I was in the fifth grade at 66th Street School in Niagara Falls when my father appeared at my classroom door holding his briefcase.  Dad was a 4th grade teacher there.  He spoke to Mr. Cruikshank, the best teacher ever, at the door of my classroom.    Then Mr. C. approached me and said, “Michael, you are going with your dad.”  It was the middle of the day, and I remember being confused.  We walked down the hallway and the stairs to the main office, where my Dad slid his nameplate from “in” to “out.” 

While we were walking, I asked him what was going on. All he said was, “We have to go home.”  I was about ten years old and hadn’t had lunch yet. Dad told me we’d hit McDonald’s on the way. The man was just trying to get me off the topic. Well, I must have asked enough times that he finally gave me an answer. A good friend of my mother and father was dead because she intentionally went over Niagara Falls.

That was the first time I’d ever heard of such a thing.  But as the years piled on, so too did the bodies of people that found their way from the precipice, down the lower river, and into Lake Ontario.  Sure, there were failed daredevils in barrels, one on a jet ski, and even a guy on a surfboard.  Then there was my barber and a few classmates, too.  From my house, which was between 17th and 18th streets, I could hear the water.  You probably didn’t know that 750,000 gallons pass over the falls every second.   Over a billion gallons fall 177 feet daily, crashing on the rocks below.  The sound is a constant that can be heard from a mile away. 

It looks like they started tracking the number of people who took the lethal plunge around 1850, and since then, it has been stated that more than 5,000 ended their lives in the waterfall that gave my hometown its namesake.  That puts it at about 30 people per year.  When I was a tour guide down there, I was told to tell those who asked that it was about 50 people per year.  And that Niagara Falls was the suicide capital of the world for a time.  The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco eventually beat us out. 

Sadly, that number went up by three last week when Chianti Means, a 33-year-old mother of two, put her 9-year-old and five-month-old in the water before jumping in herself.  People who go over the Falls usually don’t get press coverage.  There’ll just be a small article in the Niagara Gazette letting readers know that a body was recovered from the river or the lake.  The obituaries just say, “died suddenly,” and you must figure it out yourself.  This one got national coverage – with the New York Post hot on the topic.  The shock of the two murders before the suicide got a lot of attention.

Media attention is now moving from what took place to why it took place, and this is the crucial part.  It came out today in the Post that Chianti was struggling with and suffering from postpartum depression.  Now, what is sad gets really, really sad.  And that is because this horror show was preventable. The Post published some of her Facebook posts, but there wasn’t much there, just that she was pissed off about a breakup.  Then, a relative came out and said that it was postpartum.  There tends to be a greater focus on Postpartum Depression these days – but most people don’t know that there are like ten different types of depression.

Irrespective of life’s pressures, Niagara Falls is a stressed city.  I left in 2001 and watched the downward spiral from afar.  Then, just yesterday, I made the acquaintance of a man twenty years my younger who grew up about a half mile from where I lived.  We got to talking about what went down in the falls last week.  It was great to talk to someone who knew the neighborhoods, the conditions, and what it was like to come to Massachusetts and interact with people who grew up differently than us.  We concluded that Niagara Falls either makes kids elite or devastates them – with very little in between. 

He said he’s often accused of lacking empathy and credits our hometown with that. I noted that it was not a malfunction but more of a survival skill. Because somewhere in that city, there is a classroom of kids who lost a classmate last week, a city grappling with the murder of a little baby, and a family that lost…well, a family.  Stuff like this shouldn’t happen, but it does, and it did.  And now, the questions will be asked – who knew?  What help was Chianti getting, or did the folks at 9-year-old Roman Rossman’s school know what was happening in his home?

Look, this post isn’t about all of the types of depression and other illnesses that plague the mental and behavioral health of parents.  It indeed reminds us of how destructive depression can be.  And for educators, the message is so, so serious.  Things like what happened to Roman, Chiante, and Mecca (the baby) remind me of the importance of our work.  I read a study about abuse and neglect reports that are filed and noted that the big numbers of reports filed nationwide don’t kick in until kids are 5 years old. 

This is because that is when school starts, and there are adults around who can pay attention to scary things. When we wonder about a child's safety, we do something. Help is out there, and we must be sure that we are doing all we can to get services to our kids and families when they need them. I remember getting pulled out of Mr. Cruickshank’s class like it was yesterday—and it's been 41 years.  The thought of it haunts me.  We have to know that things happen that cannot be understood, nor can they be undone.  But they serve as cold, hard reminders of the importance of taking action and never, never, ever waiting. 

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org.