HOUSTON – The 83-year-old man who recently replaced my Sugar Land home’s ceiling fans this spring was one of David Vetter’s most trusted confidantes.
It’s a realization that I continue to be in awe of as I sit here writing this.
If you don’t know who David Vetter was, let me tell you: He was the boy known to the world via media as the “Bubble Boy,” a name reviled by his family and several of his caretakers.
David Vetter’s story is a Houston one –- and a sad one.
David died at age 12 in 1984. He lived in a sterile chamber from birth due to severe combined immune deficiency, known as SCID. He lived in a world very unlike our own -- at his home in Spring and in a Houston hospital -- but in our own set quite apart.
In my own world -– always on the hunt for a good story to tell about our community -- I suddenly encountered someone who knew this unique boy well and, even more rare -- was among a very few number of people whom David actually trusted.
RELATED: 50 years later: The legacy of David Vetter, the boy who lived in a bubble
David, in his sterile chamber, grew to mistrust the people in white coats who he was surrounded by as they conducted research around him for years. In a book published in 2019 about his case, the author reveals only two people -- his child therapist Mary Ada Murphy and my Sugar Land electrician, Tom Langford, were his only real confidantes.
“I’ve decided there are two kinds of people – ones you can trust and ones you can’t trust, and I only know two people I trust – you and Mr. Langford,” David had said according to “Bursting the Bubble: The Tortured Life and Untimely Death of David Vetter” by Murphy and Raymond J. Lawrence.
Langford now lives in Missouri City with his charming wife – June, a retired Houston hospital nurse, who continues to make Tom bacon for breakfast.
When I visited Langfords’ home in October, just before Halloween, it smelled like a diner and exuded that beauty of a home lived-in a long time, complete with a lifetime of knick-knacks and stunning rug collections.
Tom Langford agreed to an interview with me on one condition: I read the 2019 book “Bursting the Bubble.” He told me he viewed it as a perhaps more truthful account of David’s life than others have conveyed.
I started the book in January 2023 and only finished it in October. I love reading and I love books, but this one was so tough to get through. As a mother of two little boys, the struggle to read on, imagining the heartbreaking decisions made along the way to and for David were, at times, incomprehensible. You’re brought along for a real life story of survival and hope and sadness that peel back a veneer that was applied to David’s story by the media and the hospital in which he stayed. I do recommend the read -- especially to help people appreciate the devotion of pediatric health caregivers.
Tom Langford called me in August to see if I still wanted to interview him -- and if I didn’t, he wanted his book back.
I still wanted to talk to Tom. I still wanted to finish the book. After prioritizing so many things, I set to finishing the tome. And now, almost December, I am finishing this article. Because I need to. Because I have to. Because this story needs a read, too. I hope you’ll continue.
Tom Langford met me in late October at his modest Quail Valley house, just off the golf course. He met me at the door carrying a small plain wooden frame with a hand-drawn picture inside. I asked what the somewhat-faded picture was.
Tom told me it was one of his most prized possessions. It was a framed rainbow that read “TO TOM FRUM DAVID.”
Here’s an edited transcription of my conversation with Tom. I want to share it with you because Tom’s story is one of those that comes along every so once in a while and has the simple person-to-person connection that I have so loved reporting in Houston. Tom is one of the only remaining people alive who were part of David Vetter’s inner circle.
This is my last report at KPRC 2 as Digital Special Projects Manager and I wanted to share something with you that every day on the job at KPRC 2 I loved exploring: humans on their best days and their worst ones – and especially those normal days when you witness the everyday miracles of the mundane. In Tom Langford’s story, you’ll see that a man watched a little boy grow up in a bubble and told him the truth about the world around them both. That’s a remarkable thing.
Here’s my conversation with Tom, with a few questions from my gifted photographer Brett Doster. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.
