Max Jungreis: Hey, listeners, this is Max Jungreis. Just wanna remind you that you can tell us your stories by calling our voicemail at 702 – 706- TALK. This week, we want to know: Have you ever held on to a secret for years and years…. And then finally shared it with someone?… how did it go?  Tell us at  702 – 706- T-A-L-K.

 

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Michael Garofalo (MG): Welcome to the StoryCorps podcast from NPR. I’m Michael Garofalo. 

 

Before he founded StoryCorps, Dave Isay had a long career making radio documentaries. From time to time on this podcast, we go back and listen to some of his work. 

 

In this episode, we’re going to hear one that Dave made with producer Piya Kochhar, called My Lobotomy. It’s from 2005. But we’re revisiting it now…in honor of the person central to this story…whose journey we’re about to hear… a man named Howard Dully. He died last month.

 

The starting point for this story is January 17, 1946. That day, a psychiatrist named Walter Freeman performed the first ever transorbital, or ”ice pick” lobotomy in his Washington, D.C. office. He believed that mental illness was related to overactive emotions and that by cutting the brain, he was cutting away those problematic feelings. 

 

Freeman was something of a showman and he traveled the country performing lobotomies and crusading for the procedure. Before he died in 1972, Freeman performed ice pick lobotomies on no less than 2,500 patients in 23 states. 

 

You’re about to meet one of Freeman’s youngest patients. Howard Dully was just 12 years old when he was given a lobotomy. And it wasn’t until he was in his 50s, while working as a bus driver in California, that he started looking for the story behind his operation. And this is what he found… 

 

(Music starts)

PATRICIA DERIAN: We went into a room and there was a stretcher there.

LARRY*: He came in with something of a flourish, and he had his valise.

DERIAN: And the first person was brought in and strapped down given an electroshock.

HELEN CULMER: He had a instrument; to me it looked like a nail, a great big nail.

DERIAN: It was silver.

FRANK FREEMAN: It looked like a screw-driver, only a sharp point.

KARL PRIBRAM: It was an ice pick.

1. LAWRENCE POOL: An ice pick!

WOLFHARD BAUMGARTEL: They call it ice pick, but of course it was a surgical instrument.

PRIBRAM: And then he held the ice pick parallel to the nose

POOL: slip it under the eyelid.

ELLIOT VALENSTEIN: And he tapped it above the eyeball.

PRIBRAM: Through the orbit of the eye.

ROBERT LICHTENSTEIN: So there’d be a little crunch.

POOL: And then he’d shove it up into the forward part of the brain.

BAUMGARTEL: and then he did the other side.

LARRY:  He took the probes, he put his hands on each one and then he twirled them kind of in an eggbeater fashion for a little while in the frontal part of the brain.

LICHTENSTEIN: And then he would take a picture of it.

LARRY: Then he just took hold of each probe and pulled it with a big yank and that was that.

FREEMAN: It took between 7 and 8 minutes it was very quick.

BAUMGARTEL: the patient went out, the next patient was ready to come in, and had his procedure done, and then the next patient came in.

DERIAN: There was total silence among those of us who were watching.  It was riveting.

(Music fades.)

WALTER FREEMAN AUDIO: This is Walter Freeman, MD PHD, I am 72-years-old now

DULLY: This is Howard Dully  In 1960, when I was 12, I was lobotomized by this man– Dr. Walter Freeman. Until this moment I haven’t shared this fact with anyone- except my wife and a few close friends.  Now I’m sharing it with you.

WF AUDIO: In the past four weeks I’ve come 7000 miles chasing up patients

DULLY: This is one of the only recordings of Dr. Freeman’s voice  He made it in 1968- eight years after he operated on me. If you saw me you’d never know I’d had a lobotomy.  The only thing you’d notice is that I’m very tall and weigh about 350 pounds. But I’ve always felt different– wondered if something’s missing from my soul.  I have no memory of the operation, and never had the courage to ask my family about it  So two years ago I set out on a journey to learn everything I could about my lobotomy…

WF AUDIO: Lobotomy was done at that time (fades out).

FRANK FREEMAN: Well Hi.  

DULLY: Hi, how do you do

FREEMAN: I’m Frank Freeman

DULLY:  Howard Dully.

