Profiles in American History
Honorable Thomas M
Shepherd and 3rd
Cousin
Congressman Barry Goldwater Jr.
The Sting:
Hon.
Thomas M. Shepherd, Patriot
and Congressman Barry Goldwater Jr.
copyright © 2004 –2007
Thomas M. Shepherd is the founder of the Tom
Shepherd World Educational Foundation and the publisher of The Egalitarian Times. He is also the
founder of the Shepherd-Montessori Institute. He follows in the footsteps of his ancestors, a long line
of outstanding American statesmen and educators.
He is a grandson of John Abbott Snyder, Missouri bus line founder and plow manufacturer. He is a
great great grandson of Charles Merriman, Ashtabula, Ohio; and a cousin of Congressman Barry
Goldwater Jr. Shepherd is also a cousin of St. Louis philanthropist Van
Lear Black III.
Tom Shepherd is a great great grandson of Hon. Ignace Hainer, Hungarian and American statesman, jurist, journalist and
educator. He is a great great nephew of Hon. Bayard Taylor Hainer, Associate Supreme Court Justice of Oklahoma Territory and
chief counsel for the Federal Trade Commission during the Coolidge and Harding
Administrations (1925-1933) and he is a great great nephew of Hon. Eugene J. Hainer, Republican Congressman from Nebraska.
Tom Shepherd’s paternal grandfather, E. F. Blaise,
was an independent Texas and Oklahoma oil producer, mine operator and president
of the Farmers National Bank of Tulsa, forerunner of the present-day Bank of
Oklahoma. His stepfather, C. M. Shepherd, was director and treasurer of the
Empire District Electric Company, a Southwest Missouri-based electric power
corporation.
Tom’s mom, Clara Olive Shepherd, a Missouri civic leader, was a theatrical producer and
fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association,
the American Arthritis Foundation, the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation and other
worthy causes. During his early childhood, she produced musical revues for
women’s clubs and men’s civic organizations throughout the USA. She a member of
the board of directors of the Jasper County Division of the American Heart
Association.
Mr. Shepherd’s father, Dudley E. Blaise Sr., president of El Cedro Silver Mining Company of
Guanajuato, Gto, Mexico, abandoned his mother, brother and him right after his
birth, then disappeared to be later discovered living in La Paz, Bolivia,
working as a mining engineer for Patino Tin Company and residing with another
woman, by whom he sired a third son, two years younger than Tom. In his spare
time, he coached Little League baseball and soccer to Latin American boys.
Born in Joplin, Missouri in 1938, Tom and his older brother
John, who was born in Mexico City in 1937, were reared in
Joplin by their mother and their maternal grandmother, Mabel Mitchell Snyder.
Both brothers were creative and industrious children and
adolescents.
Tom however, was repeatedly mocked, humiliated and
assaulted and battered by jealous male childhood
friends and neighbors,
Ross Thompson Roberts, who was later appointed a federal
judge by President Ronald Reagan, was one of those that mocked, humiliated and
battered Tom.
Tom Shepherd attended public schools and went to work at
the age of eight with his 9-year-old brother, John, mowing lawns during the
summer – they were paid 50 cents per lawn. Tom washed dishes in a junior high
school cafeteria, both caddied at a local golf & country club, both sacked
groceries at a local supermarket. Tom clerked in a bookstore and enjoyed designing
houses in his spare time.
Tom Shepherd was awarded a belt for The Most
Improved Golf Score in the junior golf
league of Twin Hills Golf & Country Club at the end of the 1953 season. Art
Wadkins, Twin Hills golf pro at the time, was Tom’s coach.
During junior high and high school, John joined a
photography club and became a professional photographer, as well as editor of
the high school newspaper. He also edited a commercial newspaper for a group of
businessmen in the Joplin, Missouri area.
John also was awarded two college scholarships, an NROTC
4-year scholarship to the college of his choice and a journalism scholarship to
the University of Missouri, both of which he turned down, instead electing to
attend a local two-year community college.
Tom Shepherd, who passed the Missouri Boys State bar exam
at the age of 16, entered the National University of Mexico in Mexico City at
the age of 17, where he was an honor student.
Both brothers – Tom and John – apparently inherited a
vulnerability to inner-ear infections. Tom ran a high fever of 106 degrees
Fahrenheit at the age of six months as a result of an inner-ear infection. The
attending physician thus punctured his eardrums to relieve the pressure.
However, Tom was vulnerable to recurring infections throughout his life.
John was later operated for a cholosteatoma – tumorous
growth that developed around the middle ear – a growth that ultimately resulted
in deafness, seizures and that affected his balance nerve. As a young adult he
underwent three surgical procedures to try to arrest the growth. While
undergoing surgery at the Mayo Clinic, he suffered a stroke, causing
significant paralysis of facial nerves. He was also operated at St. Francis
Hospital and at Parkland Medical Center in Dallas for the same condition.
While a sophomore at Joplin High School, Tom Shepherd was
screamed at and threatened with bodily harm by a mentally unstable senior ROTC
student, Don Smith, during a 1953 Veterans Day parade, merely for having
reported to an inspecting officer the fact that Smith had taken his hat just
prior to an inspection a few days previously.
Don Smith, with his fists clenched in an assault position,
stood before Tom Shepherd, while Shepherd was in ranks and repeatedly screamed vulgar
expletives in reference to Tom Shepherds’ mother in an attempt to humiliate and
incite Tom Shepherd into swinging back at him.
Nevertheless, Tom Shepherd refused to either vocally
respond or to swing back at Smith. However, Smith promised Tom Shepherd that he
was going to inflict bodily harm on Shepherd at a later date. Smith also
encouraged other students to harass and humiliate Shepherd in the school
hallways.
Don Smith, who was also a varsity football, basketball and
baseball athlete, was never disciplined for his assault – his intimidation and
threats – against Shepherd during the November 1953 Veterans Day parade,
although ROTC officers and faculty member reportedly witnessed the scene.
Surgeon’s Son and Funeral Director’s Son
Conspired to Abduct and Batter Youth Leader
Tom Shepherd After School Hours
A couple months
later (early 1954), Tom Shepherd was a victim of a preplanned surprise assault
and battery as he opened the front door of his own home at 816 Richmond Road,
Joplin. Shepherd was abducted from the doorway, knocked to the snow-covered
ground by Joseph R. Thornhill, a/k/a Bob Thornhill, and suffered multiple
injuries to his mouth and nose, requiring orthodontic repair work.
Shepherd’s three
assailants, Pvt. Joseph R. “Bob” Thornhill, Pvt. Bucky Jeans and Pvt. Jim
Dailey, all three ROTC cadets dressed in civilian clothes, as well as lifelong
neighbors, never expressed remorse for their premeditated assault and battery
of Shepherd, nor did they or their parents offer any form of restitution to
Shepherd for his physical injuries and resultant mental distress. The parents
of the three boys merely aided and abetted their sons’ ongoing anti-social
behavior.
