The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [22]
The daughter further says that Clyde was moody and had an uncontrollable temper, but that, fortunately, both his mother and his first wife had been able to handle him. Shirley, according to her daughter, was stronger than Clyde. “My mother babied him and treated him as his own mother did. But she loved him and the marriage was happy.”
After his marriage to Alma, Clyde continued to drink heavily. “I have to drink to drown my sorrows,” he said. Within seven years there were two more girls and a boy, but money and land had been literally squandered away. Alma says that he drank so heavily he had to sell his stock and even his furniture to get money for liquor. Once he had raised the necessary cash he would go off for three or four days at a time, leaving the stock untended. When the money finally ran out, Clyde left Alma and the three children, and took a cheap room in town.
Because of his excessive drinking, Alma was separated from Clyde in 1940 and divorced him in 1941. She took a job as a farm laborer to support herself and the three children. In 1942, Clyde was sent to jail for drunkenness. There he became violent. He tore up the bedding, ripped off his clothes, and, standing at the jail window in the nude, tried to break it. Then he began to rant, praying one minute and cursing the next. He claimed to be God and Christ and said he heard Shirley’s voice from an airplane. Moreover, he said he was King of Heaven, reborn through Shirley, the Queen of Heaven. The religious character of his delusions was surprising to his family, since Clyde had never been a particularly religious man. It was after this episode that he was committed to a mental hospital.
The only previous sign of instability that Clyde showed was ten years earlier, shortly after Shirley died. At that time, he is reported to have walked into a grocery store, where an acquaintance of his, Charlie, was standing at the counter. When the clerk asked Clyde what he wanted, he said he would take everything Charlie was taking. Just to see if Clyde meant what he said, Charlie ordered a superfluous amount. Clyde did take all the groceries and left.
At the time of his commitment, Clyde was fifty-three. Diagnois: schizophrenia, paranoid type. Prognosis for recovery: poor. He had been hospitalized seventeen years when he, Joseph, and Leon were brought together.
Joseph Cassel
Joseph was born Josephine Cassel in a city in the province of Quebec, Canada. He was the first of nine children, seven of whom are still living. Josephine disliked his name intensely and changed it to Joseph. He had been given the girl’s name, Josephine, by his father in memory of a young woman, already dead, whom the older man admired.
The community in which Joseph grew up was almost entirely French-Canadian. His father would not allow English to be spoken in the home, even though he himself had been born in Canada of French parents and had been taught English in school. The schools emphasized English rather than French history and literature, but Joseph’s father was insistent in preserving his French origins and cultural patterns. Among his ancestors had been a famous historian and a poet.
Joseph’s birth and early development were apparently normal. He completed the eighth grade in parochial school at the age of twelve. He was a good student, and at an early age acquired an unusual interest in English literature. His father did not approve of his interest in books and got him a job as grocery boy as soon as he finished the eighth grade.
Although the entire family attended the Catholic Church, neither of Joseph’s parents were particularly religious. His grandmother, however, was and often appealed to God on a personal level. When Joseph’s mother died (the boy was then sixteen), she took him to live with her.
Joseph’s father was described by those close to him as independent, quick-tempered,