Steve Cohen, a former executive with Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co., loved his

industry and loved to smoke. And he did for decades. Three months after his
death in January 1997 from cancer, the Liggett Group publicly admitted that
smoking cigarettes is addictive and can cause lung cancer and heart
disease. And, in June, large tobacco companies reached a tentative
settlement with the attorneys general of nearly 40 states to set up a $4
billion-a-year fund to cover health-related costs and legal compensation.
This story is by Cohen's sister, Cheryl, as published on Aug. 3, 1997 in
The San Diego Union-Tribune. (special thanks to the editor, Suzanne Choney.)

A Sister's Story

by Cheryl Cohen

If I'd known at the age of 8 how my brother's life would unfold, I would
have ratted on him big-time: "Mommm, Steve's starting to kill himself!"
    But who knew? I didn't even believe my friend, Janet, when she told me that
she saw our brothers smoking cigarettes together. Steve wouldn't be that
stupid; maybe his friends. Steve was always the sensible one.
    But, in my circle, so was I, and my 23-year stint with cigarettes started
even earlier, when I was 13.
    I suppose we all have a huge hand in our own and each other's deaths and we
all help each other die a little every day. It's in the water, the
electrical lines and in our charbroiling. Or more, in the way we fool
ourselves into thinking that we're exempt somehow and that it'll be OK
anyway.
    I was always a little in awe of my older brother. He excelled in
everything, from school to business. The two of us left in his wake, my
younger brother Bruce and I, were never pressured to be like Steve, yet
felt the silent shove of our own expectations to try.
    In some ways, we were similar; all raised in Flint, Mich., with a strong
set of principles, both religious and moral. Once, though, Steve stole some
beer when he was a teen-ager, working at his first job as a meat-cutter.
    He really got nailed for that one. From the safety of my bedroom, I
remember hearing my mom give him hell that night, one of the few times I
heard him cry. My stomach sank.
    Divorce ended up separating us. Steve was 16 and went to live with dad
across town. Bruce and I stayed with mom and soon, our stepdad.
    I was 12 and Bruce was only 3 years old. It was a tough time for all three
of us, but we were already solidly linked for life. The usual sibling
squabbles stopped and Steve grew more into his role as big brother. In that
way, the separation pulled us closer than ever before.
    Steve married in his early 20s. He met his first wife, Sue, while attending
Mott Junior College in Flint. Sue and I became like sisters and the two of
them offered me their converted attic when I needed a place to stay in the
early '70s.
    Steve had already started his career at L&M, and the trunk of his company
car was always filled with a jumble of cigarette cartons. His job in those
days was to convince grocers to put the L&M brands on higher or more
visible shelves in the stores, above the competition's.
    "If you're going to stay in this house, you're going to smoke an L&M
cigarette!" he snarled at me after catching me light up a Salem. I wasn't
hard to please -- they were giving me a free place to live.
    I chose L&M's new Eve Menthols. A delicate imprinted ring of flowers
encircled the filters. Sneaky little funeral wreaths with a tobacco scent,
they were a clever fashion statement.
    It was 1972 and my lifestyle was all woolly hair and chaos. His was
button-down-smug and upwardly mobile. He tolerated me well, in spite of
the differences in the way we lived; he always encouraged me to do my best,
    When he asked me to smoke his brand, it wasn't that he was consciously
recommending cancer to me. And I wasn't pushing it on him, either, even
when I teased him about looking like he didn't really inhale when he
smoked. "Fire that puppy up, and take a real drag off of it, Bro!"
    There wasn't any stopping Steve from making it big. When I graduated from
high school, he gifted me with my first semester's books for college.
    He made success look easy. From the dreary Detroit sales territory, he was
promoted to an even grimmer Toledo. I went down there a couple of times in
my clunker car.
    Toledo didn't look like it was doing Steve and his wife any favors on the
homefront; they were starting to look kind of bleak, too -- pasty, like the
exhaust-stained slush outside; the two of them weren't smiling much
anymore.
    The gloomy Midwest winters were quietly sucking the life out of all of us.
I started planning everything from bus to hitchhiking trips to the West
Coast, where I was sure I could thrive.
    Another promotion in 1974, this one to San Diego, picked up their spirits,
and mine, too.
    I called Steve to tell him I was on my way to make my life in Carmel. He
encouraged me to start first with a place where one could actually find
work and to start out by living with him and Sue again for a while.
    The tobacco company was serving them well, and they lived in a nice
townhouse in the San Carlos area before moving to a spacious home in
Encinitas.
    Steve was embarking on the good life, barbecuing and racquetballing with
other up-and-coming neighbors and sailing on weekends in his new catamaran
on Mission Bay.
    His buddy, Dick, and I showed him how to tip the boat, life-jackets tied to
the mast where they did a lot of good. We flailed around in the water
around the boat like idiots, trying to upright it without success.
    Soon, there was my bro, on the front of someone's speedboat, looking like
the hood ornament on a Jaguar, pointing and shouting, "There she is!
There's my sister!"
    Anytime Steve rescued me from one scrape or another, I was always as much
astonished as I was relieved. Steve wasn't real big on showing his
emotions, and it always surprised me when he did.

