Walk sheds light on darkness of suicide: City woman’s journey motivated by loss of dad

Kelly Truman likes things to go as planned and works hard to make sure they do.

But when torrential rain Sept. 9 threatened a year of planning she had put into the Out of the Darkness Community Walk in Mill Race Park, Truman reached out to a friend who arranged for walkers have protective cover inside the Columbus East High School gymnasium.

Boosted by an act of kindness, the event drew 258 walkers and raised an estimated $13,000 for suicide prevention programming through the national American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

The annual fundraiser, which Truman has planned the past two years, is more than a labor of love or community service. The steps she takes during the walk are in remembrance of her father, Don Truman, who died by suicide on Sept. 2, 1993 at age 49.

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An Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, Don Truman likely came home from the war with post traumatic stress disorder, his daughter believes. He was shot down during the war, with injuries including shrapnel embedded in his back.

“They didn’t diagnose PTSD back them and he had to be tough,” she said. “Life went on. He worked construction. He was a golf pro at Otter Creek for a while. He loved golf. But he just struggled, and back then he didn’t talk about it. He medicated with alcohol.”

Kelly Truman, a Columbus North High School graduate, grew up in Columbus. Her parents divorced when she was 14, when her father moved to Indianapolis.

“I was 23 when he died. No matter your situation, he was my dad and I loved him,” Truman said. “They told me the circumstances of his death. We knew it was suicide. But we didn’t talk about it at all. We had the funeral and we buried him and we went right back to life.”

Now Truman says she knows that wasn’t a healthy way of dealing with her father’s death. It was another circumstance when she envisioned her life turning out a certain way, but it didn’t materialize like that.

“I got married without my dad,” Truman said. “I had a baby without my dad being there.”

Not dealing with her father’s death and the way he died caused a large number of problems, she said.

Truman was able to work through them in therapy, however, and by turning to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention for assistance.

There, she learned that there are people who understand what it is like to lose a loved one to death by suicide.

“It’s comforting to know you’re not the only one,” Truman said.

Now 48, Truman took over planning responsibility for the community walk after the previous organizers stepped down.

Timing seemed right.

Truman’s son had just moved out on his own and she saw it as an opportunity to give back to the foundation, which every day helps families come to terms with a new reality following a death by suicide.

“This walk just had to continue to happen in Columbus,” she said. “It needed to have a presence in Columbus.”

The walk has been held in Columbus for about nine years, starting out as a campus observance at the Columbus Learning Center. It transitioned into a community walk under Truman’s leadership.

Setting benchmarks

Although the 258 walkers this year in Columbus was a record, suicide prevention walks in Indiana metropolitan areas such as Anderson and Bloomington have attracted 600 to 700 walkers, a level of interest Truman hopes to achieve.

“I just want to increase participation in our walk,” she said. “It’s not so much about the money, but about awareness and letting people know they aren’t alone,” she said.

The money raised through the Out of the Darkness Walk goes to the foundation to provide programming and training for suicide prevention volunteers.

Truman will attend foundation-funded training this fall to become a facilitator for a support group she hopes to form with people who have had a death by suicide in their family. She is partnering with Melissa Newland, regional crisis and access manager with Centerstone, to create the group.

“I learned of Kelly Truman’s heart and commitment for suicide prevention earlier this year when she informed me she was organizing our Local AFSP Out of the Darkness Suicide Prevention Community Walk again this year and she had made a personal commitment to being our AFSP local coordinator,” Newland said. “Any community walk can be a huge undertaking, and I along with many others are grateful to Kelly’s commitment for coordinating this walk.”

Newland said Centerstone was excited to partner with Truman on the support group project.

“Kelly, as a survivor of suicide loss herself, brings much compassion for suicide prevention to our community, and she provides a strong message of hope and healing for those who have lost or nearly lost someone to suicide,” Newland said.

Truman said it’s unusual that Columbus doesn’t have that type of support group available already, and also that the city doesn’t have inpatient mental health treatment available locally.

“We do have the Stress Center at Columbus Regional Hospital, but most of the patients get sent to Bloomington or Indianapolis for treatment,” she said.

Because of that, the number of people seeking mental health assistance go on those communities’ statistics instead of Columbus’, she said, making Columbus’ numbers seem lower than peer communities.

“Everyone wants Columbus to be viewed as this perfect place,” she said. “But if we don’t talk about mental health issues, how are we going to fix this?”

It’s been an uphill climb to get corporate sponsors for the walk, something she attributes to an ongoing public stigma of death by suicide.

Some large Columbus companies have said no to supporting the walk, while others offer sponsorship for a year and then drop out the next year, she said.

“Finding sponsors for this walk is like pulling teeth sometimes,” she said.

Truman hopes Centerstone’s partnership with the support group may lead to further connections that could lead to more buy-in for suicide prevention.

“One night in September, my dad felt so alone that he thought the world would be better off without him,” Truman said. “To know that 125 families feel like that every day, that breaks my heart. I have to talk about this.”

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Age: 48

City: Columbus

Occupation: Retail Manager

Community service: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention volunteer and walk chairperson

Family: Son, Jordan, 23.

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1 million — Across the globe, the number of people who die each year by suicide.

1 million — In the United States, the number of attempts at death by suicide each year.

40,000 — In the United States, the number of annual deaths by suicide each year.

14 — The number of deaths by suicide in Bartholomew County in 2017.

More than 500 — Number of calls made to 911 in Bartholomew County about threatened deaths by suicide in 2017.

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Kelly Truman is beginning work on next year’s Out of the Darkness Community Walk, planned for fall 2019.

If you or your organization or business are interested in providing support or sponsorships, contact Truman at 812-390-1213 or emailing [email protected].

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If you want to learn more about the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, visit afsp.org/

To learn more about the AFSP Indiana Chapter, visit facebook.com/AFSPIndiana/.

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Walk-in service

Centerstone, 720 N. Marr Road, Columbus, is providing walk-in service for mental health emergencies. So far this year, nearly 1,700 people have engaged with the agency through the Crisis and Access Walk-In Clinic, which is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Centerstone also has a 24/7 crisis phone line at 800-832-5442. People may walk in or call to get registered and ask for an appointment. Anyone who is undergoing a mental health crisis with suicidal thoughts will be seen regardless of the ability to pay, said Melissa Newland, regional crisis and access manager at Centerstone. Financial navigators are available to help people access insurance.

Crisis resources

Suicide Hot Line: 800-273-8255

For more information: centerstone.org or suicidepreventionlifeline.org

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What: "Suicide – The Ripple Effect" community presentation by Kevin Hines, mental health advocate and film director

When: 6:30 p.m. today

Where: Columbus North High School, 1400 25th St.

How much: Open to the public and free, but registration is required. Visit Centerstone.org/RippleEffect to register

Presented by: Centerstone and Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.

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