THE COLORFUL CHARACTERS OF CARVILLE

by Julia Rivera Elkwood

Part 6

Dr John R Trautman

After serving 33 years in the Public Health Service Commissioned Officers Corps, Dr John R Trautman, Assistance Surgeon General, retired as Director of the Gillis W Long Hansen’s Disease Center, (now known as The Gillis W Long Center) Carville ,in which position he served for 20 years.

In 1996, the Museum Committee voted to name the museum at Carville in honor of this beloved physician leprosy expert. He is an international man participating in numerous meetings and conferences on Hansen's disease among them, five International Congresses of Leprosy. Trautman has served as a consultant on Hansen's disease the world over visiting places such as Okinawa, Tunisia, El Salvador, Mexico, Canal Zone and Argentina

Trautman played a major role in the Eighties to increase the use of the term Hansen's disease. He worked to reword Public Health Service manuals referring to HD. The term, which has been advocated by The STAR magazine since 1941, is now officially accepted by the PHS

A native of Omaha, Nebraska, Trautman and his wife, Margaret, who have three children, now live in Spring Hill, Florida. He regards Carville as a very special place having lived on the grounds for 26 years. "Working with ansen's disease has been a privilege and working with patients has been inspirational," he stated.

His belief is that HD in the United States will be controlled indefinitely if the means by with it is being controlled remains intact. Maintaining the Center as a treatment, research and training facility and working in concert with regional HD Centers and private physicians is the answer.

Dr Robert R Jacobson

Robert R Jacobson, MD, Ph D., was named Director of the Division of National Hansen's Disease Programs and Director of the then Gillis W Long Hansen's Disease Center at Carville in 1992, before his retirement on July 1, 2000.

A native of Austin, Minnesota, Jacobson has worked at the Center since 1966 as Chief of Medicine and in 1978 became Chief of the Clinical Branch. Besides his various other duties as administrator, he was in charge of all investigational drug studies conducted at the Center His research interests lie not only in the investigated drugs, but in the metabolism of anti-leprosy drugs, epidemiology and control of HD, and immunoregulatory activity in HD patients. He initiated multi-drug therapy for HD at Carville in 1971 well before it became standard therapy elsewhere.

In addition to being clinical instructor at the LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans, Jacobson regularly lectures on the diagnosis and management of Hansen’s disease (HD) and other related topics at Center seminars and elsewhere in the United States and other countries.

He is an international man who has been consultant on HD for the World Health Organization to the Peoples Republic of China on numerous occasions since 1985 and has participated in most of the International Congresses of Leprosy held all over the world. His WHO consultantships have also taken him to Japan, South Korea, Malta, The Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Western Samoa, Switzerland, Fiji, Venezuela, India, The Netherlands, France and Mexico, where he shares his expertise and many years of experience in drug treatment and control of Hansen’s disease and multi-drug therapy. In many of these countries he is brought in to evaluate their HD control programs.

A member of the Public Health Service Commissioned Officers Corps sine 1966, Jacobson, who has the rank of Captain, has received several awards for his work at Carville including the Public Health Service’s highest award, the Distinguish Service Medal. His publications are numerous and he has contributed chapters in leprosy textbooks and other books. Jacobson, who is married to Alice and has three children, is one of the leading experts in the field of leprosy and known all over the world.

JOHN P. EARLY

  John P. Early's flamboyant life was a positive means which he used to call attention to the needs of the leprosy patients of his time and to better the conditions of the Carville facility.

Early was a veteran of the Spanish American War when he left the Army to marry a Salvation Army worker with whom he had two children. They later divorced. By trade, he was a carpenter and cabinet maker

From the Army and Navy Advocate, November, 1933, "Early served with Major I.P. Blade, secretary to Congressman Hoeppel, in the Philippines. Major Blade recalls that in an attack on a barrio and its subsequent destruction, Early carried an old decrepit man -- probably a leper -- from one of the shacks while the barrio was burning."

