Lebanon
On one of the numerous cards that he had printed, and which he freely handed out to people over the years, he wrote, “I’m a human being trying my best at being humane. Peace.”
The being humane part was something that seemed innate to Caswell, who friends and relatives describe as compassionate and empathetic.
Perhaps only someone who had lived with schizophrenia, addiction and depression could speak with so much candor, and with so little judgment, to others who found themselves in similar circumstances.
On the cover of one of his numerous self-published books, he drew a picture of a building which he labeled “Caswell University,” a reference perhaps not only to what he had learned, but also to what he could impart to others.
“He didn’t put people in boxes. He had a quick joke for people, and he was really very, very supportive. He wasn’t just thinking of himself. I always got the feeling that he was trying to light the way for other people who were challenged by life,” said Ren Bastianelli, a friend and colleague of Caswell’s at Next Step Peer Support Center in Lebanon, where he worked on and off from 2000 to 2012, counseling people on mental illness and substance abuse.
John Stephen Caswell died of pneumonia at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center on April 17. He was 62.
Caswell had suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This was his fourth bout with pneumonia, but his body no longer had the strength to fight back, said his younger sister Beth Caswell, who lives in White River Junction.
Yet her brother’s life had been marked by tenacity.
He rebounded from episodes of depression and schizophrenia, and periods of hospitalization. He stopped drinking and doing drugs in his early 30s, according to an essay he wrote in 2003 for Boston University’s Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal. He quit smoking. His gift was that he was able to convey that spirit of resilience to others.
“I admire him for that,” Beth Caswell said, characterizing her brother’s attitude as one of perseverance. “This isn’t going to bring me down. Yeah, it’s a fight but you can overcome it.”
“He was a survivor, a fighter, a champion for the mentally ill, or anyone who had any kind of issue or problem. I could always count on John. He was an extraordinary person, he really was,” said his close friend Karen Clark, of West Lebanon.
Caswell gave Clark a new perspective on mental illness. Before she met him, she said, she assumed people with mental illness were “crazy.” After a yearslong friendship, she began to think of mental illness as a condition similar to “a broken leg or a heart problem. It opened my eyes to the fact that it’s just an illness. It can strike anyone.”
Caswell sported a long beard and long hair. He favored floppy felt hats that he decorated with pins, and wore vests over loose shirts. A free spirit, his friends and family called him. He reminded Bastianelli of Gandalf, the wizard in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
Caswell liked to roam, to pick up one day and take off, and then come back when moved to do so. He hitchhiked across the country and to Alaska. He had a brief marriage and has two sons, Stephen “Jake” Caswell and James Caswell, who live in Omaha, Neb. He also had, from his marriage, his stepson Eli Labelle. The marriage began and ended in the late 1980s.
He also made regular visits to his elderly aunt Katharine Johnston in Cape Hatteras, N.C., where he cared for her and wrote poetry and carved delicate and beautiful objects from sea shells.
Some of his lifelong wandering was the result of chronic paranoid schizophrenia, which he wasn’t diagnosed with until he was 35, according to his book Learning Curve, which he self-published in 2008. (Symptoms usually appear between the ages of 16 and 30, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.)
When he was on his medication, Caswell worked diligently and was focused. When he was off it, he experienced paranoia, a characteristic symptom of the disorder.
Caswell was born in 1955 in Lebanon, to James and Viola (Vivian) Caswell. He grew up in West Lebanon and attended Lebanon High School, but left in 10th grade. He went on to receive his GED and earned an associate’s degree in human services counseling. He was licensed as a New Hampshire recovery coach and received two awards for his community service.
“He was a great listener,” said Susan Seidler, his friend and boss at Next Step. “He was genuinely interested in the stories of other people and how they got to where they are and what happened to them.”
His friend Sandy Benjamin first met him in the mid-1970s when she worked at a bar in White River Junction. He would come in for a beer, which then cost a whopping 65 cents. When she became a beautician and hair stylist, he would visit to shoot the breeze. They later corresponded by Facebook, which is how Benjamin kept in touch with him in the last years of his life.
“You’re very quick-witted,” Benjamin wrote him.
“I learned by living,” Caswell replied.
Caswell, Bastianelli said, brought a human face to the issues experienced by those with mental disorders.
“It wasn’t about the diagnosis, it’s about the person you are and how you deal with it. It gives credit to people who are out there and doing the best they can,” she said.
To view his life through only the prism of schizophrenia would be misleading, Bastianelli added. “I think it would be doing him a disservice because it would be looking at his life as a problem. He lived life on his own terms.”
Seidler said, “You just knew when you met up with him that it was going to be a great conversation. He was going to share stuff he’d been doing, he’d listen to what was going on with you. It didn’t have to be swapping back and forth.”
Last winter, Caswell constructed a makeshift shelter for himself at the base of Storrs Hill in Lebanon after moving out of the Haven’s Hixon House adult shelter because he said his schizophrenia sometimes made him feel uncomfortable around others, according to a Valley News report. He called it Camp Thriving Spirits. The Lebanon police department asked him to leave the area, and he returned to the Haven.
“I think he sometimes felt safer in the woods than in society,” Beth Caswell said.
He was energetic in promoting the causes in which he believed, such as helping homeless veterans, his sister added.
In a letter to the Valley News in February 2016, he wrote that he had donated a sum of money given to him to Vermont Veteran Services instead.
“He was very much himself. He did not live a traditional life. That’s what makes him all the more interesting. He didn’t conform. He lived life in a way that made sense to him,” Bastianelli said.
Nicola Smith can be reached at nsmith@vnews.com.