Stay tuned for In Our Range on the way next, brought to you by Westgate Nursing Rehabilitation and Assisted Living Center.
Good morning and welcome to In Our Range.
I'm your host, Mike LeBeau.
Joining me this morning are Pat Galinot and Julie Clemaris with the Range Suicide Prevention Council.
The Range Suicide Prevention Council are hosting their annual Break the Silence event called Walk Through the Pain on Saturday, September 19th.
The event takes place at the Lindquist Center of Gogebic Community College.
This event is an opportunity to remember lost loved ones and reach the goal of tearing down the shroud of shame, silence, and stigma surrounding suicide and its primary cause, untreated or under-treated mental illness.
The Council is collaborating with Gogebic Community Mental Health for another event called Walk a Mile in My Shoes, an event to address mental health awareness and understanding on September 23rd at the Wakefield VFW.
The Range Suicide Prevention Council has been doing this important work for about 30 years.
They send speakers to area schools, including Gogevig Community College, where they share the triggers of suicide, symptoms of depression, and how to and how not to intervene with a loved one in crisis.
The council also promotes awareness by making quilts featuring photographs of local victims of suicide in order to honor their lives and memories.
Pat Gallinot is a native Detroiter who graduated from Michigan State in 1967.
Pat taught and coached football at
at Bessmer for 24 years.
He also taught and coached football at Ironwood for five years.
He retired in 2000 and he's been working in suicide prevention ever since.
Julie Clemaris is from Wakefield and works as an advocate for the Victim Services Unit of the Gogebic County Sheriff's Office.
She's a graduate of Wakefield High School and Gogebic Community College.
She is president of the Range Suicide Prevention Council and she's been with the council for about 10 years.
Julie also serves on the board of directors for our local domestic violence program, DOV.
Before I begin I'm just going to list a few statistics.
Suicide was the cause of death for 48,824 Americans in 2024.
That same year it's estimated that about 14.2 million adults seriously thought about suicide.
4.6 million planned an attempt and 2.2 million attempted.
Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States.
If you haven't noticed yet out there listeners, we're going to be talking about some very delicate matters.
So please keep that in mind as we move forward, but very grateful for Pat and Julie coming in here this morning.
We're going to have a good talk here and promote this wonderful event and sort of stop the stigma and move the conversation forward.
So with that, I will say good morning, Pat and Julie, and welcome to In Our Range.
Good morning, Mike.
Thank you, Mike.
Good morning.
Yeah.
First, I want to thank both of you for the incredible work that you do here on The Range with the Range Suicide Prevention Council.
And I'd like to ask each of you, and we can start with Julie, how you came to be involved in this work?
I came to be involved in this work because there's just something inside of me.
I am one that will admit I had a traumatic childhood.
And I think through the years growing up and being
a survivor of trauma.
Sometimes I use that survivor, I will say a warrior because I know there is a need out there for people like Pat and I to be there for someone as they are going through a traumatic event or crisis themselves.
And you touched on the statistics
I think that in itself says a lot.
I've had a family member that had a few suicide attempts themselves.
That put it all together is what made me think I can do this.
I survived this.
It's possible that we can make them statistics better than what they are.
Pat, you retired in 2000 and came into this work.
What drew you to it?
Back in 2000, when I retired from there, Anne Tyson had a son at Michigan State University, Ted, and he died of suicide.
And she is basically the driving force
that started our organization that kept it going.
I mean, she asked me to get involved in there because I had lost a sister to suicide who was more like a mother to me than a sister.
She was eight years older to me and that and she was only 29 years old.
After that, I also fell into a very deep depression where I was suicidal.
But I got help.
They put me on a drug called lithium, a mood stabilizer, and that's more than 50 years ago.
And I'm living, breathing, proof that intervention works, that suicide can be prevented.
I want to thank you both for sharing your stories.
And I'm reminded that often when people are drawn to type of work like this, it generally is personal.
And I think that what you both have shared here today is the idea that when your life is personally touched by a tragedy this specific and difficult, that it puts another risk factor
in there for the people who are close.
While the mission of range suicide prevention is suicide prevention you're also support survivors because when you have an example of a loved one who's done this thing it brings it so close that all of a sudden something that didn't seem like an option before it seems more real and like it could be an option and so that support of survivors is so incredibly important.
