys will remain quick to cite the criticisms of top hypnosis critics, such as Diamond and Orne, when handling cases where hypnosis played a role.

Defense attorneys may argue that:

·       Hypnotized witnesses are susceptible to suggestions by the hypnotist.

·       Witnesses may fill memory gaps with confabulations—fantasies, fears or hopes—that contradict the actual events.

·       The process leaves the witness with an almost unshakable belief in the memories produced—a belief so strong that it usually defies cross-examination. Juries still perceive hypnosis as infallible despite warnings from judges.

·       The subject usually works to please hypnotists, falling under their spell.

Psychology of Collecting: Glass Eyeballs To Presidential Campaigns

As soon as I left The Houston Post in August 1980 and began freelancing, I made a connection with a woman who did internal communications work for Houston’s largest bank, First City National. She had decided to include a general interest feature article in each month’s magazine and asked me to provide them. Her only prohibition: Nothing controversial.

So, I made a list of subjects that intrigued me and found the hobby of collecting near the top of my list. I wondered what sort of weird things were being collected by people in Houston and went on to investigate. I discovered a wide range of interests and produced this article in November of 1980. Obviously, the subject retains its fascination today as visits to several other Internet sites would attest: Wikpedia, Mental Floss, Mother Nature Network and Hobbylark.

Here’s my tour of Houston’s collectors community from 1980.

THE COLLECTORS

“Everyone always looks into a glass case," says Grant Payne somewhat philosophically, “but nothing ever looks back.”

No, Payne is not a mystic, nor is he a modern-day philosopher enlisting riddles to unravel some metaphysical dilemma. When he speaks of glass cases with no return stare. Grant Payne is talking business. A few years ago he discovered a way to alter that deficiency.

“Glass eyeballs became obsolete in 1945,” he explains. “The manufacturers turned to plastics. I’d never given it much thought until someone mentioned it to me.”

That was in 1970. Payne considered the problem of glass eyeballs a little while and soon concluded that somewhere in Houston there had to be an optician who had lacked the foresight to avoid the demise of glass eyeballs. He reasoned that such a fellow might have an overstock of old glass eyeballs which could be purchased

for a reasonable price.

“I made a couple of phone calls and got confirmation that 1945 had indeed been the last year for glass eyeballs. Plastics adapt better to the eyes and they are safer. But no companies had any glass eyeballs left.

“Finally I called one place and asked the receptionist if her doctor had any glass eyeballs in stock. When she said he would put a patient on hold to talk with me on the phone about it, I figured I’d hit the jackpot,” Payne said.

In short, the incident provided Payne with a corner on the glass eyeballs market in Houston, a triumph ignored at the time by The Wall Street Journal and businesses across the country. No matter. His victory has been of interest to a select group of individuals who have their own grapevine for vital information: The collectors.

“If it exists,” says Payne, “someone collects it .”

And wherever a person collects, Grant Payne is bound to follow. An accountant by day, this 60-year-old antique dealer has become one of the city's chief experts in collections of the unusual. He gathers items as a hobby, determines their value as collector pieces then offers them for sale from his home or his shop at the Westpark Common Market on weekends. Take the eyeballs, for example.

“I had to determine what would constitute a full set. I learned there had been eight color variations in two styles, light veined and heavy veined. There had also been another set made specially for the black race with pupils more cream-colored and veining predominant. That meant 17 eyeballs would make a set,” he says.

Glass eyeballs have been purchased by glass collectors and jokers who stick them in drinks. One person bought a set to glue them onto drink coasters bearing the Texas state design: The eyes of Texas. From Grant Payne they cost $12.50 apiece.

Scientists have long labored over classification systems, dividing the animal kingdom into various phyla and sub-phyla by bones and structure. When they get to the humans, they might consider a new division: Collectors and non-collectors. We’ve all known those folks who can never throw anything away regardless of its worth. And the practice creates a new form of monetary system used only by the collectors. Offer a collector something he doesn't have and there is little he won't do to obtain it. Meanwhile, the same piece of junk might be tossed in the trash by someone without the addiction.

