May 26, 2002
Boulder Daily Camera
by Kevin Williams
Summit Middle School student Michael Butler, center, playing the part of Lt. Joseph Cable, is enticed to the Island of Bali Ha'i by Stephen Herr, left, playing Luther Billis, Devin Brandt, playing Capt. George Bracket and Stephen Harmon, far right, playing the Professor, during a dress rehearsal at Boulder High School for a performance of "South Pacific."
Photo by Jon Hatch
Roughly one week ago, Connie Burkhart stepped onto the stage in Boulder High School's auditorium to say a few words before the opening act of "South Pacific."
"I would like to welcome you to this incredible performance by students of Summit Middle School," she began warmly.
"As many of you know," she continued, "we've been through a lot."
On April 4, as he watched the first rays of sunshine spill into South Boulder Creek, Connie's husband, William Burkhart, put a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Affectionately known as "Dr. B.," Burkhart, 44, was a music teacher at Summit Middle School and co-director of "South Pacific." A dedicated teacher and talented musician, Burkhart had bipolar disorder, a condition which he hid from all but his wife.
For more than two weeks after the shooting, doctors in the intensive care unit of Boulder Community Hospital successfully fought to keep him alive. He was eventually moved to Mapleton Rehab, then Boulder Manor, a progressive care center where he now stays.
But the vibrant, talented man his family and students knew is gone. He displays little emotion or comprehension about his situation and will likely be in some sort of care facility for the rest of his life.
"The emotional loss is pretty heavy," says Connie, 42. "My gut gets sick a lot when I'm with him and I want him to hold me or I want him to hug me.
"Sometimes if I stand real close to him and I bump him he'll put his arm around me and I'll grab him and hug him but it's very emotionless, mechanical."
Belting out tunes such as "I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair" and "Some Enchanted Evening," the children of Summit had come a long way since those first bleak days after the shooting.
"The eighth-graders, we all took it pretty hard," says DC Mungo. "I was one of the people who got together after school and cried."
But on the night of the show, he danced around the stage as Emile de Becque, trying to win the affections of Ensign Nellie Forbush, an American nurse played by Cassie Houtz.
Wandering across the terrace of de Becque's plantation home, Mungo smiled out at the crowd, singing heartily in his youthful baritone.
The kids say canceling the show was never an option. Connie, who had started as the co-director with her husband, added her husband's work to her own.
"It kind of seemed almost like an act of respect toward Dr. B.," Mungo says, "just to keep it going, do something he was really proud of and something he was really excited about."
The first day back to rehearsals, Connie sat with the students in a circle and had everyone hold hands.
"You squeeze the hand of the person next to you and that's an alive person that you're helping," Connie says. "I couldn't have gotten through this without the friends, family and people — strangers I don't even know — leaving food on my doorstep or a candle lit or prayers said."
The cast members started out slowly during rehearsals, without the music they were used to hearing Dr. B. play. They kept their focus on seeing the play through to completion.
But it was difficult. The suicide attempt hit eighth-grader Paul Reynolds especially hard.
"Dr. Burkhart was probably one of the most inspiring people in my entire life," Reynolds says. "Before I met him, I thought music was something you could just play on the piano, but he taught me to open my heart to it and he taught me to love it."
The structure of rehearsals and the acting helped many of the kids work through those first dark days.
"Because you're someone else, you don't have to think about anything except what you're doing as the other person," says eighth-grader Stephen Herr, who played Luther Billis, the comedic relief. "But then when you step out of character it's like, 'Wow, he's not around,' and it's kind of hard to do that sometimes. So I try and stay Billis as long as I can."
For Connie, the play was a godsend.
"The play kept me, I won't say alive, that's pretty dramatic, but it kept me going," Connie says.
It gave her a routine.
"Every day at 2:30, when I knew I had to start getting ready to be there at 3, I just thought, 'How am I going to do this?' I've been crying all day, I look like a piece of garbage, I can't function, I can't even think straight.
