The Final Leap (3 page)

Another reason why Golden Gate Bridge jumps continue is because the subject of suicide remains taboo. Society as a whole and people individually don't want to talk about it. Some individuals believe that if you talk about suicide, you plant the thought in someone's mind when it wasn't there before. Curiously, this same fear isn't raised in regards to public awareness campaigns to reduce drunk driving, drug use, domestic violence, cigarette smoking, or unprotected sex. In those instances, acknowledging and talking about the problem are considered important first steps in addressing it, leading to a clearer understanding of the issues while simultaneously dispelling misperceptions. Suicide though, is different. It is still concealed and largely unknown, on a par only with incest, perhaps, in terms of public avoidance. Because of the shame and stigma associated with suicide, many people want to keep it that way, including people who have been directly impacted, who have lost a loved one to suicide.

In chapter 2 I examine the much-touted history of the Golden Gate Bridge. Not only was it the longest single suspension span in the world at the time it was built, but it was the first bridge to be erected at the mouth of a major harbor. This is important because in addition to all the engineering challenges, such as high winds, deep water, strong currents, and close proximity to the San Andreas fault, which nearly leveled the city of San Francisco in the 1906 earthquake, the bridge had to be tall enough to accommodate large ships passing underneath.

The height of the Golden Gate Bridge is a key reason why it attracts suicidal people. The roadbed is 220 feet above the water, far higher than most other bridges. Jumping off it, a person is virtually certain to die—especially if he or she lands any way other than feet first. An even bigger reason for the bridge's fatal attraction, however, is the railing. It's only four feet high. When people walk on the bridge for the first time, they're always surprised at how low the railing is. If you're young, it's easy to hurtle; if you're older, it's easy to climb over.

Irving Morrow is the person who created the bridge's distinctive Art Deco style. He's also the person credited with making the last-minute design change that has led to so many deaths. By lowering the railing, his intention was to achieve even greater beauty, primarily for pedestrians and motorists on the bridge. He accomplished this goal; however, success came with a steep price. The bridge became a shrine for suicide.

In chapter 3 I relate the impact of bridge suicides on the lives of others. Each suicide has multiple victims. There's the person who dies, and there's everyone else who is left to mourn. The stories of Golden Gate Bridge victims put a face on the problem. There's the championship wrestler, the esteemed physician, and the onetime football star. There's the respected minister, the decorated Marine, and the former debutante. There's the fourteen-year-old, straight-A student who took a $150 cab ride to the bridge because she was too young to drive. There's the overweight, seventy-five-year-old matron who had no trouble climbing over the railing. There's Roy Raymond, the founder of Victoria's Secret; Duane Garrett, a personal advisor to Al Gore; and Marc Salinger, whose father, Pierre, was the press secretary for presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Their deaths and the deaths of hundreds of others, young and old, have torn the hearts out of everyone who loved them.

The role of the Marin County coroner is described in chapter 4. In addition to conducting the autopsies of Golden Gate Bridge jumpers, the coroner's office handles the death notifications. As gruesome as the autopsies are, notifying next of kin is worse. It takes what might otherwise be an ordinary day in someone's life and turns it into the worst day he or she may ever have. At one time coroner Ken Holmes believed that Golden Gate Bridge suicides shouldn't be publicized because that exposure might lead to even more deaths. It was better to keep the problem hidden, he reasoned, to discourage imitative behavior. He changed his mind when he realized that silence wasn't working; the number of jumps wasn't declining. In fact, in 2007 it reached a ten-year high. That's when Holmes decided to become vocal. He began providing data to the media about bridge suicides without prompting. He's the only person who has.

