WDU 1061-2 Memoir Assignment 1

Writer’s Digest University course 1061-2, Focus on the Personal/Family Memoir (Online Course).

Session One Assignment: Defining your book and your intended reader.

A narrative summary of my memoir Assault.
          In April 1995 our second child, Renee, overdosed on Heroin in Boston, Massachusetts. Anoxia, resulting from the drug, rendered her a semi-comatose resident to a nursing home. Three years later she was raped and impregnated in that facility. Four days after the pregnancy was discovered, our granddaughter, Kimee, was delivered, two months premature, in a hospital parking lot.
          The incident became an international news story and our family was plunged into scrutiny and suspicion. After months of innuendo and speculation, the overt crime and punishment story was eventually told by the media. However, the rest of the story, the more important part, was behind the scenes, personal and continuing. It cries out to be told.
                    I will tell that story and explore the implications it portends, not just for my family, but for everyone. It is a sad story.

Reasons to write this story.
          After the real perpetrator of the assault was identified and convicted our troubles persisted. The legal and medical institutions conspired to ignore and cover-up the conditions that lead to the crime. Those conditions in the medical industry have not changed.
          The insurance industry attempted to minimize the responsibility of the nursing home, just like they did in the Ford-Explorer/Firestone casualties, the Silicone breast implant poisonings, and the Catholic Church pedophiles claims.
          We wanted to reveal the security failings of the nursing home by a detailed exposure in court. But the legal establishment stepped in and made that difficult and unlikely. Six years into the ordeal we were offered a settlement with only a whisper of justice.
          Part of that offer required a 'confidentiality clause' that would severely limit our ability to tell the story, as it did in the above three sagas.
          So, to preserve our ability to speak, we turned down a million dollar settlement.
          That took nerve. I was essentially unemployed, my wife was a store clerk and we still had two mortgage payments to meet each month. But, we felt a responsibility to our daughter's memory and to all the future residents of nursing homes. The story had to be told.

From the worksheets:
          I will write a fictionalized personal memoir. Only three generations are shown and will include some Family Memoir intermixed through flashback.

          The story timeframe is from April 1995 to April 2006. It will be set in hospitals, nursing homes and courtrooms in Massachusetts.

          At last count there are over 200 people who had significant contributions to this story. However, the main characters are: Renee (daughter), Kimee (grand daughter), Ferne (wife), and Don (myself).
          For secondary characters I will have to change names, combine players, and summarize events to maintain readability and flow of the 'true' story.

          I want to leave a record for my family that sorts out what happened behind the headlines and why we made the decisions we did.
          A general audience may be interested in my story because I will expose deficiencies of our medical, media, and legal institutions.

          I will use First Person Limited narration with occasional reflections on significant events in the endnotes. I believe my viewpoint, someone inside the fishbowl of a media event, may prepare others for what to expect if a tragedy like this ever happens to them.

          I will use logbooks, letters, emails, photographs and newspaper clippings to tell the story. I will also use court records, medical records and Social Security records to substantiate my observations.

                    A formal genealogy is not the direction of this work. I have most records already.

          Although I intend to include a short discussion of the drug culture in Boston in the 1990s, I have not started that research yet.

          I will use Endnotes and photo captions to cite my sources of information.

My theme: Responsibility
          Character is your only guide for making critical decisions without complete information. Seek responsibility where others fear to tread.

Pages: 4
Words: 641

C. Don Huntemann
June 26, 2010