The Columbian (Vancouver, WA.)
January 16, 1996, Tuesday
A DESCENT TO SUICIDE
BYLINE: By BRETT OPPEGAARD ; The Columbian
SECTION: A section; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 1885 words
CAMAS Ray Wright slid the small picture from his wallet. He looked it over once, squeezed his eyelids shut, then stretched out his right arm.
"There he is. That's my boy, Clayton," he said, cupping the snapshot as if it were a handful of sand about to slip through his fingers. "He's thicker now. Looks older. But if he walked in here today, you'd know him. He's good looking, clean cut."
During these past few weeks, while most people were building hope for a new year, Clayton Wright watched his remaining dreams crumble in an alcohol-induced haze.
The 25-year-old killed himself Dec. 28.
His was the 40th and final suicide of 1995, the highest number recorded in Clark County. The previous high was 27 in 1994 and 1992. Self-inflicted deaths outnumbered homicides more than four to one last year, Don Phillips, a deputy coroner, said. Each year in the nation about 25,000 people kill themselves.
The Wright family agreed to talk to The Columbian with the hope Clayton's story would help others, that the end of his troubled life would deliver a message.
In the two weeks after Clayton's death, four other Clark County residents killed themselves.
"People don't discuss suicide and drug abuse because they expect them to go away," Ray Wright said. "We shouldn't hide the fact that this is going on in our world. We need to figure out a way to stop it."
The boy in this well-worn, wallet-size picture frame is smiling. He's about 14, with blond hair parted down the middle. An average boy whose mother begged him to wear a nice shirt for his class picture. A boy on the edge about to move out of his parents' home, drop out of school and become a hopeless alcoholic and drug addict.
Clayton's mother, Lollie Schulze, now remarried, said her son had a happy childhood, playing with toy trucks and cars and riding his bicycle around his Salmon Creek neighborhood. He won an award in a grade-school spelling bee.
"He was a proud boy," Ray said. "He loved to achieve. He was always trying to be the best at something break-dancing, bowling, skate-boarding."
But Ray and Lollie began having marital problems in the late 1970s, and Clayton suffered with them.
Ray, who now owns Riverside Bowl in Camas, sold real estate during the day and worked nights and weekends at a bowling alley. Lollie worked as a saleswoman during the day. They rarely saw each other and drifted apart. Eventually, they divorced.
During that time, Clayton went from being an average student to a failing one. He stopped turning in assignments. He complained that Ray didn't have time for him. He complained that Lollie didn't understand him. He complained his teachers picked on him.
Clayton began experimenting with drugs. He told people he started smoking pot when he was 5 years old. He said he was drinking beer by age 8.
Shortly after his parents separated, Clayton trespassed on a construction site and broke out the windows of one of the company's trucks. His mother later caught him smoking cigarettes.
After the divorce in 1984, the 14-year-old moved around Salmon Creek and Battle Ground with Lollie. He posed for his final class picture and gave a small copy to his father, who rarely called and visited even less frequently. Lollie soon lost her job selling books and fell into a deep depression. She spent a short stint in a local mental hospital.
"I couldn't stop crying," Lollie said. "We couldn't seem to get stabilized."
She started dating, and by the end of summer 1984 she married Jeff Schulze, a retired James River Corp. electrician. Clayton was jealous and resented the marriage, Lollie said.
He also was having problems with his classmates.
"Kids would tease him and know he would lose his cool," Lollie said. "Clay would get red and hold everything inside, just like his father." Eventually, he would lose control and erupt in a temper tantrum.
That fall, Clayton enrolled at Cascade Junior High School. Doctors diagnosed him with a peptic ulcer about that time.
Party every night
By 16, Clayton had met his future wife, Shannon, and became too much for his mother and stepfather to handle. He moved in with a neighbor and dropped out of Evergreen High School a year later.
He and Shannon spent most of their time together and began abusing drugs, especially methamphetamine and beer.
"Drugs and alcohol completely destroyed him," Shannon said. "The party thing became every night. We loved each other, I guess, but it was a sick kind of love."
During one six-month stretch in the late 1980s, the couple stayed awake on methamphetamine for weeks at a time. The $ 400 public- assistance check Shannon received each month was spent in two days.
The couple bounced from house to house. Clayton dealt drugs and worked several hard- labor jobs, including framing houses, removing asbestos and breaking rocks in a rock quarry. Shannon said he would drink a beer in the morning before work, a beer at lunch and the rest of the case when he came home for the night. If it wasn't alcohol, it was methamphetamine.
Meth
Methamphetamine is a lumpy powder colored white to brown. It is snorted, injected and smoked, and it's the most popular illegal drug in Clark County, said Camas Police Sgt. Paul Pearce.
"Initially, it makes people euphoric and gives them lots of energy," Pearce said. "But long- term, it causes psychotic behavior and extreme paranoia. The users hallucinate and do erratic things."
At the end of this six-month stretch, Clayton's nose "exploded" with blood from snorting so much methamphetamine, Shannon said. He spent the night over a toilet with a rag up his nose.
The next night, Shannon tried to kill herself. She locked herself in a bathroom and tried to slit her wrists. Clayton broke down the door, and they wrestled with the knife. It cut her hands. They vowed to quit alcohol and illegal drugs, but a few days later they started drinking again.
"Clay had a lot of problems," Shannon said. "We fought all the time, and he would break down and cry about his family, his parents separating."
In 1990, the couple had a daughter named Kayla. Clayton and Shannon were married a year later.
"We thought it would help our relationship," Shannon said, "but nothing changed. The drinking got worse and worse, and so did our fights." Clayton threatened suicide many times. The marriage officially lasted seven months.
After they separated, Clayton moved around Clark County, living with other drug users. He was arrested for several misdemeanor assaults and spent eight months in the Clark County Jail for being a habitual offender.
When he was released in February 1995, Clayton and Shannon reunited. After a few days of bliss, the alcohol returned and so did the fights. During one argument police were called, and Clayton was arrested for domestic violence. Shannon obtained a restraining order.
Last June, a judge signed the divorce order, and Clayton moved back in with his mother, unemployed, broke and without a driver's license.
Clayton complained that his former drug buddies had done "funny stuff" to his clothes, making them reflect at night so police could see him. He said his eyeballs and skin glowed. He constantly said "people" were after him.
Late one night, his sister Sherie, who was visiting her mother's Vancouver home, found Clayton outside smashing flower pots. He told her he was getting rid of all the little people in caps and dark glasses who were popping up out of the flowers.
"He thought someone had sabotaged his life and took away all his real friends," Lollie said. "I think he was just very, very lonely in the end."
Recently, he looked in a mirror and told his mother he didn't see himself anymore. It would prove prophetic.
On Dec. 26, Jeff and Lollie left to visit relatives in Oregon. When they returned, they found Clayton's body slumped on the basement floor next to the gun cabinet.
He had found some hidden ammunition, loaded one of Jeff's shotguns, put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The gun was still connected to a wire cable that secured it to the cabinet.
Clayton didn't leave a note, just 12 empty beer cans.