1971-11-12-sc-p7-glenn-harmon-editorial
November 12, 1971 Spokane Daily Chronicle Page 7:
Spokane Daily Chronicle, Friday, Nov, 12, 1971. page 3
Grieving Father Says LSD Cause of Shooting
Larry J, Harmon's shooting rampage in and near St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church yesterday claimed two lives—one his own—resulted in injuries to four others and left the church interior a shambles, What impelled it? His grief-stricken father, E. Glenn Harmon, here sets forth some answers.
By E. GLENN HARMON My son, Larry, is dead. Killed by police bullets, the record will say. But he was not killed by bullets, he was killed by LSD.
Worse than that, the same LSD pills which did irreversible damage to his brain more than two years ago, caused him to kill another with himself. These deaths are an unbelievable tragedy. I, and my family, can only feel shock for the relatives of the man he killed with himself.
Police Had No Choice
There is little doubt in my mind that, as far as the police are concerned, they had no choice than to kill Larry. Were I in their shoes, I believe I would have done likewise.
For to him, life on this earth had reached the point where he found nothing left for him to live for. He still loved his mother, his father, his little brother, Douglas. The rest of the world had become a place where he no longer fit, though his family fought as hard as they knew how, and with all the help medical science could offer, to undo the damage to an incredibly intelligent brain which was irreversibly damaged by LSD.
It Happened at MIT
Where did this happen? Even to tell it seems unreal. It happened at MIT—Massachusetts Institute of Technology—the university which his mother and firmly believed was the greatest university in the world for a budding nuclear scientist. For that is what Larry J. Harmon was three years ago when he enrolled at MIT.
When he was graduated from University High School in the spring of 1967, he was rated by his teachers as the greatest mathematical mind they had ever known, In nationwide pre-college test he scored a perfect score of 100 points out of a possible 100 points on the mathematics portion of the test, and in the top one-half of one per cent in the nation in the over-all scholastic aptitude test. His teachers said they knew of no other Spokane high school graduate who had scored a perfect score in mathematics nationally.
He left for MIT, planning to study physics. He had already started college physics at Gonzaga University.
Larry had great ambitions Among other things, he toyed with joining the Students for Democratic Action, not because he approved their plans for socializing this country, but because he opposed them.
"Anything Goes"
He entered a dormitory at MIT, He told me later that just about "anything goes" in the dormitories, or the one he was in, Friends, primarily SDS friends, finally induced him to try smoking "pot," He told me later he found pot "extremely enjoyable."
But his friends did not stop there, They kept telling him of the marvelous mind expanding properties of LSD, "acid," to the initiates. On his 19th birthday, June 27, 1969, he took a half of a pill which his friends told him was LSD. He was still at MIT at that time for the summer session, because he asked his mother and me permission to stay in school for the summer so he could "finish his course faster." He got a job in the school dining room to help pay his way in summer school,
"There Is a Hell“
His first ‘trip’ on LSD produced incredible hallucinations. His friends said he had a "bad trip." He told me he went to hell and back, literally, saying, "Dad, I know you don’t believe me, but there is a hell. I went there, I talked to the devil himself."
A few days later he had convinced himself that everything that happened on his first "trip" was a hoax, a great hallucination. He became convinced that if he just focused his will and his brain power on it, he could take LSD again and his mind would refuse to let anything happen. That would prove to him that it was all unreal, only hallucinations.
So a few days later he took a second LSD pill, this time only a quarter of a pill. He gambled with LSD against his brain. He lost.
The same identical hallucinations came back to him again, this time stronger than before. He met and talked to the devil in hell. He discovered that his friends who gave him the LSD were in fact emissaries of the devil.
Old Testament Impresses
On his second "trip" he picked up the Holy Bible. He has never been especially religious, having attended Sunday School for a time until he didn’t want to go any more. He told me later: “When I picked up the Bible and started to read it, it was like revelation to me. I read the first five books of the Old Testament, and I knew that every word in them was true.”
