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Forum index » Archive » Archive: Urban Hunt » Urban Hunt: General/Updates

Historical Article from Star Tribune (from ActionSquad)

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blag
Boot

Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 36

Historical Article from Star Tribune (from ActionSquad)

New user-friendly name...

The "Historical Info" part of the ActionSquad site refers to an article in the Star Tribune of 10/25/01. Searching for "Cambridge Star Tribune" I found:

http://www.usnpl.com/mnnews.html

Which lists the "Minneapolis Star Tribune" at http://www.startribune.com/

Going to this site and searching for "cambridge mental hospital" gives us this page:

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1600/781996.html

As well as these:

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1600/785117.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1600/854322.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1600/854725.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1600/790222.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1600/899610.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1600/771711.html

and a few others.

If you need it, username: bugmenot, password: startribune

It might simply be coincidence but the pages are all black - you can only read the text when you highlight it.

Plenty of background and some strange photos.

If you click on the photos you get a "file not found" error - interestingly, it tells you that

Quote:

Most articles are automatically purged from startribune.com's free news database after three weeks. Exceptions include obituaries, recipes and movie reviews.

But not this article?

[edited to clarify thread topic]

Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:03 am

konamouse
Official uF Dietitian

Joined: 02 Dec 2002
Posts: 8010
Location: My own alternate reality

This appears to be a feature investigational piece about the REM group homes (not about CMH). However, the Timeline associated with the article is also interesting. I have also included some of the photos.

Just to make it easier to read, here is part 1 of the article.

Quote:

Part 1: The system swallows up a boy 'as good as gold'
Paul McEnroe, Star Tribune
October 25, 2001 KERR25

On a November day in 1961, a Ramsey County Sheriff's deputy drove north from St. Paul, carrying precious cargo. In the back of the squad car sat a thin, gentle 6-year-old boy described by his nurses as being "as good as gold."

Kerry Olson was leaving Ancker Hospital, widely known as the city's "charity hospital," where he had lived for almost two years. A massive place built in the late 1800s and now with crumbling walls, it was described in newspaper accounts as having an atmosphere like "that of a medieval dungeon."

The squad car sped into Isanti County. It was headed to a place just as forbidding, a destination often spoken of in tones of horror -- Cambridge State Hospital.

The car pulled into the hospital's manicured grounds, curved around to the administration building and stopped. Imposing, overcrowded brick buildings held thousands of mentally retarded men, women and children. This was a place where cribs were turned into cages and people were forced into restraints or seclusion or tranquilized so heavily they wandered in stupors.

And even though some experts later considered it unfit for children, it was to be the boy's new home.

The lost years of Kerry Olson began that autumn day. Within weeks, he was given a number -- 4748 -- and melted into the system.

By the time he emerged from Cambridge decades later, his life had come to reflect the enormous changes that had taken place in the way Minnesota treats its most voiceless and vulnerable citizens -- people with mental retardation. He had been given up by his parents, confined to an institution and eventually sent to live with strangers in a group home in the first wave of the state's so-called "community integration" programs.

What he experienced there would come to symbolize the grim side of the system that is supposed to care for people like him.

Kerry Olson's care was to be scrutinized by the state attorney general's office, police, social workers, corporate care providers, lawyers and doctors. None had a satisfactory answer to the questions raised by all he endured.

A tough decision

In 1957 Richard and Lorraine Olson and their twin blond toddlers were living in a duplex at 969 Sherburne Av. in St. Paul.

Richard was a former Marine from Gaylord, Minn., with a year of college behind him. Lorraine was from Clarkfield, a junction town in Yellow Medicine County. He worked in a warehouse, and she stayed home, caring for their 2-year-old boys, fraternal twins.

Kevin, the larger one, was precocious and rambunctious. But Kerry, deprived of oxygen during birth, had not thrived. At 2, he struggled to sit, even when propped between pillows. He couldn't hold a bottle or manage solid food. He spent his days squirming on a blanket while his twin roamed the house and chattered with their mom. Sometimes Kevin came up and offered Kerry a toy, but Kerry never made any effort to take it.

The parents came to realize that the smaller twin was mentally retarded and that they would need help.

When his mother spoke to him, Kerry laughed and cooed. Helen Lieb, a Ramsey County social worker who visited the family in those years, noted in her journal: "The one thing Kerry does enjoy is having Kevin run around the living room and to be noisy, and then Kerry will giggle and clap his hands."

She also noted how Kerry "dearly loves to have his daddy play with him at night."

In November 1957, Lieb and Lorraine Olson had a hard talk about the future. In those days, there were few choices for parents of retarded children. There were no home health aides, no respite care, no group homes. Parents coped alone or sent their children to state institutions or boarding homes.

Lieb explained the stark reality to Kerry's mother: Go it alone or give your child away.

