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Gone is shadows' child

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When Billy Foy Jr. was born in February of 1954, he was not like most babies. He startled at touch and sound and had the most unpredictable reactions to things. At 2 he had a meltdown when he saw a mechanical puppet in a grocery store; at 3 his speech became fragmented and he began "losing" words he had once used with proficiency. By age 5 after two disastrous years in nursery school, Billy was seeing a therapist. He would see this therapist for several years.

School was hit or miss for Billy. With help and encouragement at home, he was able to complete his assignments. When left to his own, he floundered and his thinking became radically disoriented and fragmented. Luckily, he had one good friend, a boy named Tommy who defended him and stuck by his side. Sadly, his other friend, a kind boy named Chris moved out of state during that time.

The Foys were good parents to their only child. They took Billy to California the summer of 1965; they bought a boat and exposed him to as many different people and scenarios as possible.

While Billy did not appear to have hallucinations, his thinking was grossly disordered. During the summers of 1965 and 1966 he attended a YMCA camp at his own request, only to return both times full of anger at why he was allowed to go. He often expresed a fear of becoming like Hitler and destroying the world if he was not helped. He would launch into a litany of his personal problems whenever he encountered people socially. A simple "how are you" could segue for Billy into the deepest parts of his tortured psyche.

After an unsuccessful stab at 4th grade, Billy was placed in a special education class. His teacher was described as singularly inept by permitting another child to hound and harass Billy into a frenzy. The rationale for this was to force Billy to defend himself, which never happened. The Foys met with the principal and the school board, only to be dismissed. Desperate, they pulled Billy from school in late 1965 and began homeschooling him. He returned to the special class one year later only to be tormented by the same bully. Again he was homeschooled with a tutor and just barely scraped through the 1966-67 year.

By the spring of 1967, the Foys were desperate. After an unsuccessful attempt to find a residential placement for Billy, the Foys were back at Square One. In May of 1967, a chance conversation with a friend who had seen a program about how megavitamin treatment helped people with schizophrenia set Jessie Foy on a mission. Locating a Dr. Allan Cott, who was known as a vitamin dispenser for a generation of autistic and psychotic children, the Foys read up on Billy's condition and spoke with the doctor about the health properties in vitamins. According to Dr. Cott, people with schizophrenia lack an enzyme in the brain and the vitamins "replace" or supplement the deficient mental areas. Many feel that Dr. Cott saw vitamins as a panacea to all mental illnesses.

The validity of the argument is that schizophrenia is a bio-chemical deficiency in the brain. Fortunately there have been people who have benefitted greatly from the megavitamin regimen. Billy Foy was one of them.

He began the vitamin treatment on June 8, 1967. Within weeks, he was moving out of the shadows of mental illness and despair into health and mental clarity. He had a few relapses, such as when he secretly stopped taking the vitamins because he "was afraid of getting side effects again" as he did on one horrific occasion the summer of 1968. Fortunately for all, his progress soared on the wings of a falcon once his vitamins were adjusted/regulated. By 1968, he was enrolled in the Lord Stirling School in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. It was under the protective wing of the Lord Stirling School (whose mission statement is "Mainstream Education is Not for Everybody") that Billy developed into a healthy personality without any traces of his former illness.

I love this book and I especially love the way Scripture is included in every chapter. In reading this, I cannot help but wonder how well Billy is doing today. In the intervening years, one can only hope he has continued to soar on falcon's wings. Darn shame it is out of print. This is truly an inspiring story!

I think "On Eagle's Wings" is the perfect soundtrack to this book.