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Editor's note: Information in these articles comes from interviews with Wise's friends, students and former colleagues, and from documents provided to the Texan.
Gary Wise, once a well-liked engineering professor, is in jail. Police say he threatened former bosses and fired gunshots at their houses. While he waits for a day in court, The Daily Texan examines his story in two parts.
A black-and-white photo shows former UT professor Gary Wise poking a pair of bunny ears behind his wife, Stella's, head. She raises her right hand, pretending to slap him. Both are smiling widely; Wise's eyes are squeezed completely shut, he's smiling so hard.
A middle-aged man with thinning hair and a nondescript wardrobe, Wise didn't stand out from the crowd much until you got him talking about statistics or probability theory - on those subjects, he was an "intellectual cowboy," said John Morrison, one of Wise's Ph.D. students in the mid-1980s. "Gary had a very keen sense of mathematics as an art."
Like many academics, Wise was a bit of a maverick. He co-wrote a book called "Counterexamples in Probability and Real Analysis," which compiles 300 displays of how leading theories in probability are simply wrong. (Students called him "Dr. Counterexample.") But though he got into his share of squabbles with colleagues about their ideas and approaches to engineering, disagreements between faculty members are relatively common.
"He was tough on graduate students and committees," said electrical and computer engineering professor Baxter Womak, "but that's completely within his purview of academic freedom."
Wise drove to work each day in his yellow 240-D Mercedes. He liked Broadway shows, gourmet fare and fine wines. His favorite restaurant was the Green Pastures in South Austin; he'd go there for dinner with his graduate students, or with Stella and his daughter, Tanna.
Each year, Wise and his students attended a mathematics convention in Baltimore. Wise took the occasion as an opportunity to sneak off to New York City, where he'd squeeze in as many Broadway plays and meals at French restaurants as possible. He always returned humming show tunes, earning him the nickname "Broadway Gary."
"Everyone thinks a mathematician is sort of a colorless person who lives in a colorless world," Morrison said. "But Gary wasn't the stereotypical engineer. He was a hell of a lot of fun to be around."
At the end of the day, Wise ushered students into his small office, where, according to Morrison, they'd "absolutely rip apart math problems" or gossip about the engineering faculty. He usually lost track of time, so that Stella had to call and remind him about dinner.
The two were a "fabulous couple," Morrison said. At the time he knew them, they'd been married for nearly 10 years.
Wise had a few quirky physical ailments, said his friend and colleague, Terry Wagner. He put drops in his eyes at night and spread a "special cream" over his forehead - Wagner didn't know why. But eyedrops and forehead cream didn't prepare anyone for the summer day in 1992 when a blood vessel burst in Wise's brain.
'Jekyll and Hyde'
It might not have hurt at all, or he may have experienced a sudden, severe headache. Different parts of his body may have become paralyzed or gone numb; he could have quickly lost sight in one of his eyes. When someone spoke to him that day, he might not have understood the words. Wise was, to say the least, confused.
When close friend and co-author Eric Hall visited Wise in the hospital the next day, he didn't think Wise would live.
"He looked to be in horrible shape," Hall said.
Wise had suffered an aneurysm, or hemorrhagic stroke, at 47. Those who knew him say he hasn't been the same since.
Depending on where a stroke occurs in the brain, it can cause any number of effects ranging from paralysis to difficulty speaking to dramatic changes in behavior. Though physical disabilities often improve with the help of rehabilitative therapy, sometimes strokes cause lasting changes in an individual's life and personality. According to the medical textbook "Anatomy and Clinical Evaluation," strokes suffered in the frontal lobes of the brain can lead to "uninhibited, aggressive, and pugilistic" behavior.
"You can see someone that's successful professionally become a completely different person," said Jose Diaz, a neurologist for the Memorial Health Care system in Houston. "It's like Jekyll and Hyde because of the stroke."
The textbook describes attempts to restore patients with frontal lobe damage to their previous jobs as "frequently unsuccessful."
"The University worked very hard to accommodate Wise's rehabilitation," said Ben Streetman, dean of the College of Engineering. "That was eight years before he left."
After taking the fall 1992 semester off for rehabilitative therapy, Wise's doctor told him he would be able to resume his teaching duties. The University allowed Wise several sick-leave days each week and a very light class load. But Wise signed up on every Ph.D. qualifying exam committee and began to disrupt students' oral exams. Faculty members complained to the then-dean of the College of Engineering, Steve Szygenda, that Wise had made offensive comments.
When Streetman became dean of the College of Engineering in August 1996, he was specifically briefed about Wise's behavior.
"Until I became dean I wasn't aware of the things Wise was doing in the classroom," Streetman said. He added that he didn't know whether Wise had been disruptive before his stroke.
A new photo was taken of Wise on May 20. This time, he was in jail, alone. He and Stella separated in 1996. At the suggestion of his doctor, Wise learned tae kwon do to regain control of his weakened body, but then used his new skill to threaten colleagues and the heads of his department. As a professor, Wise stopped training graduate students and eventually went on to teach introductory engineering courses. The heaps of praise offered by his Ph.D. students in the 1980s turned into undergraduates' complaints about poor teaching, classroom violence and sexual harassment. In the new photo, Wise isn't smiling.
Coming to blows
Wise lost some of his physical ability on the left side of his body. Travis Young, head coach of UT Tae Kwon Do Club, said Wise could not lift his left arm higher than his shoulder. He would lift his foot a couple of inches, then lose balance.
Interested in self-defense as well as in improving his condition, Wise joined the club while still teaching at the University. A year-and-a-half and a few broken boards later, Wise carried the rank of blue belt and gained muscle weight and control over his body. He would walk up and down stairs several times a day; being fit made him proud.
"He was a positive contribution to the club with his upbeat attitude and eagerness to learn about tae kwon do," said Young. "He was fully focused on training, and he improved because of that effort."
Konstantinos Kostarelos, a former club member who received his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University, said Wise was always trying to find ways to promote the club.
"He was so proud of everything he learned in class, and when he broke his first board, he told me he took it to his class and said, 'You see this? You can do it, too,'" Kostarelos said.
In group dinners after class, Young sometimes heard Wise mention his work.
"He told me he felt he was fired by the dean of engineering because of professional jealousy," Young said. "He said they used the stroke as an excuse."
Wise may have held that impression, but several incidents led Streetman, the dean, to believe that stroke or no stroke, Wise was scaring people. In 1998, just a year before he agreed to leave the University, Wise and Streetman argued at the college's May graduation ceremony. Streetman told others later that when he asked Wise to return to where the faculty waited for the processional, Wise threw a forearm strike to his head. The arm stopped just inches from his face.
Student and faculty complaints about Wise filed into Streetman's office with a common theme: what Streetman called "getting into things a faculty member shouldn't." Students said Wise would leave class during the period and spend time talking about topics that were not part of the course subject matter.
After an unofficial reprimand from Neal Armstrong, then the assistant engineering dean, Wise said his inappropriate behavior came from the side effects of his stroke. Armstrong replied that his behavior, not his health, was the problem.
Streetman denied that Wise was let go because of his stroke. Under Board of Regents' Rules, termination of a tenured faculty member is evaluated under the issue of "good cause." That usually means violence or sexual harassment.
"Asking a tenured faculty member to leave does not happen often," said Streetman. "The case has to be an extreme circumstance."
Wise openly threatened faculty members more than once - even Streetman. In 2000, he made a haunting statement on a faculty list serv: "Who knows? Maybe some night Streetman will find himself off campus in front of me. Guess what's going to happen if he does?"
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