Norman Loewenstern, a southwest Houston stockbroker, knows all about that. He is hooked on political paraphernalia and boasts the nation's largest collection of his specialty item: Gizmos peddled at the turn of the century to promote the candidacies of President William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. His interest is historical and has made him a veritable font of information on the art of campaigns.

Among other things, Loewenstern owns a small brass pig which, when held up to the light, reveals a small oval photo of one candidate stuffed into the pig's hind end—obviously distributed by the opposition. Another item of questionable ethics is a coffin with a miniature McKinley laid to rest inside.

“But they had no way of knowing McKinley would be assassinated in office later,” Loewenstern apologizes with a laugh.

His den walls are lined with particle board and shelves which display whiskey bottles bearing the candidates’ portrait, razors with candidates’ names engraved

on the blades, buggy whips and lanterns, walking canes with a politician's head for a handle, ash trays, fans, flags and even a brass door knob with McKinley's profile engraved in the center. And then there are always the buttons.

Loewenstern's favorite is called a double eclipse. It depicts portraits of Bryan and his running mate in a circle eclipsing portraits of McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt in the background with the cry across the bottom for a “Double Eclipse on Nov. 6.”

His collecting hobby is typical in terms of the time it demands. He averages four hours a week just prowling around flea markets and old shops hoping to find “That little old lady with a box in her attic.” He also travels the country in search of buttons for his collection and notes with enthusiastic glee the lengths to which he has been driven in search of some new addition.

For years, however, Loewenstern was literally a closet collector. He began to pick up presidential items at the age of 17 and kept them hidden away after getting married. One day his wife suggested they needed something interesting to decorate a spare room.

“Out it came,” she says, “I didn't know he had so much stuff.”

His most valuable piece is a pill box distributed just prior to the election of George Washington as the first President. A Bilston and Battersea, enamel on copper item, it urges Washington's coronation as king rather than President of a democracy. His oldest single curio, it is worth “a couple of thousand dollars as a museum piece.”

Mostly individual items in his collections are valuable only to another collector. He usually barters for items he wants with those wanted by someone else. As one who moves through the collector's world, Loewenstern acknowledges the psychology involved:

“It took me a long time to understand why guys would collect barbed wire. But they do it because of the history. I guess it works on your ego, too, being able to say you're the only guy in the country who owns a certain thing. And once I’ve owned something, I feel like I can trade it unless it's really special.”

Indeed, it was history which spirited another Houston collector in the direction of his desire—beer cans. Rod Macdonald, a 34-year-old carpet installer, boasts a collection of 1,600 different cans and notes that Jan. 24, was the 46th anniversary of introduction of the beer can. Collecting beer cans has become another hit in Houston and across the country, with some distributors marketing special beers just to corner the can collectors market, according to Payne.

Macdonald is an officer in the national Beer Can Collector's Association but his collection is by no means top—even in Houston. His wife, Cooke, collects Coca-Cola objects—anything with Coca-Cola on it—and belongs to a local club with 50 members devoted to the same search.

Most folks are familiar with the more popular and widely publicized collectibles, such as comic books and baseball cards. One need only visit the annual trading conventions for those objects to lament the day their mother threw out a box of their own now-valuable collectibles. But the more unusual collector’s items can be found in town without visiting a convention. The huge flea market on Westpark attracts collectors and salesmen from all over the country.

David Hughes, a Dallas-based collector-trader visited the Common Market recently, set up his booth then wandered around looking for bargains of his own. He bought a few glass eyeballs from Payne for resale to folks who might not get past the more established shop. In his wallet, he carried a card given him once by

Loewenstern: “1 Collect Presidential Campaign Items” with Loewenstern’s address and telephone number.

“I get so many cards I just throw a lot of them back,” says Hughes, who regularly travels through 33 states to visit flea markets and trade with collectors. He notes the profits to be had when people collect “thousands of things.” Hughes has bought an item early in the day at a flea market for one dollar and sold it later on to a collector for $80.

“With a true collector, if they see something they don’t have they’ll pay whatever the cost,” Hughes notes. “An older man might collect toys because when he was growing up during the depression they couldn't afford any toys. The reasons are as varied as the things they collect.”

