By Leslie C. Griffin
You will be surprised I’ve been through all the experiences described in this post, and that I’m still alive to tell you about them. Even I can’t believe it some days. It’s quite a list, so sometimes I mention it to my friends, so they will be as amazed as I am.
I am a lifelong academic, so I also think about what lessons they’ve taught me.
One is the philosophical principle of autonomy, which I regularly teach in my bioethics class. In my opinion, it means you always have to be prepared for the very worst. You have to live knowing it could happen to you. The worst doesn’t always occur. But when it does, you need to find a positive way to look at it and to make good decisions about it.
Two is the practical decision to have your legal documents in place. A durable power of attorney. Health insurance and property insurance. These practical items also help a lot in getting you through terrible situations. Lack of insurance makes everything dreadful.
Autonomy and insurance help you through a lot of crises. My crises include a blizzard, a tornado, an earthquake, a car accident, a hurricane, and two murderers.
You also need good luck.
The Great Blizzard
I was a Notre Dame undergrad in 1978. In January I was just about to start the beginning of my last semester of college.
Then came the Great Blizzard of 1978. We got 41 inches of snow on January 30, 1978. And, of course, big snow drifts. That is a lot of snow. It is very hard to walk in that much snow. Or to drive. Or to fly. Or to do much of anything.
It was Notre Dame. The airport opened just once… for the University of Maryland basketball team. If you could get to the basketball court, you could get into the game. You did not need a ticket. Of course we all went. What else was there to do? Classes were cancelled.
I can still remember walking in the trail through the snow across campus. The snow was as tall as I am, and there were only a few narrow paths through the snow. We all stayed in a single line. I got there and I enjoyed the game. I started to learn how cautious we should be in weather.
Notre Dame won, as it usually does in big games. Later I discovered that a blizzard is just as bad as…
A Tornado
I later returned to Notre Dame as a faculty member. A tornado can provide another kind of crisis. I was in a faculty meeting in 1985. The meeting was held in a basement room of a beautiful building, so we could ignore whatever was happening outside as we could not see it. While we were meeting, a tornado happened. I could tell as I left the meeting that something had gone wrong outside. Everything was dark and wet.
I drove home through wet streets with downed trees. I had to show my ID to be allowed back onto the street where I lived.
I did not suffer any damages from the tornado. But other people did. This experience reminded me that weather, whether blizzard or tornado, can always be a threat to our safety. A tornado can actually take your life. But it was still less scary than…
A Big Earthquake
I decided to leave my career as a Notre Dame professor and go to law school. I chose Stanford, because it is a great school, and also because it was a very appealing place to me after I had faced occasional blizzards and tornados at Notre Dame. None of that in the Silicon Valley!
California is a beautiful place to live. During my first year of law school, I had just finished having my hair cut. I walked toward the exit of the salon and then everything started shaking. I did not know what was wrong. It was my first earthquake. I learned from the people around me what you are supposed to do when the earth is quaking.
You may remember that earthquake. It was during a World Series between San Francisco and Oakland. There were terrible deaths from all the earthquake’s effects.
I went home, worried about my two older orange tabby cats who had moved with me to California. They survived. But they were very careful. They walked around as if furniture would fall on their heads. That was unsurprising, as my bookcases had fallen over in the quake. And pictures had fallen off the walls. And dishes had fallen all over the place in the kitchen cabinets.
One important thing I learned from the cats. They can tell the difference between an earthquake and a truck much faster than I can. Both might send your apartment shaking, but the cats can tell that an earthquake is not another kind of shake. They know how to react. Cats are friends who help you to stay safe. They also teach you to be vigilant about being prepared to face the big challenges weather can bring.
Weather is not the only thing that can harm you. I was almost killed by…
A Car
In 1993, I was almost killed by a car driver who ran me over while I crossed the street. I had the walk sign in my favor, but was hit from behind as the driver edged forward. I was in an intersection during an early morning walk near my home. I was out for an early start before a day at my first post-law school job in a federal courthouse.
The car hit me from behind. I hit the back of my head as I fell down.
Almost a full week after the accident occurred, I woke up in a Phoenix hospital. I learned I had had two brain surgeries. One on each side of the head. My hair was completely shaved off. My mother and siblings had arrived from different states to take care of me.
Everyone was really afraid I would never work again, even though I was a recent Stanford Law School grad who was clerking for a federal judge and had just won a fellowship to Harvard. It was 1993. Many scientists were just learning more about the brain and its capacities. Most of the medical people told me I would never work again because people can never recover from brain injury. When you are injured, your brain dies, and as you age, it cannot recuperate.
That’s what the therapists told me. People cannot recover from brain injury. Period. Some doctors thought I would have to spend my life in a rehabilitation unit, learning to think again, but never fully recovering.
I disagreed with all the therapists. I think that is part of the principle of autonomy. I never stopped believing in myself, and worked to be the most excellent person I could be. I gave them a hard time, from start to finish. I went back to work in Phoenix. I went to the Harvard fellowship that I had won just before the accident. There I met an excellent doctor who told me I could recover. She had already had a patient who had recovered well from brain injury.
I cannot tell you that the time was easy. I was haunted by the doctors’ comments that I was brain damaged, incapable of work, and that only the doctors would be honest enough with me to tell me I was incompetent. Everyone else would be afraid to tell me I should not really keep any job I was holding.
Imagine going to Harvard, and yet being told before you go that you will not be aware that you are brain damaged.
I was not a good friend, colleague, or family member in those years. But I worked. That year at Harvard, I went on the job market and received a job as a law professor. It’s now thirty years later and I am still working.
