Farewell,
Fairview --- you will not be missed
If only the "inmates "
of old could have benefited from today's more-enlightened attitude
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 shrieks, the love and the drama of human life are gone.
In a moment all of that became history, a part of our collective memory.
Last Thursday, 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," 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 p.
A
green minivan pulled up in front of LeBreton and stopped. No one seemed to know what to do. A few of us waved 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 examined 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 3,000.
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 institution but also of the meticulous detail attended to
by the keepers of these "inmates."
There are scrapbooks 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," of fires, murder and death.
Images of faces smiling and laughing, a lasting testament to human spirit
and resilience. I see that face every morning.
My daughter has one just like it.
In
1981 the clippings began to tell another story; one of lawsuits, investigations,
charges and countercharges. That
ended on Feb. 24, 2000, at 1:15 p.m. 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 groaned.
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 the project for the "Oregon Home for
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
go home to her own apartment. She would be alone with the memories of a life
that had once labeled her a "victim of... " and an "inmate"
and now, to that of a respected, financially and successful professional woman.
Farewell
Fairview Training Center. You were
born of a bad idea in 1908. You
left on a brisk and shining afternoon in the midst of an Oregon winter.
Rest in peace. May your kind never pass our way
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This
article by Michael Bailey was
published by the Oregonian, February 27, 2000 as a guest opinion
Michael
Bailey of Portland is statewide community organizer for the Community
Partnerships Project, a network of 13,000 Oregonians concerned about
issues important to people with developmental disabilities. He has an II
-year-old daughter.
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