After their talk, Lieb wrote in her journal: "Mr. and Mrs. Olson definitely want the child in a hospital or institution. They feel helpless about being able to help him. ... I said many other parents feel the same way."

Later, Lieb wrote, "They had hoped against hope that he would develop normally, but now they're accepting of the fact that he will never be a normal child."

In addition to his mental retardation, Kerry had medical complications that were becoming increasingly difficult for his mother to cope with. She worried, though, that no one else would want to cope with them.

Kerry's digestive system did not function properly, and he was unable to have bowel movements by himself, his mother explained to Lieb. "She said ... it is necessary to clean out his rectum about twice a week," Lieb wrote in her journal. "She did not know if the boarding mother would be willing to do this job, since it is not too pleasant."

In late fall of 1958, the Olsons signed court papers relinquishing their rights to their bright-eyed, tow-headed son.

The day Kerry left home, Richard Olson wept.

A mother's tears

Over the next two years, Kerry bounced from boarding home to boarding home and occasionally was sent back home to his family. There were no beds available at Cambridge; too many like him were already there.

No foster parent could deal with him for too long. He screamed day and night. When he was brought home, he rocked himself and calmed. But eventually he was always sent away.

His leaving was hard on his mother. "Tears came to Mrs. O's eyes," Lieb wrote in the summer of 1959. "She said that it was going to be very difficult to see him leave, but she knew that this was the best plan."

By late summer 1960, Kerry was living in Ancker Hospital. The nurses reported: "He is as good as gold during the day, but he whoops it up at night, and will screech at the top of his voice." His parents visited him regularly.

Finally, a bed opened at Cambridge. Lieb wrote: "I called Mrs. O. and informed her that we had received an offer for Kerry and that he would be going. I discussed clothing needs with her, and I said I would send her a list of the things she would need."

On Nov. 7, 1961, the small, thin boy arrived at Cambridge to take his place among nearly 2,000 children and adults who were growing up and growing old inside the institution.

A few weeks later, someone placed the pajama-clad boy on a chair. A piece of paper scrawled with 4748 was hung on a curtain behind him. A camera snapped the new arrival. In the photograph, his face appeared grim.

The brick and cinderblock buildings called Boswell and McBroom Hall became his home, places where the non-ambulatory were housed and where so-called "herd care" was common. A woman who volunteered as a foster grandmother pushed him around the vast grounds in a wheelchair.

Five years later, a Cambridge social worker sent a letter to Ramsey County. "Kerry has had no visitors nor packages since his admission," she wrote.

The log books recorded his good days and bad, just as when he was at Ancker. He was still capable of smiling. When he was frustrated, he bit his hand.

'Forget he's alive'

It was the concern of one father -- Richard Welsch -- over the inhumane way his daughter was treated at Cambridge Hospital that ushered in a new era. In 1972 Welsch sued the state in federal court, and his lawsuit, settled in 1980, set in motion the eventual closing of state hospitals for the mentally retarded.

Routine use of restraints, heavy tranquilizers, seclusion and shackles would no longer be tolerated. Herd care and warehousing had to end. Group homes and community integration would become the norm.

The suit wasn't the only deciding factor. The economics of institutionalization were becoming staggering. A decade ago, it cost more than $100,000 a year to care for a person in an institution; group homes were much cheaper.

By 1990, the decision was made to close all of the state's institutions by 2000.

Kerry Olson was among the first swept into that tide. In October 1993, one month shy of his 32nd anniversary at Cambridge, he was moved out.

Once again, he was put into a car and driven to a new home -- this time south to Cottage Grove, where a four-bed group home had a vacancy. The home was owned by Robert E. Miller Inc. (REM), a huge health services company based in Edina with similar operations in 19 states. It touted itself as a leader in specialized fields of health care management and community services for people with retardation and other disabilities.

As Olson moved in, there was no sign any family member ever intended to search for him. His mother had died seven months earlier. His father rarely spoke about him. The family had been told years ago: Just forget that he's alive.

But that was something his twin brother refused to do.

-- Paul McEnroe is at pmcenroeSPLATstartribune.com.

TimeLine:

1925: Cambridge School and Hospital for Mentally Deficient and Epileptics opens in Isanti County.
1955: Lak Owasso Annex, affiliated with Cambridge State Hospital, is established in Ramsey County for mentally retarded children.

1972: Minnesota parents of mentally retarded children file federal suit against the state Department of Human Services. The Welsch case, initiated by the parents of Cambridge State Hospital resident Patricia Welsch, is the driving force behind improvements in state institutions.
1974: Ruling in Welsch case establishes a constitutional right to the least restrictive care appropriate.
1980: The landmark Welsch Consent Decree is signed by state officials, leading to deistitutionalization. Requires Minnesota to reduce drastically the mentally retarded population in regional centers by 1987, improve hospital conditions, increase stat-resident ratios and develop community services for those released from regional treatment centers.

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r u a Sammeeeee? I am Forever!

Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 10:14 am

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