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Readers of Annie's Ghosts will be familiar with the name of Ed Missavage, a generous soul and long-time psychiatrist at the hospital where my secret aunt spent 31 years.

Ed died last Saturday, July 10, at age 85. I wrote the following remarks to be read at the funeral service held in Detroit today.

Comments for Edward Missavage funeral,
July 17, 2010

From Steve Luxenberg,
author of Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret

Our relationship began in contention.

It blossomed into friendship.

Boldness and a bit of luck brought me into Ed Missavage’s orbit four years ago. On a chilly spring Saturday, while researching a book about a buried secret in my Detroit family, I ambushed Ed as he peered over a microfilm reader in a darkened room at the Detroit Public Library.

I had asked a librarian in the Burton Historical Collection for help in unearthing any information that the library might have on the former county psychiatric asylum known as Eloise. It was the early days of my research, I told her, and I was hoping to find a history or other documents about the institution where a hidden aunt had spent 31 years, nearly all of her adult life.

“You should talk to the man doing his own family research in the room over there,” she said. “He was an Eloise psychiatrist for years.”

If I could have sprinted the fifty feet to Ed’s location without someone summoning a security guard, I would have. I pretended to be calm as I approached a man with bifocals as large as coasters and the bushiest eyebrows I had ever seen. I introduced myself quickly, afraid that he would tell me to go away. I thrust the 12 pages from my secret aunt’s hospital file at him, silently praying that he would read the name “Annie Cohen” and say, “Why, yes. I remember Annie. She was the one with a wooden leg. I saw her many times during my three decades at the hospital.”

No such luck.

Instead, Ed fixed with a gaze – a gaze that I would come to know well during the many, many hours that I would spend with him – and he said, “Is this all you have? These are just the admission records and the social worker’s report. Where are the clinical records? I could tell you a lot more if I had the clinical records.”

If I were a flower, I might have withered. But I’m a journalist, and I’m not easily deterred.

“I’m trying to get them,” I said. “It’s not easy. There are certain legal restrictions, even for family members, and I’m trying to figure out a way around them.”

He replied with what can only be called a grunt. He didn’t seem terribly interested in my story. We talked a while longer about Eloise, and I asked him to put me in touch with others who had worked at the institution. We exchanged phone numbers, but when I said goodbye, I was pretty sure that this relationship was going nowhere.

The next morning, before 9 a.m., I answered my cell phone to hear his distinctive voice. “I’ve got some ideas for you.”

He always had ideas for me. He couldn’t help it. He had a native curiosity and restless intellect that was something hard to match. As I sat at his kitchen table, so crowded with papers and books that there wasn’t a single square inch of bare space visible to the eye, he would take notes in his cramped, tiny handwriting, jotting down the facts and details of my family so that he could study them later. My job was to offer my lap to Supercat, who seemed perplexed that his master was suddenly too busy to offer his own.

Ed dedicated himself to educating me about the field of psychiatry in general and the practice of psychiatry at Eloise in particular, squiring me around the Eloise campus in his ancient Cadillac, pointed out where the buildings once stood.

He also dedicated himself to finding someone who had known Annie at Eloise. Even the publication of Annie’s Ghosts in May 2009 didn’t stop him. As Detroit News columnist Neal Rubin wrote just four days before Ed’s death, Ed kept up his single-minded pursuit with a boyish zeal. His medical problems limited his mobility, but they didn’t diminish his enthusiasm. The last time I saw him, on a beautiful Sunday in late May, he told me excitedly of yet another avenue that he hoped would bear fruit for what he now called “our book.”

He wasn’t trying to take credit. It was our book in much the same way that it was our friendship. We both understood that most activities, most stories, most of life itself is as much about the journey as it is the destination.

Ed’s journey was longer than many, and richer than most. I said at the outset that a bit of luck had brought me into Ed’s orbit. I was the lucky one – lucky enough to have met him, and lucky enough to benefit from his knowledge and generosity.

Thanks, Ed. It was quite a journey.

Labels: Annie Cohen, Annie's Ghosts, Ed Missavage, Edward Missavage, Eloise Hospital, family secrets, mental health, Michigan mental health system, psychiatry, Stave Luxenberg

Another FAQ from my talks on Annie's Ghosts:

Q: "Did you find out exactly why your mom hid her sister's existence?"

A: Before I get to that, I'd like to answer another question that has come my way several times in the past week, including twice yesterday at the American Library Association's conference in Washington.

Q: Is your book available on Kindle?

A: Yes (as well as other e-book formats).

Now back to regularly scheduled programming.

My journey into our family secret took me around the country, as I tracked down unknown relatives and friends of my mom from the 1930s and 1940s. I read all the letters -- 600 of them -- that my parents exchanged during my father's Army days in World War II. As best as I could, I recreated my mom's worlds, both the one that she left behind and the one that she inhabited while I was growing up. I came away with a strong sense of what she did and why she did it, and of the social forces that influenced her.

