Wilson Dean “Willie” Fisher was a kind, caring, generous guy.
Every time he went to Sam’s Club, he dropped $100 or $200 in a wagon for Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, where his younger sister, Ciara, went as a child.
He also bought her a laptop when she needed one and bought one for his mother, Dora.
He once learned about World Vision’s work and bought a whole herd of cattle to help feed a village, he donated to a men’s mission in Bloomington a couple of times and he donated money for a giving tree at his church.
His giving nature and not wanting recognition for it made his parents, Dora and Jeff Fisher of Norman, proud.
Even though he dealt with paranoid schizophrenia for many years and died by suicide Aug. 1, 2019, at age 36, the Fishers want their son to be remembered for the type of person he was.
“The main thing I want people to know is to not judge them by their mental illness. There could be a wonderful person behind that,” Dora said. “There was much more to him than that. There was good he did for others. There was good he did for us. There was laughter he gave us.”
As a tribute to his giving nature, the Fisher family was inspired to do a fundraiser for National Alliance on Mental Illness St. Louis in 2020.
The nonprofit organization is dedicated to improving the lives of children and adults with mental illnesses and their families in the St. Louis region, according to namistl.org.
The organization was supposed to host a walk last year as a fundraiser, but it was changed to a virtual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Fisher family had people raise money online and sold cupcakes and buttons, finishing with $1,536 and winning an award for raising the most among new teams. They also did a virtual walk near Liberty Cemetery, where Willie is buried.
NAMI St. Louis’ event is virtual again this year, and the Fisher family is conducting a two-part fundraiser.
A sale of donated items and a silent auction are set for 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at their home, 12445 W. State Road 58, Norman. Items may be dropped off between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. today and Thursday by calling 812-530-6394. The silent auction will be done via Facebook Live on the Walk with Willie Facebook group page and include two of Willie’s Fender guitars and other items.
Walk with Willie is at 2 p.m. May 8 at the same location. The cost is a freewill donation, and preregistration is open through May 5 by calling the same phone number.
All proceeds will go to NAMI St. Louis, which the family chose because Ciara has received support from the organization and is now living and going to school in Missouri.
In 2020, NAMI raised more than $10 million for mental health through walk events, including $186,000 from the St. Louis chapter.
“I definitely want to pass what we did last year,” Dora said of the fundraising goal. “I’d like to at least double it, triple it would be better, maxing it out would be good, too, getting as much as we can.”
Trying to figure out a diagnosis
Willie’s paranoid schizophrenia didn’t start until he joined the U.S. Army.
Growing up, Dora said Willie didn’t like going to school and only had problems there, but doctors said there was nothing wrong with him. One doctor suggested doing more family and structured activities, so Willie learned how to play the guitar.
After he graduated from high school, Dora said he wasn’t staying with a job for very long, and he told her he wanted to join the Army. She wasn’t in favor of that, but he joined anyway.
In 2004, he finished his basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was sent to Fort Hood, Texas. He was supposed to be shipped out to Iraq in February 2005.
“He wasn’t allowed to take his guitar that he always had at Fort Benning, none of his platoon was down there and he was kind of all alone,” she said. “He started seeing angels. At the time, I had this whole living room decorated with angel stuff.”
The day before Thanksgiving, Jeff checked the answering machine at home and there was a message from a doctor at Fort Hood saying Willie was in the psych ward. Jeff tried returning the call several times but never heard back from anyone, so he drove down to Texas.
A doctor said Willie was schizoaffective, which is a mental health disorder marked by schizophrenia symptoms, such as hallucinations or delusions, and mood disorder symptoms, such as depression or mania, according to mayoclinic.org.
The Fishers were told numerous times that Willie was going to be released, and Jeff made multiple trips to Texas thinking he was going to bring him home, but that didn’t happen until March 2005. He was set up with the Veterans Affairs hospital in Louisville, Kentucky.
“They didn’t really try to get him on medicines, either, and in the meantime, he’s getting worse and worse, and we could see his appearance changing,” Dora said. “That first year was no medicine, and that was a nightmare because he was violent, and that wasn’t him. It’s hard because you see your loving, kind child go into something that is totally not him and hitting my husband.”
Becoming a different person
One day, Willie was arguing with his mother in the kitchen, and when she started doing the dishes, a coffee cup whizzed by her head and hit a plate rack.
“He just cussed me, which was another thing that was not like him,” Dora said. “It just makes him a person that you’re not used to being around.”
Willie was put on different kinds of medication, but he experienced side effects.
One day, Dora and Jeff were repainting the dining room when Willie came out of his room, and Dora could tell he was mad. She told Willie they were painting the walls green, his favorite color.
“He said, ‘No. The devil is green. Repaint it,'” Dora said. “When he got that look, you knew. It was like the glazed look. It was just not his look.”
Willie left the house, but when he returned later, he slammed his hand down on the bar, repeated what he said earlier and gritted his teeth. Dora was able to get away from him, Willie ran downstairs and Jeff went to talk to him. They argued for a little bit, and when Jeff walked off to come back upstairs, Willie hit him in the back.
Soon, Willie came back upstairs, went to go out the front door and pointed his finger at Dora and said, “I will kill you.”
“That was the first time he had ever said that — ever,” she said.