Promotions and stress
    Less than two years later, he was transferred with a promotion to North
Carolina, mother to all tobacco companies, and later to New Jersey. I
remained in San Diego, convinced that the casual lifestyle was tailor-made
for me.
    He called me one night to tell me he and Sue had agreed to a friendly
divorce. I never thought that would happen -- it was just another subtle
way I'd fooled myself into thinking he couldn't fall off that pedestal.
    I noticed that Steve was getting so uptight it took him almost three days
of each vacation before he'd lighten up and get out of that corporate cloud
that seemed to hang on his shoulders. Little by little, his neckties seemed
to choke out his openness and humor.
    He'd started as a sales representative in 1970. By 1980, he'd been promoted
six times. He rose through their ranks as director of sales planning and
development and, by 1984, Steve was director of marketing for L&M's Private
Label and Generics.
    It must have been quite a challenge, figuring out how to get people to buy
L&M's version of Brand X. He was on the Board of Young Executives Division
of the National Association of Tobacco Distributors, the Research Committee
for the Private Label Manufacturers Association.
    His was a loud voice for the Tobacco Action Network (TAN), a major lobbying
force dedicated to limiting governmental influence into smokers' lives.
    He was quoted in one of their newsletters as saying, "Through TAN I can
repay my obligation to my industry, my company, my career and citizens'
rights." The smoking citizens, he meant.
    Definitely a company man, if anyone dared criticize the industry he'd be
quick to point out that it was what supported his family. He would never
publicly or even privately speak out against tobacco.
    After a period of dating, and another flurry of promotions from Jersey to
New York to Durham, Steve married Ann, a fun-loving Virginian with a strong
accent.
    There was always some other young executive at the ready to succeed if
Steve faltered. He made sure he didn't. The generics skyrocketed in
popularity and by the time I visited him in 1985, he had become a vice
president.

Sister of the king
    At the tobacco plant, I was made to feel like the sister of the king. My
brother made me beam with pride. His people took me everywhere, and I liked
the fact that you could smoke anywhere in the place. There weren't any
policies against hiring non-smokers, which in contrast to San Diego's
fast-growing tobacco aversion, was really pretty funny.
    I wanted to talk to the R&D guy and they took me right to him, their
in-house version of Dr. Science.
    I had to ask. It was my duty to find out the real truth for the rest of
civilization. "You can tell me -- it's just us in here. Does cigarette
smoking cause cancer?" I asked.
    The guy looked me right in the eye and told me what I needed to hear:
"Absolutely not," he said, justifying my next smoke. I was relieved, but I
didn't believe him one whit.
    Even as a smoker with dulled senses, I knew a liar when I heard one. Didn't
matter. I could have cared less about the health implications. Steve sent
me happily home with a couple of cartons, fresh from the factory.
    After Steve proved the success of generics, they made him vice president
and director of diversification. Smart move: At least they had the vision
to see what was coming. He was responsible for acquiring Fazer Chocolates
(requiring a stint in Sweden) and Hoops Trading Cards for the Liggett
Group.
    I liked the chocolate samples much more than the sports cards. After all,
what was a little cholesterol in the interest of testing a product for my
brother?
 