I'm sitting here shaking my head because I know exactly what you're feeling and where you're coming from.
Because over the years, you know, Pat mentioned lithium 50 years ago.
We have come a long way.
Science has come a long way.
Pharmaceutical companies have come a long way.
You know, we've learned more about how the brain works, but we have a long way to go yet.
The system needs to catch up.
Yes.
And there is help available, but because of the breakdown in our mental health system right now, and also where we are geographically located, we lack resources that are out there and available to survivors and families of people that have completed.
Where do we go from here?
We touched on something earlier when we were talking off air about how just simple human connection is often the best intervention, especially when the system is not doing much to intervene.
Yes.
So how can people out there listening become involved?
What can just regular folks do to make sure that we're
gathering more people and more resources to better understand how to intervene.
You hand out these beautiful pamphlets here, how to stop suicides.
There's two different versions of them.
You give discussions in the area schools and talk to kids about what to recognize when things might be getting tough and when to ask for help.
Let me let
me
touch on that topic
a
minute because I was at an area high school.
And we have our swag that we give out, you know, we have pamphlets, we have flyers, we have any type of information.
But I'll tell you what, people avoid my table like the flag.
And when I say people, I mean teenagers.
And there is that stigma that surrounds suicide awareness prevention.
Teenagers don't want their friends.
to see them reaching out.
In their minds, they're thinking, I don't want anybody to know that I'm contemplating taking my life.
You know, that would be embarrassing.
I don't want them to talk about me.
I had nice stuff to give away for free, but because it had to do with mental health, they didn't want anybody to know what they were feeling inside.
And I'm going to say this.
It's okay not to be okay.
Finally, I got up there and I just handed things out to them as they were in line.
And you know what?
It took one kid, one kid to step forward and he did.
And then friends of his were stepping forward.
All of a sudden, I had classmates, even teachers.
We're stepping forward, putting their hands out for the information I had because one student chose to do it.
Yeah, so if I hear what you're saying, really the first thing that we can do is just make sure that we get comfortable talking about it because often when no one's talking about it, we all feel like no one wants to talk about it.
And then one person does and then all of a sudden people just start connecting and coming together and all of a sudden
were building resilience in a group of people by being vulnerable with each other and admitting that it's okay to not be okay.
Right?
Yes, exactly.
Pat, I'm sure you've got some things to say.
I don't know if you'd like to add on to what we're saying.
Well, anyhow, I think I mentioned earlier that I got involved in this thing when I was after my sister's death, which was way back in 1967.
And that was also my first year out of college.
And I was out in New Mexico when that happened out there, and I got that worst call I ever got in my life.
And from that point, for about the next three years, I was in the throes of a very deep depression.
When I came to Besbyr, I came to Besbyr not to live, but to die.
I didn't want to do it.
In my hometown, I didn't want to do it in front of my parents.
They'd been through enough grief.
I never thought for a minute how much harm I would be inflicting on my family, how much harm I'd be inflicting on my friends and neighbors.
I just thought I wanted to end this type of psychic pain that you can't really describe or feel.
You just feel totally worthless.
Life seems hopeless.
And the only way out of it is go to sleep and not wake up.
Those were the thoughts that was running through my head basically when I came to Besbara.
And I got to thank people now because what Besbara did was give me a cause to live.
That was more than 50 years ago.
And as I said, I'm right now living, breathing proof that intervention does work and that suicide is not fate.
Yeah, so the immediate intervention was the prescribing of lithium, a mood stabilizer for you.
But then what ultimately helped you not only survive, but find that meaning and that joy in your life again, was this community where you found a place where you could teach, where you could coach football, which is clearly a passion.
Having those passions and having that community seemed like those were probably the biggest tools for
it.
As I said, that first year was a very traumatic year, but I made it through it.
community came to my side to help me get through it.
And as I said, I don't have a single regret from that point on.
Well, and you have this storied career and you've got generations of folks that call you coach.
That's got to feel pretty good.
Yes.
The Break the Silence event is happening on September 19th at the Gogevick Community College at the Lindquist Center.
And registration for the event is at 9 a.m.
The program is at 10 with the walk at 10.30.
