Monday, February 16, 2009
In his despairing leap from his downtown 16th-floor apartment window two weeks ago, Timothy H. Regan, who once worked in finance and human resources for General Motors, ended his life in the shadow of the Renaissance Center.
When a 36th District Court officer opened the apartment door to evict the former clerk on that frigid Jan. 29 morning, he found the living room occupied only by an empty reclining chair and an open window.
The court officer, Cieve Turner, didn't wonder about the window, which had been laboriously unscrewed. He and three other employees closed it, then cleared out the clothing from a walk-in closet in the $956-a-month apartment. As they left the building, they heard sirens.
"Why did he have to put that on my conscience?" Turner wondered later.
Regan's last act, in its suddenness and horror, stamped an exclamation point on a life that might otherwise have ended in an ellipsis, trailing off inexorably in the almost three years since he lost his job. He left behind no wife, no children, no debts, no note or final phone call to either of his two older sisters or his friends. His Detroit friends believed he was moving back to Marine City, his hometown, and gratefully accepted his possessions. On the morning of his death, he even helped move his treadmill to a neighbor's apartment.
His Marine City relatives, including a slew of nieces and nephews who loved their Uncle Tim, thought he was living happily at his Millender Center apartment, enjoying the big city life of baseball games and People Mover rides.
'I was devastated'
"We were supposed to go to a hockey game ... I was devastated. The last time I saw him, he was vibrant and loquacious; that was his personality," said Darby O'Toole, who knew him as a fellow regular at a Detroit brew pub.
Tim Regan was a middle-aged man -- a generous, sweet-faced, well-liked man -- who had no fallback plan when he was terminated by GM in April 2006, and who had too much pride and too few supports to reach for help in the years that followed.
When he became a corporate discard on a much-publicized "Black Tuesday," he couldn't have known how much bleaker the days ahead would be.
For almost three years, he maintained what looked much like his life before -- the one-bedroom Millender Center apartment, the downtown bars where he nurtured friendships, playing darts at the Old Shillelagh, sipping from his numbered mug at the Detroit Beer Co., the acquaintances and friends who laughed with him.
Few of his acquaintances ever heard him complain or express bitterness about the abrupt ending to his career. Friends who would gladly have helped him didn't know how needy he was, as his severance pay, his health benefits and then his 401(k) savings gradually disappeared.
Occasionally, he worked at a friend's machine shop. "Guys have to work," his nephew Kevin Quail said, trying to explain his uncle's sadness. "That's who they are."
But Tim Regan's physical disability -- the odd gait and weakened legs he was born with -- made it difficult for him to get around. A premature baby, he had a mild case of cerebral palsy. That condition had made his work in the RenCen so ideal: He could walk through an elevated tunnel directly from apartment to office, or whip around downtown on the People Mover.
"He didn't really have it in him to go out and look for a job. That just wasn't Tim," said Tia Welser, his sister.
Friends say he was less than two years from qualifying for retirement when he left, at a time when forcing out white-collar workers was still unusual at the Big 3 auto companies. In his human resources job, Regan processed the paperwork of employees being laid off. Then he was one of them.
The disparity between Regan's outward mood and his inward despair came as a shock to many who thought they knew this gentle man, in his baseball cap and with a crooked grin.
"He was always smiling, always happy," said Brian Pittman, a Detroit teacher and one of 30 friends and relatives who gathered to remember him at Regan's favorite bar last week. Pittman, a Millender Center neighbor, spent New Year's Eve with Regan. But the two of them never talked about money or women, both subjects that Regan avoided, often with a smirk and a "whatevvverrr."
In the face of disappointment and loss, he laughed or changed the subject. "He was the kind of person who was competitive. He liked to wait until the last minute. At Christmas, we'd never know if he was going to come or not," said Welser.
The end came after a series of eviction notices and a rap on the door, the knock he was almost surely waiting for. Outside, court officer Turner heard a noise and waited for the door to open. When it didn't, he and his men and an apartment manager walked in.
What remained of Regan's possessions went into a Dumpster downstairs.
He enjoyed independence
The suicide risk for middle-aged men, especially unmarried ones, doubles with unemployment. Augustine Kposowa, a University of California, Riverside, professor, who published a 2001 study on joblessness and suicide, said men over 40 are much more likely to see job loss as an imprint of their own failure.
"For older men it is harder," he said. Being a single man without children already put him at risk; the loss of his job added to it. Finally, the failing economy and waves of others' job losses could have undermined whatever hope and confidence Regan did have.
In the days before his death, less than a week before his 53rd birthday, Regan gave away his furniture, his treadmill, his laptop computer.
"We don't have anything," said Welser. "Not even a wallet or his cell phone."
Despite the many people who believed themselves to be his friends, he spent much of his time alone. His sister never pressed him or insisted on visits, because he so obviously enjoyed his independence.
"He didn't like to be told what to do," said Welser, who is 20 years older.
The gentle little man who walked awkwardly and endeared himself to others with kindness and a crooked grin stayed in character until the very end. He was OK. He was fine. He was perfectly happy.
Only the scream of his death gave him away.
You can reach Laura Berman at (248) 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com.