Although
Thornhill was the one that committed the actual assault and battery on that
particular occasion, Jeans and Dailey are considered accessories to the crime,
since it was later learned that they had prior knowledge of Thornhill’s
intention to abduct and commit an assault and battery on Shepherd and since
they did nothing to prevent the assault or to intervene during the
assault.
The assailants
afterwards merely spread malicious and untrue rumors about Shepherd in order to
justify their criminally violent acts against Shepherd.
Previously, only
days before the abduction and assault on Shepherd in the doorway of the
Shepherd home, Bob Thornhill had pushed Shepherd backwards off the 4’ high
retainer wall surrounding the Jeans home at 629 Islington Place, causing
Shepherd to fall on the concrete sidewalk below, while Jeans stood by
observing.
Bob Thornhill and
Bucky Jeans had also, only days before, entrapped Shepherd in a basement
areaway, then stepped on his fingers and spit down on him as he was attempting
to hoist himself up.
Jim Dailey,
several years before (while they were in the seventh grade at North Junior High
School) hurled a softball at Tom Shepherd, who was known to daydream, striking
him in the face while Shepherd was glancing in a different direction prior to
the start of a softball games in the back yard of the Arthur Christman home.
Bob Thornhill,
Buck Jeans and Jim Dailey had made crude and vulgar references to Tom Shepherd
and his brother John, often in reference to their mother, over the years, suggesting
that merely because their biological father had abandoned the family during
their infancy that they were ‘born out of wedlock.’
All three of the boys, Thornhill, Jeans and
Dailey, as well as Ross T. Roberts, had been involved at one time or another in
various forms of sexual assaults either against Tom Shepherd or against a
female that Tom Shepherd was dating or going steady with at the time.
Ross Roberts
stalked and vulgarly harassed Tom and his then girlfriend Elsa Newman, daughter
of Joplin businessman Albert Newman, while Elsa and Tom were celebrating Elsa’s
birthday and Valentine’s Day on two separate occasions in 1953.
Elsa Newman’s
parents had encouraged Tom Shepherd to date Elsa by inviting Tom to a luncheon
at their home to celebrate Elsa’s birthday.
Tom’s brother John and Eleanor Post were also invited guests for the
occasion. The Post family then reciprocated by entertaining Tom, Elsa, and John
at their home a few days later. Both occasions were private foursomes. Ross,
who lived next door to the Posts, merely showed up at the Post home, apparently
after having heard that the Posts were entertaining Tom and Elsa. Ross himself
had never expressed any interest in dating Elsa or Eleanor.
During their
junior high school days, according to Tom Shepherd, Buck Jeans invited Bob
Thornhill, William R. Thurston Jr. and him to the Jeans home while his parents
were out of town. Then, while they were outdoors in the yard, Jeans opened the
fly of his jeans and began masturbating himself, while instructing the three
other boys, all slightly younger than Jeans, to copy his behavior.
Both Buck Jeans,
whose dad was a surgeon, and Breck Caldwell, whose granddad was a Kansas City
corporation lawyer and chairman of the Fourth District Federal Reserve Bank and
whose stepdad was a urologist, had attempted to engage Tom Shepherd in
homosexual acts during their teenage years while they were alone, although
Shepherd was disinterested in responding to their sexual advances or
invitations.
As a result, Tom
Shepherd was afterwards made light of – repeatedly humiliated, abducted and
battered – by both boys apparently because of his disinterest in engaging in
sex with them. “I think Breck and Buck were secretly embarrassed merely because
I did not share their sexual orientation. Thus, they afterwards attempted to
undermine my own self esteem while we were in the public eye,” says Shepherd.
“Almost any time
I began dating some girl – and I dated lots of girls – all of them ladies whose
parents encouraged me to date their daughters,” says Shepherd, “Jeans,
Caldwell, Roberts, and others, who had previously expressed no interest in
those girls would seemingly go out of their way to either ‘hit’ on my
girlfriends or to publicly humiliate the two of us in order to cramp my style,
to psyche me out, and to thus to break up the romance.“
However, the February 1954 incident had a direct bearing
on the breakup of the marriage of Mr. Shepherd’s parents later that same
evening, the resignation of his stepfather as treasurer of the electric power
company a few days later and in the suicide of his stepfather, Charles M.
Shepherd, a year later.
Although Bob Thornhill and Buck Jeans were arrested by
Joplin police in 1956 on a charge of stealing hubcaps from other neighbors,
neither they nor their parents ever expressed remorse for their multiple crimes
against the Shepherd family over the years, nor did they or their parents ever
offer any form of restitution.
Assailant/offender Joseph Robert “Bob” Thornhill was later
trained as a pilot by the U.S. Navy. His parents, Cecil and Thelma Thornhill,
operated the Thornhill-Dillon Mortuary in Joplin.
Offender Buck Jeans, also known as Virgil E. Jeans Jr.,
worked an elementary school teacher in Ventura, California for many years,
prior to his retirement. Jeans’ father was Dr. Virgil E. Jeans, Joplin surgeon.
Offender Jim Dailey, a/k/a James Goff Dailey, who
afterwards became a celebrated basketball player for JHS and for St. Louis University,
later worked as an account representative for Arthur Andersen, Inc. The company
eventually folded following an FBI investigation that revealed fraudulent
bookkeeping practices by the firm. Dailey’s father, Al Dailey, was a home
furnishings department manager for Newman’s Department Store of Joplin.
Tom Shepherd has
a long-standing multi-million dollar damage claim pending against all of the
above named individuals who assaulted and battered him. View Details.
Offender Dailey
reportedly now resides in Fresno, California, although he is a frequent return
visitor to the Joplin area.
Offender Joseph
R. “Bob” Thornhill currently resides in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Offender Bob
Thornhill’s mother, Thelma Thornhill, reportedly resides in Coronado,
California.
Offender Buck
Jeans reportedly resides in Ventura, California, although he is a frequent
return visitor to the home of his younger sister, Dr. Gingy Lass, an author and
retired history professor at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin.
View of Offenders Bob Thornhill, Buck Jeans, Jim Dailey
and Ross Roberts At Victim Tom Shepherd’s
Twelfth Birthday Celebration
Tom Shepherd Was
A High School Leader
During his junior and senior years, Tom Shepherd served as
citizenship chairman and president of the Joplin, Missouri Council of Churches
protestant youth council, UCYM. He was a leader in civil rights, beginning in
1955, when he led the integration of Southwest Missouri’s schools. He received
more votes from Joplin High School teachers than did any other student to
represent his high school at Missouri Boys State and he was sponsored by the
Joplin Rotary Club, of which his grandfather John Abbott Snyder was a founding
member.