He died still believing that every word in the first five books of the Old Testament were true. Thanks to LSD, his mind perverted his beliefs into an unbelievable and incredible mold.
While he was reading the Old Testament, under the influence of LSD, he came to the words, "Honor thy father and thy mother." He put down the Bible and phoned his mother and me from Massachusetts. He told us he was "tripping" on LSD and wanted to come home.
From talking to him, we had not the slightest idea of his real condition. We talked to a doctor and officials at MIT, who deprecated the seriousness of what had happened to him and said a number of students were experimenting with LSD. We asked if he could come home alone or if we should come and get him. We were told he should be able to fly home alone.
Son Is Silent, Dazed
I met him at the Spokane airport. I was a few minutes late and his flight had landed. I could not find him. After searching for some time, I started to leave the airport. Then I saw Larry. He was in a daze. For a half hour, he said nothing to me, despite my earnest efforts to get him to talk, to tell me what had happened.
I took him home. He continued to be in an unbelievable trance-like state. We took him to the hospital. Our doctor had him under medication for about a week. It was difficult to watch. His mother stayed at the hospital overnight with since he was afraid of the nurses and others.
The doctor told us we would have to hope and pray that the LSD had done no permanent damage to his brain. We heard, for the first time, the words "irreversible damage to a brain by | LSD." We could not believe it could be true. Weren't youngsters, including those right here in Spokane, experimenting with LSD on an ever-increasing scale?
Almost three and a half years later, we know it is true, Until yesterday, we continued to hope that medical science would come up with something to undo what two LSD pills had done.
LSD Becomes Poison
Amazingly enough, after those two LSD pills, he concluded that LSD was a very bad poison. He developed a dislike, to the point of hatred, for LSD and "pot," which had led him to take LSD.
We took him to one psychiatrist, talked to a number of others. They held out no real hope for a real cure. On one subject, he was completely unchangeable. When he later read the New Testament of the Bible, he became convinced that Jesus Christ was not the real divine being or deity in the universe. Jehovah was God, Christ was an imposter, in his incredibly warped mind.
Later, he concluded, still worse, that instead of an imposter, Jesus Christ was in fact the devil who came to earth to destroy the true religion of the Jewish faith. Though neither my wife nor I have Jewish blood, to our knowledge, he became convinced he was a Jew, and that he had a message for the Jewish world. He wanted to tell every person everywhere that Jesus Christ was not the true God of Creation he found in the first Five Books of the Old Testament.
Hard Work Prescribed
No one would listen, We, his family, moved to our summer home on Coeur d'Alene Lake last year and lived there. The doctors said that perhaps hard work would be the best therapy for him. He worked hard. He cut wood, cleared brush, bought an International Scout carryall with money he had saved from work he had done on a farm during summers before he went to MIT.
At times we thought he was being cured by time. He could talk with anyone and be wholly rational on any subject—except religion. He planned to go back to MIT after the class he started with graduated. He told me honestly that he was afraid he might attack the boys who gave him LSD if he went to MIT while they were still students there. Doctors told us there was no chance of having him committed for his mental aberrations. He could make a fool of anyone, with his great intellect, when he chose to do so. I suffered a heart attack, when I tried to reason with him and became angry to the point of hysteria when his mind parried every reasonable argument I could make.
Suicide Said Objective
After that, both he and I were afraid to talk seriously about religion. He continued to believe Jesus Christ was the devil incarnate who came to earth to destroy the true religion Larry Harmon found in the first five books of the Old Testament.
I know now, with as much certainty as one can have in such a tangled matter, that he went to St. Aloysius Church yesterday to commit suicide. He could not stand it that no one would listen to the distorted "truth" he found in hallucinations from two LSD pills.
So he killed so he would be killed. I know it is true. His mother knows it is true. May God have mercy on his soul.
And may God have mercy on those who caused the deaths he brought to others, But, most of all, may God have mercy on a country in which such things can happen with not enough concern from others than those who are destroyed by that "wonderful mind-expanding drug—LSD."
