Debbie Payne

I volunteered as a 14 year old at an institution for people who had intellectual challenges in my community in the late 60s. It was so much like the pictures depicted in Christmas In Purgatory and just as sad. After finishing college I went to work at the local institution and spent 42 years working in the field. Our state closed all three institutions and helped people move to new and smaller homes integrated within their communities. Today many people have no idea what institutions were like, how they looked and smelled, more importantly what it had to feel like to have to live there was unimaginable. Parents were told by physicians this is what should be done because institutions “knew what they were doing. “ Some will get the idea in the future to build institutions again for the purpose of saving money, isolating and segregating people from the greater community. If they do this, they will be recreating horrors of the past. History in this case should teach us what not to do. If it happens, shame on all of us.