A Conversation with Tom Langford
COCHRAN: “His life is…”
LANGFORD: “Complicated. (David) was so naïve. That’s what’s fascinating to me. He didn’t know what ice was, didn’t know what it was for. Some questions and things, the cars that would go down Fannin Street and go in the underpass, they never came out because he couldn’t see the other side of it.”
COCHRAN: “That was a big part of the book, how he did not get three-dimensionality. Did you ever talk to him about that?”
LANGFORD: “Yeah. I drew him a little sketch. OK, that’s an underpass, cars go down there, but here’s the road that continues on and they come out and continue on.”
COCHRAN: “What were your first interactions with David like?”
LANGFORD: “The first one he was very small and not much at all because we were testing the unit. Are we filming? We were testing the unit to see that it was electrically safe, there was no leakage of current or anything and he was kind of a small infant and it was a small bubble that he was in, about the size of an automobile and it was much smaller, so not much interaction there, but as I went back and we tried to enhance his life, make things better for him, you get to know him and he got to know me and would talk to me and I would tell him the truth because there was nothing else to do, no reason to not and he just kind of trusted me and so anytime anyone had any questions about anything, he wanted – no matter how much engineering they had – he wanted to run it by me. He trusted me.”
COCHRAN: “What do you think made you trustworthy?”
LANGFORD: “I guess – I was not there with a white coat and was going to take blood, do tests, all the stuff that would hurt him or pain or checking, because I was harmless and I would joke with him and talk with him and back and forth and he would ask me questions like my beeper that had a nine-volt battery in it, he wanted to know how far it would go and I told him 40 to 50 miles and he would want to know how many of those batteries would we have to have to go to the North Pole to Santa Claus. He was very intelligent. He was naïve because he hasn’t been around the things that we all grew up with and was taught from day one. There was no one there to teach him about hot and cold, ice and all the things that we take for granted, but he was very intelligent and he would ask you a lot of deep questions but he was a little mischievous too because he would pull some pranks on you. He’d get after you a little bit.”
COCHRAN: “Can you remember a time when he did that to you?”
LANGFORD: “Well, the one time, I was seeing him in the afternoon and he had a small black and white TV in the room and somebody donated then what was outstanding – a 19-inch color TV – you remember how great those were, so I told him, I said tomorrow you’re going to get a new TV – color TV. He said, ‘Great, I want a red one.’ I thought he was joking with me again so I didn’t reply to that so the next day, we were putting it up and he is pouting and he is not very happy and I asked him what was going on, and he said, ‘You promised me a red one,’ and I said, ‘Just wait a minute.’ We turned it on, he said, ‘Oh, I understand, the colors are inside. Oh, OK.’
“Then I was looking for a letter that he dictated to the nurses thanking me for installing his new color TV, although it’s not red, and inviting me to come up and watch ‘Sesame Street’ with him. He didn’t realize at first that I had other duties – that I couldn’t be there visiting with him all the time, which he would’ve liked – but I has St. Luke’s and Texas Children’s – the whole electrical system, so this was a small part of it, but I visited with him a lot, but a lot of times I said, ‘David, I got other stuff I got to do.’”
COCHRAN: “Can you tell me what this is?”
LANGFORD: “This is a painting. The only painting that he ever drew for anyone. The nurses sent it down to me and the carpentry shop made this little frame for me and it’s a rainbow and it’s very dim, but it says, ‘To Tom, F-R-U-M David.’ And it’s one of my prized possessions.”
COCHRAN: “Can you tell me about whenever he talked to you what it was like talking to him inside that enclosure?”
LANGFORD: “It was difficult. You had to speak louder because of the thick wall of that stuff. There was gloves that you could reach in and do stuff but you had to speak very precise and loud, you know, and he would do that, too – and he would speak back. There was no electronics, there was no microphone, no intercom system there, it was just the voice.”
COCHRAN: “In the book, they talked a lot about the emotional toll on him. Could you see that – as the years went on, that (living in the bubble) was starting to affect him in that way?”