Tom attended college at Missouri Southern College,
University of Missouri, the College of Arts & Sciences and the Graduate
College of the University of Oklahoma, where he majored in regional & city
planning, and the International School of Philosophy and Letters at Universidad
Nacional Autỏnoma de Mexico, where he was an honor student.
He served his country in the Civil Air Patrol, the United
States Marine Corps Reserve, the United States Coast Guard, and as an urban
planning consultant for the Missouri Ozark Gateway Regional Planning Commission
and Law Enforcement Assistance Council. He served as a project director for a
floodplain homeowners association. He also served as director of media research
for public television.
Tom Shepherd later studied architecture and building
construction technology at Crowder Community College in Neosho, Missouri, for
only one semester, after which he designed and built his own home, a home he
later sold after his foot was crushed by a Pakistani restaurant manager because
Tom had pointed out to the manager that he had been defrauded – that the waiter
had overcharged him $16,95 for two filets that were priced in the newspaper as
a house specialty four-course dinner for only $6.95. Although Tom succeeded in
pressuring the police department to close down the gourmet restaurant for
multiple violations of city, state, county and federal regulations, he was
never awarded compensation for the injury that incapacitated him for months.
Mr. Shepherd’s areas of interest and expertise are criminal
justice planning and reform, economic planning, housing, education, immigration
reform, alcohol and drug abuse prevention, psychiatric reform, and nutrition. Mr. Shepherd is an outspoken opponent of the marketing
and promotion of alcoholic beverages, tobacco, and psychotropic and
recreational drugs by the media.
Praised by
Missouri Senator Richard M. Webster
In 1975, Missouri Republican Senator Richard M. Webster had
this to say about Mr. Shepherd: “It is my pleasure to introduce Mr. Thomas
Mitchell Blaise Shepherd. I have known Mr. Shepherd for many years, and have
known his family for three generations. His reputation and that of his family,
has been excellent down through the years. I had an opportunity to observe his
work while he was employed as an urban planner with the Ozark Gateway Regional
Planning Commission in Joplin. I found that his work product was excellent and
he had a particularly satisfactory way of meeting with the public and dealing
with most difficult problems. His publication The Investor’s Handbook on
Mexico is recognized as an outstanding working tool by those who are interested
in investments in that country. The work particularly demonstrates his ability
as a research writer.”
Mr. Shepherd Assaulted by Shipmate
at Coast Guard Beer Party
Hosted by C.G. Captain
Aboard Anchored Ship
In 1958, at the age of 19, while serving in the United
States Coast Guard he was a victim of an assault and battery to his head by
Seaman Lester Reed, an intoxicated, belligerent Negro shipmate aboard the Coast
Guard Cutter Planetree. He was thrown out of the hammock he was napping in,
onto the deck, then pounced on, battered about the head and choked, following a
beer bust hosted by the Planetree’s captain, Commander Billy Bush, while the
Planetree was anchored offshore in the South Pacific, merely because Reed
claimed Mr. Shepherd was sleeping in his hammock. It was not Seaman Reed’s
hammock. It was community property on the fantail deck of the ship.
Had the Planetree’s executive officer Lt. Allen, not
discovered the assault in progress, Mr. Shepherd in all probability would have
died at the hands of his assailant. Mr. Shepherd himself did not participate
in the beer bust. However, following the assault and battery, Mr. Shepherd
began experiencing startle reactions while trying to sleep and amnesiac
blackouts at during waking times.
After being transferred from the Planetree to the East
Coast, he was later bludgeoned over the forehead by an intoxicated female,
merely for repeatedly telling her to stay away from him after she had attempted
to solicit him while he was in uniform and in the company of four uniformed
Navy officers in Washington, D.C. The head wound he incurred required surgical
repair at a Washington, D.C. Navy hospital. Following the assault, he was
verbally and physically sexually harassed by his Coast Guard supervisor and
other officers and seamen, resulting in his being twice hospitalized for
suicidal depression and psychiatric observation.
Mr. Shepherd Was
Poisoned with LSD
In 1970, at the age of 32, as a result of his outspoken
stand against alcohol and drug use, and as a result of his opposition to the
use of arms for settling disputes, he was persecuted and threatened by members
of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Del Mar, California, where he taught a Sunday
school class and had been nominated by the church rector to serve on the Church
Vestry. Mr. Shepherd himself had never voluntarily used drugs. However,
following his voluntary separation from the Episcopal Church, he was poisoned
with LSD at a dinner party, apparently because of his refusal to willfully use
recreational drugs. As a result of that one incident, he experienced paranoid
schizophrenic-like delusions for approximately six months, resulting in
multiple personal and legal problems. On the advice of a Beverly Hills
attorney, Mr. Shepherd attempted to contact his cousin, Barry Goldwater Jr. for
assistance.
Mr. Shepherd Was
Stalked
by Secret
Service Agents
After he contacted Senator Barry M. Goldwater, seeking
Goldwater’s assistance, Senator Goldwater asked his son California Congressman Barry
M. Goldwater, a third cousin of Mr. Shepherd’s, to be of assistance to Mr.
Shepherd. However, Congressman Goldwater brushed off Mr. Shepherd by advising
him, in a letter dated March 1971 to contact another congressman instead.
In August 1972,
on the advice of a business acquaintance, David Zone, a Los Angeles real estate
investment broker and developer and financial backer of Barry Goldwater Jr.’s,
who also resided in Goldwater’s Congressional district, and who previously had
been invited to Goldwater’s home for a barbecue, Mr. Shepherd phoned
Congressman Goldwater’s office in Van Nuys, asking Goldwater’s secretary Miss
Phillips to have Goldwater phone him at his home, regarding another matter,
although a related matter. However, instead of simply returning Mr. Shepherd’s
phone call to inquire what it was that Mr. Shepherd wanted to speak to him
about, Congressman Goldwater instead contacted the Secret Service, who stalked,
harassed, threatened, intimidated and demoralized Mr. Shepherd in an apparent effort
to discredit him.
The Secret Service agents attempted to demoralize and
discredit Mr. Shepherd by asking, “Are you still using drugs?” (Once again, Mr.
Shepherd had NEVER voluntarily USED drugs. He was a victim of the drug culture,
of which it was later disclosed, Congressman Goldwater himself was a member.)
The Secret Service agents furthermore humiliated Mr.
Shepherd by asking him if he was a “homosexual” and if any members of his
family were “mentally ill.” They forced him to address two empty, unsealed
envelopes to President Nixon, under a stated threat of being locked up if he
failed to comply. After they took a Polaroid snapshot of him, the Secret
Service agents warned him to never again attempt to contact the Goldwaters, his
own relatives. They then left, taking the empty, unsealed envelopes that they
forced him to address to President Nixon under threat of being locked up if he
did not comply.
