Norten shown with a big bass he caught during his last fishing trip in fall of 2009.My Uncle Norten turned 88 years old last October. He began suffering from dementia earlier in the year, but it wasn’t severe. He continued to be physically active and had no trouble getting around. In September of 2011, his wife sold their home and all his hunting and fishing equipment. In the next forty days he slept in six different beds in various nursing homes as she and his brother attempted to find a way to have him committed.
It began a year ago when Norten called me and told me he was having some blood in his urine. I took him to a local hospital. He had a urinary tract infection and they kept him there for a few days. While he was there his wife brought papers to him which she told him was insurance papers, according to Norten. They were not! She had him sign over “Power of Attorney” papers naming his brother Vaughn as the person who made all decisions for him. Norten, with only a minimal education, couldn’t read the papers, and yet social services personnel in the hospital followed his wife’s request and had them notarized. I took my Uncle aside and tried to explain what those papers might allow his brother and wife to have done to him and Norten refused to believe it. He said there was no way they could get him to do anything he didn’t want to do. He never did understand those papers.
A neighbor told me what was happening. Vaughn had convinced Norten’s wife Velma that if they moved him to Arkansas, that state would pay them $4000 per month to take care of him in Vaughn’s home. The two of them had actually been planning it all. When they finally pulled it off, Norten and Vaughn didn’t get along, and so Vaughn and Velma tried to have him put in a home for veterans. The facility where they took him, kept him a short time, medicated him to calm him down, and deemed him sound enough of mind to not be committed. They then sent him to a Bentonville, Arkansas nursing home. Very soon, Velma deemed it too expensive, so they moved back to Vaughn’s home. Now with Vaughn’s name on their bank accounts and CD’s, (nearly $200,000 in all) Vaughn had decided he wasn’t going to be able to get the government money he wanted for Norten to receive, and Velma had to call someone to move them back to Missouri. She paid $1000 for the move, without Vaughn’s help.
Back at Bolivar, Mo. Velma arranged to move both of them into a health care facility for a week or so, then had Norten moved into another local nursing home, where he is today. His dementia has worsened, but he still knows everyone, and remembers everything pertaining to his family and friends from years back. He does little but lie in a bed all day, getting up only when I come to see him. Apparently he can indeed leave for short periods, as nurses told me he was perfectly capable of going with me to my home, going for car rides, or to the local river to go fishing on warm days. The problem is, his wife and brother have instructed the nursing home administration to not let him go anywhere with me. He can do nothing but stay in that little room, without anyone visiting him but me. My visits are one thing they cannot forbid, Almost every day I try to have a meal with him, play checkers with him or have him sign some of his books.
I have contacted various government offices and social services on many occasions, and if there is anyone who cares enough to help him, I haven’t found them. After hours on the phone with different agencies, no one will come to talk to me or Norten about what is happening. It is as if he has no value. I have no idea if his money can be used to help him with a hearing aid, or dental care which he needs. Vaughn controls all that, helping Velma to hide much of it apparently, and to keep it from eventually going to Norten’s daughter or grandchildren, whom she has always despised. As far as I know they haven’t even been contacted.
Most of Norten’s problems result from his brother’s willingness to help Velma control the money which has always meant so much to her, and completely overlook the any wishes my uncle may have had. Neither his wife nor his brother have an education past the fifth grade. Velma began selling Norten’s personal items a couple of years ago while he would be out on fishing trips with me. She sold his Browning Beretta shotgun which he owned for fifty years, valued at 1500 dollars for 300 dollars. A few years ago Norten learned she had removed his name from all of their CD’s in the local bank, putting them in her and her brother’s name. He was furious at the time, and had to go have it corrected or he would have been penniless. During the past summer, Vaughn sold Norten’s boat and motor, and kept much of his fishing gear. He took Norten’s treasured Grumman canoe, which he had used since the 1950’s and gave it to one of his friends in Arkansas.
The two of them have made life miserable for my uncle for the past few months, and I have been told that there is nothing anyone can do. When they deceived him into signing those papers giving Vaughn the “Power of Attorney” status, it was basically all over for my uncle. Norten had no idea what it all meant.
A couple of years ago, Norten and I were fishing on an Ozark river when he told me what he wanted when his life is over. “Velma owns burial plots up near St. Louis,” he said, “but I don’t want to go there. Promise me that when I die, you will see to it I am buried in that little cemetery where my mom and pop are buried, close the Big Piney River where I was born.” I told him I would see to it, but I know now I can’t do anything about it. Thankfully, Norten gave me the things that meant most to him back then, knowing, I think, what Velma and Vaughn had planned. His old treasures from his past have no great value, but knowing what they meant to him, they mean a great deal to me.
If anyone knows how to find a legal way to do something about what has happened to him at the hands of his wife and brother, I would like to know about it. I would like to see some of his money used to help make life better for him now, and to go to his grandchildren, as Velma has no descendants. And I would like to find a way to take him out of that nursing home on occasion to let him have a little happiness in the last of his life. He is a World War ll veteran who deserves better than what he is getting.
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