NOTE: This story is based on a compilation of FBI documents and my memory, flawed though it may be.
On a cool February evening, sitting on the floor of her apartment at 2603 Benvenue Street, Berkeley, California, Patricia Campbell Hearst thumbed through her second-semester Art History texts. The UC Berkeley Sophomore, and heir to the Randolph Hearst publishing fortune, reached for the glass of chardonnay her fiancé, Stephen Weed, had poured her. As they sipped the wine, Stephen walked toward the television, hoping to catch a rerun of the Smothers Brothers.
Hearst suddenly put her index finger to her lips.
“Shhh!”
The urgency and pre-emptive danger she injected into the single word was enough to stop Stephen in his tracks. “What . . . ?” was all he could manage.
Shhh!” she repeated, with a glare unmistakable in its message.
Then, at the very moment that all motion and sound in the apartment abruptly stopped, five individuals – at least two carrying automatic weapons – broke through the front door and rushed Patty in what the FBI would later call “a leftist-inspired kidnapping,” Hearst was beaten and lost consciousness during the abduction. Shots were fired from a machine gun during the incident and Weed and a neighbor were beaten and tied up.
And just 2.9 miles away, in a modest two-story brick home that had been converted into a Zen Buddhist priory, I removed my black monk’s robe and prepared for bed.
***
On February 4, 1974, the night Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army(1), I was a 23-year-old Soto Zen Buddhist monastic novitiate, studying under the auspices of Reverend Master Jiyu Kennett, Roshi of Shasta Abbey, Mt. Shasta, California. Earlier that year, I moved from Mt. Shasta to a home in the 3600 block of Oakland’s Telegraph Ave., across the street from a California Highway Patrol (CHP) office.
Such moves were not uncommon at Shasta. Because monks paid tuition to receive the Dharma teachings, a work/study break in the Bay Area once a year was routine. I worked as a forklift driver that year while living at the Oakland priory.
“I’m following you,” you’re probably thinking right about now, “but what do Buddhist monks and an abducted newspaper heiress have to do with long-term care?”
Everything.
What do you see when you look at the picture of Patty and me? I’ll tell you what I see. I see two baby boomers who decided they would transform the world, and although Patty and I had very different ideas about the nature of that transformation (Hearst would later join her captors in a criminal conspiracy that included a bank robbery), we were fully-engaged, self-designated agents of change. (As a monk I added the caveat, “by changing myself”).
And that, my friend, is the tag line for the Woodstock generation: “Changing the World.” Almost eighty-million baby boomers with a singular dream: a safer planet, more responsive populace, less global manipulation, and universal dynamic kindness.
And if you think these 77,000,000 baby boomers are willing to spend a single day in a nursing home or assisted living facility, you haven’t heard a word I’ve said.
We’re not gonna take it
Never did and never will
Don’t want no religion
And as far as we can tell
We ain’t gonna take you
Never did and never will
THE WHO – TOMMY 1969
(1) The SLA was formed through contacts made by a leftist-oriented study group, coordinated by a University of California, Berkeley professor. Its purpose was the tutelage of black inmates, and over time the ethos became increasingly radicalized. Eventually, black convicts were viewed as heroic political prisoners, victimized by a racist American society. On March 5, 1973, African American Donald DeFreeze escaped from prison. Radical penal activists and future SLA members, Russell Little and William Wolfe, took DeFreeze to Patricia Soltysik‘s house. The SLA was led by DeFreeze, who after a prison acquaintance named Wheeler left, was the only African American.
I too was around — and in Berkeley — at the time of the kidnapping, but I think this is sort of offensive. When Patty Hearst ended up doing what her kidnappers wanted, it was hardly in a free situation and I don’t like it that you write “(Hearst would later join her captors in a criminal conspiracy that included a bank robbery), we were fully-engaged, self-designated agents of change.” Hearst a ‘fully-engaged, self-designated agent of change’? Not hardly! Instead, she was a kidnapped and abused victim with perhaps some Stockholm syndrome. Her conviction later was horrible and ludicrous.
And I also agree with Harvey Austin’s comment.
I would say that, like Patty Hearst, many baby boomers may wind up in nursing homes although they would never freely want to be there.
For the last 23 years or so I have worked in nursing homes and tried to do my utmost to gie resident the care and love that they should have as their right. The philosophy of the entire nursing home is to give individualised care to the best of our ability for those who really need it. I am still giving my best in a somewhat lesser degree on a causal basis as I am ageing too.But I have dedicated my life and it is hard to leave those that I love and who have become family to me.
I still have a very full and satisfying life away from the nursing home but yet, I have an attachment which I do not want to sever.Our nursing home has not had the direction of greenhouses or eden, but it has always believed in bringing out the best in each individual. i am so excited to think that our philosophy is growing into a culture of ‘person-centred care’, but this has been evolving for the last 25 years after reading a study by Professor Tom Kitwood in the early 1990’s. If I have to live in a nursing home because I need to, i hope I shall be cared for the way I have cared for others.
Beautiful. Thank you, Glenda.
Thank you both for your comments. But I must tell you that Ms Hearst was not the central theme of my short essay. You were. You see, if either one of you were to have a massive stroke while reading this, my “offensive” essay, your opinion about long-term care, in fact – everything you hold to be permanent and immutable – disappears. And even if you have $500,000 stashed away in your closet for such a contingency, your life will change beyond your wildest dreams. And if you have the heart, if you have the tenacity, if you accept all the fear and pain and depression that such a journey entails, you too will begin to write essays, regardless of how offensive some might think they are.. . .
sorry . . .my Parkinson’s is quite bad this morning and I replied to the wrong post. Forgive me.
No problem — we have all made plenty of email mistakes, Parkinson’s or not. I agree with you entirely.
i’m a pre- baby boomer. i remember the hearst kidnapping, but don’t understand the connection with not wanting to be in a nursing home. i was born in 1941 and i have seen relatives in homes. i decided that if the time came for me to go to one that suicide would be preferable. the green house homes may be okay. of course most anyone would prefer to have more independence till they die…
I am afraid I have missed Martin Bayne’s reasoning. He says that “Not a single one of the 77 MILLION baby boomers will spend a single day in a nursing home or an assisted living facility”. Yet he does,himself. So what might that incredible assertion be based upon?
Harvey, There are times when hyperbole helps an author paint with broad brush strokes. Apparently you did not think this should have been one of them. Sorry to disappoint. Martin
Thank you, Martin. I understand
I like your remembrance, Martin. I tell my Boomer friends that despite their protestations, they may enter nursing homes twice: once for rehab after surgery or acute hospital care (a 65 year old friend is having a hip replacement today) and later when they are frail and no one is able to care for them or they just don’t have anyone to care for them. To get to the second stay, they have to survive the first and a critical question is whether long-term residential nursing care will be widely available, affordable or paid by Medicaid in coming years.