A devoted husband, and a wife in chains

The rugged land near Bagley, Minn., is still dotted with the woods, lakes and swamps from which Jennings Sunderland's uncle carved a dairy farm 100 years ago -- treacherous territory for an Alzheimer's patient.

Sunderland's wife, Clarice, a retired nurse with the disease, began wandering this summer, so Sunderland would settle her in a chair in the barn while he and his son, Kurt, milked the cows, or take her along in their pickup to the fields.

At home in the late afternoon, he had the chain.

Tired from the chores he began before dawn, Sunderland, 78, would settle in his recliner beside his wife of 50 years, watch TV, and sometimes fall asleep. To keep Clarice close, he looped a length of chain around her and her chair, the other end in his hand. "If she started to get up or lift off that chain, well, it rattled and woke me up,'' Sunderland said. "It was a pretty good idea, I thought.''

The county attorney disagreed. What followed was a two-month drama in which Sunderland was jailed and his fragile wife removed from their home.

The battle only ended late last week when the county attorney dropped the charges and avoided a court showdown Monday over whether Sunderland's method for coping with his 76-year-old wife's illness was cruelty or kindness.

Now the family is concentrating on how to get Clarice home again.

It's not an issue isolated to a farm in a small county 250 miles north of the Twin Cities.

"Thousands of Minnesota families face this kind of thing," said Mary Birchard, who heads the Alzheimer's Association of Minnesota and North Dakota. Of the 100,000 residents with dementia, she said, 60 percent will wander off at least once.

Taking no chances

Jennings and Clarice Sunderland settled down to watch TV on Aug. 4 -- she in her chair, he holding the chain.

That was the scene when two Clearwater County sheriff deputies and a social worker -- alerted by Sunderland's worried brother -- knocked on the door. They surveyed the scene and called County Attorney Janine Brand.

Burned by a previous case, in which an abusive son took off before he could be charged, Brand told deputies to take Sunderland to jail and Clarice to the Bagley hospital, where she had worked for 40 years, then to the nursing home.

Sunderland spent the night in jail, charged with false imprisonment.

His wife remains in a nursing home -- although a different one. The first home couldn't control Clarice's wandering -- once she was out in the parking lot trying to get a car to drive home.

After she was hospitalized with a skin infection, the home transferred her to another home, in McIntosh. It is 36 miles from the Sunderland farm, but set up to care for residents with dementia.

Under a court order, Jennings Sunderland could not visit unless someone accompanied him. "Otherwise he could have just picked her up and brought her back to the farm," the county attorney said. "We did not know how much risk she faced if she went back there."

Sunderland was to appear in court Monday to enter a plea on the charge, which could have resulted in a $5,000 fine or three years in jail. But Brand dropped the charge on Thursday.

'She was at risk'

To the Sunderlands' daughters, it's a case of authorities overreacting.

"This could have been stopped in the bud that afternoon," said Theresa McLean, like her mother a nurse. "Why didn't the social worker just accept the list of family members with phone numbers,'' which her brother, Kurt, tried to provide that first afternoon.

"We have a tragedy that is still not done," said daughter Connie Krivich. "It's like ignorant people made stupid decisions. Mom is never going to be the same. Even when we finally won, we really lost."

Said Brand: "In hindsight, we know that Mrs. Sunderland was not abused. But she was at risk. If she laid back in the recliner, that chain would have been up around her neck. That was serious, and we believed that the family was aware and was allowing it to go on."

Human Services Director Malotte Backer would not talk about details of this case, but noted that services in rural counties are more sparse than in other areas. Faced with a complaint of possible abuse, she added, "We have to make sure the person is safe."

If a family asks for help, however, a social worker will assess the situation and if needed try to arrange services. If the social worker and deputies had called her instead of the county attorney -- which they could have done -- would she have suggested that Clarice Sunderland go a nursing home?

"I can't comment on that," Backer said. "I know that moving someone with dementia out of their home is always stressful and disrupting for that person. But I'm not talking about this case."

Family members say sending Clarice to the Bagley home was a critical error that has led to a state Health Department investigation. At the home, the daughters told regulators, their mother suffered undocumented bruises, including one on her breast, and was mistakenly given only half of her Alzheimer's medication -- which, if true, would be violations of federal regulations.

In addition, the two daughters, given temporary guardianship with a county social worker over their mother five days after the chain incident, were excluded from nursing home conferences on her care and not consulted about where she was moved.

"None of this had to happen," McLean said. "My mom has suffered, my dad has suffered -- and if they'd just had the decency to ask, they would have known that my sister or I would have taken Mom in that day while things got sorted out.''

Putting it back together

Since charges were dismissed last week, the family has begun putting pieces together to bring Clarice home.

On Monday, the two daughters will be in Bagley with their father arranging for a home health worker to visit daily, giving their father a break.

And they are likely to take up the offer of a Park Rapids, Minn., vendor to set up a modern replacement for the chain -- a wireless security system.

With luck, Clarice will be home before Oct. 31. That's when the children are planning a public celebration, an open house for their parents.

"Dad has been so sad and Mom has grown more confused," Krivich said. "We need something to help us all see the good in things again."

Said Jennings Sunderland: "It's been kind of hard because we just can't leave Clarice alone anymore. But I want her home again. That is my life now. I take care of the cows, I take care of the farm and I take care of Clarice."

Warren Wolfe • 612-673-7253