Today our guest is our friend Joe Hight. Joe is a journalism professor, columnist, writer, consultant and a bookstore owner. His newspaper career as an editor, director, managing editor or reporter spanned for 35 years.
His new book is “Unnecessary Sorrow: A Journalist Investigates the Life and Death of His Oldest Brother: Ordained, Discarded, Slain by Police.” It took Joe more than a decade to write and publish.
The book will be launched at a special event in Tulsa, followed by an event in Edmond. Part of the proceeds from book sales will benefit Mental Health Association Oklahoma. At both events, Elena Hight, Joe Hight’s daughter, will perform “My Uncle, a song she wrote based on the book.
LINK TO "MY UNCLE" VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfEeBkubhNg
All the details are in this episode’s show notes.
To give some background on the book, Joe has always wondered what happened to his oldest brother, Paul Hight, a Roman Catholic priest purged from the Church because of his mental illness and who was killed by police on his front doorstep.
Joe weighed through thousands of pages of documents, including his brother’s own writings and a 150-page police report about his death.
In the book, Joe spotlights the days when our mental health system often misdiagnosed and mistreated people suffering the most.
BOOK LAUNCH INFO
The book will be launched at a special event in Tulsa, followed by an event in Edmond. Part of the proceeds from book sales will benefit Mental Health Association Oklahoma.
The official launch will be during an event with Magic City Books at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 17, at The University of Tulsa’s Allen Chapman Student Union, 3035 E 5th. 
Matt Gleason will conduct an interview with Hight about his book.
The Oklahoma City-area launch will be at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 19, at Best of Books, 1313 E Danforth in the Kickingbird Square Shopping Center. Hight and his family own the bookstore.