In chapter 5 I explore the attitudes, experiences, and opinions (pre and post) of an ultra-select group—the thirty-two people who are known to have survived a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge. Nearly all were young when they made their attempt, in their teens and twenties. All entered the water feet first, at a slight angle. All had their jumps witnessed and were picked up quickly by boaters or the Coast Guard. All suffered injuries that required hospitalization and, in many instances, permanent treatment. Of particular interest, most survivors of a Golden Gate Bridge jump say that as soon as they let go of the railing, they wanted to live. One survivor, Kevin Hines, had the presence of mind to flip himself midair to avoid hitting the water head first. Another survivor, Ken Baldwin, divides his life in halves—the half before August 1985, when he jumped from the bridge, and the half afterward.

When asked why they jumped, survivors have provided a two-part answer. First, they sought relief from their emotional pain. Death—the great unknown—was more attractive than life, which was both known and unbearable. Second, no planning was needed. One didn't need to procure a gun, hoard pills, cut themselves, breathe carbon monoxide, or wonder whether the rope would hold. One also didn't need to worry about leaving a messy death scene. All that was required was a short trip to the bridge and a second or two to surmount the railing. After that the height, the fall, and the dark waters below took care of everything.

The fact that the Golden Gate Bridge is both an engineering marvel and a work of unparalleled artistry adds to the allure. As the most famous bridge and largest Art Deco sculpture on the planet, it holds a special place in people's minds. If someone's life seems filled with despair, there's always the possibility, one imagines, of a glorious exit.

The work of helpers and responders is described in chapter 6. Helpers range from mental health professionals to highly trained volunteers, from bedside clinicians to hotline counselors. They provide therapy and support to people who are suicidal, as well as to the few individuals who survive bridge jumps and to the loved ones of all those who do not. Helpers know firsthand the magnitude of the problem. They know that nearly twice as many people in the United States die by suicide as homicide. They know the enormous toll that suicide takes on the families of victims. They know the deadly mystique of the Golden Gate Bridge. They also know that suicide is preventable if society is committed to ending it.

Responders consist of police officers in the Golden Gate Bridge Patrol and the California Highway Patrol, as well as U.S. Coast Guard crew members. The former talk down suicidal people from the bridge, something they receive minimal training to do. Mostly it's learned on the job. Successful interventions can take hours and leave officers emotionally exhausted, while failures haunt their minds. The latter recover the bodies of bridge jumpers. It's not something they signed up for; they joined the Coast Guard to save lives. There are more search and rescue cases in San Francisco Bay than anywhere else in the country, in part because the job includes retrieving the bodies of Golden Gate Bridge jumpers.

In chapter 7, I examine the unique role of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District (known as the Bridge District). The Golden Gate Bridge is the only bridge in California with its own governing authority. All other bridges fall under the purview of the state Department of Transportation, commonly known as Caltrans. Since it opened, the Golden Gate Bridge has been governed by an independent, stand-alone entity. Bridge District board members set tolls, supervise maintenance projects, approve special events, and decide whether there should be any kind of suicide deterrent on the bridge. Over the years they have studied barrier options, assessed the potential impact of a barrier on wind resistance, and touted the effectiveness of bridge surveillance and monitoring efforts—the latter in an attempt to defuse blame and downplay the problem of bridge suicides. To their dismay, not only have people continued to throw themselves off the bridge, but in recent years the problem has become better known.

A large part of this is due to Eric Steel, a New York City filmmaker. In 2005 he released a documentary movie about suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge. The movie probably did more to bring bridge suicides out of the shadows than anything else. Rarely is the sight of real people dying real deaths shown to mainstream audiences. Steel deceived local officials in order to get permission to place cameras on the bridge for a year, and captured on film people jumping off. When the movie came out, Bridge District officials were incensed. Not only did they dislike being misled, they blamed Steel for contributing to the problem by making it public. Nevertheless, three years later the Bridge District board voted in favor of a suicide deterrent on the bridge. Specifically, directors approved the addition of a rigid steel net strung twenty feet below the span. The net will cost $50 million and they will not allow bridge tolls to pay for any of it, so where the money will come from is unknown. Thus, the actual end to the problem is still years away.

