What is the date you began writing this memoir and the date when you completed the memoir? I began writing my memoir in 2015. Prior to that time I spent several years collecting stories and sayings from family, friends about my life and surroundings on a small farm in Ohio. I first used these materials in a local Ohio newspaper column where I wrote about my growing up in a house without a bathroom or running water, high school, college, law school moving to California. I completed writing my memoir in 2021.
Click on the link below to visit the website of The Wellington Enterprise that Ben Ewell wrote columns for.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84028271/
Where did you do most of your writing for this memoir? And please describe in detail. Most of my writing was done in a small room in a separate guest house in the backyard of our residence. This room is quiet without a TV or radio. It has walls lined with book shelves holding hundreds of books I have collected and many of which I have read over the years.
What were your writing habits while writing this memoir – did you drink something as your wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? Most of my writing was done in nighttime hours when quiet and the stress of a particular day could be put out of my mind. I usually drink only water while writing. No coffee, tea, soda or alcohol like my days in Law School. Because I’m not a very good typist, I use a pen and paper, and write usually on lined yellow legal pads. I then have someone help me transform the hand written pages into a typed draft for my review.
Out of all the specific memories you write about in this memoir, which ONE MEMORY was the most emotional for you to write about? And can you share that specific excerpt with us here. The excerpt can be as short or long as you prefer and please provide page numbers as reference. My memoir speaks to a “perfect storm” of tragedies in my life, happening almost simultaneously involving the murder of my brother, sister in law and niece on an Easter Sunday afternoon , battles with my former wife and mother of my first two sons ending with a court awarding me custody, and the death of my Dad in a fire and explosion at his home. It was this latter event that was such a difficult to experience for me to write about.
Excerpt – Pages 170 – 177 As soon as we arrived at the Cleveland airport, we rented a car and drove to the hospital. We were directed to the intensive care burn unit on the fourth floor. This area of the hospital was very cold and stark with colorless, gray walls. Since the nurse said there could be only one person at a time in Dad’s room, I told Richard, “I’ll go first and then come out to let you know the situation.” The heavy gray steel doors in the hall in front of me had a small glass window at the top to see into the next room and a button on the wall that automatically opened the doors. I pushed the button with my latex-gloved right hand that was stained yellow and smelling of the iodine soap the nurse required me to apply before going any farther. To move from one room to the next, the steel doors behind you would close before you could open the next set of doors. It felt less like a hospital and more like a ship where sailors lock the hatches behind them before they can proceed to the next room. The receptionist had mentioned to me that the burn unit was very large and busy and treated patients of industrial accidents and burns from the entire Ohio Great Lakes area.
As I neared the last steel door, I felt the dampness of my palms and armpits as I began to sweat, and my stomach tightened. Seeing Dad was something I needed to do, something I wanted to do, but something I didn’t know if I could do.
As I walked through the last set of steel doors of the burn unit, the smell of iodine became stronger, and I sensed something else, like the smell of fresh soil from our garden. In addition, I could now hear strange beeping sounds going off with different tones at different times, creating an electronic digital symphony.
At the doorway to the room the receptionist said was Dad’s, a tall, white-haired, distinguished-looking man in a white coat approached me. He introduced himself, but I was nervous and didn’t understand his last name except it sounded Italian, something like Dr. Castiglione. He motioned me over to a small bench to sit down. “You need to be prepared for what you are going to see today. Are you?” he asked.
I said, “Yes,” very softly. I was lying; I knew I wasn’t prepared.
“You won’t recognize your dad.” He then started to talk in a very matter-of-fact way. “You see, in very severe burn cases like this, we have a formula to determine whether the patient can survive. We factor in the age and degree of burn and have determined your dad has only a five percent chance to live. All the outer layer of his skin was burned and has been removed, and all his hair is gone. He is breathing only with the help of a ventilator that moves the air in and out of his lungs. We don’t know whether he can hear or see anything since he doesn’t respond. It’s okay now for you to enter the room. Keep your mask on at all times,” he added as he rose to walk away.
Even the doctor’s warning didn’t prepare me for what I saw as I stepped into a large hospital room occupied only by Dad. A gentle man whose favorite things in life besides his family were his rosebushes and the mallard ducks on his pond, Dad was in a place he shouldn’t be. Dad’s whole body was swollen, and the raw skin was visible with the outer layer gone. His head and face were bright red with an unnatural look. He was so different that, without being told his room number, I would not have recognized him. His swollen head was large and round like a basketball. If this were a stranger, I would have turned away to avoid the hideous sight. But this was my dad, and I was able to look at him as my dad and see past the disfigurement.
“Dad, it’s me, Ben. I’m here with you,” I said more than once.
He never moved his lips or even his eyes. He had not spoken since the explosion and fire at his house two days before. The investigators from the Oberlin Fire Department who had replied to the original emergency call believed the fire and explosion may have started when fumes from a small Briggs & Stratton gasoline engine ignited. The engine, hooked to a sump pump in Dad’s basement, had caught fire and exploded. Dad, like many surrounding neighbors, kept a pump in the basement to remove water seeping through and under the foundation. The fire investigators thought Dad may have been trying to pour gasoline from a can into the small engine’s gas tank when the gas fumes were ignited by the pilot light from the nearby water heater. For some unexplained reason, the explosion had set off the security alarm that Dad had never activated because he didn’t want to spend the extra money. Hearing the sound of the alarm and the explosion, Dad’s neighbor Carl ran to Dad’s house, which was filled with smoke and flames coming from the basement. Carl said it was almost impossible for him to see. He said he crawled on his hands and knees down the steps to the basement. There he found Dad on fire, having been blown across the room by the explosion. Carl was able to drag Dad up the stairs to the front yard and lay him on the grass, wrapping him in towels and blankets he’d found in the house to make sure the fire was out on Dad’s body. The emergency personnel wanted to transport Dad to Cleveland by helicopter, but because of a severe tornado-like storm in the area that night, he had to be taken by ambulance.