At his booth on this day, Hughes offered on display old tools, railroad lanterns, badges for chauffeurs and lawmen, watch fobs, corkscrews, bottle openers and pocket knives. Some of the corkscrews can sell for as much as $75 and some old pocket knives are worth $500. Hughes knows a collector in Ohio with five tons of old locks and it’s still not enough. If Hughes finds one the fellow needs, he’s under strict orders to deliver it regardless of cost.

The key to judging a collection is knowing its purpose, says Payne. One collection might have more individual items but if they are too varied, another collection right on focus would prove more impressive. With that in mind, here’s a rundown of some of the things he’s known people to collect and why:

VASELINE GLASS—This was made by several different companies and marketed as canary glass. It glows and that fact intrigued people. But different manufacturers didn't know the formula. It was made from 1830 on up to the present for use in plates and dinnerware. Liberace has the world's greatest vaseline glass collection, says Payne. But Payne has his own use for it. He places it on a table inside his shop at the Common Market. In the dark corner it glows and beckons those passing by to come in and browse.

LADIES' HATS—“Half of your high schools today are full of 1930s clothes,” says Payne. “All of these kids have got to get some. An older lady brought me a box filled with old hats. She’ll enjoy the money they bring in.”

NEON LETTERS—“I Stopped in a shop one day out of town where a dealer had a box of them,” Payne explains. Somewhere a company had gone out of business and this shop owner had been intrigued enough with the letters to buy them. Payne in turn bought one of the letters. He put it on his shop's wall and sold it to “a guy who had an empty space on his wall. This letter happened to be one of his initials.” Payne returned to buy the whole box. “I haven't sold one since,” he says.

STREET SIGNS—Before Freeport merged with the town of Vlasco, Payne says, Vlasco had its own street signs. Porcelain or tin, they now rest in Payne’s shop. “One guy bought two,” Payne says,, “because his brother was born there and he thought they would be a nice birthday present.”

THIMBLES—“Whenever I see a thimble,” Payne says, “I buy one.” He keeps them on display in a glass case, much like the glass eyeballs. In contrast, however, the thimbles can have genuine antique value, more than as mere collectibles. Thimbles have been used for centuries as a sewing aid and cultures worldwide have produced many different kinds bearing many different designs. They appeal to women as collectibles because they are small enough to be kept in a cigar box. Top of the line in thimbles is an imported Chinese model in the shape of a ring. It dates from 1600.

WOODEN NICKELS—We’ve all seen them at fairs and centennials, bank openings and celebrations—but some people collect them. Usually they are advertisements for some store’s latest sales and given away to promote business. Payne always has a bowl on hand, filled to the brim for sale.

COASTERS--These are close to beer cans in appeal. When can collectors get fed up with that, many of them move into coasters.

RATTLESNAKE RATTLES—“In 1963 I went out west to look for cactus and rocks. Outside of Fort Davis I spotted a dead rattlesnake on the road and thought I'd get the rattles. But I couldn't touch the thing. Later I stopped in a shop in town and noticed a big pile of old rattles. The owner just let them sit around for conversation items. He'd never thought of selling them. I offered him a quarter apiece. Now I keep them in an apothecary jar,” Payne explains.

RAILROAD NAILS—“I can’t keep them in stock. There’s a continual interest in anything dealing with the railroads, the passing of the railroads and all that. There’s a world of people out there who worked for the railroads or are related to people who worked for the railroads,” he says.

Although he keeps a file on all his various clients—“I’m like a lawyer, I can't reveal their identities or the things they collect”—Payne is not one to be outdone in the field of collecting. He got started selling collectibles through his attraction to collecting and he always has something around he is collecting.

“I never forget a collector,” Payne boasts, regardless of the collection. He recalls the time a fellow asked him to find a particular horse bit for his collection. The collector wanted one geared to feed medicine to the horse through a funnel on the bit. Payne tucked the request away in his memory with the question, “What would that be worth to you?”

The collector replied, “$25.”

A few months later Payne was wandering through some shops in southern Missouri and, in a shop on a dusty back alley, he spied a row of horse bits.

“You have a medicinal bit?” he asked reviewing the wall. The shopkeeper pulled one down and sold it to Payne. A few months went by with the medicinal bit stashed under his counter. Then Payne recognized a familiar face strolling past his shop one Saturday afternoon.