There'll be refreshments served upstairs for walkers and non-walkers alike.
And also, it'll just be an event for people who are survivors or who have lost a loved one.
It'll be a place for people.
If you want to show
their support
of a
friend or a neighbor of it.
We usually get anywhere between 75 and 100, 150 people there.
And it's been, we've been doing this for the last four or five years now.
It has been a very good turnout.
So if we're inviting anybody listening to this, please come there and show your support for us people who are trying very hard to eliminate suicide.
Well and I think like when you shared your story sometimes you want to invite people out to show support but sometimes you also want to invite people out who might need support and then maybe when they get there they might find that they have something to offer someone else.
And that's their support.
When we find that one thing that even if it just gets us over the hump, over this cycle of feeling down and blue, we find someone that can, you know, just provide a spark that we can offer to someone else that reminds us of our own gifts.
And sometimes that's all you need is just a little tiny nudge.
Yeah, a little.
And that gets you on the road to recovery.
Yeah.
I just want to read a quote.
It's the most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering.
That is very important because it shows as much as your suffering and as much pain as your feeling.
Somewhere deep inside of you, maybe way down deep inside of you, you can find that strength to overcome.
You got to be stronger than you're suffering.
I was just going to mention something to you here.
One of the things we bring in speakers every year when we can and have them speak at all areas, high schools or at the college.
One of the speakers we brought in was Kevin Hines, but he is the only survivor who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge who walking on two legs.
The other survivors are all in wheelchairs.
and very few and he fell about 275 feet hit the water going at 75 miles an hour broke just about every bone in his body but somehow or other managed to live through it just the instant he let go all of a sudden he said I don't want to die and I think that goes with most people who attempt suicide they do not want to die and we know that because most people who attempt don't die
Only about eight out of every hundred people who attempt suicide actually die.
And most of them, we can guess, didn't want to die.
So if we can get an intervene in that period, there's a very good chance we can save a life.
It is most of the time a split second decision.
It is a tunnel vision.
That is the only thought process at that time is
taking that step over that thin line of taking their life or taking the gift of life.
Yeah.
So we aim our sights at trying to find that thing within a person that helps them to feel stronger than their suffering.
And we can do that through events like break the silence, through hearing the experiences of a person who's been through it, been on the other side of it, breaking that stigma.
and having people just come together in a way where we admit that we're human, that we don't always feel strong and that that it's okay.
And then we get through it through community, mental health help and medications, having that sense of support and finding that thing that gets us through.
Well, is there anything else you'd like to add this morning before we get out of here
today?
Just other than the message that we've been trying to get out, suicide is not fate.
Nobody you know, nobody you love, nobody you care about is destined to die by it.
It can be prevented.
And as I said, we give out these cards all the day.
They give you the risk factors, the triggers, the symptoms of depression, and how to intervene.
And we've given out thousands of these cards over the years and we'll still be giving out more as each year as we go around.
But that's the message we want to get out here, that we can save lives.
Absolutely.
Pat and Julie, thank you so much for coming in this morning.
Thank you for having
us.
I really appreciate it and wishing you the best on your event on the 19th and on the 23rd.
Thank you for all the wonderful work that you do and hope you have a good weekend.
You too.
Good.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Do you
want
me to
leave these cards with you?
Yes, please.
Yeah, okay.
My guests this morning were Pat Gallinaw and Julie Climares with the Range Suicide Prevention Council.
The event Walk Through the Pain will be held at the Lindquist Center on the campus of Golgebic Community College on September 19th with registration beginning at 9 a.m.
This annual event is a great way to show and receive support while growing a community doing the great work to prevent suicides and support survivors.
The Council is holding another event on September 23rd with Community Mental Health in Wakefield.
The Walk a Mile in My Shoes event begins at the Wakefield VFW and is held in conjunction with other events happening throughout the country.
If you are experiencing depression, anxiety, or struggling with suicidal thoughts, there is help and there is hope.
If you are in crisis, you can call the suicide and crisis hotline at 988.
As has been said before,
Suicide is most often a permanent solution to temporary problems.
There is hope.
Thank you for joining us this morning on In Our Range.
Wishing you a lovely weekend and we'll be back next week.
