Medication Nation

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1239118.html

By Cynthia Hubert - chubert@sacbee.com

Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Story appeared in OUR REGION section, Page B3

Suzandell George and Donald Kelley, both of Sacramento, carry candles Monday in a south area mortuary as part of a remembrance of those who died in mental hospitals and were buried in unmarked graves. Hector Amezcua

They lived inside California’s mental hospitals, and died in obscurity.

The bodies of thousands of people confined to state facilities were buried in mass graves between the 1880s and 1960s, and their grave markers have long since disappeared.

But thanks to the efforts of a group of advocates, they have not been forgotten.

On Monday in Sacramento, about 75 people gathered at a south area mortuary to honor about 45,000 physically and mentally ill people committed to state hospitals and developmental centers but never claimed in death. Many of the facilities have now closed, and their cemeteries have fallen into disrepair.

“These were individuals who had a horrific past, who were not treated like human beings,” said Wesley Chesbro, a former state senator and an advocate for disabled people. “But in fact, each and every one of them had a story, had a family, had a past.”

They were people like Lou Williamson, a “mental health consumer” who said he was incarcerated at Dewitt and Mendocino state hospitals in the 1960s.

“I am fortunate,” he said at Monday’s event, “that I am free today.” Williamson earned a master’s degree after his release, but still struggles with mental issues.

They were people like speaker Frances Gracechild’s grandmother, who died in a state institution in the upper Midwest.

Gracechild, director of Resources for Independent Living in Sacramento, never thought much about the role of such institutions. Earlier in her life in Southern California, she said, she passed daily by Patton State Hospital. “I just drove by,” she said. “I never stopped to investigate. I carry that in my heart somehow today.”

The memorial service, one of several held in locations across the state every September, was part of the California Memorial Project, created in 2002 by state law.

Besides honoring lost souls every year, the project plans to restore cemeteries on the grounds of state hospitals and developmental centers, locate graves and mark as many as possible, said Alicia Mendoza of Protection and Advocacy, a sponsor of the project.