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How did you find the Laux family?
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I was working on a project on end-of-life care, and I was interested in exploring the way Dallas institutions in general deal with these issues. The photographer I was working with, Sonya Hebert, had seen something about trisomy—a genetic anomaly that makes most kids who have it unable to survive birth or much past it. We had been working with Kathy Rose, a nurse and pediatric hospice coordinator, who thought she might be able to find a case for us. Kathy went and talked to the Lauxes, and they very quickly agreed to cooperate. At that point we were on the story. |
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How did you decide on a structure for the piece?
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The first thing we did was to follow the family. My colleague Sonya began following them before I did, but as we watched them, it became apparent that a simple chronology would be the best approach. I had come in later, but could go back in time a bit through the use of some recorded events—mainly the recording of the church services.
Also there was a nice clear break from the point at which they find out that the kid has got this condition and they go ahead and decide to carry [to term], to their making plans at the funeral home and the graveyard. That sequence made a good structure for part one, and then we decided to use the five days of Thomas’ life as the second-day story.
One challenge I had was to figure out what would be the best ending. At first, I was resistant to an idea that Tom [Huang], my editor, had. It had been some months after we followed them, and we knew that Thomas’ family was again pregnant. Tom was saying we should use that. I was a little resistant at first, because I felt the story was about this baby and this baby’s life, his journey and how the family responded. I felt if we were going to tack on a happy ending, it would take the focus away from Thomas and his life.
But it was clear that what they had done with Thomas and his life was informing everything they were doing with the new child. I got more comfortable ending it the way we did, so that readers would find that they were pregnant with a child that appeared to be normal.
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A dying baby makes for an incredibly sad story, but one that can be hard to write in any original way. |
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It was in the back of my mind that what was happening was so powerful, I just had to get out of the way—just understate and tone down the piece. And then Tom, being the kind of editor he is—there were still several pieces of the story I was in love with where he said, “We don’t need this.”
We found in our newsroom it was kind of challenging to propose the story the way we wanted to do it. We wanted to be in the room when Thomas was living his life and when he died, to be able to understand what pediatric hospice care can do for these families. The first time I sat down with one senior editor and said I was working on a story about hospice care for a baby, he winced. It wasn’t quite as quick a sell as you might imagine. There was a concern that we didn’t want to exploit the family.
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Did you worry you would be perceived as taking sides on the abortion issue? People in both camps have such strong feelings. |
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Sonya and I talked about that some—not so much that we would be perceived as taking sides, but that the issue was floating around out there. The thing that we wanted to do—and I hope we succeeded in doing—was telling a family’s story, and not addressing the larger issue of choice or being against certain choices.
One of the more powerful points for me was the night that their kid was dying, the Lauxes were on this big sleigh bed with their son. Even as he’s dying and they’re going through their own emotional upheaval, they started talking about another family with similar religious beliefs. This couple had been told by their pastor, even after getting the news, that “if you terminate, you’ll go to hell.” And showing that they weren’t cartoon characters, the Lauxes were saying, “How dare that minister? How dare anybody make any judgment about anyone else who hasn’t been through this?”
The goal was to focus on this family and tell their story—what people made of it, we really weren’t that concerned about it.
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The story and the video are both intimate. How did you and the videographer work together to get the material you needed to do a narrative like this?
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We started out working together at Baylor in April, and we connected with the Lauxes in late April. Sonya spent a little time with them in May and then in June started really focusing on the story, because June was the delivery.
We had the experience of working with each other before in the hospital, so we kind of had a rapport going with one another. Some of that is me staying out of the shot and not stepping when she’s trying to get sound. And then as Sonja started working with the Lauxes first, she would kind of give me a brief. So once we actually sat down to write this, we had the experience of doing the five days of Thomas’ life together.
I knew she would take a different tack. I knew she would use some of my research, but where I was going in one direction, she would likely go another. I think she probably let me know that her focus was going to be tighter, a focus on the family and that five-day period of Thomas’ life.
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It seems like the video took on the very intimate moments of life with Thomas, while you painted the broader picture from Thomas’ conception and continued beyond his death.
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Some of it is understanding that these two different mediums have different powers. Visually, photographers like Sonja can take a tight frame and focus on an emotional moment—really distill the story down to those powerful moments. She’s only been doing this for a short time, but she’s a tremendously talented photographer with a really nice eye. I learned to watch and look for those moments but at the same time to be able to explore the character of the two parents and place them in their home, community and church—show how they were handling it. That’s more the kind of story you can tell through words.
I storyboarded myself. We had talked about a one-day story, but I thought it was going to be two days. My only frustration is that when there’s a video as good as this one that blows people out of the water, I can feel like I’m the also-ran with the story.
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Was there anything you decided not to use for the piece?
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Everything was intimate and often excruciating. But we chose the moments that best showed the journey these people were on, for good or ill. It was more a process of trying to find those instances—for instance, when T.K. steps out of his car and starts stumbling across the kids’ graves.
I had tons of stuff on hospice and pediatric palliative care. We had a lot that that we didn’t use, but without that kind of background, I don’t think I would have been as confident of what we were representing—the larger experience that families go through.
One of the tendencies that sometimes we have as reporters is to say, “Oh, God, you mean I have to have a camera in the room?” Some of it is working with a great photographer, but I’ve also found that it can be a wonderful asset to have two flies on the wall, one of them with a camera. You might feel ridiculous when you say, “I want to do this intimate reporting on your life while you’re dying.” And then you feel worse when you say, “I want to bring my friend the photographer, too.”
While there were moments of friction between us in terms of getting what we needed, it really enhanced the storytelling. And people were remarkably responsive to the idea of it as well—not just the Lauxes, but the adults in the other palliative care project. You wonder, “Why would they want us in their hospital room when they’re having something as painful and intimate as a death?” Well, they really felt it was an important and valuable thing to have both of us there.
Sometimes people think, “How you could even ask or negotiate that kind of access?” But I’m still stunned by how much we got just by asking.
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