DeLay Kills Own
Father
LA Times. com
DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads
By Walter F. Roche Jr. and Sam Howe Verhovek
Times Staff Writers
March 27, 2005
CANYON LAKE, Texas — A family tragedy that unfolded in a
Texas hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal
— without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the
debate raging outside Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice.
The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly
injured in a freak accident at his home. Among the family members
keeping vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior
congressman — Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that
have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured
its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept
alive by intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, was DeLay's
father, Charles Ray DeLay.
Then, freshly reelected to a third term in the House, the
41-year-old DeLay waited, all but helpless, for the verdict of
doctors.
Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with his
Senate counterpart, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to champion political
intervention in the Schiavo case. They pushed emergency
legislation through Congress to shift the legal case from Florida
state courts to the federal judiciary.
And DeLay is among the strongest advocates of keeping the
woman, who doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state
for 15 years, connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced
Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he
calls "an act of barbarism" in removing the tube.
In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the
congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his
father die.
"There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine
DeLay, the congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in
an interview last week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to
live like that. Tom knew — we all knew — his father
wouldn't have wanted to live that way."
Doctors advised that he would "basically be a vegetable," said
the congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay.
When his father's kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided
against connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary
measures to prolong life were not initiated," said his medical
report, citing "agreement with the family's wishes." His bedside
chart carried the instruction: "Do not resuscitate."
On Dec. 14, 1988, the DeLay patriarch "expired with his family
in attendance."
"The situation faced by the congressman's family was entirely
different than Terri Schiavo's," said a spokesman for the
majority leader, who declined requests for an interview.
"The only thing keeping her alive is the food and water we all
need to survive. His father was on a ventilator and other
machines to sustain him," said Dan Allen, DeLay's press aide.
There were also these similarities: Both stricken patients
were severely brain-damaged. Both were incapable of surviving
without medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a
desire to be spared from being kept alive by artificial means.
And neither of them had a living will.
This previously unpublished account of the majority leader's
personal brush with life-ending decisions was assembled from
court files, medical records and interviews with family
members.
It was a pleasant late afternoon in the Hill Country of Texas
on Nov. 17, 1988.
At Charles and Maxine DeLay's home, set on a limestone bluff
of cedars and live oaks, it also was a moment of triumph. Charles
and his brother, Jerry DeLay, two avid tinkerers, had just
finished work on a new backyard tram — an elevator-like
device that would carry family and friends down a 200-foot slope
to the blue-green waters of Canyon Lake.
The two men called for their wives to hop aboard. Charles
pushed the button and the maiden run began. Within seconds, a
horrific screeching noise echoed across the still lake — "a
sickening sound," said a neighbor. The tram was in trouble.
Maxine, seated up front in the four-passenger trolley, said
her husband repeatedly tried to engage the emergency brake, but
the rail car kept picking up speed. Halfway down the bank, it was
free-wheeling, according to accident investigators.
Moments later, it jumped the track and slammed into a tree,
scattering passengers and debris in all directions.
"It was awful, just awful," recalled Karl Braddick, now 86,
the DeLays' neighbor at the time. "I came running over, and it
was a terrible sight."
He called for emergency help. Rescue workers had trouble
bringing the injured victims up the steep terrain. Jerry's wife,
JoAnne, suffered broken bones and a shattered elbow. Charles, who
had been thrown head-first into a tree, was in grave
condition.
"He was all but gone," said Braddick, gesturing at the spot of
the accident as he offered a visitor a ride down to the lake in
his own tram. "He would have been better off if he'd died right
there and then."
But Charles DeLay hung on. In the ambulance on his way to a
hospital in New Braunfels 15 miles away, he tried to speak.
"He wasn't making any sense; it was mainly just cuss words,"
recalled Maxine with a faint, fond smile.
Four hours later, he was airlifted by helicopter to the Brooke
Army Medical Center at Ft. Sam Houston. Admission records show he
arrived with multiple injuries, including broken ribs and a brain
hemorrhage.
Tom DeLay flew to his father's bedside, where, along with his
two brothers and a sister, they joined their mother. In the weeks
that followed, the congressman made repeated trips back from
Washington, his family said. Maxine seldom left her husband's
side.
"Mama stayed at the hospital with him all the time. Oh, it was
terrible for everyone," said Alvina "Vi" Skogen, a former
sister-in-law of the congressman. Neighbor Braddick visited the
hospital and said it seemed very clear to everyone that there was
little prospect of recovery.
"He had no consciousness that I could see," Braddick said. "He
did a bit of moaning and groaning, I guess, but you could see
there was no way he was coming back."