Born in 1873 in Tryson, NC, he was diagnosed with leprosy at 35 years of age while living in Washington, DC. He was placed under quarantine in Washington, where he lived in an abandoned farmhouse just a few miles from the heart of the city. An armed guard was posted about the premises and his wife and children were in another house a few hundred yards away. They would sing old hymns and he would watch his son play (not able to touch him). He was sent to New York City for treatment, then to Penikese Island, and finally to Carville. .

From Carville, Early wrote a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt on December 24, 1934. He called the Carville Hospital a “quarantine prison” and he continued, “forcibly making me pay $135 of $150 pension award for such quarantine hospital which is given free to all other citizens and handing me back $15 is a most flagrant distortion of constitutional justice."

Early wrote to the Veterans Administration Claims Director on February 9, 1935, Washington, DC, “even criminals under compulsory restraint cannot be forced by any law to pay for their maintenance."

John Early played the game of hide and seek for 19 years. He "escaped from" the hospital and was brought back by Public Health authorities numerous times. Members of his family engaged attorneys and were prepared to fight to the last for the right of their relative to spend his remaining days on an isolated tract of land in the mountains of North Carolina.

Early’s most dramatic appearance in the outside world was before a Congressional committee considering the bill to authorize the federal government to take over Carville. Members of the committee were frightened by the man's announcement of his identity upon his entering the committee room. It was reported that Early remained in the room until the committee had reported on the bill and then submitted to custody.

He surrounded himself by three or four newspapermen who had been called by him and startled congressmen by registering at a hotel which they frequented in Washington, DC.

On one of his appearances in Washington, DC, Early wandered into the police headquarters and everyone left hurriedly except a Post reporter and one policeman. They talked to him, persuaded him to depart, and followed him to Union Station. There, it was learned, he spent a $2 bill. For several days thereafter, residents of the city refused to accept a bill of this denomination when receiving change.

Quoting Theodore Tiller, Atlanta Journal, May 1, 1927, "The philosophy of the man; his habits of coming back to Washington and telling the health department that he is back; his way of walking out of restraining institutions when the mood so moves; his protestation that he is a leper although in a leper colony; and his seeming cheerfulness under an endless affliction, apparently give to John P. Early a distinction, unfortunate as it may be."

John Early titled one of his writings, "A condensed explanatory of the sad conditions and sorrowing hurts of a lifetime quarantine." His last escape was recorded in 1923. He was discharged in November 1928 to go to North Carolina. By the end of his life, he became crippled and blind. He died at Carville on February 25, 1938, and is buried in the Baton Rouge National Cemetery.

BERNARD PUNIKAI'A

Throughout his adult life, Bernard Punikai'a has been an untiring advocate of people's right, especially and particularly, the rights of persons with Hansen's disease.

His latest venture in advocacy is serving as President of IDEA (International Association for Integration, Dignity and Economic Advancement). This organization includes anyone who is interested, but the benefactors of it are the disadvantaged and disabled, including persons who have had Hansen's disease. In this capacity, he was a member of the planning committee, participated in the opening ceremonies and spoke at the banquet for the opening day of the "Quest for Dignity" Exhibit at the United Nations Exhibit Hall, New York City, in November 1997. As a tribute to all those patients who went before him, Punakai’a wrote a song, "Out of Darkness," especially for the exhibit. .

In September 1998, he attended the 15th International Congress of Leprosy held in Beijing, China, and actively participated in the social aspects seminars and workshops.

Reflecting back on time, this Hawaiian entered Kalihi Hospital at the age of six years old. He went to Kalaupapa Settlement, on the Island of Molokai, to live when he was eleven. In 1973, Punikai'a came to Carville. During that time he received the GED certificate for high school equivalency from Sunshine High School. He has taken courses on Public Advocacy and the Hawaiian language from Leward Community College, and Business Law and Public Planning from the University of Hawaii School of Public Health. He served as chairman of the Kalaupapa Patients' Council for many years; Vice president of the Kalaupapa National Historic Park Advisory Committee; President of the Democratic Precinct in Kalaupapa; Board member of the Western Hansen’s Disease Institute; served two terms (8 years) as a member of Hawaii State Board of Health which is a governor-appointed post and approved by the legislature; involved in the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement; ran for the House of Representatives and for Office of Hawaiian Affairs for the State of Hawaii; was a member of the St. Francis Catholic Church Choir which made a recording of a musical tribute to Father Damien, proceeds of which went to establish the Father Damien Museum in Waikiki.

