Sad Premonition: Christine Chubbuck

I first heard (and wrote about) Christine Chubbuck around 2009, back before the movie, back when she was just a cautionary tale mentioned in passing on the internet. Of course, hers was one of many eerie tales I remember hearing about throughout the course of my life—I was too young to remember Budd Dwyer, but later discovered both incidents with a kind of curious horror that many people of my generation reserved for images and videos on the now-long-defunct websites Ogrish and Rotten. But I don't mean to give the impression that hers was a mere horror story for me—like that of Yukiko Okada, it was the tragic details of her life before her death by her own hand that I have spent years contemplating.

Christine Chubbuck is one of a handful of women—including Yukiko Okada, Connie Converse, Huguette Clark, Fréhel, Dorothy Arnold, Karen Carpenter, and Phyllis Hyman–whose stories are so tragic, and in some cases end in such mysterious circumstances that I have carried them with me for decades. In some cases–those of Christine, Yukiko, and Phyllis–troubling lives and personal torment led to untimely deaths by their own hand. Connie and Dorothy disappeared, and Huguette was out of the public eye for decades before finally dying in relative anonymity at the age of 104. Fréhel and Karen's choices both led them to premature deaths, yet their haunting voices became the soundtrack to my own troubled life. Christine Chubbuck's story is the first in a collection of tales I am calling Sad Premonition.

Outside of a handful of articles that have been published on her over the years (and some photographs I found in her high school yearbook on Ancestry.com,) I have found that Wikipedia has some of the most concise biographical information on Christine, which I will paraphrase here:

She was born in East Cleveland, Ohio (other articles state Hudson) in 1944, one of three children of Margretha (Peg) and George Chubbuck. While attending a girls' school in Shaker Heights, she formed the "Dateless Wonder Club." A quote in her high school yearbook described her as a "dashing figure with a twenty inch (sic) waist...outstanding and outspoken." Upon graduation, she briefly attended two colleges before settling on Boston University where she received a broadcasting degree in 1965. Also in this year, she apparently had her one—and only—relationship with a man in his thirties, a relationship which might have ended due to the disapproval of her father. 

After two stints in Ohio at WVIZ in Cleveland (where she worked in station publications) and Canton, in 1968 she ended up at WQED in Pittsburgh for three months. (I've always wondered if she and Fred Rogers knew each other during this time). The following year, she moved to Florida, working at both WTOG and the WXLT (now WWSB). Here she lived in Siesta Key in the family summer cottage with her mother and two brothers, although her brother Greg was gone by the time her brother Tim moved in. We know from accounts that she was very close to her family, although she had few—if any—outside relationships. 

At WXLT in Sarasota, Chubbuck worked as a reporter before eventually landing the community event show Suncoast Digest, a show which saw her nominated for the Forestry and Conservation Recognition Award. As an aside, it should be noted that she also volunteered during this time at the Sarasota Memorial Hospital, producing a handmade puppet show for intellectually disabled children. 

Much has already been written about her death on July 15, 1974—during a live broadcast, she attempted to take her own life, dying 14 hours later at the aforementioned Sarasota Memorial Hospital. The eulogy at her funeral stated, in part

We suffer at our sense of loss. We are shocked at the suddenness of her absence. We are frightened by her rage. In her manner of death, we take note of her loneliness and our own as well.

It has been suggested that a lack of intimate relationships caused her depression; in fact, she had made a previous attempt with an intentional overdose several years prior in 1970. Making matters worse, she apparently had an unrequited crush on coworker George Ryan (who was himself dating coworker Andrea Kirby. Ultimately, Kirby's acceptance of a news role in Baltimore apparently exacerbated her depression.) Although she was often "brusque," Chubbuck desperately needed close friends, apparently being "defensive whenever [coworkers] made friendly gestures towards [her]," remaining "self-deprecating" and self-critical, ultimately "rejecting any compliments paid towards her." 

To add insult to injury, Chubbuck wanted children, yet was told she was unlikely to conceive unless she became pregnant within the next few years, a timeline truncated by the scheduled removal of one of her ovaries. Despite her standoffishness, she quizzically hosted a party just days before her death, an event which saw her noticeably more open and friendly. 