Time to stop
    In September 1988, I was at a Padres game with a friend who lighted up his
cigarette just as I was trying to dig mine out of my purse. A woman behind
us started ragging on him for smoking near her. For cryin' out loud, we
were outside! I realized that I was doomed.
    A little movie played in my head, of me being in the same argument and
being carried out of the stadium by the cops, kicking and screaming, as
they hauled me to jail for fighting about smoking.
    It was time to stop on my own terms, before San Diego's new anti-smoking
nazis tried to make me quit.
    The first day off nicotine, I scrubbed walls, floors and the dog, while my
lungs screamed for attention.
    It was evening before I realized, exhausted and angry, that I was afraid to
stop activity. What did non-smokers do with their hands all day?
    I bought three packs and smoked two cigarettes, hating myself and ashamed
that I caved in so easily. The next day, I put the three packs in a plastic
bag, vowing that when I was 80 and wanted a smoke I wouldn't have to go to
the store to buy them. They'd be as close as my freezer -- stale, but
satisfying.
    "As God is my witness, I'll never be smokeless again!" Scarlett cried to no
one in particular, as she shoved the packs in back of a whole fryer.
    They remain there now, as some kind of monument, almost nine years later. I
quit smoking purely out of righteous indignation. It had nothing to do with
being more physically sound, although it probably should have.
 
King no more
    Sometime in 1992, L&M sold to an owner who cleaned house of the old staff.
They wanted their own people in; and the king, Steve, at age 43, was out.
    It could have been scarier; Steve had just purchased a custom home in a
prestigious country club in Durham, N.C. But tobacco's former golden boy
had a parachute to match, and though he often said he missed the industry,
he didn't look back.
    Around that time, Steve quit smoking. Maybe the change in career allowed
him to do so more easily; I don't know.
    He was glad I'd been able to quit, but never directly connected smoking to
health issues. As for himself, he would only say things like, "I was
getting too winded out there on the tennis court."
    He was recruited as president of Medstaff, a kind of temp agency for
doctors. He refused to see any irony in moving from tobacco to the health
industry.
    The private sector started calling to Steve and he had a yearning to buy an
existing business. He invited me to come to North Carolina to run a bagel
shop, a thermometer manufacturing company, a retail framing and poster art
store -- anything -- to set up something and have it running for when he
was ready to retire.
    The offers were generous and always included a piece of the action and a
place to live -- but none were in California, where I'd built my life and
my own consulting business and could avoid wearing high heels for the rest
of my life.
    He was difficult to refuse, but I did. If he asked me now, I'd do it for
free and live in a ditch if I had to. I wring myself inside out sometimes,
thinking about how self-absorbed it was to think only of myself, when he
was plainly asking me for my help -- for once.
    In 1994, he finally decided that he'd take the leap and leave the corporate
world totally for a new, completely un-Steve-like business: a party
store/costume shop.
    I was elated for him and he called me occasionally for computer help or to
tell me about a new ad campaign he'd started. I think sometimes he just
called to make me feel that he needed my opinion, and I let him.
    He took an ailing store and within a year-and-a-half was in the black and
opened his second one. Steve was becoming cheerful and fun again. The
corporate noose had disappeared along with his neckties, and he traded in
his wool and silk-blend suits for khaki shorts and golf shirts.
 
Unaskable questions

    In August 1995, I was lying in bed, mouth filled with pieces of bloody
gauze from dental surgery, when the call came in. He asked me how I was and
when I started to tell him about my wisdom teeth, he interrupted.
    "You'll be OK. At least you haven't been told you have inoperable cancer."
Cancercancercancer My ears wouldn't let the word in.
    He'd just played in a golf tournament days before and his stomach was
bothering him a little, so he'd gone to a doctor.
    Steve went on to tell me about the "spots" in his lungs and colon and the
"mass" hovering somewhere above his stomach, making surgery impossible
because of its proximity to his major organs. The cancer was very far
advanced.
    Down, down, down. A thousand fathoms. Instantly sobering, the pain shifted
from my mouth to my heart. There was slobber all over the receiver.
    "Bro, are you scared?" I whispered. "Is there anything I can do? Do you
want me to come out there?" The answers were predictable.
    Steve didn't get help from Bruce and me -- he was the big brother. He would
never get used to being on the receiving end. "Maybe later, to help with
the stores, I don't know. I haven't decided on a course of treatment yet."
    I wanted to say: "Run! Run for your life, bro! Take your money and do
things you always wanted to do, before it's too late!"
    But I couldn't speak the words. I knew nothing about how he was feeling and
I'm not sure he even knew at that stage.
    "I'm going to beat this thing," he said. Steve was my big brother. He had
never in his life shown me any vulnerability, but I could hear it in his
voice. He wasn't even convincing himself.
    Where did all that success and capability get him now? He could have been
the best executive in the world and it wouldn't help him a bit with the
cancer.
    He never heard my inner rants and I was too chicken to voice them. I
wondered, did he feel betrayed by L&M when they stood with the other
companies in congressional hearings and denied that nicotine was addictive
or that it caused cancer?
    Did he ever have moments when he felt even a twinge of culpability for
helping to build the tobacco-related health legacy left to all of us? Had
any of his former associates ever called to talk candidly with him about
his cancer or were they avoiding the subject?
    I wanted him to ask him these things, but it was too much to press him
about then. He was in several levels of pain, and to risk making him
defensive about the industry that had given him a hefty livelihood all
these years would be nothing but unnecessary roughness at this point.
 