He is a world traveler who went to Belgium for the beatification of Fr. Damien along with more than 50 other Hawaiians; attended four International Leprosy Congresses; and made a trip to Japan where he went to visit the Museum for Hansen's disease.

Of all the things which he has done in his life Bernard and his friends agree that being the leader of the Hale Mohalo Ohana organization has been the greatest accomplishment in his life. He is presently Vice President for the coalition for Specialized Housing, the new name of the same organization, which fought the government for Hale Mohalo, a Place which was set up for HD patients in Honolulu. The government wanted to take it and tear it down to use it for another purpose, but Bernard and other persons with Hansen's disease had another idea. After years of protesting, demonstrating (for which he was arrested), and political maneuvering, they were successful in not only retaining the place but in building a $7 million 210-unit housing facility on the site. It is called the Hale Mohalo (House of Comfort) Senior Projects for the elderly, and disabled, and some persons with HD are living there. The wings were named after those patients who helped with the struggle. And as usual, not only did he not get his name attached to this building, but he doesn’t live there. Even though he spends a lot of time in Honolulu, Bernard calls Kalaupapa, where he arrived in 1942, his home.

Punakai'a is a philosopher, a comedian, a singer, composer and musician, a politician, a protestor and demonstrator, a student of life, a people's rights activist, an accomplished human being who has lived his life as a dignified struggle.

JOSE RAMIREZ, JR.

A native of Laredo, Texas, Jose Ramirez, Jr. comes from a proud and loving Mexican-American heritage. To know the kind of positive and upbeat person that he is now, one would never guess that this handsome man was diagnosed when he was a teenager in School and suffered much physical pain and discomfort, emotional and psychological stress when he was diagnosed with Hansen's disease (leprosy). Admitted to the hospital at Carville in 1969, he blazed the trail for others to attend college under the auspices of the Louisiana State Rehabilitation Department while being hospitalized at Carville. After he received his bachelor's degree, he went on to obtain the Master's in social work.

Married to his high school sweetheart, Magdalena, with whom he has two children, Ramirez lives in Houston, Texas. He has been employed by the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation in different capacities through the years, the latest position being Department Head of Resource, Quality and Training where he is responsible for a staff of 25 and a budget in excess of $3 million. His prior experience has been working with the Louisiana Community Coordinated Child Care (4-C) Program, taught at the Department of Social Welfare at Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA, and the Chicano Training Center, Inc., Houston, as coordinator of Training and Curriculum Development.

His publications, most of them having to do with social aspects, some especially and particularly dealing with the problems and social stigma of Hansen's disease -- subject near and dear to his heart -- are many. They have been published in professional journals, newspapers, magazines, and newsletters. This energetic person is constantly plugging education of the public about the facts of Hansen's disease and believes that "Education is the key," which is the title of one of his articles.

Going along with his promotion of education in all social aspects, this man who has the gift of gab and charisma to boot, has numerous presentations which he has made to groups up to 800 people including areas of culture, mental retardation, Hansen's disease, people power, mental illness, prisons and parolees, e.g. a presentation to MHMR's Hispanic Heritage Celebration in Houston and to the National Association for Social Workers Texas Conference, Arlington, Texas

On his favorite subject, Hansen's disease, he has participated in panel discussions, made presentations at the University of Texas of Public Health; the Gillis W. Long Hansen's Disease Center, on the occasion of its Centennial in 1994 (and shared the stage with James Carville); the 55th International Congress on Leprosy, Washington, DC. In September 1998, he attended the 15th International Congress of Leprosy held in Beijing, China, and actively participated in the social aspects seminars and workshops.

This is the conclusion of
"Colorful Characters of Carville".