Stay tuned for In Our Range on the way next, brought to you by Westgate Nursing Rehabilitation and Assisted Living Center.
Good morning and welcome to In Our Range.
I'm your host, Mike LeBeau.
Joining me this morning are Pat Galinot and Julie Clemaris with the Range Suicide Prevention Council.
The Range Suicide Prevention Council are hosting their annual Break the Silence event called Walk Through the Pain on Saturday, September 19th.
The event takes place at the Lindquist Center of Gogebic Community College.
This event is an opportunity to remember lost loved ones and reach the goal of tearing down the shroud of shame, silence, and stigma surrounding suicide and its primary cause, untreated or under-treated mental illness.
The Council is collaborating with Gogebic Community Mental Health for another event called Walk a Mile in My Shoes, an event to address mental health awareness and understanding on September 23rd at the Wakefield VFW.
The Range Suicide Prevention Council has been doing this important work for about 30 years.
They send speakers to area schools, including Gogevig Community College, where they share the triggers of suicide, symptoms of depression, and how to and how not to intervene with a loved one in crisis.
The council also promotes awareness by making quilts featuring photographs of local victims of suicide in order to honor their lives and memories.
Pat Gallinot is a native Detroiter who graduated from Michigan State in 1967.
Pat taught and coached football at
at Bessmer for 24 years.
He also taught and coached football at Ironwood for five years.
He retired in 2000 and he's been working in suicide prevention ever since.
Julie Clemaris is from Wakefield and works as an advocate for the Victim Services Unit of the Gogebic County Sheriff's Office.
She's a graduate of Wakefield High School and Gogebic Community College.
She is president of the Range Suicide Prevention Council and she's been with the council for about 10 years.
Julie also serves on the board of directors for our local domestic violence program, DOV.
Before I begin I'm just going to list a few statistics.
Suicide was the cause of death for 48,824 Americans in 2024.
That same year it's estimated that about 14.2 million adults seriously thought about suicide.
4.6 million planned an attempt and 2.2 million attempted.
Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States.
If you haven't noticed yet out there listeners, we're going to be talking about some very delicate matters.
So please keep that in mind as we move forward, but very grateful for Pat and Julie coming in here this morning.
We're going to have a good talk here and promote this wonderful event and sort of stop the stigma and move the conversation forward.
So with that, I will say good morning, Pat and Julie, and welcome to In Our Range.
Good morning, Mike.
Thank you, Mike.
Good morning.
Yeah.
First, I want to thank both of you for the incredible work that you do here on The Range with the Range Suicide Prevention Council.
And I'd like to ask each of you, and we can start with Julie, how you came to be involved in this work?
I came to be involved in this work because there's just something inside of me.
I am one that will admit I had a traumatic childhood.
And I think through the years growing up and being
a survivor of trauma.
Sometimes I use that survivor, I will say a warrior because I know there is a need out there for people like Pat and I to be there for someone as they are going through a traumatic event or crisis themselves.
And you touched on the statistics
I think that in itself says a lot.
I've had a family member that had a few suicide attempts themselves.
That put it all together is what made me think I can do this.
I survived this.
It's possible that we can make them statistics better than what they are.
Pat, you retired in 2000 and came into this work.
What drew you to it?
Back in 2000, when I retired from there, Anne Tyson had a son at Michigan State University, Ted, and he died of suicide.
And she is basically the driving force
that started our organization that kept it going.
I mean, she asked me to get involved in there because I had lost a sister to suicide who was more like a mother to me than a sister.
She was eight years older to me and that and she was only 29 years old.
After that, I also fell into a very deep depression where I was suicidal.
But I got help.
They put me on a drug called lithium, a mood stabilizer, and that's more than 50 years ago.
And I'm living, breathing, proof that intervention works, that suicide can be prevented.
I want to thank you both for sharing your stories.
And I'm reminded that often when people are drawn to type of work like this, it generally is personal.
And I think that what you both have shared here today is the idea that when your life is personally touched by a tragedy this specific and difficult, that it puts another risk factor
in there for the people who are close.
While the mission of range suicide prevention is suicide prevention you're also support survivors because when you have an example of a loved one who's done this thing it brings it so close that all of a sudden something that didn't seem like an option before it seems more real and like it could be an option and so that support of survivors is so incredibly important.
