Cassie Williams overcomes formidable odds

By KENT FISCHER

This article appeared in the St. Petersburg Times on June 2, 2000.

Smothered by grief, her life in a tailspin, Cassie Williams wanted to die. She asked her best friend for help.

"Please," she remembers begging, "just slit my wrists."

Only 17, Cassie had spent the previous year nursing her father as throat cancer mercilessly gnawed his lungs and chest. Her mother, crippled by a stroke, needed diligent care, too. So much of the responsibility of running a household -- paying bills, grocery shopping, bringing home a paycheck -- fell on Cassie's young shoulders.

"I was depressed, suicidal," she said. "My dad was my whole life. I spent an entire year taking care of him. When he died, I didn't know what to with myself. That's when I decided to quit school."

For six months, she toiled at an Arby's handing out roast beef sandwiches, but then a stint minding children at a local day care center buoyed her spirits.

She underwent therapy to beat her depression and enrolled in night school. By fall, she had returned to Gulf High and had made up all the classes she failed the previous year.

Tonight Cassie Williams will graduate, 12th in her class with a 3.7 grade point average and a math honor cord draped around her shoulders.

"She became the standard that I measure other students by," said English teacher Jan Ledman. "She really shines above the other kids. She's mature for her age. Her writing is sophisticated, her work ethic incredible."

Although she didn't realize it at the time, Cassie's slide from honor student to high school dropout started the Thursday before Mother's Day in 1994.

Cassie's mother, Carolyn Williams, a Sunday school teacher and cake decorator, suffered a stroke while recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident. The stroke froze the right side of her body and left her virtually unable to speak and understand words.

Carolyn Williams was hospitalized for a month and spent many more in rehab and physical therapy. She was 53 and needed help learning how to live again.

"We all took care of her," Cassie said. "My dad had to puree her food. We all helped and got her to walk again, but she wasn't the Mommy that I used to have, the one who used to cook for me and take me to the flea market on Saturdays."

Her mother's stroke pushed Cassie into a funk. She gorged on sweets and gained 25 pounds. Cassie carries a picture of herself from those days tucked in her purse. It is, she says, a reminder of how she used to be.

"I'm the fat one on the end," she says, pointing to a chubby girl in an oversized T-shirt.

Three years later, in the fall of her sophomore year, Cassie's father was diagnosed with throat cancer. From the beginning the outlook was grim. Doctors immediately removed his voice box, half his tongue and much of his throat. They built a new larynx from his chest muscle.

"I was his baby," Cassie said. "He was in the Army when he had his other kids, but with me, he made up for lost time."

Donald Williams, a veteran of three wars, already had survived a painful battle with skin cancer. The experience had left him sour on experimental treatments, but doctors wanted him to try another. Cassie's two adult half-sisters decided she should be the one to persuade him.

"That was the only time I saw my dad cry," Cassie said, tugging on the gold cross she wears on a chain around her neck. "I still feel really bad about that, because if I hadn't convinced him, maybe he wouldn't have suffered for so long."

With her father ailing and her mother still needing care, Cassie took over the day-to-day chores of running the household.

Cassie, then only 15, took over the grocery shopping. Her parents soon put Cassie's name on their checking account so she could pay the bills. She shuttled her parents to and from the hospital and fed her dad by pouring cans of Ensure down his feeding tube.

"Cassie is like a mother to her mother," said Ledman, Cassie's former teacher. "She has pretty much been her transportation and, a lot of times, her voice."

To bolster the family's income, Cassie took an after-school job at Winn-Dixie. She worked 24 hours a week.

"I had no choice," Cassie says flatly. "Nobody else was going to do it. I cried every day."

By summer, her father's cancer had spread to his lungs, and doctors acknowledged there was little any of them could do. Cassie had planned to take honors courses her junior year but knew she couldn't handle the work in addition to caring for her father and mother and running the house. She opted for general classes instead, a decision that still stings.

"It's not fair, I've always said that," she said. "But how is being angry going to help? You just have to deal with it and move on."

Her father died on Sept. 13, 1998. Cassie collapsed upon hearing the news.

"I was gone," she said. "Hysterical."

In the subsequent months, Cassie, an honor roll student, gradually stopped going to school. When she did go, she slept. The former captain of the school flag corps was demoted to equipment manager.

When a good friend's father died that winter, Cassie drove to Michigan to comfort her. It was there, among grief-stricken friends, that Cassie begged them to kill her. The next day, she realized she didn't want to die. What she really wanted was to quit school.

"Why not?" she remembers thinking. Her grades were abysmal, her attendance erratic. The cliquish nature of high school seemed immature and pointless. Against the advice of her teachers, Cassie dropped out of Gulf High. She told them all she would return, but, she says, nobody believed her.

"If I had stayed in school, I probably would have committed suicide," Cassie said. "I really needed a break."

Months later, she enrolled in night school, quit, enrolled again and stayed. By the end of the summer term she had made up the classes she missed or flunked the previous year. In the fall, she returned to Gulf and, with a counselor's help, enrolled in a culinary program at Marchman Technical Education Center. Cassie always had enjoyed working in the kitchen with her mother, who used to make wedding cakes. Cassie plans on becoming a chef after high school.

She still cares for her mother, and many of her teachers remain astounded that Cassie will graduate tonight near the top of her class.

"This is so (magnificent) because she did this all by herself," said teacher Cathern Wildey. "She was languishing. She had no support system."

Cassie has been accepted to Johnson and Wales University, a Miami college specializing in tourism and culinary arts. She plans on being the first in her family to graduate from college, but first there are lingering household responsibilities to figure out. Upon Cassie's graduation, the family will lose their father's Social Security benefits, about $700 a month.

"That's the car and the house payment," said Cassie, ever the budget watcher.

Cassie is still awaiting her financial aid package, which may largely determine her college track. If her scholarship applications don't pan out, there are always student loans, she said.

"I just want to earn enough money to take care of Mom," she said. "I'm a 40-year-old trapped in an 18-year-old's body."