DULLY: I found Walter Freeman’s son Frank, in a little apartment only an hours’ drive from my house

FREEMAN: Pleasure to meet you by God

DULLY: Frank Freeman is 79-years-old and works as a security guard.  I ask him what he remembers about the procedure his father created in 1946.

FREEMAN: We had several ice picks that just cluttered the back of that kitchen drawer.  And the first ice pick came right out of our drawer.  A humble ice pick- to go right into the frontal lobes it was from a cosmetic standpoint, it was diabolical.  Just observing this thing it was horrible, gruesome (giggles.)

DULLY: Frank Freeman tells me that the operation was invented in Portugal in 1935.  The original procedure involved drilling holes in the patient’s skull to get to the brain. Walter Freeman brought the operation to America and gave it a name: the Lobotomy. Freeman and his surgeon partner performed the first American lobotomy in 1936it made the front page of the New York Times. They called it Surgery of the Soul. Walter Freeman and his lobotomy became famous. But soon he grew impatient.  

FREEMAN: My father decided that there must be a better way.

DULLY: He set out to create a new procedure- one that didn’t require drilling holes in the head the trans orbital lobotomy. Freeman was convinced that his 10-minute lobotomy was destined to revolutionize medicine- and spent the rest of his life trying to prove his point.

FREEMAN: I guess you could call it a magnificent obsession… I’ve never been able to sit down and talk with one of my father’s patients. Been a darn good experience to meet you.

DULLY: It’s opened my eyes some.

FREEMAN: Oh great.

DULLY: I was age 12 when I had it

FREEMAN: Good heavens…

DULLY: I still haven’t sat with my father and talked about it

FREEMAN: Yeah hmmmyeah.

DULLY: So are you, are you proud of your father?

FREEMAN: Oh yes.  Yeah, yeah.  He was terrific.   He was really quite a remarkable, pioneer lobotomistI wish he could have gotten further yeahOk  Happy Trails everybody. (laughs)

(Door closes. Music fades in.)

DULLY: The age of the ice pick lobotomy started out with promise. Walter Freeman performed the procedure for the first time in his Washington DC office on January 17, 1946. His patient was a housewife named Ellen Ionesco.  Her daughter, Angelene Forester, was there that day.

ANGELENE FORESTER: She was absolutely violently suicidal beforehand.  After the trans-orbital lobotomy there was nothing it stopped immediately.  It was just peace.  I don’t know how to explain it to you, it was like turning a coin over. That quick. So whatever he did, he did something right.

DULLY: Today Ellen Ionesco is 88-years-old and lives about a mile from her daughter in a nursing home in Virginia. Walter Freeman kept in touch with his first trans-orbital patient for the rest of his life.

SALLIE ELLEN IONESCO: He was just a great man. That’s all I can say.

FORESTER: Do you remember what his face looked like mama?

IONESCO: I don’t remember.

FORESTER: Do you remember his office?

IONESCO: I don’t remember that eitherI don’t remember nothing else, and I’m very tired.

FORESTER: Do you want to go lie down.  I remember sitting on his lap and his beard was pointed and it was very soft. As a child you kind of see into people’s souls and he was goodat least then I don’t know what happened after that.   I wish he hadn’t gotten quite so out of hand.

(Music from old instructional movie fades in.)

DULLY: By 1949 the trans-orbital lobotomy had caught on. Walter Freeman lobotomized patients in mental institutions across the country. He narrated this instructional movie promoting the procedure.

FREEMAN AUDIO: This is a boy of 19 a dreamy sensitive individual interested particularly in the current musical idiom of bebop. Trans-orbital lobotomy was performed on August 1.

(Sound of a saxophone.)

Within a few days the patient resumed playing the saxophone. Hallucinations subsided

ELLIOT VALENSTEIN:  It was a terribly crude procedure.

DULLY: I interviewed Dr. Elliot Valenstein who wrote a book about the history of lobotomies.

VALENSTEIN: There were some very unpleasant results, very tragic results and some excellent results and a lot in between.

DULLY: Why do you think the procedure became so popular?

VALENSTEIN:  Well primarily because there was no other way of treating people who were seriously mentally ill. The drugs weren’t introduced until the mid 1950s in United States and psychiatric institutions were overcrowdedthey were willing to try almost anything.