“The bottom
line,” says Tom Shepherd, “is that I only contacted Goldwater on the
advice and repeated urgings of two prominent constituents of Goldwater’s – a
reputable and knowledgeable Beverly Hills attorney and a reputable investment
broker and real estate broker, both of whom were Goldwater constituents and had
made significant contributions to his campaign. However, Goldwater was and is
my own cousin and I had no other family member I could contact for help in the
Los Angeles area.”
Mr. Shepherd’s mother, the former Clara
Olive Snyder, and Congressman
Goldwater’s mother, the former Margaret (Peggy) Johnson,
both attended private women’s seminaries in the Washington, D.C. area during
the 1920s. Miss Snyder attended National Park Seminary and Miss Johnson attended Mount Vernon Seminary. The two women, whose paternal grandmothers were the
Merriman sisters, corresponded by mail over the years. Mr. Tom
Shepherd’s brother John had been chairman of the Richard Nixon for President
Committee at University of Oklahoma in 1968.
Mr. Tom Shepherd himself had been a member of the Young Republican Club at
University of Missouri in 1960 and had even voted for Richard Nixon for
President. He and his wife had even received an engraved invitation to one of
Nixon’s inaugural ball parties.
After the Secret Service agents left Mr. Shepherd’s home in
L.A., he attempted to contact Missouri attorney Robert Richart, a childhood
friend, a former prosecutor and a criminal defense lawyer. Mr. Richart’s wife,
Nancy, told Mr. Shepherd that her husband was already in L.A. on business.
Although Mr. Shepherd never heard from Mr. Richart, he mailed Richart a copy of
a letter he had received from Barry Goldwater Jr. the year before, explaining
that he believed his rights had been violated by the Goldwaters and the Secret
Service. Mr. Richart was later arrested by Joplin police and charged with a
prescription drug violation, regarding the drug Demoral. Following a change of
venue, the charges against Richart were dismissed on a “technicality.” Richart
was later selected to be chairman of the Missouri Bar Association.
In early 1973, Mr. Shepherd also contacted Rebekah Blair
Hughes and her husband Fred G. Hughes, neighbors and lifelong friends of the
Shepherd family, regarding the same matter. Mr. Hughes was president and
chairman of the Joplin Globe Publishing Company (of which Rebekah Blair’s
father Cowgill Blair was owner-publisher). Mr. Hughes was also a former FBI
agent. Rebekah Blair’s nephew, Dan G. Blair,
was appointed by President George W. Bush to be Deputy Director of the U.S. Office of
Personnel Management on December 20, 2001.
The Blairs are distant relatives of Montgomery Blair, former U.S. Postmaster.
The famous Blair House in
Washington, D.C. is the former residence of the Blair family.
Mr. Shepherd also mentioned to Rebekah and Fred G. Hughes,
in the presence of their daughter and a Mr. Taylor (their son-in-law), that he
had earlier in the day been given a bottle of Sinequan, an antidepressant drug,
by a psychiatrist affiliated with the Jasper County Mental Health Clinic, while
Mr. Shepherd was consulting with the psychiatrist at his office. It was Mr.
Shepherd’s mother who insisted he see a psychiatrist, although Mr. Shepherd was
reluctant to do so. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes
enabled Mr. Shepherd to phone the psychiatrist from their home, as Tom’s mother
would not permit him to use her own home phone. When Mr. Shepherd notified the
psychiatrist that he was having an adverse reaction to the Sinequan, the
psychiatrist told Mr. Shepherd to “go to the Salvation Army,” then abruptly
hung up.
The following day, Mr. Shepherd contacted another Joplin
psychiatrist in private practice, a Dr. Clary, who told Mr. Shepherd that he
had coincidentally been discussing his case with the same psychiatrist who had
prescribed the Sinequan and said, in a very abrupt tone, to Mr. Shepherd, “I do
not want you as my patient!” Dr. Clary, who had treated Tom’s brother, John
Shepherd, many years before in private practice, had never met Mr. Tom Shepherd
himself. As Tom Shepherd was attempting to explain his situation to Clary,
Clary abruptly hung up on Mr. Shepherd.
Mr. Shepherd then contacted another family friend, Mrs.
Irwin (Peach Piowaty) Craig, wife of a Joplin physician, about the fact that he
had been prescribed a drug by a Joplin psychiatrist who then refused him
assistance when he phoned to say he was having an adverse reaction to the drug
and that when he also sought Dr. Clary’s advice, Clary told him he did not want
him as his patient, then also abruptly hung up on him.
Sinequan is a tricyclic antidepressant, now know to cause
seizures and convulsions, as well as disturbingly high anxiety. After Mr.
Shepherd explained to Judge Byron Fly, another friend of the family, what had
happened, Judge Fly said he would look into the matter. After an investigation,
the psychiatrist, according to Judge Fly, resigned and was reassigned.
The Jasper County Mental Health Association is now known as
Ozark Center. Administrators connected with the center have recently told Mr.
Shepherd that his medical [psychiatric] records apparently have been lost. They
claim they are unable to locate them.
Following the visit with his mother and with Rebekah and
Fred G. Hughes, Mr. Shepherd returned to Miami, Florida. Soon after arriving,
he was secretly informed by the maintenance man [a Cuban-American] where he had
leased an apartment [in Coconut Grove] at an apartment house previously owned
by the Episcopal Church, that the man [Vic] who afterwards leased the apartment
next door to him was a government undercover police agent, and that a police
agency had also leased another nearby apartment, where they had installed
“electronic equipment” of some sort. The agent [Vic], who identified himself as
a high school wrestling coach and a sociologist, later sought to engage Mr.
Shepherd and his girlfriend in three-way sex and drugs, although Mr. Shepherd
and his girlfriend made it clear to him that they were not interested. The
Miami Herald, owned by John S. Knight, and where Mr. Shepherd was employed at
the time, later revealed in an investigative news story that FBI agents were
indeed posing as private citizens and attempting to engage Coconut Grove
residents in sex and drugs in order extract information or to smear innocent
people. Coconut Grove was an upscale section of Miami, adjacent to Coral
Gables, inhabited largely by wealthy and influential Old Guard blue blood
families, including yachtsmen, writers and other artists.
In 1975, Mr. Shepherd contacted Pentagon Vice President
Francis W. Crary (husband of Clara Frampton Crary, who was also a cousin of Mr. Shepherd’s) and Sen. Ted
Kennedy, regarding the fact that the Goldwaters had employed Secret Service
agents to stalk, threaten and intimidate him, merely because he had asked their
assistance as relatives in trying to locate his missing brother and because he
had informed the Goldwaters that during his service with the Coast Guard he had
been assaulted and sexually harassed by Coast Guard officers and
shipmates. Mrs. Crary later told Mr.