“Hey,” Payne yelled, “aren't you the guy who collects horse bits?”

The fellow wandered inside nodding his head.

“You still looking for a medicinal bit?” Payne asked.

The collector's eyes grew wide as he panted, “Did you find one?”

Payne slapped the treasure down on his counter and smiled. The collector's glee lapsed as suspicious thoughts raced through his mind.

“Say,” he squinted, “how much you going to charge for this?”

Payne flipped cigarette ashes into an ashtray and chortled, “You said it’d be worth $25 to you a while back. That's what I’ll sell it for today.”

The collector tossed the bills on the counter, picked up the bit and ran out the door.

“He was so excited,” Payne recalls, “he forgot to say thanks. He was a true collector.”

Gordon Wood: High School Football Coaching Legend

 Although I had never been a sports writer during my newspaper days in the 1970s at The Flint (Michigan) Journal and The Houston Post, I added sports features to my portfolio during my years as a freelance journalist from 1980-1997. I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing athletes and coaches in particular. And it was in that vein I quickly encountered one of the most memorable feature subjects of my career: Texas high school football coaching legend Gordon Wood.

I hadn’t even heard of Wood before I persuaded the fledgling sports publication Texas Sports to let me poll a national group of top college coaches in 1981 on the question of trying to identify Texas’ best high school coach. I was pleasantly surprised when a healthy number of college coaches agreed to answer my query, which involved anonymously listing their selections for the state’s 10 best high school coaches and adding a few comments explaining those picks. I figured I’d see a lot of names from the powerhouse high schools in Houston and Dallas. But I was stunned to find one name from rural Brownwood mentioned prominently on every coach’s ballot: Gordon Wood.

In follow-up phone calls with coaches at national powerhouses like Nebraska and Oklahoma, as well as Texas schools, I confirmed their confidence in Wood’s ability to produce players ready for the college ranks. The more I learned about Wood, the more eager I became to learn more. So, I convinced the editor at the Sunday magazine for The Dallas Times Herald (Westward magazine) to assign me a feature story on Wood. I traveled to Brownwood one Friday with a photographer to spend a football weekend with Wood. I even joined him for a haircut in his favorite Brownwood barber shop before the game, a weekly ritual for the iconic coach. We finished the weekend with a lengthy interview session on Saturday following a Brownwood victory on Friday night. I would write about Wood several times in the next few years.

Wood died in 2003 at the age of 89. During a 43-year career as a Texas high school football coach, he won 25 district titles and nine state crowns, finishing with a record of 396-91-15. At least four other high school coaches have topped that win mark. Only three college coaches logged more wins than Gordon Wood: John Gagliardi with 489, Joe Paterno with 409 and Eddie Robinson with 408.

I wrote the story below as Wood was launching his 1983 campaign, two seasons before his retirement in 1985. He would finish the 1983 season with a record of 8-3. Two years before his death, Wood penned a memoir entitled Coach of the Century. Of course, there is a Wikipedia article on Gordon Wood for anyone wanting more details than provided here in my article from the October 1983 editions of Muse Air Monthly.

WORLD'S WINNINGEST FOOTBALL COACH

Gordon Wood, coach at Brownwood, Texas, has a won-lost record that’s the best in football at all levels.

Clearly, the situation looked hopeless. The Stamford High School Bulldogs — Texas state football champs in each of the two previous seasons — had been penalized back to their own one-foot line. The ball sat perched just outside their own end zone. They looked to the sidelines.

There, Coach Gordon Wood explained his plan to reserve Wendel Robinson: “Tell them to wedge block two plays and then punt that ball out of there.” Wood slapped Robinson on the seat and dispatched him to deliver those instructions to the players waiting on the field. But somehow; the message was garbled.

“Coach says for the quarterback to follow me 99 yards on a sneak,” Robinson ordered from the midst of the huddle. Although they were puzzled, the team dropped into position and prepared to follow those instructions. And no one was more surprised than Wood when the play zigged right, then left and then carried through a hole for a touchdown.

