Local man’s documentary chosen for online film fest

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, February 9, 2006

“Wally,” a film by Everett psychiatrist Bob Fink, has been selected to be in the online film festival Cinequest Online Viewers’ Voice Competition through Feb. 28.

Fink and the movie were profiled in The Herald last September by reporter Victor Balta.

“Wally” is a story of Lake Stevens resident Wally Meyer Jr., who had cerebral palsy and was thought to be mildly to moderately retarded. There was no plan for what would happen to him after his parents died, and his younger sister, Cassie Meyer Bernethy, a patient of Fink’s at the time, was expected and asked by her father on his deathbed to move into the family home and care for her brother for the rest of his life.

Bernethy told Fink that her parents’ neighbors in “the loop” were also involved. The loop, Fink describes it, “is a small 42-house neighborhood, and no one really leaves. Parents move away to retirement homes or die, and the family moves in. …

“And everyone has an opinion, and they tell Wally about it. …”

Bernethy faced a choice that threatened to split her own family, because she and her husband didn’t want to move into the house and take care of Meyer indefinitely.

Meanwhile, Fink, who had practiced psychiatry in Everett for more than 25 years, was returning to a dream he left behind in college three decades ago – to be a filmmaker.

Meyer and Bernethy agreed to Fink’s idea to make a movie about the situation to possibly help other people in similar situations.

To view the 77-minute film online, go to www.cinequestonline.org. You may log on and register to watch and vote on the films in the competition. The top vote-getters will be shown at the Cinequest Film Festival March 7 to 12 in San Jose, Calif.

“Wally” also has been accepted to be shown at the Seaside Repertory Film Festival in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., and George Lindsey Una Film Festival in Florence, Ala.

Kevin Nortz / The Herald

Filmmaker and physician Bob Fink (right) takes a walk with Wally Meyer, the subject of his documentary film.