Shepherd that she was highly annoyed over the fact that the Goldwaters were
writing letters to her influential and wealthy friends in Boca Raton, asking
for contributions to Congressman Goldwater’s senatorial campaign, after having
turned their backs on their own cousin.
Interestingly, Clara Crary
is Mr. Shepherd’s cousin on his mother’s mother’s side of the family. Clara’s
sisters were Mrs. Van Lear Black Jr., nee Helen Mitchell Frampton, and Mrs.
Samuel Candler Dobbs Jr. (nee Marjorie Frampton). Peggy and Barry Goldwater Jr.
are Mr. Shepherd’s cousins on his mother’s father’s side of the family. Clara,
Peggy and their husbands were very close friends during the years they resided
in Washington, D.C., prior to Senator Goldwater’s 1964 presidential defeat. In
fact, Clara still has a photograph of the four of them at a party the Crarys
hosted for the Goldwaters in 1964 just prior to the National Convention.
Mr. Shepherd Was
Disenfranchised
by Government
Psychiatrists
Mr. Shepherd was also complaining to the Goldwaters about
the fact that the stigma and notoriety of having been twice hospitalized for
psychiatric observation in three different Public Health Service hospitals,
during his Coast Guard service had prevented him from obtaining and sustaining
gainful employment and had resultantly disenfranchised him, even though he had
an honorable discharge. Mr. Shepherd had been wrongly fired as an urban planner
by Jack Williams, Executive Director of the Ozark Gateway Regional Planning
Commission & Law Enforcement Council after Jack Williams himself had been
accused by a congressman of misusing his authority for his own personal
economic gain. Several months later, Mr. Shepherd was disqualified from
employment as an urban planner with the City of Beverly Hills by a civil
service board for an undisclosed reason after having been hired as an urban
planner by the Beverly Hills planning director.
“I lived in terror, following that August 1972 visit by the
Secret Service agents, wondering what they might do next, what they might do
with the two empty, unsealed envelopes they forced me to address to President
Nixon in the living room of my own home, wondering if the Secret Service might
use them to further discredit me, by perhaps planting something in them, like a
bomb, then claiming I tried to kill the President. People don’t think the
Secret Service does things like that. People are naïve until it happens to
them, “ says Tom.
Interestingly, two years after Congressman Goldwater used
the Secret Service to invade the privacy of his cousin Thomas M. Shepherd,
Congressman Goldwater authored The Privacy Act, which Congress signed into law
in 1974.
Congressman
Goldwater Exposed
as Cocaine User
in FBI Sting
While Congressman
Goldwater was later campaigning for a Senate seat, the FBI did a sting on
Congressman Goldwater, employing undercover female FBI agents to engage
Goldwater in conversation. During the conversations, according to the
Washington Post and other newspapers, Goldwater was alleged to have freely
admitted that he regularly used cocaine while serving as a member of Congress.
He was defeated in his bid for the Senate by Pete Wilson in a November 1982
election. In 1990, according to journalist Stephen Lemons, Barry Jr. entered
the Meadows
Clinic in Wickenburg, Arizona, for
treatment of his drug addiction.
View updated report on Barry Jr.’s drug history, following the
airing of an HBO program on the Goldwater family, produced by C.C. Goldwater,
Barry Jr.’s niece in October 2006. The report refers to a story appearing in an
online Phoenix News Times, written by journalist Stephen Lemons. The Devil Was In The White Powder.
Congressman Barry M. Goldwater’s nephew, Ty Ross (who is
also a distant cousin of Shepherd’s) later allegedly admitted to a reporter for
a gay tabloid that he was gay and that he was HIV positive. The author of the
exposẻ, Kevin Sessums, who also writes for Vanity Fair, asked Ross if his
mother, Joanne Goldwater, was a “fag hag.” Sessums claims Ross told him his
first sexual experience (when he was about 15 years old) was with a 30-year-old
Army captain, who was introduced to him by his mother and stepfather. Sessums
also indicated at the end of his story that he and Ross were involved in a
physical relationship. Ross,’s mother Joanne Goldwater is former Congressman
Barry Goldwater Jr.’s older sister. She also reportedly admitted to Sessums
back in the 1990s that she and her son Ross both used marijuana and that she
saw nothing wrong in so doing.
Sen. Goldwater
Facilitated Illegal Abortion for Daughter
In a biography of Barry Goldwater, written by Robert Alan
Goldberg and published by Yale University Press, Joanne Goldwater tells about
her father, Senator Goldwater, making arrangements to leave Joanne on a
Washington, D.C. street corner with a Time magazine folded under her arm for
identification, to be picked up and taken, along with several other pregnant
women, to a countryside location in Virginia, where she underwent an abortion.
She was nineteen years old at the time she became pregnant [in 1955] and a
recent graduate of Mount Vernon Seminary. Her mother, Peggy, was a
founder-director of Planned Parenthood of Phoenix. The father of the child
reportedly was Dr. Thomas Ross, the man she later married, and by whom she
fathered Ty and three daughters.
Mr. Shepherd has filed three separate disability claims (in
1971, 1985 and 2002) against the Veterans Administration for compensatory
damages as a result of the fact that he was a victim of assault and battery and
repeated sexual harassment while serving with the Coast Guard, and the fact
that the Coast Guard encouraged alcohol use by supplying beer to coastguardsmen
aboard ship and on Coast Guard bases. Mr. Shepherd claims a Coast Guard boot
camp classroom instructor, who identified himself as a clergyman of sorts, was
advocating that recruits engage in rectal sex (anal sodomy) in lieu of vaginal
coitus as a method of birth control, during training at Cape May, New Jersey in
1957. The instructor also claimed that rectal sex was the safest form of sexual
intercourse and that the rectum was “the cleanest organ of the human body.” The
first VA claim was apparent0ly made in his behalf by Senator Goldwater, prior
to the Secret Service incident.
VA Denies Mr.
Shepherd’s
Claims for
Compensation
The U.S. government has repeatedly denied Mr. Shepherd’s
claims, maintaining that the suicidal depression, paranoia and “psychotic”
behaviors that were observed by psychiatrists during Mr. Shepherd’s two lengthy
hospitalizations while serving with the Coast Guard were in no way caused or
aggravated by his Coast Guard experiences.
Documentation by two examining psychiatrists at the United
States Public Health Service Hospital in Baltimore, dated May 11, 1959,
indicates that Mr. Shepherd’s attempted suicide the day before he was admitted
to the hospital was a direct result of having been approached by a homosexual,
and at the time he was in the company of other Coastguardsmen who were attached
to the Coast Guard Cutter Triton, then docked in Baltimore. The documentation
also indicates that Mr. Shepherd was suffering from a psychiatric disorder
characterized by “paranoia; and “marked schizophrenic features. The medical
report also notes “abrasions to the left wrist” and “healing lacerations of the
forehead” (the result of surgical repair at a Navy hospital two weeks
before). It was the recommendation of
both psychiatrists that Mr. Shepherd should not continue in the Coast
Guard.