The `Steve Report'
    A couple of weeks passed, the chemotherapy began and the verbiage went from
"spots" to "tumors."
    There was little or no news coming to California. My parents and
stepparents all lived in Florida now. We exchanged what we began to refer
to as the "Steve Report" as best we could, but there were impediments along
the way.
    Facts got skewed and left out altogether. Sometimes my parents got the
sugar-coated version. Steve's wife, Ann, was busy handling the day-to-day
reality of cancer and didn't feel like sharing gory details and having to
relive everything on the phone, after filling in her family.
    What little information Dad and my step-mom, Pam, got, they shared
accurately.
    Mom never seemed to absorb much of it, the shock probably being too great.
Most of her news was in the form of questions.
    Bruce and I were, by default, assigned the role of mushrooms in the dark on
the West Coast. Bruce preferred it that way. It was an
"If-I-don't-look-at-it, maybe-it'll-go-away" kind of thing, because it was
too painful to deal with the truth.
    But I felt like I wanted to know everything. Calling frequently with
specific questions, I was an irritation to Ann. I tried to explain that I
didn't want the saccharine version of events, that I wasn't a distant
cousin. I needed to know what was really going on. It didn't go over well.
I became the family pariah.
 
A brave front
   With each phone call, my heart rushed all the way from California to North
Carolina, only to be dashed by the indifferent gauntlet of people that were
with Steve on that side of the country.
    The doctors decided to remove two tumors from his colon. If I called
Steve's room at the hospital and someone else answered, I'd hear, "He had a
difficult night," but that's all.
    Probing further, I'd find out that he'd gone into kidney failure, his lung
collapsed or he had a bad reaction to anesthesia. Bad nights, indeed.
    In between surgery and chemo stays in the hospital, Steve called when he
could. His voice was becoming labored. He said he was fine, but he sounded
like hell.
    There were tubes; raging fevers; infectious, cavernous holes from colon
surgery that the chemo wouldn't allow to heal. Nobody ever talked about
trying to remove the tumors from his lungs -- it was impossible.
    Over the next 18 months, this was his life: He'd spend a week or so on
chemo in the hospital and then three weeks at home, recovering from it.
    There were always new "recipes" of chemotherapy formulas to try.
He called when he lost all his hair, puzzled that it still remained on his
legs. Before, he'd been a veritable gorilla, with 5 o'clock shadow, hairy
back and all. He was a swarthy kind of handsome, with sharp blue eyes,
framed with thick black lashes.
    He took to wearing hats. I resisted sending him one with a blond ponytail
attached.
    He was weakening, although he always put up a brave front for all of us. He
did it for himself, too.
    The tumor over his stomach was becoming so painful, they decided to remove
it because it was in an impossible place, just at his waistband area. He
began to have trouble sitting up.
    When they finally did remove it last year, doctors said it was the size of
a football, weighing more than 10 pounds.
 
