Stories can change your life. This is a true one from a newspaper that changed mine.
Part 1 of a 2-Part series.
[NOTE: This blog contains a description of violence against a woman.]
Yesterday when I mentioned former Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder in my blog, it reminded me of a story—one I had read over twenty years ago in the Washington Post newspaper. I never forgot the story it was that memorable. When I lived in the Washington DC area I read the WP everyday. As the years have zoomed by, only two stories have stuck in my mind after all these years.
One of these stories was about Hunter S. Thompson. A woman reporter tried to interview him, during which he either shrieked at her, menaced her, or tried to hit on her. But the best part was her reporting of the laundry list of the alcohol and drugs he consumed in ONE DAY. The assortment and quantities were staggering. The amounts ingested would have been enough to tranquilize a band of circus elephants—or lapse the entire clown coterie into a coma.
I would love to re-read that article. At the time, I cut it out and saved it—just wish I could remember where. I’d like to tuck it into my well-worn copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (“No need to tell him about the bats…”) I don’t know what beat Mr. Thompson was marching to in life, but I really liked his writing.
But the drug story isn’t the one with the Congresswoman Schroeder association. She’s a part of the epilogue to Memorable Story #2.
This one was printed in the WP in 1989 in the popular Style section. As I recall, there was a large silhouetted photograph of a woman—a headshot that accompanied the story, which was about a man who worked on Capitol Hill and a woman who worked at a nearby company. The story was written because this woman might have been in a situation one day to have to deal with the man in a business capacity.
Doesn’t sound too problematic so far. Just wait….
The man in the story was John Mack. In 1973, at the age of nineteen, he worked at a home furnishings/imports type store in Northern Virginia. Near closing time a twenty-year-old college student came into the store to purchase window blinds for her apartment.
Mack lured her to a storeroom in the back and attacked her viciously. First with a hammer—smashing her head in at least five times. He then stabbed her repeatedly in the chest and slit her throat. He dragged her unconscious body to her own car and threw her in the back seat. He drove the car to a movie theatre, watched a movie, then left the car with the woman inside and went home.
Sometime in the middle of the night, the young woman’s ankle was grating against the metal seat belt holder in the back seat, which caused her pain. It was this pain that woke her from her unconsciousness.
Somehow she managed to crawl into the front seat and drive to a gas station. She had the presence of mind to recite her telephone number to the gas station attendant so he could call her parents. She made him repeat the number to make sure he had remembered it correctly.
The woman was rushed to the hospital—barely alive. For the next 18 hours, a team of physicians worked on her to put her head, face, shoulder, and chest back together again. (During this ordeal I think there was something like 14 doctors, including a few general surgeons, vascular surgeons, and plastic surgeons.)
The doctors pulled off a miracle and saved the woman’s life.
Over the years she underwent more surgeries to continue repairing the damage to her body. She suffered from debilitating headaches and endured other medical problems. But she managed to graduate from college and went on to have a successful business career in the Northern Virginia area, near Washington, D.C.
And what became of her attacker?
Stay tuned for Part 2…