However, following Mr. Shepherd’s transfer to the USPHS
Hospital at Staten Island, N.Y., Dr. James Finkelstein, examining psychiatrist,
stated on a medical record “patient has partial cryptorchidism with serious
psychiatric implication. Although he underwent surgery at age eight, the left
testicle is smaller and higher in the scrotum.” No mention is made in Dr.
Finkelstein’s final report of the fact that Mr. Shepherd had been a victim of
assault and battery by a shipmate during his first year of active duty with the
Coast Guard, that he had received a head injury requiring surgical repair at a
Navy hospital two weeks prior to his psychiatric hospitalization, that he had
been disturbed over repeated sexual advances made to him by shipmates,
including his immediate supervisor, and other males both before and following
the head injury he received, and that the repeated homosexual advances made to
him were the immediate cause of his suicidal gesture, the reason for which he
was hospitalized at Baltimore. Dr. Finkelstein’s report claimed that Mr.
Shepherd’s problems stemmed from “familial problems.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Shepherd was returned to duty aboard the
same ship, the Cutter Triton, a month later, where he experienced one more year
of repeated taunting, including demoralizing sexual harassment by shipmates
Seaman James Williams, Petty Officer David Synnott (his supervisor), Ensign
Dee, Petty Officer James Hunt and others. Dee and Hunt were assigned to duty on
the Triton while Mr. Shepherd was hospitalized at Staten Island for a month and
apparently had been misinformed by ship personnel regarding the actual
circumstances surrounding Mr. Shepherd’s psychiatric hospitalizations in
Baltimore and New York. Homosexuality, as was noted by Triton Executive Officer
Carondelette, was rampant aboard ship, although Mr. Shepherd himself did not
participate, which was the apparent real reason he was continuously harassed by
others.
One year later Mr. Shepherd was resultantly re-hospitalized
at the recommendation of the Commandant of the Eighth Coast Guard District at
New Orleans and honorably discharged, based on a psychiatric evaluation that
attempted to whitewash the Coast Guard from blame for his behavior, by
conveniently omitting facts that would have enabled him to collect
service-connect disability compensation. The examining acting psychiatrist, Dr.
Carl Keller, stated that it was his belief that Mr. Shepherd’s psychiatric
condition was the result of an “emotionally unstable personality, which
pre-existed his enlistment in the Coast Guard and is not incident to his Coast
Guard service or his own misconduct.”
Government
Psychiatric Evaluation
Suppresses Facts
Prior to Mr. Shepherd’s enlistment, the Coast Guard
requested and received four detailed forms, attesting to Mr. Shepherd’s apparent
sound mental health, leadership qualities and integrity, filled out and signed
by: (1) Mr.
Robert Spurgeon, owner of Spurgeon’s Book
Store, a former employer; (2) Rev. E. Weldon Keckley,
pastor of First Community Church of Joplin and sponsor of the UCYM, of which
Mr. Shepherd served as citizenship chairman and president; (3) Rev. Father
David. C. Patrick, rector of the Episcopal
Church where Mr. Shepherd served as an altar boy and president of the youth
group; and (4) Col. Ralph L. Nolan,
retired Air Force officer and president of the Connor Investment Company, who
recommended that Mr. Shepherd be sponsored by the Joplin Rotary Club as a
delegate to Missouri Boys State during his junior year of high school.
Dr. Keller stated
in his final psychiatric evaluation that Mr. Shepherd “was teased by some of
his friends” following testicular surgery at age eight. Keller also notes that
Mr. Shepherd “worked very energetically for a Christian youth group” during
high school, and that “since his enlistment in the Coast Guard he has become
drunk on numerous occasions and his unusual behavior during such episodes was
brought to the attention of the civil or Coast Guard authorities.”
Keller’s notes,
some of which were taken from Baltimore USPHS records, state that following
repair of Mr. Shepherd’s (wrist) wounds at the Coast Guard infirmary (following
his suicide attempt in 1959), “the patient was still too anxious to return to
his barracks and attempted to evade the shore patrol by rowing out in the river
in a boat. He finally went to the Public Health Service Hospital in Baltimore.”
Keller notes that Mr. Shepherd was administered the
Weschler Intelligence Test, the Rorschach test, the Chambers test, the Bender
Motor Gestalt Test and the H-T-P test, placing the patient in the superior
range of intellectual ability.
Keller also
states in his psychiatric evaluation that “it is the psychologist’s opinion
that the patient is very likely to become overtly psychotic.” Keller goes on to
say that Mr. Shepherd has a “fear of becoming crazy and homosexual,” Keller
also expressed his opinion that “in dealing with emotionally laden situations,
Mr. Shepherd’s thinking becomes markedly impaired and is autistic, inaccurate
and affectively charged. Keller also expressed his opinion that Mr. Shepherd
“was experiencing confusion about his sexual identity.” He then concluded: “The
revelation of the contents of the Board of Medical Survey to the patient or his
appearance before a physical evaluation board would be deleterious to his
mental health.”
Prior to his discharge, Mr. Shepherd was urged by Dr.
Keller to seek continued private psychiatric care and to have his medical
records sent from the New Orleans Hospital to a Missouri outpatient facility.
Mr. Shepherd’s mother was also urged by a hospital psychiatrist to seek
continued psychiatric treatment for her son. A copy of Dr. Keller’s psychiatric
evaluation was thus sent to Mr. Shepherd’s family physician, Dr. Gregory
Schulte, in Joplin, and to the Jasper County Mental Health Outpatient Clinic in
Carthage. It was also sent to the student counseling service at University of
Missouri, where Mr. Shepherd continued his college education in the fall of
1960.
Mr. Shepherd
Obtains His Medical
Records Forty
Years Later
VA Ignores Facts;
Again
Denies
Compensation
Mr. Shepherd did not receive a copy of Dr. Carl Keller’s
report and the rest of his Coast Guard medical records until May 2001, some
forty years later, although others, including government employers, were
apparently apprised of the content of his records.
After receiving some of his Coast Guard medical records in
2001, he prepared a third application to the Veteran’s Administration for
reconsideration of his right to receive service-connected disability benefits.
Although his application for reconsideration was accompanied by a letter from
Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Edward A. Elliott, who did his residency at
UCLA and at the West Los Angeles Veterans Hospital, stating that he believed
Mr. Shepherd’s psychiatric problems were indeed service-connected, the
application was once again denied. Mr. Shepherd is now 65 years old.