I'm going to stop there, so that I stay on this side of the spoiler rules (don't give away the story).

Next and final FAQ: "How did writing Annie's Ghosts affect your relationships with ..."

Labels: Annie's Ghosts, e-book, family history, family secrets, Kindle, Steve Luxenberg

Another favorite FAQ at my talks on Annie’s Ghosts:

Q. If your mom were still alive, would you have written your book?

A. Whenever I’m asked this question, I pause long enough for silence to set in, long enough for the audience to wonder whether I'm going to reply, and I say, “Are you kidding me?”

Then I take a more serious shot at the question. It’s not a tough one to answer: I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t have written this book, the one called Annie's Ghosts. Why? Because my mom’s death triggered the events that led me to believe that I could tell her motivations for keeping Annie a secret and that I could explore Annie’s unknown life.

If my mom were still alive, the story would not have unfolded as it did. The first concrete clue – the forwarded letter from the cemetery that listed Annie’s grave and finally revealing her name – only came to us because my mom was no longer alive to receive it.

Who knows what would have happened if my mom had decided to reveal her secret while she were alive? I imagine that conversation sometimes: Listening to her, gently asking her questions, trying to understand. I know this: I wouldn’t have been thinking about writing a book. As I wrote in Annie’s Ghosts, while my mom was alive, I was very much the son, not the journalist.

If she were still alive, the secret would still be her story. It only became my story – my journey into the secret – after she died.

That’s how I look at it. How would you have reacted? Feel free to leave a comment.

Next: “Did you find out exactly why your mom . . .”

Labels: Annie's Ghosts, family history, family secrets, Steve Luxenberg

Another of the FAQs asked at my talks on Annie’s Ghosts:

Q. Looking back, with all that you have learned about your mom’s secret, can you now see certain moments as evidence that she was hiding her sister Annie’s existence? Was the secret right there in front of you? Did you have a sense growing up that something wasn’t being discussed?

A. I've been tempted, really tempted, to say, “I always felt an air of mystery in my family. Even as a kid, I already knew that my parents were hiding something. It all added up, looking back.”

That would make me look smart, attentive, observant.

Unfortunately, the only adjective that fits here is . . . clueless.

I can’t remember even a single moment of doubt about my mom’s biography or her veracity. Nothing struck me, at the time, as odd, or deceptive, or off kilter. Like most children, I accepted that my parents did not share their innermost fears or concerns. I knew that they protected me from worries about money, which was usually in short supply. But if any of my friends had asked, “Do you think your mom or dad has any deep, dark secrets?,” I would have said, “Our family? Not a chance.”

Looking back, I do wonder: Were there moments where my mom slipped – and her slip just passed me by?

If so, I can’t point to any. In my mom’s company, I was very much a son, a son who had been raised to tell the truth. The summer that Annie died, in August 1972, I was home from college, working at a local factory. My mom managed to arrange for Annie’s burial, and I never picked up any hint of it.

The journalist in me has to just shake his head, and say: Good job, Mom.

Next: “If your mom were alive. . .”

Labels: Annie's Ghosts, family history, family secrets, FAQs, Steve Luxenberg

A few weeks ago, at one of my book talks, I handed the microphone to a woman in the audience, who began by saying, “You’ve probably been asked this before, but…”

She was right – and I didn’t mind a bit. (Authors who do mind shouldn’t engage in Q&A with the audience.) She hadn’t attended any of my other events, and she hadn’t heard my answer.

“Has a photo of Annie turned up yet?” she wanted to know.

It’s one of the most frequently asked questions that come my way. “Not yet,” I said. “But I hope people keep asking. Maybe some day I’ll be able to say yes.”

Her question lingered with me, and spawned this idea: Over the next several weeks, I will post several FAQs (and answers) that I’ve been asked about Annie’s Ghosts. If you have another one that you would like me to answer, send it along to steve@steveluxenberg.com for consideration. (Book clubs might be interested in the Discussion Guide list of suggested questions on my website.)

Today’s FAQ involves three variations of the same query:

Q. What’s up with the title? Why is it Annie’s Ghosts, plural, and not Annie’s Ghost, singular? Why isn’t it Beth’s Ghosts, given the book’s focus on your mother Beth and your search to understand her reasons for hiding her sister Annie’s existence?

A. Book titles can say a lot or they can say too little – or they can mislead. Annie’s Ghost, singular, sounded to my ear as if Annie might be haunting my mom. That seemed too narrow to describe the story I was telling. I wanted a title that suggested a universal story, a broader story of the many ghosts and secrets that haunt us all.

My mom is any woman whose sister has physical and mental disabilities. Annie is any woman who finds herself being pushed into a mental institution in the first half of the 20th century, a time when patients had few rights and large asylums dominated the mental health system in the United States. For me, Annie’s Ghosts, plural, signals immediately that this book has broader ambitions.