"And yet I would walk into that multipurpose room and I'd see these kids so eager to do the show and I just thought, 'OK, they're here, so am I.'"
"I felt like writing a book called, 'He Asked Me Not to Tell,'" Connie says. "All those months I was trying to keep Bill looking good. Don't let his kids know how bad it is; don't let his ex-wife know how bad it is, and don't let the school know how bad it is.
That's part of the shame and ignorance surrounding bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic depression, she says.
Connie started to notice something was wrong in fall 2000, when her husband began having fits of rage for no apparent reason.
"It just didn't make sense to me the way that Bill was being," she says.
Months later, a coworker suggested she read a book, "How to Live While Loving a Manic Depressive."
"I finished the whole book and I was just shaking," she remembers, "because I knew it was my husband, cover to cover."
Bill was diagnosed in March 2001.
"Once you understand mental illness better, you go back through all the years and you go, 'Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,' and you can see all these patterns," Connie says.
Bipolar disorder is characterized by vicious mood swings. People fighting the disease often find themselves alternating between excessive highs and crushing lows.
"I think it's very tough," says John Rifkin, a licensed psychologist whose practice is in Boulder. "If someone is truly suffering, you're talking about moods cycling very rapidly at times. People can literally be losing touch with reality in those kinds of states and that can be very disturbing."
Connie witnessed it firsthand on Back to School night in September 2001, as Bill spoke to members of his premier vocal group, Silver Rain, and their parents.
"I'm standing way in the back of the classroom watching him," she remembers. "You could just see him shut down, he was talking slower, slower and hanging his head and all of the sudden he just stopped and no words were coming out of his mouth.
"He said (later), 'I felt like I didn't have anything good to say to these parents.' From his perspective, where he was, everything was bad, everything was terrible."
Back to School night was a culmination of sorts, Connie thinks; Bill actually had started to slide into a depression a few months prior.
Just before the depression hit, he had a manic episode where he went on wild spending sprees, racking up $23,000 in credit card debt.
Through it all, she kept his secret.
The day it happened was surreal.
Connie's 17-year-old daughter, Jenny, found the suicide notes from Bill at 6:20 a.m. — one to his wife, one to the kids. Both said he loved them, but couldn't continue to watch his life fall apart.
After checking the house, Connie immediately called the psychologist, Bill's ex-wife, Debra Elett, and the police.
Four hours later, detectives arrived at the house with the news that they had found Bill by South Boulder Creek with a gunshot wound to his head.
"Debbie and I were sitting together and both of us just felt like we'd been knocked to the floor," Connie says.
The kids, three of whom go to Summit, came home.
"They had all these officers and victim advocate people and they told me what had happened," recalls Rebecca, 14. "I just thought, 'Oh my, is he dead, is he alive,'.... I was in shock."
Sitting on her couch, the play a couple of days behind her now, Connie sighs.
"The show was a ... I wish it could have gone on a little longer," she says.
Then the phone rings, a doctor from Boulder Manor, where Bill is staying.
"That's when reality hits," she says, taking a deep breath.
She takes trips to Boulder Manor frequently but it's difficult.
"There's no connection anymore," she says. "It's hard for me; it's hard for those of us who are emotionally close to him because you expect something back."
But if something good can come out of her situation, she hopes it would be that people realize bipolar disorder is a disease, much like cancer or diabetes. And it needs to be treated.
Psychologist Rifkin agrees.
"I think there's a huge stigma against mental health treatment in general," Rifkin says. "Most of these things, when you do get help, most of them can be controlled...it's not the end of the world."
Unfortunately for Connie, the help came too late.
But even with everything that's happened, she is grateful for the time she had with her husband.
"The one thing I believe and say all the time is I experienced with Bill some things that were incredibly great and wonderful ... a lot of people in their lives don't even get close to that love.
"I don't look at what I've lost as much as what I was able to have, even if only for a short time."