He seemed so alone in the hospital bed that day. I thought of all the times over the years when he had helped and encouraged me and was always there for me. How he had told me so many times to not worry about things that happen in life. I still worried then, and I worried now. I wanted to talk to him just one more time and hear more of his thoughts and advice. I told him, “Richard and I flew from California to be with you,” even though he didn’t respond. “Dad,” I said, “I just keep thinking about all the times you helped me.” He never blinked or moved his eyes or lips.
I saw him two more times that summer as I flew back and forth from California to spend time with him at the hospital. Shortly after my return to California from the last of those trips, a Cleveland Metro Hospital nurse called me at my Fresno office. She said they planned on turning off the fluids to Dad’s body, and he would survive at most forty-eight hours. I can still hear her say, “The doctor is planning to go on vacation and wants to deal with your dad before he leaves.” I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. I asked myself, Would Dad die now at this particular chosen time because of someone’s vacation schedule?
Someone must have agreed to have the fluids to his body stopped. I didn’t ask, but my brother Dan said later, “It was probably Betty. You know,” he continued, “she was driving every day to Cleveland, and the doctor had already said he wouldn’t survive.” Dan, Richard, and I never knew for sure who had agreed to stop the fluids, and we never asked.
I immediately scheduled a flight to Cleveland and returned with my new wife, Suzy. While we waited for our connecting flight in the Dallas airport, I found a pay phone and called the hospital. The night nurse on the intensive care floor answered my question before I could ask about Dad. “Yes, your dad is still with us, but you need to hurry.”
When my wife and I boarded our flight to Cleveland, I didn’t want to talk to anyone and waved off the stewardess who wanted to pass out sodas and snacks. I could only motion to my wife to get some water. I just couldn’t stop thinking about Dad, and I choked up and got teary-eyed whenever I tried to speak.
Arriving at the airport at about midnight, I left the plane and ran to again find a pay phone, called the hospital, and asked to be connected to the intensive care burn unit.
I had barely said my name when the same night nurse I’d last spoken to from Dallas said, “I’m sorry, he’s gone. Would you like me to keep him in the room until you get here?”
“No,” I whispered, “that won’t be necessary.” I wanted to remember Dad as he had always been, with a laugh or a joke for everyone who could hear him. I didn’t want to see him dead, swollen, and motionless on a hospital gurney as I had with Mom.
I mumbled on the phone to the nurse, “What happens now?”
She replied, “They’ll take your dad’s body to the county morgue tonight, where an autopsy will be performed early tomorrow morning.” The thought of Dad being cut open with his organs and brain removed from his body went through my mind.
“Do they have to do that?” I asked the nurse.
“Yes, it’s the law,” she replied. “In a case of death from fire and explosion, it has to be done. You could call Mrs. Reynolds, the county coroner, in the morning, and ask her about the process, but you better hurry because they start autopsies at about five. Do you have something to write on?” I mumbled yes, and she gave me the number for the morgue.
I left the hospital, and we drove the rental car to my sister’s home in Ashland, but I slept only a little, having set the alarm to wake up at four thirty so I could call the coroner before five o’clock.
I awoke with a start and used Betty’s home phone to call the Cuyahoga County morgue. “Hello, can I help you?” the person answering the phone said. I explained I was the son of Austin Ewell who had died earlier that Sunday at the Cleveland Metro Hospital. I had been told that his body had been taken to this morgue.
“Wait just a moment,” the gal on the phone said. “I’ll check our records.” After a brief time, she said, “Yes, he’s here and scheduled for an autopsy procedure shortly.” I asked if I could speak to someone about the autopsy.
After the Cuyahoga County coroner got on the phone and introduced herself, I said, “I’m Austin Jr., son of Austin Ewell. We know he died last night from a fire. Why do you have to do an autopsy and disfigure his body even more? He’s almost eighty-seven years old. He led a peaceful life and now has died a violent death. Can you please not to do this?” There was desperation in my voice.
“Well, it’s the law in Ohio when there is a violent death,” she replied. “We don’t really have a choice.”
There was a long silence on the phone, and then the coroner came back on the line.
“Well, I shouldn’t do this, but I’ll honor your request and forgo the autopsy,” she replied. “I’ll just sign the death certificate myself.”
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Can you describe the emotional process of writing this ONE MEMORY? The most emotional memory for me to write about was sight of my Dad in the Cleveland Metro ICU Burn Unit. This vividly brought back to me the sights along with sounds and smells of that hospital setting ending with Dad’s death and my negotiating with the coroner. I felt like I was peeling back layers of my memory to re live the trauma involving my Dad’s death and then write about those memories.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? My treatment of this event in my memoir actually involved me adding more detail in each draft as opposed to deleting content. I felt I got stronger emotionally in later drafts of my writing allowing me to better describe the details of my Dad’s condition and death.
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