My Crazy Brother

I always called him “my crazy brother,” half in annoyance, half in affection. He was exasperating, yet he could be charming and funny and loving. His name was George Preston Pattie. The family called him “Preston”; friends and wives called him “George.”

He was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1944. Daddy was 46, old enough to be his grandfather. Mother was 36, and I was 15. I loved being Big Sister to that little red-headed boy, but when he was eight, I married and moved to Chicago. In the next 55 years we saw each other infrequently.

But I heard about him. I heard about the accident that caused Daddy to throw up when he saw where Preston hit a bridge and the car tumbled down into the creek. Preston totaled several cars and walked away with bruises in crashes where anyone else would have been killed.

In the Air Force he made two tours in Vietnam, keeping F-15's flying. Later he told me he was asleep in his bunk when the Viet Cong attacked Da Nang. He jumped out of bed to go to the shelter. Just as he reached the barracks door, a shell cut a scratch across his chest. If he had been one second quicker, he would have been killed. Preston did not even get a Purple Heart.

I always said, “If Preston was not crazy before he went to Vietnam, he was when he came home.” I drove into my parents’ driveway with my three-year-old son David beside me. Preston bounded out of the house waving a gun at us. “What are you doing with that gun, Preston?” “I didn’t know who was coming into the yard,” he said innocently, as if everyone should be greeted with a deadly weapon.

He married Robin when she was 15 years old. They were married for seven years and were divorced shortly after the birth of their son, Terrence. Robin said, “I’ll always love George, but I can’t live with him.” I understood.

Preston went to work for Bell Helicopter in Iran when the Shah was all-powerful. He came home for our parents’ 50th wedding anniversary and did not go back. He said, “There is going to be trouble over there.” The next year was the Iranian Revolution.

Preston went to California to work for McDonald-Douglas. He married his second wife, Donna. McDonald-Douglas sent him to Spain for two years. Then he was sent to Austria. As he drove through the Alps, he rounded a curve and hit another car head-on. Both cars were traveling over 100 mph. He said, “Never try to stop a Mercedes with a Ford.”

Many bones were broken, and he lay in a coma for six weeks. After months of therapy, he went back to work in California. It did not last. He was given retirement on the basis of disability. His legs never fully recovered, his eyesight was damaged, and he had a brain injury which compounded his craziness.

Preston and Donna were divorced, and he came home to Texas. He became obese. At topless bars he fantasized that 18-year-old girls were madly in love with that fat, old man. He bought cars for them, but cleverly made them sign loan agreements. When they defaulted on payments, he repossessed the cars and sold them to other young things. He carried thousands of dollars in cash on gambling jaunts to Las Vegas and Louisiana, where he was given free meals and rooms, and where he insisted he always came home with more money than when he left.

Robin needed money, so he bought her house. She moved out, and he moved in. He put three locks on the front door and took off the door knob. For five years he never cleaned house. His hot water heater broke, and he would not let a plumber come in to fix it. He adopted a cat and let it pee on the carpet. He slept with a loaded gun beside his bed.

Then he got sick. Leukemia. He spent months in Harris Hospital, the same hospital where he was born. He developed an abscess on his brain. He looked bad, thin and bald, not making sense when he talked. Our family doubted he would ever leave the hospital. But he did.

With his leukemia in remission, he resumed his crazy lifestyle. After I moved to Garland, he spent weekends with me, driving 80 mph. on Dallas’s crowded expressways, carrying a pistol in the pocket of his car, and threatening, “If any other driver gives me trouble, I’ll shoot him.” I worried about his driving while nearly blind. He had minimal sight in one eye, and told me at times he could not tell if the car in front of him was in his lane or the one next to it.

Somehow he avoided accidents. But, after a year, the leukemia returned. He needed a bone marrow transplant but was too weak to survive one. Again, we thought he would die, but after several more months in the hospital, he was well enough to come to Dallas to see the transplant specialist. I went with them when Don took Preston to get the results of the bone marrow tests. The doctor said, “The chemo your doctor gave you in Fort Worth has worked a miracle. You do not need a transplant. Your tests were clear of cancer cells.” Don and Preston both thought the doctor said, “You are cured.” When I disagreed, Don said, “I was there, and I heard him.”

We agreed that Preston had nine lives.

After surviving leukemia twice, he seemed “his old self,” telling jokes and full of confidence. For the first time in years he started going to church regularly. Then the leukemia returned. This time the doctor said more chemo treatments would be fatal. There was nothing more he could do. Preston went home, depressed, but still hoping for another miracle. It was not to be.

Don, Mary, and I went to see him Tuesday evening. Terrence met us at the door. Robin was at the side of the hospital bed where Preston lay gaunt and gray, eyes closed, his mouth open above a thick, gray beard. When he opened his eyes I said, “Preston, you look like Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments.” There was no response.

On Wednesday I was hooked up to the machine which cleans my blood when Don came to the dialysis center. Don sat beside my chair and said, “Preston died an hour ago.”

Preston was my brother. He was reckless. He was frustrating. He always did what he wanted to do without regard to anyone’s feelings or opinions. He was crazy; so am I. When we talked on the telephone, he ended by saying, “Luv you.” I said, “I love you, too.”