Three Long and Too Short: A Memoir of a Lost and Found and Lost Life

By Tom Qualley

An engrossing memoir of a young boy growing up in a very rural environment of northern Minnesota without friends in a home with a physically and psychologically abusive father and mercilessly abused mother. Despite being ostracized in school and told he wasn’t college material, Tom graduated with academic honors from a highly ranked private university and went on to become a nationally recognized marketer with major Fortune 500 companies. Despite his success, he was clinically depressed from childhood until well into his forties. Only after two years of psychiatric therapy (and a lot of advice from the late actress Betty White) did he begin believing in himself.

Little is left to the imagination as he recaps the harrowing experience of having a loaded rifle pointed at him by his father. He shares details of one of the most horrendous wedding days and nights imaginable. Ever wondered what it’s like to play Scrabble against Betty White? Tom provides the details (as well as provides a play-by-play recap of his young daughter’s food fight with Betty—at Betty’s request). His memoir captures, in vivid detail, the adoption fiascos he encountered on his way to becoming a father of two daughters and then the devastating separation from them. Not once but twice.

Plagued for years by self-doubt, he shares how difficult it can be to distinguish between having luck and having real talent in the corporate world. He recaps, in stunning detail, how, in that corporate world, some of us are more equal than others. For those who believe a corporate code of ethics applies to all, Tom will disabuse you of that notion.

His concluding chapter provides recommendations for couples planning to be married or become parents. Those distinctive insights, provided from a child’s point of view, likely won’t be found in any other guides to a successful marriage or parenthood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669843641

Tom Qualley

Tom. a native of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, graduated with academic honors from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. He began his marketing career with Delta and then joined Grey Advertising as a vice president in its Minneapolis office. He returned to the corporate world as director of advertising at United Healthcare before advancing to vice president of Medicare Marketing Programs for Aetna. An adoptive father of two daughters, he recently relocated from Connecticut and now resides in Minneapolis with his partner, Mark, and feline friend, Kadin.

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Copyright © 2022 by Tom Qualley.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Front and Back Cover Photography by: Mark Richardson

Rev. date: 11/30/2022

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Introduction

My Earliest Childhood Memory

The Beginnings of It All

Grade-School Disasters

Loose-Change Bribery

Loaded Guns and Trophies

Marriage and College

Career Success and Adoption Fiascos

Welcomes, Farewells and Awards

No Way in Hell Am I Going Back There!

Old Roots and New Routes

The Daughter, the Car and the Hot Coffee

Yes, I’m Betty White

2001 Upheaval

U-Turns

National Recognition

Seat of the Pants Behind the Wheel and in the Office

Lovebirds

Looking Back at the Lessons I Learned

Concluding Thoughts and Feelings

Epilogue

FOREWORD

I wonder how many psychiatry rules I’m breaking by writing about my patient, even if he asked me to do so. So what? Rules are made to be broken, right? Boundaries are made to be breached. And Tom has breached the limits of many boundaries in his journey. Thus, following his example, I can do no less.

Tom first came to see me in the 1990’s. At that time, neither of us could contemplate the paths he would take over time, personally and professionally. His forging those new paths was achieved through his determination, persistence, and courage—the very qualities that led him out of his Minnesota rural roots in the first place.

Being a psychiatrist, I hear stories about traumatic families and people’s struggles to overcome the residue of that trauma. Tom’s story is haunting and sobering: it is hard to accept the nature of the trauma he writes about. Even having heard traumatic stories, I was demoralized by understanding Tom’s environment growing up. That he escaped from it—scarred by it, but escape he did—is testament to his grit and unique gifts.

My enduring impressions of Tom his wicked sense of humor, his intelligence, his Minnesota accent, his love for his children, his professional success, and his courage in being true to his inner self. How brave he has been! He has withstood the disapprobation of friends and family, society in some respects, and the lack of understanding of those closest to him. He has endured, thrived, and earned his satisfaction in life many times over.

I am humbled by having been asked to write this forward. I smile to think of Tom as I have known him over time and as he is now. He is a mensch, something rural Minnesotans might not understand, but I know Tom understands now, as he surely has all of the qualities of a true mensch.

