Brady Friend: Bureaucracy 'Broke His Great Spirit'

http://www.thepilot.com/stories/20060801/news/local/20060801brady.html

BY JOHN CHAPPELL: STAFF WRITER

Navy bureaucratic bullying is what really killed Astronaut Charles Brady, a Navy
doctor and close friend alleges.
Brady, a Robbins native whose Astronaut image on a downtown mural dominates the
center of his northern Moore County hometown, died July 23 of knife wounds
investigators described as "apparently self-inflicted."

Dr. Ed Drum, a retired Navy captain and flight surgeon, blames Navy medicine and
its "bottom-line thinking" for contributing to a depression leading to a single
impulsive act that took his friend's life.

"They ate him alive," Drum said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "They thrust
him into a political quagmire. He was in constant pain from osteoarthritis,
needed a hip replacement. A week before the operation, they refused to approve
it."
Drum and Brady had been colleagues at Whidbey Naval Air Station in Whid-bey,
Wash., where Brady was sent as a flight surgeon after his NASA service.

"He's looked down at Earth from space," Drum said. "He'd seen the world with
God's eyes. The hospital didn't know what to do with an astronaut."

After leaving NASA, but four years away from retirement, Brady found himself
trying to work in a hospital more concerned with numbers than patients, Drum
charges. It didn't fit with Brady's sense of honor or his understanding of the
duties of a doctor.

Old friends, as aware as anyone of the many factors that can contribute to
depression, all describe Brady as a man of sunny disposition, given to seeing
the bright side and ever ready to help others.

"Chuck always sought to do the honorable thing," said Mark Benson, who had known
Brady since college days at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "I
am extremely sad at the loss of my friend. I knew him for over 25 years."

They met when Benson, an undergraduate student in Chapel Hill, went to be
treated for a knee injury he suffered playing basketball. Brady, whose specialty
at that time was sports medicine, turned out to be the doctor on call.

"He was my doctor," Benson said. "That's how we met."

Sense of Obligation

Benson went on to do nonprofit work. He served as executive director of the Lucy
Daniels Foundation in Raleigh and now is with another nonprofit organization.
Whenever Benson asked Brady's help, he could always count on it.

"Among the most inspiring things I witnessed was his dedication to the youth of
America," Benson said. "He helped Operation Raleigh to send young people on
science and service around the world. I was very grateful to him."

That program, begun in England by Prince Charles, was named for Sir Walter
Raleigh in honor of his sending the first English people to the New World -- a
settlement off the North Carolina coast now known as the Lost Colony.

Brady, according to Benson, took to heart the public role that came with being a
Blue Angel and, later, an astronaut.

"When Chuck was a Blue Angel -- when he was an astronaut -- no one took the role
of an ambassador more seriously," Benson said. "There is a room where they keep
everything people send to astronauts -- things people send in to be signed,
sometimes even their wedding photographs. I understand Chuck spent more time in
that room than any other astronaut, doing that for people around the world.

"When he was a Blue Angel, no one stayed on the flight line longer. It was his
sense of humility and awareness of his privilege at having been 'lucky enough'
in his words to have these responsibilities."

That sense of obligation got Brady in trouble at Whidbey, according to Drum.
After the Columbia disaster, he'd spent a week doing the best he could to handle
calls and media visits that came flooding in to a Columbia veteran who was also
a flight surgeon.

"The hospital put him 'on report' and penalized him," Drum said. "I told him,
'You don't take a captain to a Captains Mast, ask for an Admirals Mast.' He
wouldn't do it."

Brady found himself blocked simply trying to remain a flight surgeon, Drum said.

"The hospital wouldn't let him fly," he said. "When he took personal leave and
went to Guam to try to get flight time and keep his flight surgeon status, they
accused him of an unapproved absence. They broke this man's spirit."

It was a spirit that previously inspired many, according to his friend Benson.

"Chuck was among the most optimistic people I have ever known," he said. "Chuck
always sought to do the honorable thing. He thought that answering calls from
the world after Columbia was the honorable thing to do. That's who he was."

'Broke His Great Spirit'

That optimism and that sense of honor learned at his small- town doctor father's
side, had not prepared Brady for "life among the bean counters," in Drum's view.

"Chuck was basically eaten alive by Navy medicine," he said. "It is a sick
organization. At the hospital, we found out they were doing bad medicine. We
showed the Inspector General, and they flunked the inspection."

Whether or not that led to any reprisal, Drum doesn't know. He only knew his
friend, always in pain, was growing more and more depressed.

"I told him 'I can't afford to lose you -- you need big muscle behind you,' and
tried to get him to call John Edwards," he said. "When he found out I'd sent
Sen. Edwards an e-mail, Chuck was furious."

Brady admired his Robbins hero, but wouldn't try to get any special favors from
him. He followed Edwards' political campaign assiduously, considering Edwards to
be doing what he could to help others in the political arena out of care for
people and not out of personal ambition, Benson says.

When he himself needed help, Brady found the Navy wasn't on his side, according
to Drum. Neither Benson nor Drum think the Brady they knew for so many years
would ever have planned to take his own life. To Drum, that was the action of a
man driven desperate by bureaucratic obstruction and daily pain.

"Chuck was eaten alive by managed care," he said. "They broke his great spirit.
They chewed him up like he was rat poison."

Whatever complex combination of events and forces culminated on Orcas Island,
Benson will always remember a friend of indomitable spirit, inner humility and
patient generosity.

"Chuck Brady had the heart of a lion," he said. "He had remarkable resilience.
He demonstrated that throughout his life and career."