“I don't k n ow why he told them to do that,” recalls Wood of the incident during the 1957 season. “But that was a team that just got it in its head they could do anything. Maybe I had underestimated them by telling them to hang on.”

The Good Book promises that faith will move mountains. While many geologists might dispute that claim, most people will agree that faith is still a pretty potent force, particularly in sports. It would be hard to find a more fitting example of the strength in that dictum than Gordon Wood, the classic American high school football coach.

Kicking off his 45th campaign this fall in Texas high school football. Wood has employed a lot of faith to help compile the most successful record any football coach in America has ever enjoyed: 383-77-11 for a winning percentage of .825 with nine state championships to his credit. When the late Bear Bryant topped the record for most wins by a college coach (315), he trailed the Texas legend by about 60 victories. Situated as he's been in the lower visibility arena of high school sports. Wood hasn't been treated to the same sort of national spotlight. Just this year he was honored with election to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. But those with a firm grasp of the impact of Woods accomplishment have never been shy about expressing their opinion.

“Gordon Wood belonged in there long before I did,” says former University of Texas coach Darrell Royal. “His record is more remarkable to me than Bear Bryant’s.”

Bryant himself paid Wood the ultimate compliment when he once joked about his reasons for leaving Texas A&M: “I just didn't want to be remembered as the second best coach in the state.”

And Texas Tech's Jerry Moore confesses: “I’m a Gordon Wood fan.” The framed portrait of only one coach graces the walls of Moore's Lubbock office—that of Gordon Wood. The image of a major college coach plotting next season’s strategy beneath a portrait of a high school mentor is itself symbolic of Texas high school football.

Gordon Wood's inspirational record is just the peak of his contribution to Texas culture. Wood stands as the measure against which all other coaching efforts must be measured, of course. And he excelled in a realm where he had to rely on the talent presented him, most of the time molding a bunch of squirts into champions. There are at least three other even more significant accomplishments with long range impact attributable to the man.

First, his imprint will forever be stamped on Texas football coaches in general. Many of the men coaching across the state today played their schoolboy football during Wood's golden years in n the 1950s at Stamford. They've carried the Wood trademark into their own systems and undoubtedly will transmit it to the boys destined to grow into the state's coaches of the next generation. In many ways  Gordon Wood is Texas high school football.

Second, Brownwood, Texas, where he has coached since I960, has developed at least some of its community pride from its teams. Brownwood, a pleasant community of 20,000 between Fort Worth and Abilene in northwest central Texas, teems with ambition. The high school, recently moved up a notch to 4A status, and Wood got credit for infusing their little city with spirit and pride. In small Texas towns, the high school football team serves a psychological function. A winning spirit is contagious. The kids bring it home from school and pass it on at the supper table. The parents take it to work with them on Monday morning. Grade schoolers grow up working toward one ultimate goal—to make the team in high school.

Brownwood, before Gordon Wood, had claimed only one district title in 40 years. By most accounts it was a depressing place. Wags at a barber shop joked about the “sissies” on the gridiron. But in his first year as coach, Wood took them to the first of the school’s seven state championships. He never looked back. And Brownwood hasn’t either.

Third, and probably most important, Wood has done much more than pump quality athletes out of his system. High school sports exists to teach more than the intricacies of the game. In fact, 95 percent of the kids who play in high school won't go any further on the football field, but they will carry valuable lessons about discipline, spirit, pride and, yes, faith, into business, agriculture, government and education—all the fields which make this society work. To that end, this is what Gordon Wood is all about. Ask most college coaches to talk about their most memorable players and you'll get a litany of All-Americans and the ones who went on to the pros. Ask Wood and you hear about boys who grew up and went to Congress or one who turned down a coaching job on Wood's suggestion to become a high-powered math professor.

And for all who passed through his locker room, Wood voices only the

same, simple view: “I just hope that I had something to do with teaching that all things are possible if you get a good vision of what you want to be, work hard and get your priorities right.”

Before he died, Bear Bryant offered an equally simple summation of the Brownwood legend: “What Gordon Wood does, is, he helps people be better people.”

But how has he done it? What ingredients have combined to create Gordon Wood? What's the secret of his success?

“The formula,” replies Wood with characteristic brevity “is to get a program and get the kids believing in what they're doing.”

