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Gamble

The true face of gambling
One Kansas family says it all
Last year was winding down on a chilly day, Dec. 29, in rural Kansas. David* sat by his father’s grave, warmed by a leather coat that his dad had le him. He wrote a note to his beloved wife. It was Sunday, and she was with her family celebrating a late Christmas – they had been with David’s family celebrating, only four days earlier. His note reasoned that if his family knew the pain, desperation and shame he woke up with every morning, they would not want him to have to go on. David was a licensed counselor with a Master’s Degree who manned gambling and suicide hotlines. He was an experienced social worker who routinely talked addicts through their toughest moments. Only a day before, he and his wife, who had doggedly supported him through his secret gambling addiction, had gone to Harrah’s (operator for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Indian Nation casino). ere he underwent the voluntary humiliation of fingerprinting and paperwork that would ban him from the casino for life. is Sunday morning he awoke feeling terrible. He persuaded his wife to visit her family without him. ough he had an immediate family of professionals who loved him dearly, two nurses, a physician and an attorney, he was trying to make it on his own. He wanted to fight the monster in secret, but he couldn’t. Sometime during that day, he went to the Golden Eagle Casino, a bit beyond Harrah’s. He lost again. He traveled to St. John, the small Kansas farm town where he had grown up and where the father he revered was buried. He took his shotgun, a memento from brighter days with his dad, and his only firearm. He put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. “I would rather take a beating than walk into a casino,” says his sister, Kathy Bassett at her home in Topeka Kansas. “I hate casinos! ey killed my brother.” And Kathy has more reasons than David’s death for hating them. Her mother, now 73, had her condominium paid for and enough...