With much fondness for Tom, I recommend this book to you readers. You won’t be disappointed to discover Tom Qualley and his journey.

Dr. Joyce Kamanitz

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply grateful for the input provided by my very good friend, Karen Heller, as I constructed this memoir. Her input and insights were very helpful throughout the process. My great sister-in-law Christina Richardson also deserves plaudits for her valuable commentary for months on end.

Thanks also to Tom Williams, Dave Mahder and Frank McCauley for taking a chance on me during my great years of working with them. And to Louise, David and Debra for being the best lieutenants to serve with me throughout my career.

A special thank you to my former doctor and new friend, Joyce Kamanitz. If it weren’t for her guidance and support over the years, I wouldn’t be here today. To my partner, Mark Richardson, who gives me every reason to live today and finally to my two great daughters. Because of them, I live for tomorrow.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The names of the author’s daughters have been changed to protect their privacy.

INTRODUCTION

After a long battle with clinical depression that likely began when I was a young boy and endured into my forties, I realized that if I didn’t seek out professional guidance, my life would no longer be worth living. I really didn’t think I would be a big loss to anyone if I committed suicide. I was tired—no, exhausted from enduring life.

While I saw countless others around me seeming to enjoy life, I wasn’t one of them. Pretending to be one of them had become exhausting. My marriage was failing. I felt I was failing as a father. While my career trajectory was extraordinary, given my childhood, it wasn’t bringing personal satisfaction. I seriously doubted that if I committed suicide my daughters, or anyone else for that matter, would miss me.

My wife at that time, Barbara, insisted we try to save our marriage with professional counseling. Feeling I had nothing to lose, I agreed. After two introductory joint visits, the psychiatrist to whom we had been referred, Dr. Joyce Kamanitz, recommended we conduct further sessions separately for a while. We agreed. After two separate sessions, Barbara revealed she had no confidence in the psychiatrist and wanted to seek another counselor instead. I disagreed.

Barbara had developed a habit of constantly seeking out new doctors when she disagreed with their diagnoses and subsequent recommendations. Much to her chagrin, I remained with Dr. Joyce Kamanitz. Thanks to her, I am alive today.

Like everyone else, my life has been full of joys and sorrows. Now though, I savor the joyful events and handle the sad times differently than I did before entering counseling. I try to avoid revisiting my childhood days and instead reflect on how amazing it has been for a little lonely boy growing up in a backwoods rural setting to finally be moving to the emotional and physical place I live in today.

I’ve learned a lot. I still have questions. Where I am on this incredible journey of life is anyone’s guess. I still have important goals to achieve before I consider that my life was one well-lived. Likely we all do. But if any can find a lesson from my life to help them in theirs, I know I will have achieved one of them.

I’ve not written a primer on how to quickly get rich nor a spiritual guide. There is not a fairy-tale ending where every character lives happily ever after. Instead, it is a chronicle of enduring but hardly enjoying childhood. It illustrates how thinking and feeling as a child can still influence life as an adult. And then overcoming that.

We all hear and speak the phrase all grown up now. We generally apply it to someone who has attained adult height and weight and/or may have reached the age of sixteen or eighteen. Yet we have no idea as to whether or not the emotional development has matched the physical development. If flawed thinking and feeling development has not maintained pace with physical development, we rush to judgment when we say to someone, You’re all grown up now.

It isn’t much of a leap to then move to the next familiar phrase: He/she is on her own now. Can someone, if they carry the weight of a bruised childhood identity or flawed thinking process into adulthood, be all grown up? Can they successfully (in every sense of the word) be on their own?

I have no easy answer to that. But I can say that the baggage I carried from childhood into adulthood became heavier with each passing year. Discarding it after decades of being all grown up was, at times, harder than carrying it. And for me and likely many others, being on my own was never true until I finally left the baggage behind.

This is my story of being all grown up now and being on my own.

But not alone.

MY EARLIEST

CHILDHOOD MEMORY

My mother, Agnes, loved playing her violin. She never had any formal lessons. Instead, she learned from her father, Joseph. He’d made her first one from discarded wood cigar boxes when she was a child and let her have fun.

