Dr. Hunter “Patch” Adams says humor saved his life.
During his last two years of high school in the 1960s, the 69-year-old said he was beat up almost daily because of his refusal to be silent about the racial injustices around him. Before the age of 20, he had spent three stints in a mental hospital for attempting suicide, he said.
“I didn’t want to live in a world of violence and injustice,” Adams said. “Between my second and third hospitalization, I was present at Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. … I found my stride. I still needed one more hospital, but in that hospital, pshh! Lightning struck: ‘You don’t kill yourself, you dummy, you make revolution.’”
Adams was the featured speaker at a fundraising luncheon for Denton Community Health Clinic on Friday at Hubbard Hall on the Texas Woman’s University campus. He talked about how humor has affected his personal life, his professional life in medicine and his mission work around the globe.
Throughout the day, Adams trained a small group of community leaders on clowning around and spreading love and joy. Those leaders spent time with Adams visiting residents at a local nursing home. Adams completed his day as the keynote speaker at a gala for the clinic, also at TWU.
Founded in 2011, the Denton Community Health Clinic is a nonprofit organization that offers health services to people regardless of their ability to pay, including health and nutritional services. Since opening, the clinic has served several thousand people.
Alice Masciarelli, executive director of the clinic, said the theme for the fundraiser — laughter, joy and humor — was decided last year. She said she heard Adams at a previous conference and knew he would be the person to speak at Friday’s fundraiser events.
“Stress is what’s killing our society, and he’s about looking at things positively,” Masciarelli said. “Our clinic is all about helping people look at their strengths and not weaknesses.
“We’re all about the community ... and that’s what this is all about, bringing the community together so that we can take care of each other.”
In 1971, Adams founded the Gesundheit! Institute, a pilot hospital that was operated out of a communal home for 12 years where patients — some of whom he said had profound mental illnesses — were not charged, insurance was not accepted and there was no malpractice insurance.
The hospital staff worked outside jobs for money, he said. He said it was because of humor that the staff stayed for several years.
Since the 1980s, he’s traveled the world with groups on clown tours, visiting hospitals, orphanages, the elderly and people on the street. He said he travels the globe 200 to 300 days a year, and he’s sat at the deathbeds of numerous people.
“I have seen a huge amount of hell, which just only encourages me to work for love,” Adams said.
His story was told in the 1998 movie Patch Adams, starring the late Robin Williams.
When he was 18, Adams said he made two decisions that saved his life, one of which was to become a doctor. He said society was based on in equality and medicine was a big business, so he decided to become a doctor who didn’t charge his patients for services.
Secondly, Adams said he wanted to be an instrument for peace, justice and care in every moment of his life.
“It was then that I decided to live out six qualities all of the time — that I would always be happy, funny, loving, cooperative, creative and thoughtful,” he said.
Laughter ensued throughout the Hubbard Hall ballroom as the tall, slender man, dressed in clown-like clothing with a curled mustache and a long white mane with a streak of blue swept in a ponytail, spoke about his experiences.
“Humor saved my life,” Adams said. “It stopped me [from] being bullied, and it stopped my life in mental hospitals, and it made everything easy. It was such a magnet for human life.”
His humor and compassion were on display for those at Friday’s luncheon to witness as he consoled a grieving grandmother.
During the question-and-answer portion of the luncheon, a woman came on stage and shared the story of her grandson whose death was linked to mental illness. She wept as she spoke, and Adams embraced her and recited a poem from the late Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda to console her.
Before the woman left the stage and made her way back to her seat, she was smiling, and she and Adams danced it out.
At the close of the luncheon, Adams responded to several questions on Ebola, the death of Robin Williams and ways to console someone who’s been diagnosed with cancer. He also offered advice to a group of aspiring health professionals — students who had traveled from East Texas for his talk.
Some luncheon attendees said the draw to the event was Adams himself. They said they enjoyed the event and that they were leaving with a sense of joy, rather than a focus on materialistic things, and a drive to help others.
“I thought it was marvelous. Everything about it, especially Patch,” said Johnnie Turner, a medical social worker at VNA Ann’s Haven, a hospice agency in Denton.
The final question from the floor for Adams was about whether society must shift from materialism to human contact in order to progress.
Adams responded that his generation had John Lennon, and that everything Lennon was imagining in his song “Imagine” is everything Adams has worked for.
He said he would like to see the world convert to a place where no one knows the meaning of the word “war.” They would have to look it up in a dictionary because no one would ever believe a human would want to hurt another person.
“I’m calling for you to be loving around the clock,” Adams said, “to be radiant with life and to be seductive to imagine that world, where it’s inconceivable a woman would be unsafe. … We guys need to be at the forefront of being nice when we’re taught to be powerful. Screw powerful.”
