Eleven years ago, Ted Nicolai's dad, Bill--perhaps the nicest, most unassuming man I have ever met--retired after 30 years with the Schlitz brewing company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Bill and his wife, Billie Jo, moved to a modest home on a sleepy East Texas lake to be near their son, Ted, and daughter, Peggy, both of whom were married and raising children and living in the Dallas area. The elder Nicolais were healthy. They had a good pension. They planned to play with grandchildren and gaze at the lake and travel.
Instead, two years later, their 44-year-old daughter was attacked and crippled, their son-in-law moved to California, and their daughter's two children moved out of state. All their retirement dreams vanished. From 1987 to the end of 1993, they spent every single day driving from the lake, where they also were caring for Billie Jo's ninetysomething mother, to the East Texas nursing home where their daughter was being taken care of. They brushed her teeth, combed her hair, showed her pictures of her children, and wheeled her around the halls of a place filled with sick and dying people. Through it all, they fought their son-in-law in civil and criminal court--trying to make him pay, to take responsibility for what had happened to Peggy. They never succeeded.
Then their health began to fail. Bill began a slow descent into Alzheimer's. Billie Jo had severe diabetes and suffered a series of small strokes--all of which she put second to her daughter's needs. Seeing what was happening to his parents, their son, Ted, retired from his job in the electronics business, sold his house in Arlington, and moved to their East Texas lake to take care of his family. Each day, he drove his ailing parents to that nursing home--until they were too sick to go anymore. Then, last month, he was forced to place Bill and Billie Jo, both in their late 70s, in a nursing home located not far from his sister's.
When he thinks of Walker Railey--and he tries really hard not to--he thinks of what has become of his family. "They were to a point in their lives where they wanted to start going places and doing things," he says, recalling when his parents moved to Texas. "And then their whole lives just stopped. They literally wore themselves out--killed themselves--going over there everyday to that nursing home. Mom wouldn't take her insulin when she was supposed to. She wouldn't take it seriously. Now they're in a nursing home. Now it's ruined."
Sometime in the near future--most likely in December, after NBC has had a chance to return to Dallas for a second time to conduct more interviews--Walker Railey, tears welling up in his eyes, will tell the entire nation why it's so darn hard to be Walker Railey.
Out there in the darkness of television viewing land, a few people will know better.
