Gail Afriat Toby [10/16/2004]

Gail Afriat Toby, who lived for more than 20 years on Brownfield Road in Snowville, would have been 50 years of age in November. Because of an interest in rock climbing, Gail came to the Mount Washington Valley from New Jersey where she was born and raised. Early in her residence in the Mount Washington Valley, Gail established a one-woman company, Climbing Partners, and designed a new type of bivouac sack for mountain climbing. The Climbing Partners bivvy sack was light enough to be carried in a backpack, but strong enough to hold the occupant in a comfortable position, keeping him or her warm and dry while secured to a belay on a narrow ledge of a mountain even in extreme climatic conditions. Gails design had special hardware that raised the fabric away from the users face, providing more space, yet weighing little and easily collapsed for transport. One of her bivvy sacks went on an expedition to the Himalayas. Its user reported back, in an article for an outdoor sports magazine, that the bivvy sack performed extremely well and was sturdily made of the best materials. Dozens of orders for the device resulted.Most young business people would have been delighted by this development, but unfortunately, Gails illness interfered with success. The bipolar disorder that she had been struggling with since adolescence made it difficult for her to manage complex supply and finance problems or to manage employees. She filled only some of the orders, assembling the sacks with her own hands, and wrote letters to the other customers explaining she had gone out of business, returning any deposits they had sent. Gail wrote a novel in which the main character, an alpine guide who had a bipolar disorder as she did, is stranded on a mountain in the French Alps with a woman with a broken leg. The guide recognizes that the only way he can save both of their lives is to stop taking his medication, because only in a manic state could he have the nerve and energy to solo his way down the mountain to summon help before they both froze or starved to death. The novel has not yet been published.Although Gail graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio with a major in psychology, her mental illness prevented her from holding a job for any length of time. She never married and her only companion was a dog, Cody, whom she loved. She practiced Zen Buddhist meditation, which she believed helped control her symptoms.Following several months of psychiatric hospitalization this year at the New Hampshire Hospital in Concord, she was discharged in June 2004, seemingly stabilized on medication. She complained, however, that she felt too depressed to take care of her dog or even go to the supermarket. Apparently she felt that she had lost the long struggle with mental illness and that it was time to give up. In her last telephone message to her father in New Jersey, she said, "I don't know what I am going to do." He did not realize that one of the courses she was contemplating was to kill herself, which she did at her home on Oct. 8. Her father, Jackson Toby, a retired college professor, and her brother, Steven Toby, a naval architect with John J. McMullen Associates in Alexandria, Va., survive her. Her mother died seven years ago. She had told her father that when she died she wanted to be cremated and to have her ashes scattered on a picturesque site near her home, on a vista that she loved. Her father and brother are planning to do this as soon as is practicable.The Conway Humane Society is trying to arrange for a good home for Cody, which is what Gail would have wanted. Those who knew and cared about Gail might wish to make contributions in her name to the Humane Society.