Marriage is tough enough without this

Cowboys kicker misses again; big payday for some lucky gambler

By Ken Tingley

It’s a story that most likely escaped your attention this weekend.

It shouldn’t.

Jerry Gilland, a 77-year-old man in failing health in Daytona Beach, Florida, made a pact with his 76-year-old wife Ellen.

He told her if his health continued to fail, he wanted to die.

It is something most of us would find unimaginable.

But it shouldn’t.

I think it happens more often than we think.

Nine years ago, a Glens Falls woman suffering from mental illness asked her 69-year-old husband to help her die. She had become a recluse in her bedroom because of frequent panic attacks and had attempted suicide. She asked her husband to buy her a shotgun and show her how to use it, how to load the shells. She took detailed notes.

Marriage can be difficult, but it is not supposed to be this difficult.

He left her with the shotgun the next morning when he went hunting, but he had tampered with two of the three shells in hopes the misfires get her to change her mind. When he returned that night, he did not check on her. He went hunting again the next morning and when he returned mid-morning he had to force his way through her locked bedroom door.

He found her dead of a gunshot wound to the head.

The husband picked up the notes his wife had written on how to use the gun. He removed the suicide note she had left for him before calling for help. But things did not seem right to the police. So when they asked him to take a lie detector test, he failed.

He was arrested for manslaughter.

He was not a criminal.

Not in my book.

In Florida this weekend, Ellen Gilland brought a gun into the hospital Saturday morning and proceeded to her husband Jerry’s 11th-floor room. The plan was for Jerry to kill himself, but he no longer had the strength. So shortly before 11:30 a.m. Ellen did it for him. She had planned to kill herself, too, but couldn’t do it.

Ellen sat with her dead husband holding the pistol and refused to come out of the room in an hours-long standoff with police. They eventually used a flash-bang device to distract and disarm the elderly woman.

Ellen was taken to Volusia County Jail where charges were pending.

Nine years ago, the husband in Glens Falls was charged with manslaughter in the second degree and held in the county jail because he could not meet the $100,000 bail. He was facing up to 15 years in prison.

His children asked the judge for leniency.

Judge John Hall took mercy on him.

After 25 days in jail, the husband was released on five years probation and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service. Cancer got him four years later.

That same year, the state of Vermont passed a law that allowed assisted suicide. Vermont has always been light years ahead of the rest of the country.

In the nine years since, another nine states have passed assisted suicide statutes.

Various legislation has been introduced in New York over the years, but it has never gotten very far.

I hope the case in Florida brings the issue to the forefront. Maybe the Legislature needs to review that Glens Falls case. Maybe it needs to retired Judge Hall.

I’m pretty sure there are many others.

These are good people who just don’t want to suffer anymore. They’ve lived their lives and are ready to move on to what’s next with some dignity and should be able to do that without violence.

The Vermont law takes great pains to ensure that patients are capable of making rational decisions; that more than one doctor believes their illness is terminal. And that they can administer the medication themselves.

No one should have to go through what these two couples did.

Never.

Sports gambling

After the Dallas Cowboys kicker Brett Maher missed four extra points last week, several sports bets provided a gambling proposition on whether the kicker might miss again.

Kickers are so good in the NFL that seemed like the ultimate long shot.

But in the first quarter of the Cowboys game against the 49ers Sunday night, Maher had his extra point attempt blocked. It was his fifth failed attempt in six tries. Some lucky gamblers landed a big pay day.

Maher later kicked two field goals for the Cowboys, who lost 19-12.