ONCE IN A LIFETIME DRIVE TO SELL AMERICANS HAPPY DEATH AT $50 A DAY

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33965, 4 October 1975, Page 14

ONCE IN A LIFETIME DRIVE TO SELL AMERICANS HAPPY DEATH AT $50 A DAY

/ By

CHARLES FOLEY.

in Los Angeles for the Foreign Ncu-s Service)

A major marketing drive to sell the United States public on death —the last American taboo—has just been launched from a high-rise suite in a business quarter of Los Angeles. Branch offices have been opened in six areas and more will spring up as a national sales campaign takes hold. The product: a customised service for ushering clients out the world at $5O for an eight-hour day.

Threshold Inc., billed as "A Research Centre on Death and Dying.” is cashing in on a movement which began here in California to support or replace the family in providing aid and comfort for the dying. The problem of facing death has come "out of the closet” and hundreds of universities are starting courses on it. Books on the subject are selling fast; on the lecture circuit it outdraws politics and sex.

“We do need a more open, healthier attitude to death.” says a leading Los Angeles physician "Because of our reluctance to have anything to do with the dying — as if we feared contamination — four out of five Americans today must die among strangers in hospitals and nursing homes.” Threshold’s full-page advertisements, laid out in tombstone style, offer to free the family from irksome and painful deathbed scenes by providing surrogates for hand-holding duties. Threshold aims to supply death guides, or “companions” who will go “beyond medicine and nursing” to bring human comfort. "Someone to be there, to talk and to share with. Someone who cares . . William Roberts, aged 50, Threshold’s founder and main

..driving force, is best known 11 in California as an exponent 11 of Right-wing causes who, 11 until last year, was a partner Jin the “go-go” political public relations firm of Spencer-Roberts. The cool professionalism which Roberts brought to the task of transforming Ronald I Reagan, for instance, from an ageing film star into the “citizen politician” who became Governor of America’s most populous state and a ; presidential candidate is now turned to exploiting the terminal sub-culture which is beginning to flourish in the United States. How did the unsentimental Roberts find his way into this strange new world? The man who use simulation models Ho predict how the public ! would react to any given | policy position in an election ■ campaign says he was I jerked into realsing the possibilities after sitting with a dying friend in hospital.! I Something, he thought, must] : be done to change the de-I i humanised, isolated United | 'States deathbed, and his | ! study of what makes people (vote convinced him that he 'might be the man to do it.i So. with himself as chairman ; and a younger colleague. Jim Rosner. 30, as president he registered Threshold Inc.

Free publicity They began a few months (ago with recruiting appeals ■to the motivated: those who are ready, as the advertise(ment put it, “to give their i utmost, without restrictions las to age, sex, religion or i race.” Roberts began his i career as a television time salesman, and much free publicity was engendered on talk shows. At first, free training was offered, but now Threshold ■charges would-be companions ’s42 a seminar, if they agree to work for the organisation for at least a year, surrendering 60 per cent of their earnings to the company. (The charge to patients is $6.20 an hour.) Professional people — doctors, nurses, priests, morticians — who take the course on "guiding the dying; and their families through the final crisis” must pay $250 a seminar. “Hospital staff have no] time to sit and talk — they just try to keep up a cheerjful front.” says Roberts. “So. the 1,500,000 people who’ll die in hospital this year will. ! die essentially alone. And' i clergymen have no seminary i training in the matter. We’ve had considerable interest in. both categories.” But Thres-i ihold got nowhere withj i funeral director's. “They (think they know it all.” i Public response to the | recruiting calls has been “overwhelming,” said Rosner. “We had more than 1000 calls.” After stiff screening (religious zealots looking forward to deathbed conversions were among those eliminated), 10 companions were put through, an eight-week semester before being sent out for “field training” in hospitals, nursing homes and private houses. The programme is described as “an intensive, in-depth group activity, with no tests as such and completion as the only examination.”

At three-hour weekly classes, trainees learn that

qeven the tight-lipped dying 'person longs to talk, not only .■about himself, but often ’(about the meaning of life and I death. Companions are taught Ito recognise stages on the J path. i: Denial is said to be the first reaction as the patient Ijtries to blind himself to the J truth, followed by angry rejection of relatives and ■friends. Next, an attempt to postpone the inevitable by (“bargaining” with doctors, nurses, perhaps with God, for more time. Then he may sink i into an abyss of hopelessness. And finally may come acceptance: suffering and fear lift I (as if to allow a “rest before . the long journey.” In each (stage of the drama, the com- ; I panion may play a useful Irole. Threshold is frankly comImercial, — in accordance i with Roberts’ belief that anything free in free-enterprise | America is regarded with I suspician. "The volunteer . worker, however worthy, lacks status: we prove our faith in the service by putj ting a price on it. “The paid companion says. ’Go ahead. Say what you I like. Rant and rave at me if (you wish.’ And since the ! companion is hired, he or she can also be fired. That can be a great comfort, too. But I ultimately the key to helping I the dying is to understand I that they are — excuse the (pun — dying to talk.” Threshold sales teams are •now holding their first meetings before homing in on (hospitals and nursing homes (which might use their services. ■ Recently. Rosner was challenged by the chairman of Los Angeles Public Health Commission, who said that the dying often leave their money at the last moment to people outside the family — might his companions benefit that way? Rosner replied that companions signed an agreement that anything willed to them goes to a non-profit Threshold foundation. He agreed that there was no way of preventing employees from recommending funeral homes and lawyers to patients and their (families. While some critics take a cynical view of such ventures with their frequent euphemisms (“terminal living” instead of death; "grief therapist” or "facilitator” for Isitter), almost any attempt (to encourage old people to (die at home is to be welcomed. As for Threshold, it plans jbigger and better services on 'a wider scale if operations in coming months prove finan(cially viable. “Dying, after (all. is a once-in-a-lifetime affair,” says the expansive Bill Roberts. “Why not make a production of it? Have the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at your bedside, for instance.” For a fee. of course. —O.F.N.S. Copyright. Homosexual lair Homosexual acts between consenting adults are no longer punishable by law in South Australia. The Homosexual Law Reform Bill was approved by the Executive Council, freeing homosexuals from police prosecution. — Adelaide.