That's faith. And most of all, faith is what Gordon Wood has taught. There’s little complex strategy and rarely any dramatic hellfire-brimstone oratory in a Gordon Wood halftime pep talk. He simply tells each player what specific maneuver to make that should correct the current situation. It works because each player has learned by experience the primary dictum on a Gordon Wood team: If Wood tells them something will work, and they follow his orders, it will. And, if that 1957 Stamford squad believed Wood ordered a quarterback sneak for 99 yards, well, that's exactly what they did—in football's version of a mountain-moving performance.

Wood was born May 25, 1914, on a cotton farm in south Taylor County The youngest of eight children, he learned early that the family watchword was “work.” Their father toiled in the field from dawn to dusk, and he expected the family to do the same. An excellent farmer, Wood's father might have become wealthy except for one flaw, Wood recalls. He did not believe in owing money When disasters struck and crops failed—as they almost invariably do at one time or another—he moved his family on rather than borrow money from a bank. The family never went hungry. But Wood remembers his youth as a time of constant toil. He says the children always looked forward to those times when their father would loan them out to neighboring farms where the work schedule was a more comfortable 10-hour day compared with the 12 hours-plus they knew at home.

Theirs also was the type of environment in which school became a luxury. The brood showed for class on opening day, drew their books and returned only when rain forced them out of the fields. That life left its impression. Wood grew up seeking an escape. He didn't enjoy farming, an existence dependent on the whims of nature with its insects and weather. However, it also brought out the competitor in Gordon Wood. Picking cotton was the only athletic event his family knew, and he worked obsessively to do it better than his older brothers. It was a grand occasion when he could brag at supper about having plucked 400 pounds of cotton during the day.

Strangely enough, the nation's winningest coach played only five football games as a schoolboy athlete. That occurred in the seventh grade when he lived in Abilene with his mother. Rather than borrow to pay off a doctor bill, the family split briefly that year with his father working the farm near Wylie and his mother doing laundry for pay in the city. The young Wood saw some friends playing football and asked if he could try. He was so naive, he recalls, he took literally the coach's instructions to “Go out there and fight.” He failed to make a single tackle because he was too busy pounding the face of the player across the line.

When the family was reunited in Wylie, he tried commuting to Abilene because his local school wasn't large enough to field a team. He surrendered after five games, the combination of school, travel and farm chores overwhelming even his enthusiasm. He never played another down in high school.

But his competitive edge could not be dulled. He played basketball and starred in track meets around Taylor County He was big and possessed a farm-fed strength. Those qualities, plus his desire to win, landed him a general athletic scholarship at Hardin- Simmons College in Abilene. At last, he was freed from the farm—but not entirely from chores. His scholarship covered only tuition and books. To pay for room and board, young Wood brought a family cow to Abilene. Her milk each day earned him quarters at a boarding house.

In 1938, with the Great Depression still in full fury, Wood graduated from Hardin-Simmons clutching degrees in physical education and history. By 1940, Wood had made enough contacts to land a head coaching position at Rule High School. Half the size of Spur, it had lost 20 straight football games, but it offered Wood the perfect laboratory for demonstrating his special talent. It was at Rule that he began to practice the techniques destined to create a legend.

Foremost came an ability to look beneath the muscles and speed when selecting players, to locate those with that special quality known as “heart.” One incident in particular illustrates his jeweler’s eye in this regard. During spring drills at Rule, Wood watched a defensive back miss a tackle that would have prevented a touchdown. Calling the youngster to the sidelines, Wood simply chided: “Johnnie, I don't believe you even tried to tackle that kid.”  He was prepared for a response of disappointment but nothing like the scene that transpired. Johnnie cried all afternoon.

Wood recalls his own feelings: “I knew then in my heart this was something I’d never have to say to that kid again. He was trying as hard as he could. I knew I had me a football player. You’ve got to recognize these things in kids.”

Halftime of opening day found his team behind 25-0. On the way to the locker room he overheard his two largest players grumbling, “It’s nothing.” Wood started the halftime pep talk by telling them to turn in their uniforms. The surviving members of the team returned to the field and carved out Rule's first win in two seasons, 31-28.