FACTS
Dr. Keller’s 1960
evaluation makes no mention of the following facts: (1) that Mr. Shepherd was
indeed a victim of an assault and battery ABOARD SHIP 1958 in the South
Pacific, by a drunk shipmate who threw him out of the hammock he was sleeping
in onto the deck and began pounding the back of his head against the deck, then
tried to choke him; (2) that Mr. Shepherd’s assailant was drunk as a direct
result of a beer party hosted aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Planetree by the
ship’s captain, while the Planetree was anchored offshore (3) that the Coast
Guard encouraged alcohol dependency by operating “beer gardens” at Coast Guard
bases; (4) that Mr. Shepherd was several months later bludgeoned over the head
by a female in Washington, D.C. and taken to a Navy infirmary, where he
underwent head surgery approximately TWO WEEKS PRIOR TO HIS FIRST PSYCHIATRIC
HOSPITALIZATION at Baltimore; (5) that Mr. Shepherd was continually sexually
harassed (BOTH VERBALLY AND PHYSICALLY) by officers, including his immediate
supervisor and other shipmates, while stationed aboard the Cutter Triton for
one year; and (6) that Mr. Shepherd had experienced severe sleep disturbances,
startle reactions, difficulty getting along with others and periods of amnesia
following the first assault, and that he continued to experience even more
severe sleep disturbances, often waking up screaming aboard ship, following his
psychiatric hospitalizations at Baltimore and Staten Island.
Because of Dr. Keller’s attempt to suppress evidence on his
final evaluation, Mr. Shepherd was denied service-connected disability
compensation, as well as continued VA medical care at the time. In 1985, he was
finally admitted to the VA Brentwood Hospital in West L.A., where he was
treated for a psychiatric illness. While an outpatient at the VA, Mr. Shepherd
was told to “shut up” and threatened with arrest by resident psychiatrist Dr.
Thomas Grieder for merely talking about a Coast Guard experience, in which he
was explaining to Dr. Grieder and other psychiatrists and social workers how he
was punished for being out of uniform by a Groton Coasf Guard Radio School
instructor who witnessed the fact that the reason he was out of uniform was
because his classmates had taken his uniform cap off his head and were playing
catch with it.
Thomas
Shepherd’s Brother,
John, An Army
Veteran, Died Homeless
Hon. Thomas M. Shepherd’s brother, John Snyder Blaise Shepherd, victim of an inoperable brain tumor, died homeless in
2002, following 30 years of having been missing and apparently homeless. When
he first complained of deafness while serving in the U.S. Army between 1962 and
1964, he was treated as if he were malingering. Two years after his discharge,
only part of a large brain tumor “the size of a small grapefruit” was removed
by surgeons at the Mayo Clinic. During surgery, he suffered a stroke, resulting
in facial paralysis, inability to blink and total deafness in one ear. Surgeons
were unable to removed the entire tumor, which had also affected his balance
nerve.
Mr. Shepherd’s brother John also suffered from other
resultant complications, including seizures and pneumonia, up until his death
in Springfield, Missouri, where he was inadequately cared for by social service
providers under the auspices of the Springfield Council of Churches and the
U.S. government. His brother did not learn of his death until February 2004,
nearly two years later. Springfield government officials and religious leaders
have been uncooperative in revealing information to Mr. Shepherd regarding his
brother’s life in Springfield, prior to his death.
A spokesperson at the Victory Mission told Mr. Shepherd
that his brother sometimes slept on the floor at the multi-million dollar
Victory Mission because there were only 30 beds available. Springfield hospital
records indicate he suffered severe neglect while staying at Victory Mission
and at the nearby Missouri Hotel (an SRO for the indigent, mentally ill), that
he was badly beaten and suffered seizures and resultant injuries from falls.
Apparently, no effort was made on the part of Victory Mission officials or
Missouri Hotel social workers and other Springfield officials to place, him, a
chronically ill U.S. veteran, who was obviously mentally confused as a result
of brain tumor surgery, in safe and adequate housing.
James M. Harriger, a member of the Springfield Rotary Club,
is director of Victory Mission, which has received millions of dollars in
government and private funding.
When Thomas M. Shepherd contacted Harriger by e-mail and by
phone in February 2004, Harriger told Mr. Shepherd that he was not aware his
brother, John Shepherd (Dudley E. Blaise Jr.) had died April 2, 2002, near two
years before, although hospital records now indicate Blaise was admitted to the
St. John’s Hospital and Cox Hospital emergency rooms in February 2002 as, less
than two months before his death, a result of a falls and injuries he suffered
while residing at Victory Mission. The day his brother was hospitalized in
February 2002, less than two months prior to his death, Mr. Shepherd spoke to
James Harriger by e-mail and phone, and Harriger indicated at the time that his
brother was doing fine, that he had his own apartment and that he occasionally
saw him at the library.
Note: James M. Harriger was well aware of the fact that
Dudley E. Blaise Jr. and John Shepherd were the same person, a fact that had
been documented with Mr. Harriger in February 1995, when Tom Blaise Shepherd
first learned of his brother’s whereabouts and spoke to Harriger at length on
the phone and mailed him photos and further documentation of the fact that
Dudley E. Blaise Jr. and John Shepherd were the same person and that Thomas
Mitchell Blaise Shepherd was his brother, who was very concerned about Dudley
Jr.’s welfare, even though Harriger continuously told Tom that his brother was
doing fine, that he soon after had an apartment of his own and did not want Tom
to have his address.
John Snyder Blaise Shepherd (a/k/a Dudley E. Blaise Jr.)
was a graduate of Joplin High School, where he was a member of the National
Honor Society, editor of the school newspaper The Spyglass, a captain in the
R.O.T.C., and a straight A Latin scholar. A Boy Scout, he served as assistant
scoutmaster during junior high school and as a counselor, archery instructor
and water safety instructor at Boy Scout camp during the summers. He majored in
political science and Spanish at Southwest Missouri State University in
Springfield and worked as a radio newscaster and SMS pool lifeguard while
attending college. Following his honorable discharge from the Army, he (in
1971) received a B.S. degree in business administration from the University of
Oklahoma at Norman, just prior to his disappearance, when his brother Thomas
first contacted Senator Goldwater for help in assistance.
Mr. Shepherd is
the Author of
Many Books,
Commentaries
Thomas M. Shepherd, whose pen name is Tom Blaise Shepherd,
is the author of The Investor’s Handbook on Mexico (1970), The
Conscience of an Existentialist (1996), Sex and Sanity: The Myths and
Realities of Human Sexuality (1997), and An Existential Approach to
Sober Living (1997). He is also the author of several short stories,
commentaries and book reviews. He is also the author of an autobiography: Day
Dreams, Lost Dreams, the Dad I Never Had: A Long Day’s Journey into
Schizophrenia.