LANGFORD: “Yes. There were days he would be upset and you wouldn’t know what it was. He was pouting and he didn’t want to talk and he, after a while he would get over it and you would say something else or you would go on or something. I think but there were times when he went into some moody times. Right.”
COCHRAN: “Can you talk about the last days of David’s life.”
LANGFORD: “We were on vacation and were out of the state. I don’t know if we’d been on a cruise or what, but I missed that part I was not here. I knew that they were going to go and get the bone marrow from his sister and do the bone marrow transplant and a friend of mine was one of the Houston policemen that escorted the family and brought the bone marrow in and did all that stuff but the actual procedure and his downturn and eventually death I was not here, so I kind of missed that.”
COCHRAN: “When did you hear?”
LANGFORD: “I kind of knew about it as soon as I got back in town. They let me know. You go back to work. And that’s a big thing, you know that then.”
COCHRAN: “Can you tell me what it was like going into work that day?”
LANGFORD: “I don’t remember a lot about it but it was difficult because I knew that area would be shut down, that room the bubble would be torn apart and never be used again and I really don’t even know what happened to that bubble. I don’t. In working in a hospital and then I worked for hospice for a while, you get used to a lot of people passing on and moving on and stuff. But this was especially tough, because he was my buddy. Sometimes, when he talked to me, he called me by my name, Tom, back and forth, but when he talked to the doctors and nurses, he’d say, ‘You need to talk to Mr. Langford.’ He changed it to ‘Mr. Langford’ then. In his early days, it was ‘Wangford,’ but he finally got to ‘Langford.’”
COCHRAN: “It sounds like he, from what I gather from the book, that he had this whole universe around him in that hospital that was, like you said, he had a playful side, but also had a cranky side, just like any other human being, but he was very special in some ways. Could you talk about ways that you saw him as special?”
LANGFORD: “One particular thing was some of the nurses and doctors too, talked down to him as a kid. Well, we had two blowers that blow the air, circulate the air through the big bubble. This is a big bubble, probably as big as this room, almost, maybe the size of this rug and two blowers that are constantly blowing and David started complaining to the nurses and doctors that one blower is not putting out – working as good as the other one. And they said, ‘Oh David, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ So David had a little chair there and some crepe paper stringers and he put the chairs in front of each blower and put that crepe paper and it would blow one straight out and the other one was down. It wasn’t blowing as much and he proved it with his chair and the little ribbon. And so they got us to come up and check it and sure enough, the one motor on one it was slipping – on the fan – the shaft of the motor was not tight and it was slipping and it was not producing as much air. And he solved that, because they was not going to listen to him. ‘Oh David, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’”
COCHRAN: “Were you in charge of any of the stuff whenever he would go home?”
LANGFORD: “Yes and no. I went with them to their house one time and early on, it was really bad because his family had a big SUV and they put that small carry bubble – which was small – in the back of that SUV and with no airflow and to get him up near Spring. He lived just north of Spring. He would be just sopping wet with sweat by the time they got him there so we, along with some of my buddies, we used an inverter that would invert DC to AC and we plugged this into the cigarette lighter which is DC and AC and we could plug in a fan and we recycled air through there for him on the travels back and forth.
“They had a home bubble that was bigger. There was some organization or some lab or something that built that and tested it and it was OK, so I didn’t do anything with that. The only other thing I remember though, on one occasion, we went there and NASA had built this space suit. So when he got there, he got out in the yard and just places he had never been and his greatest delight was to get the water hose and squirt all the reporters. He tried to soak them. He thought that was great fun. But he would open drawers, turn door knobs, flush toilets, faucets, turn on water, things that he had never done, hadn’t been around, hadn’t even seen.”
COCHRAN: “When you look at his life do you see it more as a tragedy or a life that didn’t get to have its promise. Do you think of him as a little boy or the man he could have been?”