By 1942, Wood was able to carry his first head coaching record from Rule into the U.S. Navy: 11 wins and 9 losses. He spent World War II in California, where he served as a chief petty officer for recreation and boxing. He worked part time for some college coaches out there, recruiting, scouting and undoubtedly learning a number of new tricks.

He returned to Texas in 1945, assuming the helm at Roscoe where the student body totaled 113. He overcame car wrecks which injured his stars and a flu epidemic to compile a record of 17-2-2 with one district title. On toward destiny he continued to roll: 1947-1949 at Seminole (20-9-2); 1950 at Winters (7-3); 1951-1957 at Stamford (81-6); 1958-59 at Victoria (12-7-1), and finally, 1960 to present at Brownwood (235-41-6).

It was at Stamford that Wood-led teams began to project a distinct personality, one etched into the face of Texas high school football. Besides nailing down two state football titles there (1955 and 1956) he coached the school's golf team to the state championship one year with the help of his football quarterback. That quarterback,  Charles Coody went on to become one of the country's outstanding professional golfers. At Stamford, Wood polished his expertise in the fine art of preparation.

He called upon graduates to spend Friday nights scouting future opponents. One of the players who benefitted from those reports remembers them as extremely detailed.

“He really wanted to beat Seminole, his old school,” recalls H. L. “Buddy” Gray now a math professor at Southern Methodist University. “We were both 12-0. Before the game, he passed out a sheet to our team with facts and figures about every member of their team. He even had quotes they might have said, comments about which ones were married and which ones could intimidate. I don't know how he collected all that, but we wound up beating them 35-0. We respected him because he planned things and told us they would work. If we did them right, they did work.”

Under Wood, those Stamford teams developed a reputation for using the first play of the game as a boost. Gray recalls that Wood always seemed to know his opponents’ weakest spot, and that spot is where he went to open the offense. But Wood also used those years to develop a precise understanding of dealing with youngsters.

“I’d never been so severely chewed out as when I missed a block,” recalls Charles Stenholm, one of Gray's teammates and now a U.S. congressman from Stamford. “But I've never been so sincerely praised as when I did something good. He just had an instinct for knowing when to rage and when to calm down.”

For any coach, the halftime pep talk is equivalent to a doctor's bedside manner as a key to success. Wood explains his philosophy developed at Stamford: “All that gung-ho, beat ‘em up and kill ‘em stuff is no good. Kids are too wise. But there are times when the worst thing you can do is chew them out. There’s a reason for them doing poorly. Just find it, tell ‘em what it is and let them correct.”

The most important aspect of Wood’s relationship with young players concerns their emotional foundation. Some coaches win because they hate to lose. Wood seems to win because of his love for the kids. His yearbooks yield a thousand different stories, and he built on those relationships to the maximum. He always took the time for personal attention, becoming for many boys the second father they needed in those uncomfortable adolescent years. It was not unusual to find Gordon Wood dipping into his own pocket to help with a doctor bill.

One example of Wood's personal touch was Gray He came to Texas as a refugee from an Oklahoma City street gang. He'd gotten into trouble and moved south to live with an uncle. Gray chuckles now about the size of Wood's Stamford teams: “They wouldn't even have let some of those kids come out for football in the city.”

Once Wood warned Gray about picking on a quieter member of the team, predicting he’d be unable to handle the explosion that was bound to occur. Wood’s

home was the first place Gray stopped to display the black eye that boy had finally presented to him. And years later it was Gordon Wood who got a late night phone call from Gray as he wrestled with a career decision. It wasn’t too late for Wood to listen and advise Gray against accepting a high school coach’s position.

“I remember him being absolutely furious about some other coach,” Gray recalls of another incident which demonstrates Wood's outlook toward helping rather than just winning. “A kid at another school had gotten hurt and Gordon asked the coach how the kid was recovering. The other coach told him the kid wasn't doing too well. He said the kid wouldn't work out, that he wouldn’t follow the exercises given to him.

“Gordon said that was the coach's job. He said he would have taken that kid out to the field by himself and gotten him started. A coach has to show the kid he's interested in him first and then see if the kid will respond. And that’s how he’s treated every kid that’s ever come his way.”