Joseph loved to whittle in his spare time, usually in the evening when farming duties were completed and after all had gone to bed. When he learned that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been diagnosed with polio, he found a young diamond willow tree and from that carved the president a new cane. Shortly after sending it off to the White House, he received a letter from President Roosevelt thanking him for the cane. That letter held a place of high honor in his little farm home.

Over seventy years later, I made an inquiry to the Hyde Park, New York, museum dedicated to Roosevelt. I wanted to know if the cane was a part of the museum. I learned after Roosevelt’s death the cane was donated to a charity specifically for polio victims.

Mom never had formal music lessons but learned to play by ear, as she would later say. Joined by three others from our rural neighborhood, she would occasionally play at local resorts in northern Minnesota for the tourists. The quartet would bring home a few dollars each, but they didn’t play for the money. They played for the fun of it. And everyone had a good time. Or so I thought.

One late summer Saturday evening in 1959 when I was five years old, my mom took the night off from our little family tavern and gas station, the Parkway Inn, to play one last time for the summer tourists at a small resort seven miles away. It might have been only her third or fourth night off that summer. Usually she was home every evening, keeping our family business going. There was always someone needing gas for their car or a bottle or two of beer, a six-pack to go and a pack of cigarettes (usually Pall Malls, Winstons, or Camels).

My dad, Olaf, told me I could stay up as long as I wanted that night. He never cared about bedtime for me. So I took my usual stool at the end of the bar and watched old TV westerns while Dad sat with a woman named Ida and one of the usual barflies. They enjoyed shot after shot of Four Roses whiskey. At one point, she took out a small pistol from her purse and laid it on the bar. Why? I’ll never know. I remember she was mad, and with each new shot she got madder. And so did Dad. Before too long the barfly had dozed off, his head slumped down on the varnished wood bar, next to me at the end, snoring with gross yellow/gray stuff sliding from his mouth. More than likely it was chewing tobacco drool.

Around 10:00 p.m., I went off to bed in a small bedroom area behind the store’s retail section. In the bar out front, Ida kept on. I remember her voice slurred while my dad said barely a word as I fell asleep.

I awoke Sunday morning to voices coming from the bar. I didn’t recognize most of them, but there were many. I made my way through my parents’ sleeping area (there weren’t really any separate bedrooms then in our back-of-the-bar living area), past the kitchen, and out into the bar. There were four or five people quietly talking among themselves who stopped when they saw me. I looked out a window and saw three or four neighbors gathered there, all men, who seemed to be blocking my dad from walking toward the two-lane asphalt Highway 71 that ran in front of our home.

None of this was making sense to me. At age five, soon to be turning six, I had no idea what was going on. I wanted to go outside; but a neighbor lady, Jane, said I should go play in the kitchen instead and have some breakfast. She’d pour me some cereal and milk and sit with me since I was all alone. She was nice and was always friendly to me.

We then left the bar and headed back for the kitchen. I asked where my mom was, and she didn’t really answer. Instead, she asked if I wanted some toast. Sure, I said. But Jane didn’t know where the toaster was, so I hopped up on my chair to show her the location. When I did that, I looked out of our kitchen window. And there, stumbling up out of the ditch, onto Highway 71 and headed toward our driveway, being steadied by another neighbor, was my mom.

Her legs were bleeding, her face bruised; blood, dirt, and grass smudged most of her clothes. Her left eye was swollen shut, and she was crying, louder than I had ever heard another person cry. It was a cry of pain, anger, and sadness.

I ran from the kitchen and out the front screen door before Jane could catch me. There I saw men in the front yard holding back my dad. With fists doubled, he kept shouting, I’m gonna kill you, you dirty fuckin’ bitch! Paul, one of the men, grabbed me, lifted me up, and quickly took me back inside and held me back until Mom entered the bar. At that point, my dad disappeared. What happened next was a blur, but I do remember neighbors remained in our home for the entire day.

In short order, I learned that one of the band members, Ted (Ida’s husband), had given my mom a lift home after the resort bar closed at 1:00 a.m. My dad wasn’t waiting for her inside when she returned home that night. Instead, he’d waited outside; and when Ted pulled out of the driveway, he had rushed her from behind as she headed toward our front door and began beating her. Somehow she ran away but made it only as far as the end of the driveway. He caught her there, continued to beat her, and threw her in the ditch; and she fell unconscious.