I'm sitting here shaking my head because I know exactly what you're feeling and where you're coming from.
Because over the years, you know, Pat mentioned lithium 50 years ago.
We have come a long way.
Science has come a long way.
Pharmaceutical companies have come a long way.
You know, we've learned more about how the brain works, but we have a long way to go yet.
The system needs to catch up.
Yes.
And there is help available, but because of the breakdown in our mental health system right now, and also where we are geographically located, we lack resources that are out there and available to survivors and families of people that have completed.
Where do we go from here?
We touched on something earlier when we were talking off air about how just simple human connection is often the best intervention, especially when the system is not doing much to intervene.
Yes.
So how can people out there listening become involved?
What can just regular folks do to make sure that we're
gathering more people and more resources to better understand how to intervene.
You hand out these beautiful pamphlets here, how to stop suicides.
There's two different versions of them.
You give discussions in the area schools and talk to kids about what to recognize when things might be getting tough and when to ask for help.
Let me let
me
touch on that topic
a
minute because I was at an area high school.
And we have our swag that we give out, you know, we have pamphlets, we have flyers, we have any type of information.
But I'll tell you what, people avoid my table like the flag.
And when I say people, I mean teenagers.
And there is that stigma that surrounds suicide awareness prevention.
Teenagers don't want their friends.
to see them reaching out.
In their minds, they're thinking, I don't want anybody to know that I'm contemplating taking my life.
You know, that would be embarrassing.
I don't want them to talk about me.
I had nice stuff to give away for free, but because it had to do with mental health, they didn't want anybody to know what they were feeling inside.
And I'm going to say this.
It's okay not to be okay.
Finally, I got up there and I just handed things out to them as they were in line.
And you know what?
It took one kid, one kid to step forward and he did.
And then friends of his were stepping forward.
All of a sudden, I had classmates, even teachers.
We're stepping forward, putting their hands out for the information I had because one student chose to do it.
Yeah, so if I hear what you're saying, really the first thing that we can do is just make sure that we get comfortable talking about it because often when no one's talking about it, we all feel like no one wants to talk about it.
And then one person does and then all of a sudden people just start connecting and coming together and all of a sudden
were building resilience in a group of people by being vulnerable with each other and admitting that it's okay to not be okay.
Right?
Yes, exactly.
Pat, I'm sure you've got some things to say.
I don't know if you'd like to add on to what we're saying.
Well, anyhow, I think I mentioned earlier that I got involved in this thing when I was after my sister's death, which was way back in 1967.
And that was also my first year out of college.
And I was out in New Mexico when that happened out there, and I got that worst call I ever got in my life.
And from that point, for about the next three years, I was in the throes of a very deep depression.
When I came to Besbyr, I came to Besbyr not to live, but to die.
I didn't want to do it.
In my hometown, I didn't want to do it in front of my parents.
They'd been through enough grief.
I never thought for a minute how much harm I would be inflicting on my family, how much harm I'd be inflicting on my friends and neighbors.
I just thought I wanted to end this type of psychic pain that you can't really describe or feel.
You just feel totally worthless.
Life seems hopeless.
And the only way out of it is go to sleep and not wake up.
Those were the thoughts that was running through my head basically when I came to Besbara.
And I got to thank people now because what Besbara did was give me a cause to live.
That was more than 50 years ago.
And as I said, I'm right now living, breathing proof that intervention does work and that suicide is not fate.
Yeah, so the immediate intervention was the prescribing of lithium, a mood stabilizer for you.
But then what ultimately helped you not only survive, but find that meaning and that joy in your life again, was this community where you found a place where you could teach, where you could coach football, which is clearly a passion.
Having those passions and having that community seemed like those were probably the biggest tools for
it.
As I said, that first year was a very traumatic year, but I made it through it.
community came to my side to help me get through it.
And as I said, I don't have a single regret from that point on.
Well, and you have this storied career and you've got generations of folks that call you coach.
That's got to feel pretty good.
Yes.
The Break the Silence event is happening on September 19th at the Gogevick Community College at the Lindquist Center.
And registration for the event is at 9 a.m.
The program is at 10 with the walk at 10.30.