Maxine DeLay agreed that she was never aware of any
consciousness on her husband's part during the long days of her
bedside vigil — with one possible exception.
"Whenever Randy walked into the room, his heart, his pulse
rate, would go up a little bit," she said of their son, Randall,
the congressman's younger brother, who lives near Houston.
Doctors conducted a series of tests, including scans of his
head, face, neck and abdomen. They checked for lung damage and
performed a tracheostomy to assist his breathing. But they could
not prevent steady deterioration.
Then, infections complicated the senior DeLay's fight for
life. Finally, his organs began to fail. His family and
physicians confronted the dreaded choice so many other Americans
have faced: to make heroic efforts or to let the end come.
"Daddy did not want to be a vegetable," said Skogen, one of
his daughters-in-law at the time. "There was no decision for the
family to make. He made it for them."
The preliminary decision to withhold dialysis and other
treatments fell to Maxine along with Randall and her daughter
Tena — and "Tom went along." He raised no objection, said
the congressman's mother.
Family members said they prayed.
Jerry DeLay "felt terribly about the accident" that injured
his brother, said his wife, JoAnne. "He prayed that, if [Charles]
couldn't have quality of life, that God would take him —
and that is exactly what he did."
Charles Ray DeLay died at 3:17 a.m., according to his death
certificate, 27 days after plummeting down the hillside.
The family then turned to lawyers.
In 1990, the DeLays filed suit against Midcap Bearing Corp. of
San Antonio and Lovejoy Inc. of Illinois, the distributor and
maker of a coupling that the family said had failed and caused
the tram to hurtle out of control.
The family's wrongful death lawsuit accused the companies of
negligence and sought actual and punitive damages. Lawyers for
the companies denied the allegations and countersued the
surviving designer of the tram system, Jerry DeLay.
The case thrust Rep. DeLay into unfamiliar territory —
the front page of a civil complaint as a plaintiff. He is an
outspoken defender of business against what he calls the
crippling effects of "predatory, self-serving litigation."
The DeLay family litigation sought unspecified compensation
for, among other things, the dead father's "physical pain and
suffering, mental anguish and trauma," and the mother's grief,
sorrow and loss of companionship.
Their lawsuit also alleged violations of the Texas product
liability law.
The DeLay case moved slowly through the Texas judicial system,
accumulating more than 500 pages of motions, affidavits and
disclosures over nearly three years. Among the affidavits was one
filed by the congressman, but family members said he had little
direct involvement in the lawsuit, leaving that to his brother
Randall, an attorney.
Rep. DeLay, who since has taken a leading role promoting tort
reform, wants to rein in trial lawyers to protect American
businesses from what he calls "frivolous, parasitic lawsuits"
that raise insurance premiums and "kill jobs."
Last September, he expressed less than warm sentiment for
attorneys when he took the floor of the House to condemn trial
lawyers who, he said, "get fat off the pain" of plaintiffs and
off "the hard work" of defendants.
Aides for DeLay defended his role as a plaintiff in the family
lawsuit, saying he did not follow the legal case and was not
aware of its final outcome.
The case was resolved in 1993 with payment of an undisclosed
sum, said to be about $250,000, according to sources familiar
with the out-of-court settlement. DeLay signed over his share of
any proceeds to his mother, said his aides.
Three years later, DeLay cosponsored a bill specifically
designed to override state laws on product liability such as the
one cited in his family's lawsuit. The legislation provided
sweeping exemptions for product sellers.
The 1996 bill was vetoed by President Clinton, who said he
objected to the DeLay-backed measure because it "tilts against
American families and would deprive them of the ability to
recover fully when they are injured by a defective product."
After her husband's death, Maxine DeLay scrapped the mangled
tram at the bottom of the hill and sold the family's lake
house.
Today, she lives alone in a Houston senior citizen residence.
Like much of the country, she is following news developments in
the Schiavo case and her son's prominent role.
She acknowledged questions comparing her family's decision in
1988 to the Schiavo conflict with a slight smile. "It's certainly
interesting, isn't it?"
She had a new hairdo for Easter and puffed on a cigarette
outside her assisted-living residence as she sat back comparing
the cases.
Like her son, she believed there might be hope for Terri
Schiavo's recovery. That's what made her family's experience
different, she said. Charles had no hope.
"There was no chance he was ever coming back," she said.
Verhovek reported from Canyon Lake, Texas; Roche reported from
Washington. Also contributing to this report were Times
researchers Lianne Hart in San Antonio and Nona Yates in Los
Angeles.
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