By JOE PETRUCCI
jpetrucci@leader.net
It's a cool evening and a bloody Charlie Wysocki is in wide-open space on another long run.
Just an hour before, he had been sitting in his adoptive parents' home. His father had told him everything would be OK, but Charlie knew something was up. He knew it was time to run.
Into the car. Three six-packs from the bar. Guzzling. Driving. Guzzling some more. Forty miles down I-81 South. Off at Frackville. Out of the car.
He breaks a beer bottle against the car.
He pulls the glass across one wrist, then the other.
He has failed, he tells himself. Something is wrong that he can't figure out. It's bad, though. There's no cure.
Minutes later, he doesn't really know why, he's back in the car, pulling into the parking lot of the Schuylkill Valley Mall. He can't think straight, but he tells himself not to go in the mall bloody.
For some reason, he figures he'll be OK slinking into a seat at a nearby McDonald's. At least it's warm.
He tries to think straight, but sees himself lying on a slab in a coroner's office. He tells himself, "No. I don't want to go out that way."
No one bothers him in the restaurant, but Charlie can't sit still. He heads back outside to his car. He's not there for a full minute before state police cars swarm.
Troopers level their guns at the unstoppable former star running back from Meyers High School.
Charlie's confused. He's lost his will to live, but he's also lost his will to die.
The cuts on his wrist aren't deep enough. He thinks to himself: Please don't shoot.
Even though the fledgling Washington Federals of the USFL had offered Charlie a contract, being cut from the Dallas Cowboys was too much for him.
Former Maryland teammate Mark Duda heard about it while in training camp for his senior season.
"Charlie's not doing so well," Duda is told.
"What do you mean?"
"He's not taking being released so well."
"Well, nobody takes it well," says Duda.
During Charlie's previous four years at Maryland, he had called his adoptive parents, Stan and Patricia Wysocki, up to three times a day. Upon his return to Maryland to finish the remaining semester of classes he needed to graduate in the fall of 1982, Charlie stopped calling. When his parents reached him on the phone, he offered nothing more than "yes" or "no" answers.
"When I look back, it was like putting a Band-Aid over it," says Patricia. "It cheered him up for a few minutes."
When he called his parents on the morning of Oct. 19, 1982, Charlie couldn't speak.
"I was on the phone for 35 minutes," Patricia says, "and all he kept saying was 'Ma.' He never said another word. ... He just couldn't bring anything out."
Charlie drove back to South Wilkes-Barre. He didn't stay long before trying to kill himself.
"The way he talked ... he was slurring his words and the things he was saying didn't make sense," says Stan. "He told us he couldn't sleep."
That would be the least of Charlie's problems.
After police in Frackville arrested Charlie outside the McDonald's, they called the Wysockis.
"I thought they were going to tell me (Charlie) was dead," says Patricia.
Released to the custody of the Wysockis, Charlie was taken to General Hospital in Wilkes-Barre. When the car stopped, he tried to push his father out of the car and take the wheel so he could get away again. Shortly, he was transferred to First Hospital of Wyoming Valley, a private institution on Dana Street in Wilkes-Barre.
The wounds on his wrists would heal, but some mental scars remained. They led to a life-threatening diagnosis.
At the time, the American Psychiatric Association had recently updated the term "manic depression" with bipolar disorder. The new terminology stressed the highs (mania) and lows (depression) of the disorder.
The jargon was lost on Charlie. He was confused. He just knew he wasn't right.
He didn't speak again for six months.
The Wyosckis took Charlie to a psychiatrist three to four times per week at $90 a session. Stan Wysocki suggested taking Charlie out of the house for exercise, maybe to Kirby Park to run.
Patricia had to lift Charlie out of the chair to get him moving. It was not an easy task. Charlie had already gained nearly 30 pounds on his 200-pound frame.
Around Christmastime of 1982, Charlie slipped into a catatonic state. His brother Steve carried him to a Christmas party at sister Millie's home. They fed him and showed him presents, but Charlie showed no expression. On Jan. 6, the Wysockis took Charlie to Philadelphia Hospital.
There, his bipolar diagnosis was confirmed. A doctor told the Wysockis Charlie would never be the way he was. The Wysockis thought that meant Charlie would just be "slower moving."
"I never thought it would take that long," says Patricia.
Charlie remained catatonic for six months until April 1983, when, out of the blue, he called his mother on the phone.
In a 90-minute conversation, Charlie recalled the Christmas gathering at his sister's, the gifts and food. Before long, Charlie returned to the Wysockis' Charles Street home in South Wilkes-Barre. Still under contract with the Federals, Charlie began working out with the Pocono Mountaineers, a new local semi-pro team. But he no longer looked or felt like the tough, strong young man who could run forever. He looked broken, soft, vulnerable. He barely played.