DULLY: Hmmm

VALENSTEIN: I think the problem with the whole lobotomy period was that it spread like wild-fire; that there was a lot of publicity, a lot of exaggerated success initiallythere was a lot of demand for the operations because there were many parents and family members who were desperately in need of help and not getting anyand it spread not only to seriously ill patients but to a lot of people who were not that seriously ill

WF AUDIO: The operator lifts the upper eye-lid(fades out).

DULLY: By 1950 Walter Freeman’s lobotomy revolution was in full swing. Newspapers described it as easier than curing a tooth-acheFreeman was a showman and liked to shock his audience of doctors and nurses by performing two handed lobotomies: hammering ice picks into both eyes at once In 1952, he performed 228 lobotomies in a 2-week period in West Virginia alone lobotomizing 25 women in a single day. Through it all, Freeman’s fame grewBut he wasn’t satisfied. He decided that his 10-minute lobotomy could be used on others besides the incurably mentally ill.

DULLY: Hello.

CAROL NOELL: Hi.

DULLY: I’m Howard Dully.

NOELL: Hi.

DULLY: Good to see you.

NOELL: It’s good to see you.

DULLY: I fly to Atlanta, Georgia to meet Carol Noelle. Carol tells me her mother suffered from severe headaches In 1950 she was referred to Walter Freeman, who prescribed a transorbital lobotomy.

NOELL: That’s when the fun began.

DULLY: The procedure cured Carol’s mom of her headaches, but it left her with the mind of a child.

NOELL: Did she worry about stuffnope didn’t worry. Just as Freeman promised, she didn’t worry.  She had no concept of social graces if someone was having a gathering at their home she had no problem with going in to their house and taking a seat toonot a problem

DULLY: There you go

NOELL: Will you hand me Anna Ruth’s picture from back there. That’s her. Is she pretty?

DULLY: Beautiful woman

NOELL: She was so smart, she was so smart but she had no place to put it.  The only outlet she had was beating every pinball machine in town and knowing how many pennies were in the jar at the carnival, you know.  She was the greatest playmate we ever had, and the best friend, and we loved her to death but I never remember calling her Mama, or Mommy or anything.I never even thought of my mother as my daughter’s grandmother.   And I never even took my daughter to see her.  Not one time, so she never even got to have that.   

DULLY: So needless to say if I ask you that if you think about this a lot would be an understatement.

NOELL: I make sure I never forget.  Do you ever wonder how come it is, that we’re at the age we are and we can’t seem to say, “ok that was then, this is now.” Why are we even…why are you bothering?

DULLY: Because it’s not ok.  It’s not finished.

MG:  After a short break…. Howard becomes the first ever patient of Walter Freeman’s to see his own medical records….

TAPE: December 3, 1960: “Mr and Mrs Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on.  I suggested them not tell Howard anything about it.”

Stay with us…

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(Music fades in.)

POOL: My name is Dr. J. Lawrence Pool.  I am now 97-years-old.  I dedicated my life to brain surgery.  I did not approve of Dr. Freeman’s ice pick method, no. I said, “Walter I don’t approve of this procedure.”  He knew that.  Dr. Freeman did some in his office and would send the patients home by taxi-cab, just as you go to the dentist and get a filling and send them home by taxi.

I tell you it gave me a sense of horror.  How would you like to step into a psychiatrist’s office and have him take out a sterilized ice pick and shove it into the brain over your eyeball?  Would you like the idea?  No.

(Music)

DULLY: In 1954 with the introduction of the first psychiatric drug, Thorazine, Walter Freeman’s lobotomy revolution was over.  Almost overnight, there was no more demand for his services. The procedure was obsolete.  But Walter Freeman refused to let go. He opened a small office in California and kept on performing the procedure the office happened to be only a couple of miles from my home.

(Sound of door swinging open.)

DAVID ANDERSON: Hello.

DULLY: David Anderson?

ANDERSON: Yes I am

DULLY: Howard Dully.

(Sounds of walking down hallway.)

DULLY: I fly to Washington DC to visit the the George Washington University archive which holds 24 boxes of Walter Freeman’s sealed files I request to see my records.  I’m the first patient ever to do so.

(Sounds of paper shuffling.)

ANDERSON: If you’d go ahead and fill this out .(fades out.)

DULLY: My file has everything a photo of me with the ice picks in my eyes, medical bills But all I care about are the notes- I want to understand why this was done to me.

(Reading from medical files.)

DULLY: “Mrs. Dully came in to talk about her stepson who is now 12-years-old” (fades out.)