LANGFORD: “I think of him as a little boy, but I see it both ways. His early life it was tragedy – that he had to live in that kind of condition, but Dr. Shearer who was mentioned in the book. We were having breakfast one day and he told me the number – it’s in the book – and it was in the thousands of kids whose lives were saved because of the research that they got out of David – from what’s David’s life was.
“It’s tragic that he had to live that way and die that way and go through that, but there was some meaning to his life. He contributed.”
COCHRAN: “How did he contribute to you?
LANGFORD: “Well, I never had kids, so we were – he was not like my child, but he was close, you know. He was just – I really liked him. I enjoyed being around him and he kind of lit up when I was there and he trusted – I didn’t have a white coat on so he trusted me more than those guys and he would tell me things that you know, I don’t know what all he would say, but he would just open up more to me. He was really friendly and open to me.”
COCHRAN: “Did he ever tell you anything you could share with us?”
LANGFORD: “I can’t think of anything right now, but I know in the book it tells you about the hearing test. That he was pouting because they were going to give him a hearing test and they tried to convince him that there was no pain, nothing could hurt you or anything like that, and they didn’t tell me, but they got together and said, ‘What if Mr. Langford put a special wire in there that had no germs on it?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s good.’” And later, when I was up there, he told them Mr. Langford’s wire worked because no germs came in, he was good. But he was aware as a little kid that if germs came in, he could be killed. He knew about that and was cautioned about that.”
COCHRAN: “Did you have pity for him as he was in this small space?”
LANGFORD: “If I did, I didn’t show it because I didn’t want to bring him down. I wanted him to stay upbeat and tough. And Mary was too. I might have thought it, but I didn’t say it.”
COCHRAN: “Anything that I didn’t ask that you want to add.”
LANGFORD: “There were some interesting things that happened with his life. I thought one of the interesting things was – David didn’t really have anything to do with it, but when NASA built the space suit, we had a press conference and in those days, we had the press conference in the auditorium and all of the networks would come in, set up their tripods and film this thing and stuff so they filmed him getting fitted for the suit and all that stuff. And back in the day, they just had reels of film, so we got the reels of film and the next day at the press conference, each network was going to get a copy of the thing, but networks want theirs early and up front, so we knew that public relations would probably be broken into that night, looking for the film, and it was. They broke in, but the film was in my desk drawer in the basement.”
COCHRAN: “One of the things that’s fascinating about the end of the book – and I got that feeling through the whole thing, is that David presented himself different ways to different people.”
LANGFORD: ‘Yes. Absolutely.”
COCHRAN: “It felt like he was holding court. It was his world.”
LANGFORD: “That’s right. And if you weren’t in it, he wouldn’t give you the time of day. But I don’t know how or why he liked me. I could walk in and have a conversation and chat with him and whatever and he went to school and he did have a tutor and he went to school in the bubble. So he got some education.”
COCHRAN: “Did he ever say anything about the term ‘bubble boy’?”
LANGFORD: “No. He didn’t. He never referred to that at all. And do you know also that they had way back, many years back, a film about ‘The Bubble Boy’ ‘The Baby in the Bubble’ John Travolta. It was the biggest farce. It was just ridiculous. It’s an embarrassment. If you ever saw it, you would just say it was just not even close. He escapes out of the bubble and runs with his girlfriend in the woods and it just, uh, it’s a joke.”
COCHRAN: “Would you support other people doing films or other kinds of documentary about David’s life?”
“I wouldn’t have any problem with it if they kept it factual and wouldn’t go in for the slander and just kept it upbeat and told his true life. (PBS) did a story. We went down to the Heights and they rented a house and we filmed all day. And they cut everything I said out.”
COCHRAN: “How is David’s story a Houston story?”
LANGFORD: “It happened here in Houston. And it happened at Texas Children’s and it gave Texas Children’s a little notoriety and fame for being there and it’s a Houston story also because after the book came out, I have some inside information that some unnamed Houston oil man that picked up the tab for all of this and his employees that knew about this were sworn to secrecy or they’d be fired. That’s quite interesting. That’s a Houston story – the oil man and picking up the tab for 12 years of medical care. That’s quite a package, if that happened.”