So what exactly is it about Christine Chubbuck's story that resonates so deeply with me? Before you worry, no—I have no plans to do the same, on live television or otherwise. But the circumstances that led to her death—that of depression, isolation, and an inability to form close friendships—are eerily similar (if not identical) to my own experience. I will not attempt (and indeed it isn't fair) to try and posthumously diagnose her with any condition or illness. But I can guess how she felt during those last few years of her brief life, and this is at the heart of why I cannot get her story out of my mind. 

Apart from being a fellow Ohio native, her troubles with forming relationships date to at least her time in high school. I imagine she might have been an introspective, intelligent young woman, perhaps prone to bouts of depression and resulting isolation. I have spoken at length elsewhere on this blog about my own troubles with forming relationships with others, troubles which began when I was in elementary school. To be sure, I had more friends when I was in kindergarten and elementary school than at any other stage in my life—the older I got, the more withdrawn I became, and my willingness to socialize with others became almost nonexistent. But even in grade school, I was keenly aware that there was an invisible veil that seemed to separate me from others, a veil I never completely learned how to cross. 

It is hard to say what about my own story is caused by my aloneness due to being an only child, and what is caused by my autism or other conditions. But I distinctly remember being perfectly content to be by myself, reading the encyclopedia for hours, imagining I was on my own little planet far from others. Here, however, our similarities seem to diverge—as I stated previously, many have speculated that this solitude was a cause of great consternation and depression for her. And unlike me, this difficulty with relationships also included romantic ones, and I admit even I was shocked to discover that she had only apparently had one brief romantic relationship in her entire life. 

Are we so alike? Maybe. But I cannot tell you the number of times I have wanted to meet her, to tell her that I felt like I understood what she was going through. That I wanted to be her friend. That she mattered. One thing has always puzzled me, however, about her story: if she was as lonely as they say, why did she go to such lengths to shrug off all friendly gestures by others? I wonder if she felt as though she didn't deserve their friendship or interest. That she wasn't good enough. I myself have never really felt good enough—I excelled in college, graduating first in my class—but my graduation marked the end of an academic career filled with so much hope and expectation. I never went to grad school, despite the pleading of my academic advisors, and I've in the decades since worked a series of dead-end jobs that are paying the bills so I can write in the evenings. 

For Christine, at least in the movie, she was hailed as the smartest one at WXLT. How true this is I will never know, but I imagine it to be a likely possibility. In this situation, others were chosen for bigger and better roles at other television stations—not her. Others were in the relationships she so desperately wanted—not her. So when friendly gestures were made towards her, it isn't so hard to believe that she felt as though there were something wrong with her, and she didn't deserve their attention or friendship. So much of my own story has been one of self-sabotage: addiction, poor choices in relationships, and a fear of new situations. I've been the cause of a lot of my problems. But knowing that hasn't really helped any, when I'm lying awake at night and I feel as though the world was made for everyone but me. So perhaps it was with Christine. 

Can I be honest with you? I've watched the only extant news clip of her countless times over the years. I've studied her hair, the jewelry she wore, the clothes she had on. But far from being an unhealthy obsession, my fascination in her stems from the fact that I see myself in her. I think a lot of us could. Her awkwardness. Her loneliness. A better life always somehow out of reach—the life she wanted, the life she deserved. How many of us have lain awake at night thinking, "Why didn't my life turn out the way I wanted it to? How did I get here? What am I doing wrong?" I could have been anything I wanted. I could have been a translator. I could have been a professor. I could have been a mother. But I'm not. And sometimes, although I've found the love of my life in my husband R. and am happier now than I've ever been before, I have to admit—those thoughts really bother me. Haunt me. Refuse to let me go. And so Christine's story—with its nagging emptiness and loneliness—refuses to let me go. Christine's story is tragic not just because of how she ended her life, but because of how she experienced it. She would have been 82 in a few weeks. As it is she never saw the age of 30. Christine, you are not forgotten.