DULLY: It’s pretty much as I suspected. My real mother died of cancer when I was five.  My dad remarried, and his new wife, my stepmother, hated me.  I never understood why, but it was clear she’d do anything to get rid of me… Evidently she heard about Dr. Freeman and figured he could help.

DULLY: “Mrs. Dully called up to say that Howard has been unbelievably defiant with a savage look on his face and at times she is almost afraid. He doesn’t react either to love or to punishment.  He objects to going to bed but then sleeps well.  He does a good deal of daydreaming and when asked about it he says,‘I don’t know.’ He turns the room’s lights on when there is broad sunlight outside. He hates to wash” (laughs) Ok…  

DULLY: After a couple of weeks of building her case she brought me to meet Dr. Freeman.

DULLY: October 26, 1960: “Howard is a rather tall, slender, somewhat withdrawn type of individual.  The first interview today was largely a matter of getting acquainted.  He told about his paper-route which brings him some $20 each month.  And he’s saving up to get a record player. Howard is rather evasive about talking about things that go on in the home”

November 30th, my birthday: “Mrs. Dully came in for a talk about Howard. Things have gotten much worse and she can barely endure it. I explained to Mrs. Dully, that the family should consider the possibility of changing Howard’s personality by means of transorbital lobotomy. Mrs Dully said it was up to her husband, that I would have to talk with him and make it stick.”

December 3, 1960: “Mr and Mrs Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on.  I suggested them not tell Howard anything about it.”

December 17, 1960: “I performed transorbital lobotomy.”

This is the physician’s service report. “Transorbital lobotomy: a sharp instrument was thrust through the orbital roof, and moved so as to sever brain pathways in the frontal lobes.  200 dollars for surgery” So the whole thing was 200 bucks.  Well, that’s pretty cheap.  How fantastic.

January 4, 1961.  “I told Howard what I’d done to him today and he took it without a quiver. He sits quietly, grinning most of the time and offering nothing” And I was supposed to fight all this.  No way. Twelve-year-olds couldn’t stand against all that It just wasn’t fair

( Music fades in.)

DULLY: When my stepmother saw the operation didn’t turn me into a vegetable, she got me out of the house… I was made a ward of the state It took me years to get my life together…  Through it all I’ve been haunted by questions: ”Did I do something to deserve this?”, ”Can I ever be normal?”, and most of all, “Why did my dad let this happen?”  In 44 years we’ve never discussed it once– not even after my step-mother died.   It took me a year of working on this project before I even got up the courage to write him a letter.

DULLY: Dear Dad, I am writing you this letter because I have gotten my records on the operation I had as a boy and I have some questions to ask. I have not asked them before this out of love for you and I am afraid that asking will change your love for me The operation has haunted me all my life. Now that I am 56 years old, I would like to sit down

DULLY: I couldn’t believe it– my dad agreed to talk.

HOWARD DULLY: I’m here with my dad.  I’ve waited for over 40 years for this moment, thank you for being here with me.

RODNEY DULLY: I tell you anything that needs to be answered.

HD: OK, so we’re here to talk about my trans-orbital lobotomy.  So how did you find Dr. Freeman?

RD: I didn’t.  She did.  She took you. I don’t, I think she tried some other doctors who said, “nah ah, there’s nothing wrong here” ya, ya, ya, “he’s a normal boy”. It was the stepmother problem…

HD: My question would be naturally, why would you let it happen to me if that was the case?

RD: I got manipulated pure and simple.  I was sold a bill of goods. She sold me and Freeman sold me.  And I didn’t like it

HD: Did you ever meet Dr. Freeman.  And what was he like?

RD: I only met him I think the one time. He described how accurate it was in that he’d practiced the cutting on literally a carload of grapefruit, getting the right move and the right turn. That’s what he told me. (laughs)

HD: Have you ever seen a picture of the operation?

RD: No.

HD: Would you mind if I showed you one or

DULLY: I show my dad the photograph of me at 12 years old with the ice picks in my eyes.

RD: The thing I’m intrigued by is how you look so calm.

HD: Is there anything in this that you regret at all?

RD: See that’s negative.  And I don’t dwell on negative ideas.  And what am I talking about?

HD: The positive.

RD:  I always try to be positive. I don’t make it always.

HD: But this has, this has really affected my whole life.

