My Father — 30 Year Career U.S. Diplomat — Left Out To Dry
“You probably have never heard his name, though you might recognize his face. You may not know the lives led by career U.S. diplomats over the last fifty-odd years, but people like my father bled red, white, and blue during the Cold War years, ushered in a new era of relations with the Third World, and wrote the book on how to deal with integrity with people across the world. His kind were rare, and are much more rare today. He truly cared about the world.
My father is William Schaufele. He began his diplomatic career in Germany, in 1950, after having served as a tanker in World War Two, fighting in the important battle of Bastogne, the fulcrum of the much larger Battle of the Bulge offensive. As the fifties ended, he then shifted his focus to Africa, which would become his area of expertise, and served in Casablanca for four years. Next he moved to Bukavu, The Congo — now the Democratic Republic of Congo — opening a consulate there. Following a few years back in the United States, he was then appointed U.S. Ambassador to what is now called Burkina Faso, in West Africa, by Nixon. In the 1970’s, with ambassadorial status, he worked at the U.S. Mission to the UN, under George Herbert Walker Bush, a typically benumbed, unknowing political appointee, out of his depths in the diplomatic arena. After stints as Inspector General and Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, he was named U.S. Ambassador to Poland in the late 70’s, and so witnessed Solidarity and the naming of the Polish Pope. After his tour there he retired, not wanting to serve under the incoming administration of Ronald Reagan, and became President of the Foreign Policy Association, headquartered in New York City.
Throughout his career he won awards and the admiration of many Third World leaders. He was truly one of the few Americans African leaders felt they could trust, and in the end that may be his lasting legacy.
Over the past few years Dad had become quite infirm, and his mental faculties began to fail him. It is always so difficult to see someone who had such command of all their talents suddenly reduced in strength and stamina and mental acuity. So, about a year ago now, my Mother and I made the decision that we couldn’t properly care for him anymore — we had been successful doing so for quite some time, but it became too much for us — and we placed him into an assisted living facility in Northwestern Connecticut, nearby where my parents had retired.
Now the truth hit us like a ton of bricks. Dad’s health care would not cover the cost for the 24 hour care he required. We made inquiries to all the proper government agencies, pulled every rabbit out of hat we could think of, but it was not going to happen. A thirty year career diplomat, award winning, well respected and beloved, responsible for some of the few *good moves* enacted by the United States over the past fifty years, was left out to dry by his government insured health care.
Quickly we switched over to Medicaid, which would pick up roughly fifty percent of the cost of the 24 hour care, and breathed deeply with prayers, hoping this would somehow work. The monthly cost for caring for him is around $12,000, so we wound up having to pay roughly $6,000 a month. Now a year has passed, and dear dad is still fighting for life, breathing, eating, and seeing his family every day, though his condition continues to worsen.
But we cannot afford to keep paying for the care. It has finally come to this. And we are on the verge of having to sell the family house, the only thing of value we have left. Now, it’s easy to think that we’re rich — and there are certainly millions of people out there in the United States who have it worse than we do — but we certainly are not rich, in any way, shape, or form. We once had security, in the house and in investments. But it has all dwindled away because of the escalating prices of everything these days, including health care. We are not rich. We have next to nothing. And now we are being forced to make the extremely difficult decision to sell our house in order to take care of dear Dad.
We all know what’s happening to the economy in this country. To sell property at this time is akin to economic suicide. Clearly we are on the verge of a depression, no matter what our corporate media tell us. And our family finds itself in the position in which so many wonderful Americans find themselves: having to sell out to the system in order to stay alive. I have investigated alternatives, contacted various governmental associations, sought out any avenue I could find, to help us. Heck, I’ve even considered contacting Henry Kissinger, with whom my father once worked. But we all know about Henry, don’t we? Who the hell would want to shake hands with a world renown war criminal, one of the chief architects of our demise in this country, just to get some financial assistance for a slowly dying true hero? We sure don’t. We would rather waste away than go there. After all, we still have integrity, while Henry can’t even travel to most places in the world for fear of being arrested. We will have to sell the house.
The story of William Schaufele is a sad, broadly-stroked picture of what has happened to this country. While many Americans remain hoodwinked by what they hear, see, and read, we in fact have already lost just about everything, and the bottom is going to drop out any time now. And the mere fact that my dear father has been left out to dry, impoverishing his family as a result, because of a corporate driven health care system and an unconcerned, uncaring governmental infrastructure, is just one painful thread in the rapidly deteriorating tapestry of America.