“We try to tell all of our kids that they are better than they think they are,” says Wood. “Maybe not as good as they tell their girlfriends, but better than they really think they are. But none will ever make it up to their potential. And the potential is always there.”

With his Stamford teams to bolster his reputation, Wood decided to move up a notch in 1958, accepting the highest level head coaching job he's ever held at division Four-A Victoria. His two-year experience there paved the way for the triumphs to come at Brownwood. For starters, he recruited as his assistant

Morris Southall, at that time the head coach for Winters. Today Southall is still his assistant, having moved with Wood to Brownwood in I960. They've always lived next door to each other, and Wood is quick to give Southall lots of credit. Indeed, Southall could have moved on to head coaching jobs of his own, but his desire to remain 25 years as Wood’s top aide stands as a comment itself on the attractions of coaching high school football in Texas. In Brownwood he feels he's been a part of the most successful program in America, and the record presents a good argument for that opinion. Southall is the only assistant coach in Texas who has served as head coach of the state's all-star team. Wood's other assistant, Kenneth West, has been with Wood’s program for 20 years—another testament to its magnetism.

But the crucial lesson Wood learned in Victoria concerned his personal goals. He went there as the highest paid high school coach in the state in 1958. Victoria was the big time for high school coaches, perhaps a step to collegiate ranks. When Wood reviewed the stands for a district championship game in 1959, however, he made a decision. Victoria had sold only 200 adult tickets. Something was missing, even if he was coaching in the big league. Just before the opening kickoff, Wood whispered to Southall: “I’m getting out of here.”

At his next stop he accepted the stiffest challenge of his career with a cut in pay worth $2,500 per year. “The retiring coach here told me, ‘Nobody can win at Brownwood.’ I knew Brownwood was not a winner,” Wood recalls. “But no job is ever as good as it looks, or as bad. It’s just what you make of it.”

When he moved to Brownwood in February I960, Wood stopped in a barber shop for a haircut. In there he quickly learned the attitude of the town. Recognized as the “new coach,” Wood immediately drew comments from another customer who said he was already betting on Breckenridge—beaten only once by Brownwood in 30 years and scheduled for the seventh game that season. Wood listened a while, got his haircut, paid his tab and went to the door.

Before he left, Wood offered a taste of his attitude: “If every SOB in this town is as sorry a sports fan as you, you don't ever deserve to beat Breckenridge. When I walk out this door, you can bet your life I’ll never take another step back in here as long as I live.”

Fortunately Brownwood had another barber shop because Gordon

Wood has had many more haircuts in the years since then. His team that year “just got it in their heads they could score on anybody” and by the time the Breckenridge game came around, the first fan in line to buy tickets purchased 373.

Maroon-and-white state championship footballs now line Wood’s bookshelves at home like scalps on an Indian brave's teepee: I960, 1965, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1978 and 1981. It’s a tradition that’s inspired the whole community.

Wood doesn’t cut players who come out for the team. He usually has 90 or more wearing uniforms and boasting about being a Brownwood Lion. “Oh,” he admits, “we may try to discourage some of them a bit, but if a kid had any ability at all and really wanted to play, I couldn't cut him. You have to decide if they are there because they want to be or just to look good. We emphasize winning here. It’s tremendous pressure now, and I don't apologize for it . You’re competing with everyone in life.”

Besides the exercises, weight training and agility drills. Wood and Southall have devised some other routines of note. One is a listening drill in which assistant coaches scout the assembled team to detect wandering eyes or lack of interest. A Brownwood Lion can attract a more serious tirade for daydreaming in a skull session than for missing a tackle.

By the time they're 69, most coaches have retired to the spectator ranks. In 1983, Wood appears to be the very picture of health and enthusiasm. He won't say anything about plans to retire. On the start of his 23rd campaign for Brownwood, his thoughts this year focus on the team. With only two starters returning from last year’s squad, the experts weren't giving the Lions any vote of confidence. With Wood cracking the whip, however, they're always a threat to go all the way.

As for Wood's analysis, well, he seems to look at all his teams about the same before each season starts: “I may just find me a bunch of little nuggets in there somewhere. Who knows?”