RD: Nobody is perfect. Could I do it over again, would I haveoohhhhh hindsight’s beautiful. Fifty years later I can say this was a mistakeSo was World War I a mistake.

HD: So why do you think it’s been so hard for us to talk about this, in your estimation?

RD: Largely because you never asked about it, you never asked about it. It was an unpleasant part of my life and I don’t particularly want to delve into it.

DULLY: Although he refuses to take any responsibility, just sitting here with my dad and getting to ask him questions about my lobotomy is the happiest moment of my life.

HD: Well I want to thank you for doing this with me, I really do.  I never thought that this would ever happen.

RD: Well you see miracles occur.

HD: Actually what I wanted to do was tell you that I love you.

RD: Whatever made you think I didn’t know that.  You shaped up pretty good!

HD: And I feel very happy about that.

RD: That’s what I wanted to hear.

(Music fades in.)

DULLY: After 2500 operations, Walter Freeman performed his final ice pick lobotomy on a housewife named Helen Mortenson in February 1967.  She died of a brain hemorrhage, and Freeman’s career was finally over. But he never lost faith. He sold his home and spent the rest of his days traveling the country in a camper, visiting old patients, trying desperately to prove that his procedure had transformed thousands of lives for the better…  Walter Freeman died of cancer in 1972. To those few who remember his name, most think of him as a monster.

REBECCA WELCH: I don’t know who could have perceived this procedure as a miracle cure. The only thing I see that came out of it was hurt and pain for a lot of people.

DULLY:  Rebecca Welch’s mother Anita was lobotomized by Dr. Walter Freeman for post partum depression in 1953.

(Anita McGee talking unintelligibly.)

WELCH: You’re all dressed up today.

DULLY: After spending most of her life in mental institutions, today Anita McGee lives in a nursing home in Birmingham Alabama.  Rebecca visits her every weekShe believes Walter Freeman’s lobotomy destroyed her mother’s life

WELCH: I personally think that something in Dr. Freeman wanted to be able to conquer people and take away who they were

(To Anita McGee)

WELCH: What was that song mom, remember?

(Both begin singing, “You Are My Sunshine.”)

WELCH: She’s there, but she’s not there.

DULLY: Today Rebecca brings along her husband David. They’ve been married 19 years, but he’s never been here before, never laid eyes on his mother-in-law

WELCH: Basically, it’s been so painful I’ve tried to stay very far away from it for a long time.  Kind of like if you leave it alone it will go away.  But it never goes away.

DULLY: So what has changed your mind about hiding from it?

WELCH:  You. Do you know how many people you’re championing?  Do you know how many people that can’t do what you’re doing and you’re doing it for them?

DULLY: It does wonders to know that other people have the same pain.

WELCH: The loss

DULLY: The loss you that can’t ever get made up

DULLY: After 2 years of searching, my journey is finally over….  I’ll never know what I lost in those ten minutes with Dr. Freeman and his ice pick.  By some miracle it didn’t turn me into a zombie, crush my spirit, or kill me

But it did affect me.  Deeply. Walter Freeman’s operation was supposed to relieve suffering… In my case it did just the opposite…. Ever since my lobotomy I’ve felt like a freak.   Ashamed…   But sitting in this room with Rebecca Welch and her mom I know that my suffering is over. I know my lobotomy didn’t touch my soul. For the first time I feel no shame.  I am at last at peace.

(”You Are My Sunshine” song fades up.)

HOWARD: This is Howard Dully.

WELCH: That’s it!

(Anita McGee laughs)

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MG: ”My Lobotomy” was produced by Piya Kochhar and Dave Isay. The editor was Gary Covino. Special thanks to Larry Blood. Major Funding for “My Lobotomy” was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. With additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

And this episode of the StoryCorps podcast is dedicated to the memory of Howard Dully, who died on February 11, 2025.

Our voicemail line is always open… and this week we’d like to know: Have you ever held on to a secret for years and years… and then finally shared it with someone? How did that go? Leave your answer in a voicemail at 702-706-TALK. That’s 702-706-T-A-L-K.

The StoryCorps podcast is produced by Max Jungreis. Jud Esty-Kendall is our Senior Producer. Our Technical Director is Jarrett Floyd. And our Executive Producer is Amy Drozdowska. The art for this episode was created by Liz McCarty.

I’m Michael Garofalo. Thanks for listening.