Asylum in Vermont: A Memoir
Croke, Bill
"Asylum in Vermont: A Memoir" The deinstitutionalization movement from the 1960's sent hundreds of thousands of the mentally ill out onto the streets. Here are a few that stayed behind. IN 1986 I...
...I quit Waterbury after four years of service, and on the day before I left, I took a final walk around the grounds...
...Are you using soap...
...it gave me the illusion of control...
...Sam Hammond," she hissed...
...Tyrrell unearths troubling new revelations about Bill and Hillary Clinton, and sheds important light on their activities in Arkansas and Washington...
...He carried the little white pail, the inside of which was slick with half-eaten hamburgers and soggy bread...
...He was a champion panhandler, though the handful of change collected daily did not benefit the cats...
...Norwood finished his business at the office and, carrying a iii Denny knew the entire roster of the '61 Yankees...
...You may think you've read it all about our 42nd President - but you haven't until you've read BOY CLINTON Available at bookstores nationwide...
...Some interior lights were on...
...Then I remembered the enormous trust fund, and Charlie's unlimited credit at the hospital canteen...
...I was straining to keep a tight hold on Bill's right forearm...
...Norwood signed in, and as he did so made small talk with Howard for a few seconds...
...Unfortunately, others more transient stubbornly keep to the streets or homeless shelters...
...To prevent this, Jim and I each took an arm while Marty pushed...
...I wheeled around behind the Weeks Building, then down the drive to the canteen...
...The prospect of an afternoon enlightening darkened lives obviously pleased him...
...Grace was incredibly strong...
...He needed a shave...
...The brown butts protruded from gray tufts in his ears...
...He spoke and had some reasoning faculties intact, but never called anyone by name...
...He had great lungs and could hold a howl for many seconds...
...I moved to get hold of her, but Pete called me off with a silent and vigorous shaking of his head...
...36 September r996 • TheAmerican Spectator "Whew...
...Pete and I exchanged looks that were a mix of surprise and alarm...
...Grace Hammond was a dairy farmer's wife who had done hard work...
...The Cat Man celebrated the Fourth of July in 1942 by running away and burning down the huge barn on the adjoining hospital dairy farm...
...Despite an open window this bright fall day, the room stank...
...Several times a day he carried out-in all weathers-his small white plastic bucket of scraps, and filled four old pie plates he'd stashed near the garage...
...I was in the dayroom with Pete Arquette-a Romannosed French-Canadian -and we could see Norwood leaning on the half door of the ward office as the Ward Charge Howard Keenan (who also detested him) passed him a clipboard with the visitor sign-in sheet...
...I opened the door of my tiny Honda and adjusted the pas senger seat to make more leg room for him...
...33 The American Spectator • September r996 In his room he had a scrapbook of clippings from various newspapers including the Newark Star Ledger (Bill was from Cranford, New Jersey...
...I was spent by farewells...
...After a couple minutes more of sweaty struggle we left Bill parked in the middle of an empty seclusion room, swearing and spitting-and locked in...
...He must have thought that she would turn into one of the rooms off the hall, or simply run right past him...
...He was back in the dayroom an hour later, looking at the photos in a dog-eared National Geographic...
...Bill could be difficult...
...He enjoyed legendary status at VSH because of his kleptomania, a disturbing facet of which was that he always threw away his booty, be it valuable or worthless...
...It was either that or move back to New York...
...His old familiar self...
...In BOY CLINTON, Tyrrell traces Clinton's life and career from boyhood to the present, drawing heavily on interviews with the friends and associates who knew him best...
...I knew he was restricted to the grounds and could only be off them when supervised...
...A few more minutes, Denny," we would say...
...Jack's clothes ill fit his 64" frame...
...Not subsidized by the taxpayers, Charlie was a cost-effective patient who went through life in the black...
...We went in, and I sat him at a table...
...He was incapable of reading the newspaper text, headlines, or picture captions, but he loved the pictures...
...I could see him smiling...
...This got a simple, negative grunt...
...The iron-constitution type...
...He sometimes sat in his room with the scrapbook in his lap, slowly turning the heavy pages...
...Fingering his bushy gray mustache, this taciturn and easygoing Vietnam veteran was at a loss as to what we should do...
...In Bill's case, it was the result of a car accident...
...Harry unlocked a utility closet across the hall, and we got out a mop and filled a bucket with fresh, hot soapy water...
...I straightened up as a huge hand settled gently onto my shoulder...
...He shows how the influence-peddlers who dominated Arkansas politics served as Clinton's real political mentors and role models...
...He drew pictures of locomotives that were marvelous in their detail, and collected magazine pictures of trains or anything related to railroading...
...He also points out many previously unobserved connections in the evidence against the Clintons, and nails down countless contradictions and inconsistencies in their public statements about it...
...And I surely didn't want him kicking out my car windows...
...The added feature is a chilling prologue that plows new ground and adds new questions in the saga of `Boy Clinton...
...Charlie was 5'ro" and big-boned stocky...
...He knew the Roman emperors, and the names of great rivers and mountain ranges...
...He knew the lifetime batting averages of many Hall of Famers, along with thousands of other statistics...
...s . i.r 1,,g h i .0>l.waro r...eM-1- PQ Box 39 - Fcdcralsburg, MD 21632.0039 PUBLISHING, INC...
...Fortunately, the Vermont State Police caught him first...
...There were people-both staff and patients -I hadn't seen, but at that moment had no desire to see...
...By the time we got control of her and dragged her away to locked seclusion, she had delivered six or eight hard shots...
...After a week-long training session by Janet Perkins, R.N., a 25-year veteran of VSH, we were loosed upon the wards, and the frazzled and chronically shorthanded staffing office was glad to see us...
...Listen to us instead...