Let me remind you of the practical side of that. As an ethics scholar and law student, I already had a durable power of attorney. I had great health insurance as a federal employee. And I had an umbrella on my insurance policy to handle extra damages. Believe me, if I did not have insurance, I would probably still be repaying the thousands of dollars that were spent getting me back to health.
It’s funny, though. I still pay attention every time I cross a street. Autonomy means you remember your damages. Even all these years later. And I learned of another weather crisis when I lived through…
Hurricane Ike
I lived in a high-rise condominium while I was on the faculty at the University of Houston Law Center. In a high-rise building, you think a hurricane can’t touch you. After all, I lived on the sixth floor. But the wind and rain loosened something on our roof, and water came flooding down the building. We were all in the hallways, sweeping floods of water down the staircase. We had to have experts in to assess the damages. I had to live in a friend’s house while the building was repaired. Our carpets and our walls were flooded with the hurricane’s waters. My floors had to be completely redone. The wood and the carpet were ruined. We lost our electricity, which took a while to be restored.
It is hard to be shut out of your home because of a hurricane. And to watch all your friends and neighbors suffering as well. You need both autonomy and insurance. And some good luck. Autonomy gives you the strength to face the difficulties and live positively. Insurance pays the bills for most of those damages.
Houston has had post-Ike hurricanes, and they have done terrible damage to people’s homes and lives. Many people have to live elsewhere because their homes were destroyed. It is very difficult to live without electricity. And many people are physically injured while many of them try not to drown to death.
Death was also involved with…
My Neighbor
I know a lot about murderers. From 2007-2012, I lived down the hallway in my Houston condominium from Robert Durst. You might not have heard of him, although he has gotten a fair amount of publicity. He was a very rich man, from the wealthy New York Durst real estate family. He was long suspected of killing his wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst, in 1982. There were then years of suspicion that in 2000 he had killed a Los Angeles friend, Susan Berman, probably because he had told her about his wife’s murder years before. In 2021, Durst was convicted of Berman’s murder, more than 20 years after she died.
When Durst became my neighbor in Houston, he had just been acquitted of his neighbor’s murder in Galveston, Texas, which is not far from Houston. Parts of Morris Black’s body were found in Galveston Bay. Durst convinced the jury that he had killed his neighbor in self-defense. And they believed him. You become very aware of murderers when you live down the hallway from an accused one. I told my Texas friends and neighbors that if I were ever killed in my building, they would have to testify that Durst had not acted in self-defense.
Durst’s next-door neighbor moved out because she was so afraid of living next door to him. I stayed there. Never once did I hold an elevator for anyone on my floor. Never again did I leave my door unlocked, even if I went out for a minute. Living near an acquitted, suspected, accused, and finally convicted murderer makes you aware of the constant threats to your safety that daily life provides. Autonomy demands that we always be alert to the damages life can bring. Always keep your eyes open and be ready for attack.
You realize it can happen to you (as it did to Kathleen McCormack, Susan Berman, and Morris Black).
A Houston friend called me when he heard that Durst was convicted in 2021. He still remembered that I had warned all my friends that I was living near a dangerous man!
Life was going well until I suffered…
The Murderous Attack
I was out for a walk in Henderson, Nevada, where I lived after I started working at UNLV’s law school. It was early October 2016. In late November, I woke up in a hospital in Houston. I have no memory of that time. I found out in Houston that a Nevada man had pushed me onto the street and told passersby that I was dying. Fortunately, he was arrested and is still in prison.
I came very close to death. In all that time I was unconscious, the rest of the world, especially my doctors and my family, thought I would either die or wake up permanently brain damaged. They thought I would be unable to do any work.
It’s a long story, which I’ve told before. Because I had survived the horrors of 1993, I did not believe anything the 2016 people told me about my inability to work. I suffered from the stress of it. But I was determined to show the academic world, almost all of whom had read about my attack, that I was okay.
I’ve told people numerous times. My durable power of attorney and other legal documents made sure someone could make my decisions for me. I had health insurance. I’ve told people a million times to get good insurance because such an attack — or a car accident, 1993 — could happen to you. I’m relieved I had to pay my deductible and not the other thousands of dollars as I recovered in two states.
Health insurance is hard and does not always cover everything. My health law colleagues were there to fight for my insurance coverage while I laid unconscious. Often you or your advocate have to fight with your insurance company to make sure you get your coverage.
Autonomy took over when I woke up. I confess, I am very stubborn, more stubborn than most of you. I was too stubborn to let anyone hold me back from living the life I had enjoyed pre-attack. And I have gone back to that life.
Although I always look behind me when I am walking. It’s like the cars. I always know an incompetent driver or an intentional murderer could be near me and I keep my eyes open for them. Just as I am very aware of the health hazards that weather poses across the country. In my case, autonomy and insurance saved the day. With a big dose of good luck.
Blizzard, Tornado, Earthquake, Car, Hurricane, Murderers
I am grateful to be alive today and healthy, with good finances and health insurance. My wish is that you are too. I want us to remember all those who are lost to murderers, blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, and earthquakes, or who have lost many important things because of them. These events happened to me, and can happen to any of us.
To survive them, I recommend that autonomy is necessary to get you through every day, with all its ups and downs, and goods and bads, focusing on the positives and not the negatives.
Legal documents can save you from not having anyone available to make decisions when you are unconscious. You need a named decision-maker for when you cannot make decisions. That day will arrive.
Both property and health insurance will save you from financial disaster.
And I am grateful for my good luck.