Shepherd
Brothers Were Abandoned
By Their Own
Father Soon After Birth
Thomas M. Shepherd, his brother John Snyder Shepherd and
their mother, Clara Olive, were abandoned by their father Dudley E. Blaise Sr.
when the two boys were infants. At the time of their birth, their father was
president of the El Cedro Silver Mining
Company in Guanajuato, Mexico, which
closed down following the expropriation of Standard Oil Company from its
American stockholders by Mexican fascist President Lázaro Cárdenas and a
lengthy and violent anti-American miners’ strike at El Cedro, prior to Tom’s
birth in 1938. Tom and John had no
father, no foster father, no uncle, nor did they have a grandfather during the
first twelve years of their lives. Their own paternal grandfather, E.F. Blaise,
a well connected Tulsa oil man, banker and Thirty-second Degree Mason,
neglected them. The only contact they
had with their Grandfather Blaise was a Christmas card with a $10 check, the
only source of revenue provided them by the Blaise family. Their mother had to
go to work outside the home from the time they were still infants.
Consequently, they both became scapegoats in the community, as did their mother
and grandmother, who reared them.
Their mother remarried to Charles M. Shepherd, electric
power company director, when they were 11 and 12 years old. Mr. Shepherd, a heavy drinker, verbally and
physically abused them, once locking them out of the house while they were at
church. He committed suicide when Tom was sixteen years old. Tom met his father
for the first time when he was 17 years old by going to his father’s home in
Mexico City, a home he shared with the woman with whom he ran off and sired a
third son. John, who was eight months old when his he last saw his father,
never again saw his father.
Their father, D.E. Blaise
who died in 1988, never offered any voluntary assistance to Tom and John, nor did
he ever write a letter to them, nor did he answer any of their letters to him.
Yet he nourished and reared a third son, Stephen, two years younger than Tom,
whom he sired by a common-law-wife, Alice LeRoi Jordan, an alumna of University
of Southern California school of social work, after deserting
Clara Olive, John and Tom and failing to provide for them.
Congressman
Goldwater’s Actions
Called
“Inexcusable”
“My cousin Barry M.
Goldwater Jr. doesn’t know what it’s like to grow up without a father, to grow
up without a father who was neither dead nor poor, but who simply didn’t care;
and to also not have an uncle or grandfather to provide leadership and
financial support. Goldwater himself was sheltered and protected by his own
father. He inherited millions from a trust fund left to him by his maternal
grandparents. He had everything handed to him on a silver platter,” says Mr.
Shepherd.
“Senator Goldwater himself said in his book The Conscience
of a Conservative [1960], which was actually written by William F. Buckley’s
son-in-law Brent Bozell, that welfare should be the responsibility of families,
of relatives, not government. However, what the Goldwaters did to me, one of
their own relatives, in employing the Secret Service to stalk, harass, threaten
and intimidate me when I needed help and had no one else to turn to, is
inexcusable. While Congressman Goldwater takes pride in being affiliated with
the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he was unwilling to represent my brother and me
in our own claims for veteran disability benefits. Yet, Barry Goldwater Jr.
considers himself a humanitarian. I have been treated by the Goldwaters, the
Secret Service and others as if I am an ‘undesirable citizen’ and a ‘dangerous
person,’ yet I am not. I am a very responsible citizen who has been victimized time and again by the numerous anti-social and criminal
acts of others, including my shipmates and officers while serving in the United
States Coast Guard, the Secret Service agents and the Goldwaters themselves who
employed them,” claims Mr. Shepherd.
“The irony of
what happened is that although I was being falsely accused by the Secret
Service agents of being a ‘drug user, I in fact had NEVER voluntarily used
drugs. Yet, Congressman Goldwater, who employed the Secret Service agents that
falsely accused me of being a drug user, was later revealed, through his own
admission to undercover FBI agents, to be a voluntary cocaine user while
serving as a Member of Congress. In spite of his admitted cocaine use while
serving in Congress, Congressman Goldwater is now eligible to collect a very
substantial Congressional retirement pension, in addition to income he receives
from his inherited wealth. Yet I, who was a repeated victim of the anti-social
acts, including assault and battery, of my shipmates, one of whom was
intoxicated as a direct result of a ship’s beer party hosted by the Coast Guard
while we were anchored off-shore in the South Pacific, am denied any kind of
pension for my government service. That is not fair.
“I wonder what Senator Goldwater would
have done if Barry Jr., while serving in the armed forces, had been thrown out
of the hammock he was sleeping in and then had his head pounded against the
deck by a drunk shipmate, who was drunk as a direct result of the fact that the
ship’s captain had hosted a beer party, paid for by U.S. taxpayers, aboard
ship?
“I wonder what Senator Barry Goldwater
would have done if his son, Barry Jr. had repeatedly been denied employment
as a result of the fact that he had been hospitalized for psychiatric
observation during military service and resultantly discharged for a
psychiatric disability, yet denied a government pension for a service-connected
psychiatric disability?
“I wonder what Congressman Barry Goldwater
Jr. would have done if he himself had been visited by Secret Service agents at
his home and forced, under threat of being locked up in a psych ward if he
failed to comply, to address two empty, unsealed envelopes to President Nixon,
who then walked out the door of his home with the envelopes?”
“I wonder how Barry Goldwater Jr. would
react if Secret Service agents asked him, ‘Are you a homosexual?’ Would he have lied to them?
“I should now be receiving better than
$2,000 a month from the Veteran’s Administration for a service-connected
nervous disorder. I figure the U.S.
government owes me approximately $1 million in retroactive veteran disability
payments. I figure they owe me additional compensation for character
assassination and the abuse of my rights by the Secret Service and others.
However, they presumably would rather see me dead than pay the claim. If my
name had been Goldwater, I would have been immediately awarded compensation at
the time of my honorary discharge from the Coast Guard in 1960. If I had had a
father or any other relative to stand behind me, I would have been awarded a
disability pension. The attempt of the U.S. government to cover up what
happened to me is inexcusable. I have been betrayed by my country.
“As far as the Ozark Center in Joplin,
Missouri and the West Los Angeles Veterans Hospital, I would advise no one to
seek medical advise or treatment from those institutions, which should be shut
down. They do their psychiatric patients far more harm than good. As a matter
of fact, I think psychiatry, as it is currently being practiced, should be
outlawed!”
The Conscience of Hon. Tom Shepherd
Education and economic equality
are the armaments of peace!
Say NO to all alcoholic
beverages!
Alcoholic beverage distributors
are NOT interested in your
welfare.
They are ONLY interested in
their profits.
Choose red grapes or red grape
juice
in lieu of red wine!
Say no to marijuana, cocaine
and psychiatric drugs!
Sound nutrition and regular
exercise are
the building blocks of a functional
brain!
Violence only breeds more
violence!
Problems are never
solved with alcohol,
marijuana, fists, bombs and
guns!
Nor are they solved with
prisons!
Prisons are a fascist
institution!
Problems are solved with
education,
books, tools, dialogue and
civility!
Best Wishes,
Hon. Tom Shepherd
American Existentialist
