Ex-boyfriend of Phyllis Hyman was among last to talk to her; said she was 'happy' with decision to commit suicide

Jet, July 24, 1995

One of the last people to talk to songstylist Phylliss Hyman before she recently committed suicide was a longtime friend who told JET the singer "was real happy with her decision" to end her life.

Danny Poole, a model and real estate broker in Denver, told JET he and Ms. Hyman dated during the early '80s while she was starring in the Broadway hit Sophisticated Ladies. He said when she called him at the office on June 29, the day before she took her life at her New York apartment with an overdose of pills, five minutes into the conversation he realized she was serious about ending her life.

Poole told JET he wanted to reveal his final conversation with the songstylist to give fans some idea of her personal pain and state of mind at the time.

"She was tormented but she was real happy with her decision. She wasn't angry. She was jovial, she laughed, she made fun of life," Poole recalled.

He recalled her saying, "The last time I didn't know what I was doing, this time I do," referring to a previous failed suicide attempt. Talking frankly about how she would end her life, Poole said, Ms. Hyman told him a gun is the best way to go," but she didn't have one.

"She said, `I'm not going out of the window because it would hurt all the way down,' and she was laughing because she lived on the 33rd floor," Poole said. He said, "She said she was going to do a pill overdose." "`I'm just going to take some pills and go to sleep,'" he remembered her saying.

The songbird complained "she was just existing and she didn't want to go through another 46 years of living like she had lived the last 46 ... She said July 6 was going to be a grand day."

Poole said he didn't realize that July 6 was her birthday and thought that was the date she had planned to end it all.

She warned him "not to try to talk her out of it and if I did she would hang up," Poole said. "I'm not going to debate my life with people," he remembered her saying in an uncompromising tone.

He said as he held the telephone in silence, Ms. Hyman rationalized her impending suicide. "I'm unhappy. The only bright light is to die so I won't have to worry about a job and other people ... I have no personal life and no energy. All I want to do is go," Poole recollected her saying.

"She said, `I'm trying to be nice and say goodbye to everyone and everyone is trying to talk me out of it,'" Poole said. He countered with, "Phyllis, you're too young to die. And she hung up on me."

He immediately called her back at her apartment and she warned him again, "I told you Danny, if you try to talk me out of it, I'm going to hang up on you."

Phyllis, who was scheduled to appear at the Apollo Theater with The Whispers, said the shows there "would be her last gig. Her last hurrah," Poole said.

After calling her back, Poole said he spent the next 20 minutes or so just listening to the singer as she contemplated suicide. While she rambled on, he thought, "When she has her mind made up you can't talk her out of it. She's very hard-headed," so he listened without saying a word.

"She said, `I'm not going to debate you over my life ... You can't help.'" Choosing his words with great care so as not to agitate her, Poole said, "Phyllis, people are going to miss you."

To which she replied, "I'm not going to stay around for people who will miss me. I never see them anyway ... They'll get over it."

Poole said Ms. Hyman said she was suffering from depression which was exacerbated by the death of her mother a couple of years ago and Internal Revenue Service woes. She even considered writing the IRS a letter to be received after her death. "I'd like to send them a letter saying kiss my --," Poole recalled her saying.

For Ms. Hyman, "the only bright light is to die so I won't have to worry about a job and other people,'" Poole said. She added, "Life is about choices and I choose to go and everybody should respect that," Poole recalled her saying.

Poole, attributed the break-up of his relationship with Ms. Hyman to a conflict in social schedules. "When we dated, she was a big celebrity. She stayed out late and slept in and I just couldn't do it."

I'd leave her at sometimes six in the morning still partying because she wasn't ready to go and I was," he said. Despite their short-lived love affair, Poole said, "I liked Phyllis as a human being so I made the effort to remain friends with her' even after moving out of the area.

As the phone call neared an end, Poole said, Ms. Hyman rushed him off the phone with `Oh my foods here. My food's getting cold. I gotta go!" When I hung up, I planned to call her back. I said, `That's not the last time I talk to Phyllis." I didn't feel it was my final phone conversation with her because she referred to July 6 as the grand day for her."

Poole said he thought he had enough time to call her back and try to get her to get some help. When he got the news she was dead, a horrified Poole thought, "She cheated! She went the next day instead of the sixth (of July). She said she would do it by the sixth!"