Charlie became more functional, but that led to more problems.
He sent 21 bouquets of flowers to the coaches' secretaries at Maryland. He ran up a $1,200 phone bill. And worse, much worse, Charlie repeatedly tried suicide.
Stan was an avid hunter and kept his guns in the attic. One day, Patricia noticed the attic drop-door was down. Charlie, she reasoned, must have gone up there to look for his father's guns. Fortunately, Stan already had considered this possibility and removed the weapons.
On another day, Patricia tried to get Charlie out of bed and dress him. She mustered all her strength to pull Charlie into an upright position, and underneath his body were dozens of red pills. Fortunately, the capsules were harmless - they were a supplement taken by Patricia for her fingernails.
One time, Patricia tried to open the door to Charlie's room, but it was locked. Hysterical, she pounded on the door and screamed for her husband. Stan rushed upstairs and managed to force the door open. Inside, Charlie had one leg out the window, about to jump.
"We had to foolproof the house," says Patricia.
Many offered theories as to why Charlie's mental illness surfaced. The first, and most obvious? The letdown of not being drafted.
"On the second day (of the draft), I'm thinking, 'Damn, all this over a sprained ankle,' " says Charlie. "That guy who did that to me, if I had a gun I'd shoot him. He gypped me out of my career. Now I'm dealing with this stuff."
Another was the pressure Charlie felt to succeed in football. In what other occupation could Charlie feel as much support, as much pride and as much love?
Additionally, Charlie found himself torn between two different worlds at such a young age - the poor, black DeGraffenreids and the well-off, white Wysockis.
"People say it was the pressure of the draft, but the bottom line is, I don't know what happened," says Duda.
Most likely, the bipolar first presented itself in the form of sleeplessness, which Charlie initially experienced at Maryland around the time he injured his ankle early his senior year. Experts say a "trigger" event usually sends those predisposed to bipolar over the edge.
"That would have been a clear indication that something was wrong," says Dr. Robert Yager, who would treat Charlie starting in July 1996. Yager said that on a scale of 1-10, the severity of Charlie's bipolar would rate a 9 when he displayed symptoms.
"One of the aspects of sleep deprivation would be psychotic symptoms. ...
That wasn't something they were looking for."
No one looked then because Charlie, with his big smile, easy-going demeanor and friendly attitude, never exhibited any signs of being disturbed.
One man who would have noticed is Duda. He spent plenty of time with Charlie, including those long rides from Maryland back to the Wyoming Valley during college breaks.
"Everybody in that car, every one of us," says Duda, "was more likely to do something crazy than he was.
"He was nice to every damn soul in the world."
Andy Pappas, a psychiatric aide, walks into the admissions ward at Clarks Summit State Hospital one day in the winter of 1984.
The ward holds new patients. Workers have no idea if the newcomer is homicidal, suicidal, has AIDS, or just wants to punch somebody.
Having worked the ward long enough to become somewhat desensitized, Pappas, on the night shift, still isn't prepared for what he is about to see.
There's that guy that he used to watch score touchdowns in high school and college. He sees Charlie, but can't believe that it's really him.
Charlie's in what's called the quiet room. It's anything but when it holds the hulking, angry, ex-football star.
The room's got padding, windows with screens and a heavy door. Charlie rams his body into the walls and doors much like he threw himself into opposing defenders. The only difference is Charlie is now close to 300 pounds.
Pappas can hear the repetitive thumps. The echoes are loud enough to be heard throughout the building.
Charlie defecates in the quiet room and smears it on the walls and himself. Someone orders the aides to shower him, but no one wants to touch him.
Pappas thinks it can't get any worse than this.
Charlie would go in and out of the doors at Clarks Summit 15 more times. He walked the grounds naked sometimes, urinating wherever he pleased.
Sometimes he stayed for as long as a year, sometimes for just a few months. Charlie usually re-entered Clarks Summit during football season.
Sometimes he stayed out of the hospital for months at a time - enough time to start a family.
In 1981, he met a woman in a local night club and they lived together off and on for about seven years. She bore him a daughter, Tiffany, in 1984. In April 1988, they married. Charlie and Donna Wysocki divorced twice, for the final time in 1991.
Donna refused comment for this series.
Charlie's bipolar behavior presented itself mainly in the form of delusions. He told police in Pittsburgh he was an FBI agent. He entered through the back of the Kirby Center and hopped onstage during a religious revival show and began to sing along.