The suicide barrier controversy is discussed in depth in chapter 8. The issue of a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge has been debated for years, ever since Harold Wobber leaped over the side soon after the bridge opened (Wobber's body was never recovered, in part because no one had planned for that possibility). Although numerous studies have been commissioned and designs proposed, anyone can still walk on the bridge today, climb over the side in seconds, and jump to a near-certain death. The logical question to ask is, why? Why doesn't the bridge have a barrier?

The nominal reasons are easy to name: because a barrier would be expensive; because it would impact bridge aesthetics; and because many people believe that it would not make a difference (their argument being that someone intent on suicide would go somewhere else to jump or, being thwarted, choose another lethal means). Even if those reasons were true—and there's substantial evidence that they're not—they don't answer the question. Every other architectural wonder in the world that once was a site of frequent suicide attempts now has a barrier even though at one time the same arguments were voiced against it. Why did people in Paris, New York, Rome, Florence, Sydney, and elsewhere ignore those arguments and erect suicide barriers— sometimes after fewer than a dozen deaths—while citizens of San Francisco, to date, have not? Is it because local residents, famous for their tolerance, choose to accept deaths from their international icon and perhaps even derive perverse enjoyment from the macabre nature of the bridge? Is it because San Franciscans don't care, because they reason that it's only a few dozen people per year who are dying and many of them are marginalized by mental illness so, from a societal point of view, it's not worth worrying about? Or is it because most residents haven't even thought about it, that despite living in the shadow of the bridge they are oblivious to the siren call it emits?

If two to three people died every month in a cable car accident, it's a good bet that the cable cars would stop running until the problem was fixed. If a baseball fan died every ten days at AT&T Park—home of the San Francisco Giants—because of batted balls, shattered bats, or an accidental fall over the second-deck railing, preventative measures would be implemented. If an intersection in the city was the site of frequent fatal accidents because vehicle traffic was unregulated, a stoplight or stop signs would be installed immediately. Public pressure would demand it. Yet suicides continue from the Golden Gate Bridge in greater number than anywhere else and relatively few people, including local people, know it or seem bothered by it.

In the epilogue I touch on a recent, related problem—suicides at various train crossings in the Bay Area. I also describe steps being taken to implement suicide barriers on a number of bridges elsewhere, including the Aurora Bridge in Seattle, which for many years was the number two suicide site in the United States after the Golden Gate Bridge, with 250 deaths. Finally, I note that the new section of the Bay Bridge that links Oakland with San Francisco is being modeled after the Golden Gate Bridge with a high roadway, pedestrian access (to date pedestrians haven't been allowed on the Bay Bridge), and only a fifty-four-inch railing. The new section is scheduled for completion in 2013, and already U.S. Coast Guard crews, mental health professionals, and others are bracing for the possibility of another major suicide magnet in the area. The Bay Bridge already has several suicides per year, and the number is sure to increase once there is pedestrian access.

Additional information, including a summary of research on why people kill themselves, is included in the appendices. From the early studies of sociologist Emile Durkheim, who theorized that suicide is caused by social factors such as isolation and lack of connectedness, to psychologist Edwin Shneidman, the father of suicidology, who coined the phrase “psychache” to describe the emotional pain that drives people to take their lives, to psychiatrist Aaron Beck's research on hopelessness and psychologist Thomas Joiner's current studies in which desire and capacity are key elements, the thinking about suicide has changed over the years. We know now that 90 percent of people who die by suicide are clinically depressed, and their actions may be further influenced by drugs or alcohol. Yet many people who suffer from depression never make an attempt. Some researchers believe that suicidal behavior is linked to physiological or genetic factors, but so far this has not been proven conclusively. What has been proven is that most people fixate on one means of death. Eliminate access to that means—whether it's a safety lock on firearms, a blister tab on medications, or a barrier on a bridge—and suicides are reduced.