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The Short Life And Sudden Death Of Dirk Fisher

The Short Life And Sudden Death Of Dirk Fisher image The Short Life And Sudden Death Of Dirk Fisher image
Parent Issue
Day
12
Month
March
Year
1972
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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In the freezing, still dark, early morning hours of Monday, Dec. 20 - five days before Christmas 1971 - an ambulance roared up to the emergency room entrance at the rear of University Hospital. Inside the vehicle, unconscious, lay 16-year-old Dirk Fisher, who resided with his father, mother and two sisters in a neat suburban home at 2534 Esch Ave. The ambulance ride was to be the last trip Dirk would ever take. The slender, long-haired, U-M professor's son was pronounced dead on arrival. Now, nearly three months later, Dirk's parents, family and friends are still not sure exactly what caused his death. Nor are the Ann Arbor Pólice or the doctors who examined his body. In a strictly medical sense, it is known that Dirk died directly as the result of a pulmonary edema, meaning that his 1 u n g s f i 1 1 e d with excessive fluids, choking-off his breathing process. This explanation, however, does not begin to reveal what actually caused the fatal condition, nor does it give any indication as to what brought about the convulsions Dirk went through just prior to his death. Several factors may have been at least partially responsible. First was the quantity, quality or effect of the LSD Dirk and two friends took at the friends' apartment on Sunday night, Dec. 19. Second was a physical assault on Dirk, while he was reportedly "stoned out of his brains," which occurred about an hour before he was rushed to the hospital. Third was a f all Dirk took in the friends' apartment in which he struck his head on a refrigerator. And last, and perhaps most important and all-inclusive of the other factors, was Dirk's general health and mental state during the hours immediately preceding the 3:34 a.m. ambulance call. In the opinión of Francis Fisher, Dirk's balding, mustachioed father and an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University, the above sequence of events - and particularly the assault- combined to build-up stress in Dirk until "something in his physiology just blew." Sam, a member of the Rainbow People's Party and a friend of both Dirk and his older brother Grant, believes the cause of death "wasn't any one thing; probably a lot of things ..." Ann Arbor Police Chief Walter Krasny, whose detectives investigated the death, contends the LSD was a definite "contributing factor." Whatever the circumstances w e r e leading up to the pulmonary edema, it seems certain that Dirk Fisher at the time of his death a talented, sensitive and troubled youth who, according to a female friend, "was looking hard for a different kind of life style . . . always looking for freedom in his own way." Dirk died less than one month before his seventeenth birthday. He was born in Fishkill, N. Y., on Jan. 10, 1955- the third of four children bom to Martha and Francis Fisher. The family moved to Arm Arbor in 1961 and Dirk took an immediate disliking to school, from kindergarten on, Mrs. Fisher says. Although he recorded an IQ mark of 130 in second grade, Dirk received poor grades and was a "typical non-achiever," his father notes. He blossomed aeademically during his first year at Tappan Junior High School, but it was only a temporary development. By the end of his seventh grade year, "things began falling apart again," his parents agree. A habitual truant from school, Dirk was finally confined to the Washtenaw County Juvenile Detention Home on Platt Rd. for a brief period in the early summer of 1970. It was around this same time, his father recalls, that Dirk and a friend were picked up by Michigan State Pólice for possession of marijuana. By then, the Fishers were a ware that Dirk frequently used marijuana and LSD, and had experimented w i t h "speed," a category of amphetamine drugs. When. questioned by his father, Dirk admitted using such illegal drugs to "get high." "I had absolutely no control over him," Prof. Fisher says, remembering the arguments he had with his son concerning Dirk taking the responsibility for his own actions. "I was scared he was going to get off on heroin . t . I used to check him for needle marks." Back at Tappan in the fall of 1970, Dirk's truancy continued, as did his use of drugs and alcohol. Although he had apparently quit drinking in the months preceding his death, because of a suspected toxic reaction to alcohol, Dirk got into minor difficulties with the police on two separate occasions when drunk. In one of the incidents, Prof. Fisher says, Dirk smashed two car Windows in a violent rage and had to be held down by officers attempting to control him. "He was berserk, but he didn't remember anything about it the next day," his father explains. By the time he turned 16, Dirk had dropped out of school completely. He had no job and spent much of his spare time drawing, sleeping, eating and lying around the house doing nothing, according to his mother. Later, upon discovering the Pioneer II experimental high school, Dirk would regret discontinuing his formal education because he liked the Pioneer II concept of learning but was ineligible to attend due to his status as a drop-out. "School really missed him . . . he found it stifling," says Robin, one of Dirk's female friends and a staff worker high, too. He didn't take any bad drugs at Drug Help Inc. and the Washington St. Community Center. Art was Dirk's one major talent. "He was deeply into art, really fine in graphics," Robin claims. "And he was really improving, too." After dropping out of school, Dirk apparently funnelled much of his creative energy into his drawings, some of which appeared in the Ann Arbor Sun, a local newspaper published by the Rainbow People's Party. Dirk also began hanging-out at the Rainbow People's Party headquarters on Hill St. during his free time. His father says he became one of the "street people," but Sam maintains Dirk had become interested in radical politics. "He was heavy into change, into changing the world and getting rid of the injustices he saw . . . It showed in his drawings," Sam says. "Dirk was really that he knew about. He used to draw stuff to show how bad speed was for you." Adds Robin: "He did take drugs and so do a lot of other people . . . but more than that he was Dirk and that was a very special person." She believes Dirk's use of drugs was "adolescent experimentation ... I wouldn't say it was abnormal." Prof. Fisher, however, feels differently, claiming that his son's use of drugs was an "escapist bit." He doesn't believe in punishing drug offenders ("Justice is not putting anyone in jail for taking marijuana.") but says, "When you take drugs you're your own victim . . . Dirk was flirting with death." In fact, Prof. Fisher is convinced that Dirk had a premonition of his death, which sometimes showed through in his drawings. Yet one of the last drawings he was working on before he died depicts himself living outdoors, next to nature and happy. (See drawing above.) "He had an insight to nature," his father states. "He was touched by a lot of things and he was concerned. But he didn't have good judgment in taking care of himself." Prof. Fisher is critical of the way in which Dirk's death was originally reported by the police and The News. He contends the doctor on duty in the emergency room when Dirk was brought there called after the story first appeared in the newspaper and told him no information pertaining to the autopsy had been released to police prior to the story. (In that story, Krasny told The News that a preliminary autopsy on Dirk's body had revealed death was caused by large amounts of LSD. He was quoted as saying, "The availability of LSD in this particular case cost a boy his life." A final autopsy report from the Michigan Department of Health has since shown no trace of drugs was found in Dirk's system, and thus the four "hits" of "blotter acid" he took on Dec. 19 cannot be pin-pointed as the cause of death or even a contributing factor, as Krasny said. Nor does Prof. Fisher approve of the fact that no mention was made of the assault on Dirk in the first story, although the incident was reported in two later stories concerning the death. The U-M professor criticizes Krasny for at one point saying, "We have nothing verified on this beating angle. In fact, our source for that information cannot be considered altogether reliable," when the information came from the same source as the information about the LSD usage which was apparently believed by Krasny. The source in question, Prof. Fisher says, is Mike and Dave - Dirk's two best friends and the boys who were with him in their apartment at 1407 S. State St. when the LSD was taken. Both boys admitted taking the drug with Dirk, although Dirk reported took four hits in quick succession, while Mike took four hits over a longer period'of time and Dave took only two hits. As Mike related the story of the assault to the Fishers, he and Dirk were walking near the intersection of Main and Stadium, across from Crisler Arena, when a car containing two boys and two girls approached and the boys called Mike and Dirk "fags." At the time, around 2:30 a.m., the temperature was below the freezing mark and Mike and Dirk were walking with their arms around each other in an effort to stay warm, the Fishers were told. When the boys in the car jumped out of the vehicle and threatened to beat Dirk, he replied, "Don't beat me up. I'm your brother. I love you." Despite this, Dirk was struck about the face and body and knocked to the ground while Mike was held back from interfering. Following the attack, Mike and Dirk returned to the State St. apartment where Dirk reportedly collapsed and struck his head on the refrigerator there, at which point he became increasingly upset. Shortly after the f all, he went into convulsions (something he had never done before, according to his parents), began vomiting and calling out for his family. It was then, with Dirk's pulse slow and his breathing labored, that the ambulance was called. Police were also called to the scene and attempted to administer artificial resuscitation to Dirk while awaiting the ambulance, Prof. Fisher notes. These efforts to save the youth's life proved unsuccessful, however. Since his death, Dirk has been described in many ways. Robin refers to him as "really a gentle soul." Sam remembers him as "a peaceful person." To his father, he was "a misfit, but really a beautiful, sweet kid . . . Dirk was so far from being any kind of a criminal." Mrs. Fisher recalls he was constantly worried about his health, to the point of hypochondria, and "ate like a horse." His sister Leah, who attends Tappan now, says he was known by everyone she knows and had a lot of friends, while his other sister Meg, an Eastern Michigan University student, remembers him I struggling to learn to play the guitar and I listening to Frank Zappa albums. Then, shaking his head wistfully, Prof. Fisher mutters, "Hell, what can you say? It hurts, that's all." But he wants to make one point that others might heed as a result of Dirk's death. "Let us pray that our youth does not take drugs : and that we do not beat them because they have long hair." Despite the inconclusive nature of the state autopsy report, Krasny still feels the LSD Dirk took is at the root cause of his death. "While the post mortem examination does not and apparently cannot scientifically establish that LSD caused this death, I think anyone who denies that the drug was a contributing factor is blinding himself to reality," Krasny says. The chief points out that his detectives have established through witness statements that Dirk and his two companions took quantities of LSD in the hours immediately preceding the death. He says a minor street scuffle and then a fall in the S. State St. apartment both involved the Fisher youth but doctors say the death could not have been caused by a blow received in either incident. He says at the time of Dirk's death the immediate evidence at hand indicated that LSD had been the cause of death. But this type of drug apparently disappears in the system, leaving no trace for a pathologist to find, he notes. "The Fisher investigation is closed as far as the Police Department is concerned. The exact cause of death apparently will never be determined," Krasny says. Dr. Otto K. Engelke, Washtenaw County health officer, said the autopsy report indicates "there is not enough evidence of physical injury to attribute death to a beating." Pulmonary edema, which can be caused by a number of things, is listed as cause of death, but the actual cause of death was not pinned down by the autopsy, he said. (Editor's Note: Dirk Fisher. Born, Fishkill, N.Y., Jan. 10, 1955. Dead on arrival, University Hospital, Ann Arbor, Dec. 20, 1971. Cause of death: undetermined. Suggested causes: overdose of LSD, a beating, a fall. Dirk Fisher's death at the age of 16, and the way it was reported by the police and the news media, has become a subject of questioning and controversy in the community. In the following articles, a team of Ann Arbor News reporters takes an in-depth look at Dirk's death, and at a life which ended before it had hardly begun.) One of The Last Drawings Dirk Did Before His Death