He also hopped onstage at a strip bar in Los Angeles. Dancers ran scared while he made drinks and took money from the cash register.
"Hollywood's finest," as Charlie referred to the LAPD, arrested him and put him in leather shackles, one of which he broke through. They took him to Camarillo State Hospital, another mental institution.
Outbursts occurred when Charlie didn't take his medications. He would adhere to doctors' orders for a little while, but once he felt good, he would stop. The Wysockis found pills meant for him in a crevice of the fireplace.
No pills, in time, meant more grandiose thoughts and run-ins with Wilkes-Barre police. He called local newspapers to tell them he was training to be the first barefoot linebacker in the NFL. He told friends he was working on a multimillion-dollar deal with Donald Trump.
"He had all these huge ideas, things that were just, you knew he didn't have control over what he was saying," says former Meyers classmate Andy Kuhl.
"You couldn't do anything but sort of go along with him and say to yourself 'I hope this ends soon.' "
Shortly after Charlie's second divorce he found himself at a McDonald's in Dickson City in the summer of 1991.
It was there his life would take another sharp turn. And like nearly 15 years before, he would find care and comfort with a white family.
A woman named Lois was ordering food with two of her sons. Her boys, Philadelphia Eagles fans, started talking with a black man in a Dallas Cowboys jacket and hat. Lois didn't think much of it, except the boys seemed to enjoy the conversation.
"They didn't realize they shouldn't give him our phone number," Lois says. "He kept calling ever since."
Charlie developed a relationship with Lois (she declined to give her full name for this story) and her family. Charlie and Lois were married in May, 1994. It was a marriage not of romance but care-giving love, according to Lois.
"Charlie is the age of my children," says Lois. "I still feel like his mother, like I take care of him."
During his early time with Lois, Charlie recorded his most intimate thoughts and memories on a mini tape recorder. Lois learned more about Charlie than she knew about herself.
"You can see his heart," says Lois.
Three months after the marriage, Lois encouraged Charlie to go back to Maryland to finish his degree. She helped Charlie get accepted via a program for former athletes. The university seemed happy to have their former big man on campus back.
Lois was concerned, however, that Charlie wouldn't take his medication. It wasn't more than a few weeks before someone called the police on Charlie again. He was yelling and screaming uncontrollably on campus.
Charlie, crying, called Lois, who rushed to the mental ward of the Maryland hospital where police had taken him. Charlie was shackled with rubber cuffs to a bed. Just a little while before, he had broken out of the cuffs.
Three female patients had been walking down the hallway. Charlie managed to get to the doorway and punched each of the women. A male nurse came running to help.
Charlie hit him too. He knocked him down.
Finally, a big security guard managed to restrain him.
"I wasn't right. I shouldn't have done that," says Charlie.
The hospital wanted Charlie put away for life. Someone told Charlie one of the woman was hurt badly. Lois, however, called a Maryland law professor who helped Charlie get released to her custody.
When he returned to Lois' home in the Honesdale area, Charlie improved. Lois monitored his medication intake and Charlie complied. Charlie secured his own apartment in nearby Hawley and managed to stay out of the hospital for two years.
In March of 1996, Charlie went back to Clarks Summit for two months for a check-up of sorts. When he was released, "partial remission" of the bipolar was written in his discharge notes.
After a nearly four-month stay starting in December that year, Charlie experienced the most successful period of his battle with mental illness. The only negative? He became estranged from the Wysockis.
Stan and Patricia were tired. They had spent so much time and money on Charlie - furnishing new apartments for him only to see Charlie give his new belongings away, arranging for private doctors and treatment and countless drives to hospitals and police stations - only to see Charlie disappear from them whenever he thought he was cured.
Charlie acknowledges it was his fault - falling out of touch with his adoptive family.
Lois feels differently.
"It's obvious God created him a black man," says Lois. "I think whatever we are, we should be the best, and Charlie got into trouble by wanting to be a white man."
Charlie responds: "I am black. I'm just a black man who likes white women. Look at Lionel Richie. He married a white woman."
Charlie's first wife, Donna, and other former girlfriends, were also white.
"You started out as a champ with the DeGraffenreids and got really messed up when you left," Lois told him. "DeGraffenreid, that's what you really are."
Charlie spent all of 1998 and most of 1999 living in a room at Lois' home. Lois, however, started working 18-hour shifts at a Honesdale hospital. Meanwhile, her mother began suffering from Alzheimer's.
There was little time left in the day to monitor Charlie and his medications. When she returned home from a long day, she found the pill box she left for Charlie still full.
"It was too much," says Lois.
The two divorced.
There was no place for Charlie to run to now, except back to the hospital he came to know so well.