 
`Not afraid to die'
    In April 1996, our stepdad, Bill, died after having been in remission from
bladder and prostate cancer for 10 years. Steve had recommended that Bill
try chemo to see if it would help.
    It seemed to knock the life out of Bill almost immediately and I wonder if
Steve blamed himself for that.
    It drove him nuts not to be there to help us help Mom get her affairs in
order. I called him daily from her Florida home to let him know what I was
doing. He advised me from his hospital bed.
    Finally, he broke down with grief for Bill, who'd been as good a friend to
us as a stepfather. It was the first time since we were kids I'd heard
Steve cry.
    I could tell it wasn't helping his own battle to see Bill lose his. Bruce
didn't even want the "Steve Report" after Bill died.
    Dad confided to me that during one of the last hospital visits he had with
Steve, he asked Dad to "call Dr. Jack," meaning Kevorkian.
    Dad, of course, couldn't do it. I wondered, as much as I'd want to have the
kind of strength that would take, if I'd have been able to, either.
    I broke down all the time. It was the suffering caused by that insidious
disease that got me. It went on, and on and Steve kept trying to buy hope
by the month, with each new chemo treatment.
    Everything inside me screamed for him to stop the treatments, but I'd never
have voiced it. Nobody really knows what they'd do, until they're going
through something themselves.
    In a rare conversation, when I asked Steve how he was doing -- really -- he
said, "I'm not afraid to die, Sis. I'm just terrified of being an invalid."
    Around the time last year when Steve was struggling, the government was
talking about going after tobacco executives, past and present.
    I asked Steve if he feared repercussions. He simply said that he doubted
they'd do anything to a man in his condition.
 
Disastrous visits
    I'd attempted to see Steve during a couple of disastrous visits. The first
time was about a month after he found out about the cancer. I was with our
family. The latest chemo cocktail was making him more short-tempered than
he already was; we wound up not staying long.
    The second visit was last August, when the cancer had spread to his brain
and Ann summoned us all out, one by one. I never even got to his house.
    When I got to Durham and called for directions, he got angry that I needed
help finding the way.
    The drugs were his personality now and I was trying not to aggravate him --
without result. I went home, sure I'd never see him alive again.
    When Ann called last December, she told us to prepare for the end. Steve's
spirits sagged; his head bulged with several brain tumors. He couldn't
breathe well.
    He started referring to himself as "Mr. Potato Head." I'll never be able to
look at one of those toys the same way again.
    He called and left a message on my answering machine, saying that he was
sorry he "chased me away" and that he loved me. These were the last words
from my brother to me and, mistakenly, I erased the tape.
    When the time for his death was imminent, Ann again summoned the masses,
this time in concert. My heart felt like someone was standing on my chest
-- I couldn't breathe.
    I went back to North Carolina, finding Steve resembling a martianlike
fragile form, lying on a hospital bed in his den, moaning in pain.
    His azure eyes were the only familiar thing; all of him was expressed
through them now. There was no plug to pull. He was on his own and he was
scared.
    This was exactly the position he'd told me he feared. He kneaded his hands,
tugged at his tubes and pleaded with a look to get him out of this
situation.
    That night, New Year's Eve, he got out of bed in the middle of the night
and tried to walk. He fell, but Bruce carried all 80 pounds or so of him
back to bed. Nobody could believe the strength he'd gathered in order to do
that.
    The next morning, he knew I was there, but he could only squeeze my hand.
There we were, all assembled around his bed. If he could have done anything
about it, he'd have bellowed for us to get out of there.
    One part of Steve was always wanting family around, while the other part
was pushing it away.
    Everyone stood around, telling him it was OK to let go. But, what if he's
not ready to leave?
    "Let him go when he's good and ready!" I yelled at my
mom for talking like he was already dead. Meanwhile, he continued to watch
us watching him; I never felt so useless in my life.
    On New Year's Day, at about 12:30 p.m., Steve died. He was 48.
 
Trapped
    For a while, I wondered whom to blame for Steve's death, but there's really
no one. Friends and family members smoked cigarettes out on Steve's balcony
while we all took turns at his bed saying goodbye during those last hours.
    The buddy he'd first smoked with when he was a teen, Janet's brother Dave,
was one of them. Some odd kind of circle's been completed, I thought.
    Afterward, the North Carolina church was full of friends and lots of
tobacco people, past and present.
    Dad got up and said a few words and then Bruce did. I wanted to jab Steve
in the ribs and laugh, "Did you hear what Mom said to so-and-so?" "What's
with that tie that guy's wearing, anyway?" but he was in that little box.
    Trapped inside a box, a picture frame -- and my memories.
    People were lining sidewalks outside the church, smoking cigarettes. A few
years earlier, Steve might have been pleased to see such wide consumption
of his products. Maybe he'd have given out premium gifts to them. A
Chesterfield hat would look good on that guy over there. Give that lady a
pearlescent Eve lighter.
    It's OK, somehow. It's what people do in North Carolina and all over the
world. We drink, we smoke, we pollute our environment. Even if we don't
sell the vices, we all find ways to self-destruct, even if we don't mean to
harm ourselves or others.
    It's really nobody's fault but our own.