--Peter Schaufele
It isn’t just William Schaufele that has been hung out to dry. We ALL have. We ALL suffer, and the suffering has only begun. Class warfare has been a resounding success–for the wealthy. The rest of us will continue to sink in the mire of debt and decay while the fortunate few consolidate their ill-gotten gains. And who’s to blame? The Congress of the United States for acting as collaborators and accomplices for todays robber barons.
Peter, if you get a chance to read this, please accept my condolences.
As you surely realize, your father’s story has resonance because his situation is shared by so many. The “American dream” is a myth more than ever. Housing foreclosures are epidemic. An entire generation knows that it will live less well than its parents and grandparents.
Somehow, “the economy” is doing well.
The fundamental change we need must start with telling the truth. Thanks for your contribution.
Peter –
Your story is eloquent and I am sorry about your situation. It is certainly one that millions of people in the U.S. – yes, that many – could echo. Sarting with war veterans denied health care because they couldn’t ‘prove’ that their needs were due to exposure to military chemicals, weapons, or simply the stress of war. Continuing with thousands of people like you who had one unforeseen medical issue that resulted in bankruptcy. Who could have predicted that your father would have his debilitating disease or who could have predicted that my highly educated attorney-friend would have a stroke at age 38, rendering him physically and mentally unable to work, living on borrowed credit and borrowed time until he is out on the street. Lest we not forget the TENS OF MILLIONS of women and children living in those countries where your beloved father served who die because they can’t get to a hospital, even if they could afford it.
Things will get worse before they get better. And I am so sorry to have to say that.
Peter and Mrs. Schaufele, I understand completely what you’re going through. I’ve been living with my mother since January 1999 and have seen her condition deteriorate slowly but surely. She’s going to be 88 next month (and says she wants to live to be 100!) and is in horrible health. Her days are spent watching TV, eating, sleeping, and reading. I’m 56 and this is my only “job.” She has Medicare and a supplemental insurance but when it comes to the point where I’m no longer able to keep her at home, I don’t know how we’re going to afford it. She has no long-term care insurance. I look at the money we have in the bank and wonder how long it’s going to last. At the rate it’s going, not long. Will it last as long as she does? That is what I worry about constantly.
Do I feel bitter about what the current administration is doing to spend our country into obscurity? You bet! Do I feel bitter about how the current administration is treating our most vulnerable citizens? You bet!
You and your mother will be in my thoughts and prayers as you go through this hell-on-earth situation.
And yet, the USA (United States of Atrocities) can pay a single Blackwater murderer thousands of dollars a day to act like Charles Whitman in Baghdad. (Maybe that is what we progressives should rename Blackwater - the Charles Whitman Brigade)
The United States has had every opportunity to create a health care, education, and social welfare systems that could have been the envy and model for the rest of the world. This fu**ing country, instead, has decided that causing the death and suffering of racial minorities in order to steal their oil is more important than taking care of its young, its old, its sick, and its disabled. I do not love this country, as it is a curse on humanity.
Peter Schaufele I am so sorry about your father. He sounds like a true partiot and he did good things for this country.
I hope this article embaresses the hell out of those denying your father coverage. Sadley its going to take a revolution to get this country back together I think.
Peter–You0r situation is tragic and your father’s treeatment shabby, but if you would get a DVD of the movie Sicko you would know that he is not alone. Rather, he is a prophecy for what awaits aging Americans by the scores of millions as our misplaced priorities continue to enrich the few at the expense of the many.
Peter,
Perhaps there is a land trust operating in your neck of the woods as opposed to reverse mortgages.
Good luck.
The Empire eats its own — or just throws them on the garbage heap.
My question to PS: While your dad was bleeding red, white and blue during the Cold War and helping to make the world safe for US-based corporatocracy, exactly what was it that he was doing in Africa, especially the Congo, during the years when the CIA assassinated Congolese premier Patrice Lumumba and was fighting dirty “proxy” wars throughout the continent (that go on to this day)?
I am so sorry that your family is facing what you outline here. There is no way, after a life of working, that any American should be on the edge of such a cliff.
However, check further into other assisted living facilities. My mother was in one that was established and sponsored by the Christian Churches of KY (affiliated with the Church of Christ) and payments there were based on income. It was nice, clean, and had some residents that lived there under Section 8 (welfare) regulations. In Kentucky, when she died four years ago, she was paying the full amount they charged, $950 a month. So I would start a new search to see if there might be a place lurking you did not think of before.
Also look at medicaid/medicare requirements in your state. When I checked into Kentucky’s requirements in anticipation of handling my mother’s affairs, they were stringent, but Medicaid did allow her to keep a home (of under a certain value), an automobile, and savings of about $3,000 dollars. Turning to them never did become necessary, but was my back-up plan when her money ran out.