After the VA hospital learned of the incident, the Fishers were advised to get a court order, which meant they had to switch to the VA hospital in Indianapolis for treatment.
First suicide attempt
In August 2008, Willie went missing. A friend asked Dora to check the clothes in his room, and that’s when she found a pair of cargo pants and a white T-shirt covered in blood. That was the first time Willie tried to kill himself.
Knowing any time Willie goes anywhere that it was toward Bedford, the Fishers drove to that Lawrence County community.
At the farmers market, an employee recalled a man with a similar description being there the day before. She said he was glassy-eyed and had something wrapped around his wrist. Surveillance footage showed him driving out of the parking lot.
Jeff wound up receiving a call that Willie was found in Chicago, Illinois, and was taken to a hospital.
They learned Willie had pulled into a subdivision and saw a police car outside a house and asked a woman if an officer lived there. The woman called the officer after seeing Willie with a bloody sock on his arm and wearing no shoes, socks or a shirt.
“He told us he stopped because there was an alien following him, and he wanted the policeman to follow him,” Dora said.
Upon a search of Willie’s car, they found out he took all of his money out of the bank and hid it in different places in his car.
Willie later told Dora he had tried to commit suicide by putting a trash bag over his head, but it was too hot. He then drove to Bedford and bought rat poison and vodka and ingested both, but the vodka made him throw up the rat poison. He then headed to Chicago.
He also had a new toaster, a garden hose and a cooler in his car, and Dora found out he was going to use those to commit suicide if the other ways didn’t work. She said he couldn’t take the voices and violent images in his head anymore.
“I said, ‘You cannot let the stigma of mental illness keep you from making yourself better. You just have to come to the conclusion this is not different than somebody with heart trouble taking medicine, somebody with diabetes takes medicine, somebody with liver trouble takes medicine,'” Dora said, noting he needed medicine to live a good life.
Willie was then prescribed a new medication.
“The thing that is so bizarre about all of that, him trying to commit suicide actually ended up saving his life because they had a drug that they would only use if (a person) tried to commit suicide,” Dora said.
Since the medicine could affect his heart and other internal organs, he had to regularly go to the VA to have blood drawn and checked. He also was taking an antidepressant.
Death shocks family
Dora said Willie was doing really good with his medication, so they wanted to see if he could handle being around people for Ciara’s wedding June 8, 2019.
That day, he initially said he couldn’t do it, but he later changed his mind and attended. Come to find out, he had forgotten to take his afternoon pill, which helped him if he was going to be outside his house.
In mid-July, the family helped Ciara pack up to move to Missouri. At one point, Dora saw Willie walking down the driveway toward his house looking sad, and she told him to come give Ciara a hug. That wound up being the last time she got to see him.
On Aug. 1, 2019, Dora and Jeff were going to take her mother to a doctor’s appointment in Mitchell at 1 p.m., but Dora said she was dreading it.
At the doctor’s office, Dora got a call from Ciara, who was crying and saying she really missed her brother. Dora told her to give him a call, and she said she would do it the next day.
When the Fishers returned home around 6 p.m., Dora noticed Willie’s pants and shoes were gone, but his backpack was there and the patio door was unlocked. She thought that was odd because he usually left their house by 2 p.m.
They couldn’t find him in the house, so they called police and received help from neighbors in searching for Willie.
While waiting for police to arrive, Dora opened the patio door and yelled and then spotted Willie’s dog, Vash, near the wooded area behind their house. She then had a feeling Willie was somewhere in the woods.
“I called it mother’s intuition,” she said. “I said, ‘I’ve just got this aching feeling that that’s where he’s at.’ I felt like he was straight behind the house hurt and he needs us.”
Ciara’s father-in-law and brother-in-law then went to that area and found Willie sitting at the base of a tree. He had shot himself.
“It was such a shock,” Dora said. “I said, ‘No, he didn’t. He wouldn’t have done it. Ciara just got married. He wouldn’t do this to her. He wouldn’t do this to me and leave me here alone, and he knows I don’t like being alone. He wouldn’t do this to Ciara. She was his world. He wouldn’t do this.'”
Dora found Willie’s afternoon medicine in his backpack.
“If he would have taken it, it might have calmed him down enough,” she said.
“Losing a child is hard, but when you lose them that way, every emotion you can imagine goes through you,” she said. “You think, ‘What could I have done different that day? Is that why I felt like I shouldn’t leave? Should I have turned back and hugged him one more time? Should I have fixed him his favorite meal?'”
Dora said she doesn’t think the paranoid schizophrenia resulted in him dying by suicide. She thinks it was the depression, knowing he had a mental illness that prevented him from going places and doing things like other people.
While the grief is overwhelming for Dora at times, thinking of Willie when he was himself helps her get through the tough moments.
“He was the most giving, loving person when he was himself,” Dora said.
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The Fisher family of Norman is conducting a couple of events in memory of Wilson Dean “Willie” Fisher.
A sale of donated items and a silent auction are set for 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at 12445 W. State Road 58, Norman. Items may be dropped off between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. today and Thursday by calling 812-530-6394. The silent auction will be done via Facebook Live on the Walk with Willie Facebook group page.
Walk with Willie is at 2 p.m. May 8 at the same location. The cost is a freewill donation, and preregistration is open through May 5 by calling the same phone number.
All proceeds will go to National Alliance on Mental Illness St. Louis.
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