As she began stumbling home hours later, she was noticed by neighbors headed on their way to church. They gave assistance. One of the men continued on to a nearby grocery store and called my uncle Joe, Dad’s brother who lived nearby, to quickly come over and help calm my father down.

Dad didn’t return for three days. He’d become convinced during his night of drinking with Ida (Ted’s wife) that my mom and Ted weren’t really playing at the resort. Instead, Ida believed, and then convinced my dad, the two had joined up in a nearby roadside motel.

Of course the story wasn’t true. But that is the first real memory I have of my mother and father. Within a few short years, I learned, in fact, he, not my mother, was the one sleeping around. Always sleeping around. And as such, he had no emotional interest in his wife or in raising his only son: me.

From that day forward, I tried to maintain a safe distance from my father. I had seen what he was capable of doing when he was angry and, as a consequence, didn’t want him to be angry with me. And for two years staying safely away worked. But like any other little boy, I forgot what could happen. Two years later, it was my turn to be the subject of his fury in a way I would never forget.

THE BEGINNINGS OF IT ALL

Olaf was born in the far southeastern corner of Minnesota in the small farming community of Spring Grove on August 25, 1916. His father, Ole, was a first-generation immigrant from Bergen, Norway. Very little is known about Ole’s ancestry. What is known is that when he arrived at New York’s Ellis Island as a stowaway on a freighter, his last name was spelled Kvaale. An immigration agent told him that no one in America would be able to pronounce that, and therefore, the last name would henceforth be spelled Qualley instead. Ole’s sponsor in the United States was his uncle Arnold Traun, also of Spring Grove.

Ole’s time in Spring Grove was short. Seven years later, with the little money he had saved and with assistance from Traun, he moved his six children and wife, Bessie, to Bemidji, Minnesota. There he opened a small grocery store. In the midst of the depression, he consoled himself with whatever liquor he could find. No longer able to afford much to heat the Qualley home, Ole pulled Olaf out of elementary school at the conclusion of his sixth grade.

Olaf’s new primary responsibility was to walk daily along the local railroad tracks and pick up whatever wood might have fallen off railcars headed for paper mills. Whatever Olaf brought home would then be sawed or chopped for both cooking and heating. In the summers, Olaf took on dual responsibilities. Not only picking up wood but also working as a caddie at Bemidji’s Birchmont Country Club and Golf Course. Tips and the meager wages went to feeding the family of eight.

Before long, Ole lost the grocery business and then, in short order, the family home. Recognizing that the wood business was booming and northern Minnesota had no shortage of trees for pulp, he moved the family out of Bemidji thirty miles south to near Lake Alice and Itasca State Park.

There, with the small logging earnings of Olaf and his brothers Joe and Gerhardt, Ole built a ramshackle two-story home.

For the first few years, the house exterior was covered only in tar paper and thin wood. Consequently, Olaf and his brothers worked outside every day seven days a week cutting timber to heat the home or to be sold with the proceeds going toward the purchase of clothing, food, and kerosene for the interior lamps. Eventually the family was getting by, and Olaf saved up enough money to buy what his future wife would later call the worst piece of junk she’d ever ridden in.

Across the state border in Lankin, North Dakota, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Gardner, both children of first-generation immigrants from Bohemia, made the decision to leave the state and start their own family and farm on a small homestead on the shore of Rice Lake, near Bagley, Minnesota. There Joseph and Katherine raised five children, Charles, Lucy, Joseph, Josephine, and Agnes. Agnes at an early age demonstrated an interest in music, so Joseph Sr. made her that first violin.

Before long she, accompanied by her brother Joe, would venture out to play at local community gatherings. Whatever earnings she made went toward feeding the family. She later vividly recalled one Saturday evening in February when she and Joe walked in -20F weather five miles to a community gathering. Nearing the end of the journey, her legs and feet became frostbitten (she had no winter boots because the family was too poor). Upon her arrival at the community center, her neighbors carefully massaged the frostbitten areas with snow under the mistaken belief that such actions were the best cure.

It was at a local dance she met a young Norwegian fellow who took more than a passing interest in her. After a few dates, she and Olaf were