I am so sorry the dignity age deserves is so sledom possible in America. We must continue to work for single payer, national health care and protect our Social Security program. As a childless woman with one remaining relative, I definitely worry about who will care for me.
tj,
Good points.
Mr. Schaufele’s piece may have been better if he just characterized his father as someone who worked his whole life in a syatem where humans are just disposable resources to be used and thrown away.
I wonder how the Bush’s health care plan looks these days?
But the article states that this is a government run health care system, how could this be happening? I have to believe that there must be more to the story.
As the writer of the above article I am very appreciative of all the comments, especially those of a sympathetic nature. To TJ and PJD i am only too happy to inform as much as time allows. TJ uses the term corporatocracy, which means he has read John Perkins. This is excellent!! I have known John for many years, and I have written many articles for a number of progressive engines regarding the military-industrial-congressional-media complex. I saw its nefarious workings first hand. As a teenager, I used to go out and live in the bush for weeks at a time, helping Peace Corps Volunteers and bushmen build better water-wells and schools (The Peace Corps is one of the very few good ideas to come out of the U.S. in the past fifty years). And I lived with the bush people, in their huts, ate their food, and heard their stories. Once, after we had been working digging a new well which would better catch what little rain would fall during a long drought, i was resting with a truly beautiful Mossi tribesman who became a great friend. And all at once he said to me, “We like you Americans. You have great gifts. But we do not like your businesses or your government; they impoverish us, and make it impossible for my children to have a future worth living. If you do not change your ways, some day many people may rise up against you.” This was a chilling prophecy, now come true. The reason i bring this up is to provide a distinctive background to how the military-industrial-congressional-media complex works. My Dad was never a part of anything that built hatred toward the U.S. Most diplomats have nothing to do with corporate/military affairs; it is a completely different part of international affairs. Dad hated and fought against the corporatocracy as much as was humanly possible. As just one example, once overjoyed to be able to offer U.S. monetary assitance to one of the African countries in which he was serving, when he found out that the money would only be given if the country spent that money *through* U.S. companies, he balked at this and was crestfallen by not being able to assist as he thought he would. One has to remember that during the sixties and the seventies *the game* wasn’t so obvious; it was done very much undercover. And the old style diplomats — who were truly trained professionals, a quality now gone as it has become a cadre of strictly business/political appointees, were not privy to the goings-on. In actual fact, TJ and PJD, one of the reasons my father has lost his faculties is that he was a man of high honor, who truly cared about helping others from other nations, and by the time he retired (1980) he knew the truth, and wrote about it, spoke about it. Helping the world meant everything to him, and it crippled him spiritually that, instead of being a bringer of the right to self-determination to the world, he had been a tertiary element to the global U.S. empire. Bashing the system is highly recommended; i’ve done it since i was a child. But don’t blame the diplomats of the past. It just didn’t work that way. Secretaries of State, yeah, you bet. But not the people underneath. Again, however, i must stipulate that it has changed today, as we have become more desperate to sustain our way of life. In 1964, in the Congo, for instance, TJ, we had to flee for our lives as populist groups took over our house…But we were not the C.I.A. We barely made it out alive. People like my Dad were the good guys. We have had good guys, believe it or not.
To Beefeater, your comment is most adroit about the Government insured health care. People like my father, of course, were given access to groups specifically designed to help civil servants of all stripes. Without going into too much detail, the important point here is that even they screw with their insurees, just like the others. These insurence companies are privatized, but also have *a leg up* affiliation with the government. The truth about all the health care providers in the U.S., as opposed to other nations with socialized meedicine, is that they all have the ears of our politicians; there is indeed collusion.
All of your comments are wonderful. Thanks so much.
“I wonder how the Bush’s health care plan looks these days?”
i believe it looks like a corpse lying in the street, dead from homocidal violence (the slow death from govt. action/inaction). it’s called the “bleed in the gutter and die” plan. it provides a dual purpose. 1. it gets rid of those that are no longer useful to the govt. and 2. it provides national security by getting rid of individuals who may have detracted spending from military programs.
John Edwards has made a promise to take away the health care benefits of Congress if they do not legislate Universal Health Care within 6 months of him taking office. That’s good enough for me.
Peter,
Life is sacred. Life has its time. Life has its cycle. and it always ends.
This need not only be accepted it needs to be embraced.
Your father was a good man, but his function died, from your account quite a time ago. sounds like you should have let him go “hiking with the bears” some years ago.