COCHRAN: “Thank you. That’s fascinating. If you ever want to drop that name, you just let me know.”
LANGFORD: “Maybe I’ll drop it to you off-camera.”
COCHRAN: “OK. That sounds good, sounds good.” (He did tell me, but only on the condition that I would not share it.)
DOSTER: “We’ve been asking you all along about his impact on your life – do you still have to think about what you were able to provide for him because he called you ‘Tom’ but if anybody else was there. He made them call you Mr. Langford. It seems like he had a reverence and a lot of respect for you.”
LANGFORD: “I think so. I think he did. But I really don’t know why. I guess it was because he trusted me. Because I told him the truth. There was no need for me to tell him, ‘You’re going to be better. You’re going to be well. You’re going to do this’ and all that stuff and you know, his medical care was somebody else’s. They took care of the medical stuff, but I made sure he had a safe environment. That it worked properly and he had a TV and we had a way to transport him to give him the best that I could to do and share a little bit of my time with him because I had two hospitals to take care of and I couldn’t be there day and night. So – but two or three times a week, and like the book said, there were a couple of times, that I took my sack lunch and I went up, and we’d sit and eat. I would sit outside the bubble and eat my lunch and he’d ask me all kinds of questions about rain, the weather, what’s out there, the cars. Just stuff. The stuff we all knew from childhood, we grew up knowing, but he didn’t. He didn’t know that ice was cold and what do you do with it and a lot of stuff. And the one thing that I thought was fascinating was – and I think I even agree with him – was there was a lot of people, news people interviewing doctors, nurses, all kind of people, always around him. Seemed like there was no privacy there. And he had food, he had his water and stuff there. He would drink water, but when he would urinate, he just would do it. And they said, ‘No, David, you have to go behind the curtain, and he asked me, ‘Why can I take in the water in public, but to get rid of it, I have to go behind a curtain?’ And I said, ‘You have a really good point, David. You really do, but. I think (trails off with a laugh).”
COCHRAN: “Did you feel bad he didn’t have any privacy?”
LANGFORD: “He had no privacy yeah, but I thought that was a really good point. You can take it in, you can’t you put it out.”
COCHRAN: “He was just a little kid.”
LANGFORD: “No mom to teach him there these things.”
DOSTER: “You mention that one of the things that drew him toward you was you weren’t one of these medical professionals, you weren’t a doctor. You weren’t there to do bloodwork. He was surrounded by doctors all the time. It sounds like you were just his friend.”
LANGFORD: “Yeah. I was.”
DOSTER: “He didn’t have a whole lot of that. He had a lot of people to come and go.”
LANGFORD: “Exactly. And you bring up a very good point because the friends, the people who worked with him were all women. Ninety percent. There was a couple male doctors but Mary was a lady, Jackie Vogel was a lady, the nutritionist Elaine Potts was a woman and then there’s several others PhD women that were all there, so there was not a lot of male counteracting and the doctors, they don’t sit down and talk about stuff, you know, they do other stuff so I think I was a male counterpart that he could kind of be with.”
You can watch the edited interview with Tom Langford in the video player above. I hope you do. Also, read and watch the expert piece by Haley Hernandez who spoke with David’s mom about his life and legacy below. This was a truly heartfelt piece that deserves a watch. I spoke with Haley about this piece several times and Haley’s reverence for telling the story well and with the utmost respect for David’s family and memory were of primary concern.
(As for me, dear readers, I am going on to other writing and editing projects and would love to continue to connect with you at amanda.writerone01@gmail.com. Please share any ideas, thoughts and questions with me at this email going forward. I truly appreciate the years I’ve been entrusted with your news coverage here at KPRC 2 in Houston.)
RELATED: 50 years later: The legacy of David Vetter, the boy who lived in a bubble
Watch a story below, produced by Haley Hernandez, with David Vetter’s mother.