George McGovern - Terry: My Daughters Life-And-Death Struggle with Alcoholism

Copyright 1996 by George McGovern

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

V ILLARD B OOKS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to The Washington Post for permission to reprint A Death in the Cold by Laura Blumenfeld (February 1995).

Copyright 1995, The Washington Post.

Reprinted with permission

The photograph on is reprinted by permission of AP/Wide World Photos.

All other photographs are courtesy of the McGovern family.

eISBN: 978-0-307-83041-8

v3.1

Also By George Mcgovern

The Great Coalfield War (with Leonard Guttridge)

War Against Want

Agricultural Thought in the Twentieth Century

A Time of War, a Time of Peace

An American Journey

Grassroots: The Autobiography of George McGovern

For Terry and her treasures,

Marian and Colleen

for Eleanor, her best friend

and for Ann, Sue, Steve, and Mary,

who loved her.

They shall not
grow old, as we
that are left
grow old:

Age shall not weary
them, nor the years
condemn.

At the going down
of the sun and in the morning

We will remember
them.

Laurence Binyon, 1914

Terry, age twenty-two, at her favorite lake near Charlottesville, Virginia.

T erry was what everyone called her. When she was born, we named her Teresa Jane McGovern. She came to prefer being called by her proper name, Teresa, but somehow, almost from the beginning, Terry seemed the perfect name for this engaging, fun-loving, pretty little girl.

I had a special name for her: the Bear. Over the years, putting an arm around her shoulder, I would proclaim, The ol Bear, or Ter the Bear. How this affectionate term originated Ive forgotten, but perhaps it was because as a toddler she reminded me of a playful cub.

Early on, she developed a habit of pulling a tiny piece of fuzz from a teddy bear, or a doll, or a shaggy blanket, and rolling it between her fingers or gently across her upper lip. This was the way she went to sleep as a childand it continued to the end.

June 10, 1949, was a sweltering hot day in Mitchell, South Dakota, as my wife, Eleanor, gave birth to Teresa Jane, our third daughter. Eleanor recalls that delivery as the easiest of our five children, but I still remember fashioning a fan from a newspaper in the stifling maternity ward and trying to cool the perspiring young mother.

Forty-five years later, on December 12, 1994, Madison, Wisconsin, was covered with seven inches of snow and the temperature was far below freezing. Teresa left a Madison bar that night, stumbled into the snow, and froze to death.

She had fallen before from excessive drinking in every season of the year. But this time, there was too much snow, too much cold, for a fragile body to overcome. How could this have happened? My lovable little girl who had given me ten thousand laughs, countless moments of affection and joy, and, yes, years of anxiety and disappointmentnow frozen to death like some deserted outcast? Terry had a multitude of friends who admired and loved her everywhere she had ever lived, gone to school, worked, or played. They all testify to her kindness, her warmth, her intelligence, her compassion, her marvelous wit. Why then did she drink so much and die so young?

The blunt answer is that Teresa Jane McGovern was an alcoholicone of twenty million alcoholics in the United States. She died as over 100,000 other American alcoholics do every year. The difference with Terry was that she was the daughter of a prominent family. She had campaigned across the country in 1972 for her dad, the Democratic nominee for President. The moment her body was identified, her death was news around the world.

Every day, three hundred Americans die quietly of alcoholism. Many of them go unnoticed. Some of them have been out of touch with their families for years. There might be a small news item reporting that the police have found an unidentified body in a park or on the street or in a cheap rooming houseor in a snowbank. These people are usually not the subject of public notice or concern. But each one of them is a precious soul who was once a little girl or boy filled with promise and dreams. They are the silent victims of the nations number one health problem-alcoholism. They just didnt happen to come from a prominent family, so nobody notices when they die.

In Terrys case, I could not have escaped, even if I had tried, the avalanche of reporters questions. Immediately, I decided to respond openly and candidly about her life and death.

Yes, she died while intoxicated. Yes, she was an alcoholicand had been for much of her life. Yes, we were aware of this and were in communication with her until the last hours of her life. Yes, she was in and out of treatment many times. Yes, she had periods of sobriety during which she fell in love and gave birth to two delightful daughters, Marian and Colleen. Yes, she fought her addiction to alcohol until the day she died.

There were other questions I could not answer then and still find it difficult to answer. Why do some people recover from alcoholism while my daughter died despite all her struggles to overcome her addiction? Why did my daughter become addicted at all?

I was open about Terrys death not only because it was virtually impossible to be silent about it, but because I wanted both her life and her death to be understood and appreciatedand I wanted others to gain from the lessons her life can teach us.

I write this book for the same reason. I want my fellow citizens and especially my fellow parents to know that alcoholism is a deadly disease that can strike any familyrich or poor, wise or foolish, strong or weak, young or old. Alcoholism is like a thief in the night. It can steal up on you and seize your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness before you comprehend what has happened.

Most people can take a drink or two with no serious consequences. Not so the alcoholic, who is powerless to stop drinking once the addiction takes control. Alcoholism will ruin your life and kill you as surely as a raging cancer if it is not properly treated and contained.

Terry came to understand all of this. And yet she repeatedly relapsed from hard-gained sobriety into more bouts of uncontrolled drinking. In the end, her struggle to recover failed.

I believe, however, that in some respects, she speaks more powerfully in death than she was able to do in life. Both her life and her death have taught me much. Perhaps most significantly she has taught me that life is not only precious, it is fragile and uncertainand that we need to love each other more. I wish that I had held her closer as she was and judged her less by what I wanted her to be. I wish that I had always separated my resentment of her disease and its behavior from my love for her. My father was fond of the old admonition Hate the sin but love the sinner. I would add: Hate the alcoholismbut love the victim.