The Reporter & The Angel

For many years during my morning run through East Rock Park I have looked up at the ​“Angel of Peace” monument atop East Rock’s summit and sent out a silent message to my longtime friend Paul Hammer, who survived a suicide attempt when he jumped from near the top in 2004: ​“Stay up there, Paul! Stay UP!”

And every time I did this I thought: ​“I really ought to be in touch with Paul to see how he’s doing.”

Then came the terrible news earlier this week that Paul had died in his second suicide attempt. I will never again see his ever-smiling face, hear him laugh in life-affirming joy or get to listen as he pitches another innovative long-shot project to promote peace, refugees, bicycling, the arts in our community, etc. etc.

I met this charismatic character in 1976 when I was living in Wallingford as a cub reporter for the Morning Record and Paul was living in Middletown.

That year Paul organized a leg of the Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice. We walked together from Middletown to New Haven alongside several Japanese Buddhist monks who banged on their drums and chanted a peace message. What an introduction to the worthy, passionate pursuits of Paul Hammer!

Paul and I didn’t realize it at the moment we crossed into New Haven on State Street, but both of us were destined to soon move to this city and find fulfilling lives and careers. In 1977 I joined the staff of the New Haven Register. Shortly afterward Paul embarked on a series of meaningful jobs: marketing for Long Wharf Theatre, the Yale Rep, the Shubert Performing Arts Center and the Stony Creek Puppet House; teaching theater in New Haven’s public schools; serving as a caseworker for a crisis hotline; and much more.

Paul was never shy about contacting me to suggest I write a column for the Register about his latest creative endeavor. The first time was circa 1981 when he had become a bicycle advocate and was coordinating New Haven Bicycle Week. We rode around the city together, zipping through downtown and many neighborhoods. Paul handed out leaflets promoting the special week. He also greeted a mail carrier and pointed out New Haven’s interesting architecture and trees, all the things motorists speed past without seeing.

“Did you know,” Paul asked, ​“that the Chinese word for bicycle means ​‘that which goes by itself?’” Spending time with Paul was always entertaining and educational.

As far as I knew, Paul was a cheerful, easygoing fellow, enjoying life day by day. I had no clue he suffered from a bipolar condition, characterized by emotional highs (manias) and lows (depressions); and that mental illness and suicide were common in his family.

And so I was profoundly shocked when I read in my own newspaper on May 7, 2004 that the man who had miraculously survived a 600-foot plunge off the top of East Rock was my old friend Paul.

When I visited him at Yale New Haven Hospital a few days later, he was heavily medicated and just beginning to recover from a fractured skull, shattered knee cap and broken leg. He had cuts and bruises all over his face; his right eye was swollen shut.

When I interviewed him five months later for another of my Register columns on Paul (“At the edge of an abyss, a second chance at life is found”), he told me that after he regained consciousness at the hospital, ​“I thought I was in a bicycle accident. What? Me? Jumping off a cliff? I’m afraid of heights!”
And then came that wonderful laughter.

But he also had a serious message to pass along, having had time to reflect on what had happened. He said that when he jumped, ​“I was running out of medication. I had run out of unemployment benefits and a financial opportunity had fallen through. I fell into a deep depression.”

And so Paul nearly died because he could no longer afford his medication. This is all too familiar a story in America.

But Paul told me surviving his suicide attempt ​“has made me look at the future with optimism.” He said he wanted to help others with mental illnesses. Paul was a religious man, a Quaker, and he theorized God had spared his life ​“to aid those at risk for suicide to build a life worth living.”

Paul joked, but not really in jest: ​“I had to attempt suicide to qualify for decent health care!” Soon after his big plunge, he qualified for Social Security disability. Suddenly he had free health insurance.

Toward the end of our interview that day in the fall of 2004, I asked Paul what he wanted to tell people who were in the kind of desperate sadness he had experienced. He replied: ​“If you are considering taking your own life, don’t do it. There’s hope out there for other people who’ve been faced with the same thing. Give yourself the gift of time. Time is the greatest healer. Because people will come to their senses. I wish I’d done that on that day.”
Paul added, ​“I feel very fortunate to look forward to the rest of my life.”

I slipped off my yellow Lance Armstrong bracelet (which read ​“Livestrong”) and gave it to my old friend. I told him he deserved to wear it for the rest of his long, meaningful life. He said he would do so.

Through the ensuing years there were some troubling experiences with Paul. One day he called me and said he had no place to sleep that night. Could he come to my house? Of course I invited him to stay. The next morning he rode off on his bicycle.

In early March 2020, just a few days before the pandemic hit Connecticut and closed everything down, Paul and I taped a one-on-one talk for StoryCorps, an organization that collects and archives interesting conversations. Naturally Paul had set up the whole thing, asking me to be the interviewer. We met in a room at the New Haven Free Public Library.

During our talk Paul described his suicide attempt and said it had led to his working with a suicide prevention support group. ​“It’s helping people to envision a life worth living as an alternative to despair. Anybody who’s tried suicide before is a very high risk, so I don’t think it’s possible to save everyone. Some people are very determined. But I think most suicides are preventable.” (Click on the above audio file to hear the full discussion.)

I asked Paul if he thought he might ever again get so depressed that he would try to take his own life. He replied, ​“I don’t think I will. I can’t guarantee it. But I’m pretty self-aware and resourceful. I think I have a good support system.”

At the end of that interview I said to Paul, ​“Let’s keep in better touch and communicate better. Man, if you ever get in a bad place, reach out to me.”

More than once Paul had told me he considered himself lucky, that he was living in a Jimmy Stewart kind of ​“a wonderful life.” But his luck ran out, and perhaps his meds too. I guess I’ll never know. The lesson here is: do, yes, stay in touch with people you know who have been in pain previously and might again be in pain.

This morning, as I again ran through East Rock Park, I looked up at the angel on the summit. Knowing my friend is gone and how he chose to end his remarkable life, I called out: ​“Oh, Paul! Why?”