Sign Up

Advocates

Stuff to KNOW

Stuff to DO

Who's behind
Freedom
Clearinghouse?

What is our
mission?

What's
Happening
Now?

Home page

Photo Credits

  by Michael Bailey

  The following is from the People First Connection:

In the end it was just green grass and vast, empty buildings. The mass of humanity going about its business, the smell, the bedlam, the shriek, the love and the drama of human life are gone. In a moment all of that became history; a part of our collective memory.

On February 24, 2000 at 12:30 PM a small group of staff, state officials and advocates met informally in front of LeBreton Hall on the grounds of the Fairview Training Center. Some stared into space, their minds occupied with memories of things past, some joked, some dabbed at moist eyes, some took pictures. Over all of us lay the anticipation of a once unimaginable and long awaited event. It happened, finally, at 1:15 PM.

A green mini-van pulled up in front of LeBreton and stopped. No one seemed to know what to do. A few of us waived to the occupant in the front passenger seat. He smiled and waved back. For him a new life was beginning as another, older and more ordered life came to an end.

The van pulled out and disappeared. Leaving in it was the last, the very last, resident of the Fairview Training Center.

In the Superintendent's office we carefully read the entries in the large, musky, leather bound ledgers. Their endless sheets filled with careful renderings. The pages yellow and stiff from age and from the dried ink so painstakingly applied by generations of clerks. On the pages are columns marked "inmates".

Here are the daily counts. "February 24, 1917, 371 inmates." Soon their number would exceed 3000. Also the names of new "inmates". were carefully recorded and each assigned an "inmate number". Also entries such as this: "March 16, 1921, inmate #...died. Remains shipped to family in Cave Junction." The ledgers are an archive not only of an instituion but also of the meticulous detail attended to by the keepers of these "inmates".

There are scrap books of clippings from newspaper stories. Aging photos of goofy kids dressed up for a parade. Construction of the pond. Later, newsworthy pictures of young people bowling "in the community."

There are also stories of lost "inmates", fires, murder and death. Rendering images of faces smiling and laughing. A lasting testiment to human spirit and resiliance. I see that face every morning. My daughter has one just like it.

In1981 the clippings began to tell another story; one of law suits, investigations, charges and counter charges. That ended on February 24, 2000 at 1:15 PM. There will be no more clippings.

Slowly we walked around the silent and empty campus with two former "inmates" who remembered their lives at Fairview Training Center. The infirmary where one went for a knee operation only to learn that they operated on her healthy hip by mistake. Another pointed out the spot where she was run over by a staff vehicle. To save money her knee was fused rather than repaired. Thirty years later it still will not bend.

We walked into the empty "cottages", now smelling of cleaning products and echoing the sound of our footsteps. "Oh, no it wasn't like this when I lived here" our commentator said. "Then there were no partitions of any kind. All of us girls slept on cots next to one another. There was never any privacy." She remembered how as a child she was frightened of "the big heads", the ones with hydrocephalus who leaned on the wall and growned.

Finally we passed the plaque on the wall of Fairview's first building. It commemorates the names of the superintendent, state officials and architect responsible for completing this project for the "Oregon Home of the Feeble Minded - 1919."

We walked back to LeBreton and got into the van. We drove off with one of the former "inmates". She had to return to her full time job and at the end of the day would go home to her own apartment. There she would be alone with the memories of a life that had once labeled her a "victim of..." and an "inmate" and now, finally, to that of a respected, financially independent and successful professional woman.

Farewell Fairview Training Center. You were born of a bad idea in 1908. You left us on a brisk and shining afternoon in the midst of an Oregon winter. Rest in Peace.

May your kind never pass our way again.

Michael Bailey is Statewide Community Organizer for the Community Partnerships Project, a network of 13,000 Oregonians concerned about issues important to people with developmental disabilities.

Read the story of Kenneth and Shirley Newman's years of confinement and abuse at Fairview and their effort to obtain resolution and an apology from the State of Oregon.

Fairview closes officially March 1.

Twenty years ago there were over 3,000 "inmates" here. The transition to the community of over 350 people in the last year has been very smooth, and even hardcore Voice of the Retarded activists have been forced to admit that their family member is much better off in the community. I think we can claim a real success here.

Deputy Director Bobby Mink and I have been busily traveling the state in recent months, meeting as many of you as we can, and visiting interesting places and projects.

Last week, my travels took me to Portland and to Hawthorne House, one of our new state-operated homes for people with developmental disabilities.

There I met 54-year-old Ron Noble -- "Ronnie" to his family and friends. Ronnie, who is non-verbal, has quadriplegia, heart and lung problems and other health issues.

At age 2, he went to live at the Fairview Training Center in Salem. His medical needs had become too complex for his family to manage.

Now, more than five decades later, we're closing Fairview, in large part so its residents can live closer to communities. Ron moved to Hawthorne House last March.

To make a long story short: He's doing very well. He's healthier, more alert, more interested in reaching out to touch things.

He lives in a place with curtains and personally decorated bedrooms. He's been able to experience life in Portland, visiting the Sternwheeler and riding the Max light rail, for instance. He's in touch with family.

A tribute to our staff. For me, meeting Ron was a powerful reminder of the importance of helping our clients to live as close as possible to communities.

Staff at Fairview and in the group homes have worked hard to make this transition work, for residents and their families.

In many cases, Fairview staff have made the transition themselves. For example, Ruby Davis and Joyce Collins, now at Hawthorne House, were long-time Fairview employees.

Like many Fairview staff, they understandably had concerns about whether residents' complex needs could be met in community settings.

"This is so different from what I expected," Joyce says of the change. "The residents I worked with before are so calm and so much happier. I have to admit now that it's been a good thing."

Summing up. We face challenges as we continue to move people with developmental disabilities to community settings. But the benefits can be enormous.

One of Ron's sisters said it best. Thanks to the Hawthorne House staff, she wrote in an account of her brother's life, "Ronnie has a home!!!"

"We now mail 13,000 copies -- mostly in Oregon, but we have subscribers in 27 states and 12 countries."

To subscribe simply send name and address to:
The People First Connection
540 24th Pl NE
Salem, OR. 97301
Or do it by e-mail to jonna@teleport.com

Subscriptions are free; participation is welcomed.

Freedom Clearinghouse is a project of
Free Hand Press, publisher of Mouth magazine.
Website developed by Cliffwood Organic Works.
Website hosted by DIMENET.
| E-mail | Home |