There'll be refreshments served upstairs for walkers and non-walkers alike.
And also, it'll just be an event for people who are survivors or who have lost a loved one.
It'll be a place for people.
If you want to show
their support
of a
friend or a neighbor of it.
We usually get anywhere between 75 and 100, 150 people there.
And it's been, we've been doing this for the last four or five years now.
It has been a very good turnout.
So if we're inviting anybody listening to this, please come there and show your support for us people who are trying very hard to eliminate suicide.
Well and I think like when you shared your story sometimes you want to invite people out to show support but sometimes you also want to invite people out who might need support and then maybe when they get there they might find that they have something to offer someone else.
And that's their support.
When we find that one thing that even if it just gets us over the hump, over this cycle of feeling down and blue, we find someone that can, you know, just provide a spark that we can offer to someone else that reminds us of our own gifts.
And sometimes that's all you need is just a little tiny nudge.
Yeah, a little.
And that gets you on the road to recovery.
Yeah.
I just want to read a quote.
It's the most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering.
That is very important because it shows as much as your suffering and as much pain as your feeling.
Somewhere deep inside of you, maybe way down deep inside of you, you can find that strength to overcome.
You got to be stronger than you're suffering.
I was just going to mention something to you here.
One of the things we bring in speakers every year when we can and have them speak at all areas, high schools or at the college.
One of the speakers we brought in was Kevin Hines, but he is the only survivor who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge who walking on two legs.
The other survivors are all in wheelchairs.
and very few and he fell about 275 feet hit the water going at 75 miles an hour broke just about every bone in his body but somehow or other managed to live through it just the instant he let go all of a sudden he said I don't want to die and I think that goes with most people who attempt suicide they do not want to die and we know that because most people who attempt don't die
Only about eight out of every hundred people who attempt suicide actually die.
And most of them, we can guess, didn't want to die.
So if we can get an intervene in that period, there's a very good chance we can save a life.
It is most of the time a split second decision.
It is a tunnel vision.
That is the only thought process at that time is
taking that step over that thin line of taking their life or taking the gift of life.
Yeah.
So we aim our sights at trying to find that thing within a person that helps them to feel stronger than their suffering.
And we can do that through events like break the silence, through hearing the experiences of a person who's been through it, been on the other side of it, breaking that stigma.
and having people just come together in a way where we admit that we're human, that we don't always feel strong and that that it's okay.
And then we get through it through community, mental health help and medications, having that sense of support and finding that thing that gets us through.
Well, is there anything else you'd like to add this morning before we get out of here
today?
Just other than the message that we've been trying to get out, suicide is not fate.
Nobody you know, nobody you love, nobody you care about is destined to die by it.
It can be prevented.
And as I said, we give out these cards all the day.
They give you the risk factors, the triggers, the symptoms of depression, and how to intervene.
And we've given out thousands of these cards over the years and we'll still be giving out more as each year as we go around.
But that's the message we want to get out here, that we can save lives.
Absolutely.
Pat and Julie, thank you so much for coming in this morning.
Thank you for having
us.
I really appreciate it and wishing you the best on your event on the 19th and on the 23rd.
Thank you for all the wonderful work that you do and hope you have a good weekend.
You too.
Good.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Do you
want
me to
leave these cards with you?
Yes, please.
Yeah, okay.
My guests this morning were Pat Gallinaw and Julie Climares with the Range Suicide Prevention Council.
The event Walk Through the Pain will be held at the Lindquist Center on the campus of Golgebic Community College on September 19th with registration beginning at 9 a.m.
This annual event is a great way to show and receive support while growing a community doing the great work to prevent suicides and support survivors.
The Council is holding another event on September 23rd with Community Mental Health in Wakefield.
The Walk a Mile in My Shoes event begins at the Wakefield VFW and is held in conjunction with other events happening throughout the country.
If you are experiencing depression, anxiety, or struggling with suicidal thoughts, there is help and there is hope.
If you are in crisis, you can call the suicide and crisis hotline at 988.
As has been said before,
Suicide is most often a permanent solution to temporary problems.
There is hope.
Thank you for joining us this morning on In Our Range.
Wishing you a lovely weekend and we'll be back next week.