Leaving Wayne
A Story about Overcoming Trauma, Poverty, and Addiction while Growing Up in a Time of Radical Change
by
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The “ward”—it was a strange name for a room. To me, it was a long, pale green room of iron-barred cots. There were women dressed in starched white uniforms who seemed less than happy to see me. When they walked they sounded crispy. The room was large and had one way in; I couldn’t find the way out. The hard mattress in my cage was cream colored with blue stripes; others had pissed and shit on it before me. The mattress had a thin sheet that covered it, yet the yellow and brown spots could be seen through the well-worn cotton. The women would turn it over from time to time, but the stains just changed places. The tall bars of the steel bed cast shadows across the dull room—crib bars that kept me contained. The paint was chipped—scars left from past kids. How long would this last? At seven you worry about these things. I saw someone’s name half-scratched above my head, leaving the metal with a partial autograph that was not legible.
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About the Book
When author Danny Clune was seven years old, he experienced a traumatic accident that changed the course of his life—It left a hole in his life that he would spend a lifetime repairing. In Leaving Wayne, Clune tells his coming-of-age story that takes place in rural New York State and northeastern Pennsylvania in the 1950s and ’60s.
This colorful memoir narrates the struggles of surviving shame, poverty, abuse, and succeeding in an era that went from party phone lines to cell phones, from 45s to MP3s, and from sock hops to mosh pits. Leaving Wayne tells of Clune’s childhood in a family with seven children; his struggles with addiction; his recovery; his stints as an English teacher, chef, and restaurateur in Upstate New York; his work abroad with mental health services; and the ways that 9/11 affected his life and his profession.
Throughout this story, Clune shows how the grit of rural life conflicted with the influences of prosperity and modernity that gradually overtook him and molded him into the person he became.
About the Author
DANNY CLUNE is a licensed clinical social worker and addictions specialist; he has traveled and worked in China, Pakistan, Malaysia, Th ailand, Peru, and Brazil training health care professionals in mental health and addictions treatment practices. Daniel Clune is an administrator for a major mental health treatment company and has a private practice in Portland, Oregon