The title did present one problem at first: During radio interviews, I would take extra care to emphasize the plural, and I feared that I sounded like a hissing snake – “Ghostsssss.”

The snake is under control, and the title has taken on the attributes of a good suit: It fits.

Next: “Looking back, do you see…”

Labels: Annie's Ghosts, book clubs, book talks, family secrets, FAQs, nonfiction

One frequently asked question at my recent talks about Annie’s Ghosts: Since the hardcover came out last year, have you learned anything more about your secret aunt Annie? Have you found anything new about her three decades at Eloise, the psychiatric institution outside Detroit where she spent almost all her adult life in anonymity?

For months, I shook my head. No, nothing beyond what I put in the book. No dramatic phone call or email, no surprise moment at a speaking event.

Until last Thursday.

“I think I met Annie at Eloise,” the woman said softly, almost in a whisper.

The woman had approached me just a few minutes before my scheduled talk at the West Bloomfield Library, in the northern suburbs of Detroit, about 20 miles from Eloise. I had just finished chatting with one of the other guests, and I was thinking about how I could incorporate our conversation into my opening comments.

Susan Matlas’s quiet statement yanked me out of my thoughts.

I mumbled something suitably unintelligent, and asked her to go on. Her story had the ring of truth, as well as logic, although there’s no way to know for certain that the Annie she met at Eloise was the Annie whose life I had painstakingly sought to reconstruct.

On my journey, I found others who knew Annie, but none from among the hundreds of people who lived or worked at Eloise. My mom had kept her sister a secret, and then my mom’s death in 1999 had inadvertently brought Annie’s existence to light.

During my talk, I turned the microphone over to Susan, telling the crowd to be prepared for a surprise. Here’s what Susan said:

Her parents worked at Eloise during the 1950s, just before and during her teenage years. She had two older sisters, and when they returned to the Eloise grounds after school, they would often head to the small soda shop for a late-afternoon snack. Patients would come into the store as well.

One day, a woman struck up a conversation with them. “I’m Annie,” she said. “I’m going to get married.” She held out her finger to show them a ring.

Susan told the crowd, “I was about 11 years old, but even at that age, I knew that the ring came from a Crackerjack box. I wondered why she was making up this story, but I didn’t say anything, of course.”

She asked her father, who was on the psychiatric staff, about the woman’s story. He told Susan that this Annie probably had a fantasy about getting married, but that it probably gave her some comfort to believe that. He told Susan not to say anything to undermine Annie’s belief that she getting married.

Susan says she saw Annie at the shop almost every day for about two months. Then Annie stopped coming. She didn’t think about her again until she read Annie’s Ghosts. As she got deeper int the book, Susan grew more and more excited as details of two Annies matched: Frizzy hair, not very tall, a social worker’s report that described how my Annie had expressed a strong desire to get married.

Then she called one of her sisters, and asked if she remembered the woman with frizzy hair at the Eloise shop. Her sister said, “Her name was Annie. She walked crooked.”

My Annie walked with a noticeable limp, the result of having a wooden leg, the result of an amputation at age 17.

As the detectives would say, this is still just circumstantial evidence. Yet it seems unlikely that two women at Eloise would have all these attributes in common. I’m inclined to believe that, for those two months at the soda shop, Susan did have episodic encounters with the aunt I never knew.

Susan wanted to tell me this story personally, she said, because “I wanted you to know that Annie seemed happy.”

That, of course, is the hardest truth to know. It may be wishful thinking, but it’s a nice wish.

Labels: Annie's Ghosts, Detroit, Eloise Hospital, family secrets, mental health, Steve Luxenberg, West Bloomfield Library

Definition of enthusiasm: Three book groups coming for a talk about Annie's Ghosts in Springfield Township, Michigan, this past Wednesday.

Definition of embarrassing: A question from one reader that showed the author had not remembered an important detail in the book that he had written.

Definition of kindness: The large audience forgave me, enthusiastically, for my lapse.

The talk in Springfield was one of four library visits that I'm making this week and next, part of my Michigan Notable Book tour. The Library of Michigan honors 20 books a year as Michigan Notable Books, and I'm delighted that Annie's Ghosts was fortunate to be included among this year's winners.

In return, the Library asks the winning authors to promote the program and their work through speaking events. I drew good crowds for the first two library talks -- in Royal Oak, outside Detroit, and Springfield Township. Next week, I'm invited to speak at two more -- Grand Rapids and Morenci, on the Michigan-Ohio border.

Libraries provide two important public spaces for authors. Not only do they put our books on their shelves, but they serve as community places for writers and readers to come together.

Join me, if you're nearby, in Grand Rapids or Morenci. Don't expect to trip me up, though. I'm re-reading my book, just in case.

-- Steve Luxenberg

Labels: Annie's Ghosts, book clubs, family history, family secrets, Steve Luxenberg