People First of Oregon    

Fairview's Closing Chapter

The Parents

Christine Rook didn't want Fairview to shut down.

Her 4 1 -year-old son, Jamie, had been at Fairview since he was 7. Four years ago, Jamie moved into one of the former staff doctors' houses on the hill Fairview, where he enjoyed a view deer grazing nearby. The other three men who shared the house "were all about the same level of retardation' and they all got along well, she said. The employees knew Jamie and his needs.

"The doctors were there all the time'.' That's all they did, work with develop mentally disabled people," Rook said. "I was hoping and praying they'd those group homes as they were."

But on Aug. 3, Jamie Rook from the place where he spent most of his life into a group home in Junction City. Now, he is starting over.

He lives in a nice home with two other men, one quiet like himself and one who wreaks furniture, Rook said.

Jamie Rook, who is mobile but not verbal, works at Goodwill in the mornings and has afternoons free. He has his own bedroom with a skylight and big closet, a cat named Willie and goldfish.

He loves to get the mail. His mother worried at first because the mailbox is on a busy comer. At Fairview, she said, "he was always safe." But the group home made a special gravel path for Rook, fined it with a picket fence and installed a mailbox that he can open from the back. 

"You (also) have to start all over with the doctor," his mother said. That means an assortment of specialists, including a podiatrist and a neurologist.

Even though she likes the staff, two caregivers have quit and been replaced in the five months since Jamie Rook moved in. The manager also has been replaced.

"I thought that when I died, Jamie would have a place for the rest of his life," she said. "Now I don't have that, and it's a worry to me." 

The move to group homes also angered Sara Neitling at first.

After 31 years at Fairview, her daughter, who is profoundly retarded, also faced a forced move to the communtity. She belongs at Fairview, Neitling insisted.

But her daughter, Shirley Ann Skirvin, has blossomed since moving to a group home in Keizer about three years ago. "She truly is walking in the sunshine, no matter what the weather," her mother now says.

Skirvin, 42, has her own bedroom, painted a hazy pink and with white shelves. Two former friends from Fairview share the house.

"She caught on real quick that it was her house," her mother said of the one story home where Skirvin helps make the bed and vacuums. "They even take her to the store. She knows where the milk is and the cottage cheese.  She pushes the cart for them.... She will see something she wants. She's quite little shopper now."

At Fairview, Skirvin rarely left campus. Her hair was kept short because of a scalp problem, and her food was blended before she got it.

"They've let her hair grow out; it's getting long," her mother said. "She's got the prettiest hair, (and) she eats everything we eat."

Most of all, Skirvin is talking, something Neitling was told would never happen. The mother says her daughter often says, "I go work, I go store." , ,

A group home employee wanted to take Skirvin and a roommate to a dance in The Possible Building on Fairview's campus.

"They got in -sight of the buildings, and Shirley and (her friend) started to cry and shake their heads no," Neitling said.