We will all be food for crows in time. The choice of death at the right time is not evil. You can’t hold it forever, let it go, and him!
Save the money for the children and the future. Withold care and let him go.
It’s not evil, it’s necessary,
And it serves to focus on on understanding our own limit and facing our own time to be left on the mountain for the crows.
Tantrum
You may be able to avoid these high costs with home care.We had nursing assistants at 12$(one can use a pay service for employee regulations) an hour - they came from 9 to 5 seven days a week- Medicaid helped with bed and home visits by nurse and sometimes doctor. Family members were in the home at night when our parent was in bed. We spent about 3,000 a month. This worked for both our aging parents. My Mother(dementia-stokes-not alziemers) was well cared for at home.(in fact better) Nursing homes are not the answer, except in very extreme cases. Please think outside of the norm and see if possible to provide home care. Aged parents for most of history have died at home, with family. Over half the residents in care facilities for the aged are there simply because they are incontinent!
6 grand a month??? Most people dont even make that much….you should be happy that you own a house to sell to cover the cost..most regular people in his condition wind up dying in the street. America the Beautiful?..looks pretty damn ugly from here.
My condolences, Peter. If you read this, please understand me when I say truthfully that I feel your pain.
My father was a career diplomat/foreign service officer for 23 years and, despite years of excellent work in Africa and Asia, and the support of his friends and colleagues, was forced out of the State Department, out of a job, and out of an identity that defined him for decades, following his refusal to “spin” the Iraq invasion as PAO in 2003.
This thanks to the reckless tyranny of the Bush administration (and others in previous years, lets not pretend this is an isolated incident) and the disintegration of democracy and diplomacy that has followed since.
Following a political firing, my father has sunk deeper and deeper into depression despite our family’s love and support. Stripped of a job that defined him, he continues to deteriorate mentally and is unable to get treatment because of the unaffordable cost, which of course is not covered under his FSA ‘retiree’ health plan. We are not looking forward to the day when, like you, we are forced to make personal sacrifices in order to bear the burden of an irresponsible government that refuses to recognize the priceless contribution of inspiring and hardworking individuals like your father and mine who committed their lives to the vision of a better America within the context of a better world.
We are preparing to do whatever it takes to help him but the position it puts me and my mother in continues to anger me because we are shouldering the human costs of a senseless, profit driven system that pockets billions by playing a twisted game of capitalist monopoly with people’s lives.
So, trust me when I say I understand. Thank you for this article.
What a truly tragic story, which mirrors the countless untold. As countries are wiped out, in the now utterly disgraced names of ‘freedom and democrocy’, its own are left to rot. Under Saddam Hussein, until the embargo, Iraq had the finest, FREE health service in the Middle East, with hospitals that looked like Boston’s best. What a comparison to Peter’s families plight, Bush not measuring up to Saddam.
The invasion of two helpless countries, posing a threat to no one, has now cost 1.6 trillion dollars, spent on killing, an illegal invasion, not on looking after America’s own. Iraq’s health care under ‘Viceroy’ Bremer, was, along with all else, privatised, but no one has bothered to rebuild the hospitals.
Here in the UK., where we are pround of our ‘free’ health service (though it is paid for out of National Insurance tax at earnings’ source) US companies are creeping in to privatise by the back door. Where the US goes, the UK government slavishly follow, as lemmings over the cliff.
When is there going to be a second uprising, as you did against the Brits? The world would be far a safer place - and America again a place where the poor and huddled masses and the sick could be treated with compassion and humanity.
In solidarity.
Have you all read the VA Claims Dodge by Deb Derrick posted here?
www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/12/5180/
Another shining example of how we take care of our own. We do need be break out of our delusion. America is about the people. We all contribute, rich or poor. We either are in it for ourselves or choose to be there for others. Most of our political and economic leaders are in it for themselves. We can easily make the same mistake. How to change their hearts? Only God knows.
this is a cautionary tale of what can happen in the us of a if you don’t look out for number one.
The story is sadly familiar. Here is my riff on the Schaufele family tragedy:
http://avuncularamerican.typepad.com/blog/2007/11/venting-on-the.html
Thank you for moving me to write about our own experience with elderly parents and the “system.”
I know quite a bit about Bakavu. I went to an elite high school (Notre Dame today called Alfajiri) in that city and graduated in 1972. I also know well the politics of the early70s under Mobutu and the American diplomats of that time. I have my own take and critique on Mr. Schaufele’s diplomacy of the time. Rather than tear the message apart, it is better to give Peter a word of comfort to care for his dad. This is not the time to embarrass a dying human being. I just wish Peter and his family well.