...He zeroed in on me, and we were soon face to face in the road...
...Sam Hammond," she muttered...
...I considered entering the grounds proper and walking amongst the buildings and the giant leafless oaks standing between them...
...I rested a bit with it pinned to his chest...
...The water was brown from runoff...
...that would necessitate some unpleasant explaining...
...The "peculiar pattern of deaths of people connected to the Clintons during their rise to power - serious questions that cant be dismissed with accusations of conspiracy- mongering • Bill & Hillary's college years: keys to understanding their politics, and their characters...
...After a few minutes, he'd wet his head again, then shut the water off...
...Sit down on the mattress and cool your jets," he told her...
...they don't take your best interests to heart anyway...
...Wait a minute," I said...
...Grace bent over him, holding hard the ponytail with her left hand, and pummeling his face and head with her right fist...
...Some of them held real jobs, others didn't...
...He could recite the entire roster of the 1961 New York Yankees...
...Goddamn it...
...I opened Charlie's door like a chauffeur...
...I dug in my pocket and placed a quarter in his clammy hand...
...34 September r 9 9 6 •The American Spectator ers, he would run the water, and just stand outside the stall...
...I ordered chocolate ice cream, which I put on his tab...
...Charlie turned his attention to his treat, and I left him there...
...As a young man he was a talented minor league pitcher, one who might have gone on to pitch in the majors...
...Denny knew...
...This drove home to me the point that patients under stress-despite their disabilities-could sometimes exhibit tremendous physical strength...
...While Grace had hold of me she whispered that she was the Virgin Mary, and would take me to heaven when I died...
...won't hurt you," Harry Pyle said calmly, as he extri caed me from the huge arm that had engulfed me...
...It was a quiet afternoon...
...He was a slight, Telderly man who lived on the Dale Two geriatric unit...
...They were always hanging around on weekends, and thought it their job to discourage patients from any therapeutic way out of their predicament...
...o'ROURKE Clinton Stories the Media Missed -- Or Buried • Did then-Governor Clinton knowingly benefit from the profits of a cocaine-smuggling ring operating out of an Arkansas airport...
...Want to ride over to the canteen for an ice cream, Dad...
...Jack Gale was a lanky man of about 6o, and a paranoid schizophrenic who jammed cigarette butts in his ears and covered his left eye with a duct tape eyepatch, so as to prevent the Devil from entering his body through those orifices...
...Jim was having trouble holding on...
...It was a fine spring day, and Charlie was shuffling up maple-lined Randall St...
...Veteran staffers of many years service, who were usually adamant about not giving money to patients, were a soft touch for Merrill...
...Well, Jack," Harry said with mock sarcasm...
...She hit him like a middle linebacker...
...He was congenitally retarded...
...It looks like you have yet somebody else to clean up your messes...
...This might set him off into a tantrum charade of slapping the side of his bare head and screaming...
...e Cat Man's name was Merrill Berry...
...It didn't work out, and I was soon unemployed again...
...He thought that she was going to kill him...
...Want to go for a ride, Dad...
...On a bad day he could hit me, especially if I was trying to get him to do something he didn't want to do...
...Grace Hammond was an ex-farm wife in late middle age, and was a woman who had totally divorced herself from reality...
...As for show Bill had been a talented pitcher who might have gone on to the major leagues...
...He once stole a fellow patient's teeth, and another's artificial leg...
...Generations of Waterbury's strays passed in and out During the winter it held a dozen or so, as if they were hibernating...
...Oh, you sure did," said Pete...
...Before I got to the boiler house, with its tall white brick stack and escaping steam, I turned into the soggy dead fields...
...I followed the drive back toward Randall St...
...The patient advocates were volunteers, do-good er liberals who, with permission of the state Depart ment of Mental Health, were given certain privi leges to counsel patients as to their legal rights...
...Had been for decades...
...A perfect punch landing between my eyes and imprinting my glasses onto the bridge of my nose...
...I again jumped to chase her and Pete grabbed my arm...
...The Weeks Building (where I spent most of my work time) closed and was renovated for office space to accommodate an ever-expanding government bureaucracy in the nearby state capital of Montpelier...
...I looked back at the dull red brick buildings with their slate roofs...
...BILL CROICE is a writer living in Cody, Wyoming...
...He was unwashed, and had a braided ponytail that hung halfway down his back...
...PJ...
...The care of the felines, after all, was the Cat Man's life's work...
...It is only since the advent of deinstitutionalization in the 196o's that the state hospitals have become truly fiscal burdens on the taxpayers...
...Well, I guess we can go deal with Jack," he said as he continued to tug on the mustache...
...Like other "asylums" built at the same time, the place was almost self-sufficient...
...What makes him lie all-our when even a half-truth will do...
...I avoided the muddy cornfield with its rows of winterbeat stalks...
...Marty-a stout man-looked like an Iditarod musher trying to handle an unruly team of sled dogs...
...A lifetime of haying, milking cows, and house chores had left her with physical capabilities that got the respect of veteran staffers used to dealing with violent patients...
...It was loud and echoed off the tiled walls of the tub room...
...He grinned and did not think it odd that Grace raced toward him...
...The hills rising across the river were bare...
...The Cat Man made the chirping sound that was his deaf man's greeting, and lowered the pail to the ground...
...The legendary pitching arm had been conquered...
...VERMONT STATE HOSPITAL SITS in a bend of the Winooski, a buffer between the river and the town of Waterbury...
...Now, Tyrrell draws together all the known facts about Clinton --- plus many never before revealed - into the most comprehensive, illuminating and bitingly irreverent biography ever written about a sitting U.S...
...The nails were thick and cracked yellow...
...They surely never went hungry...
...Patients lounged around the dayroom before the droning TV, Grace among them...
...He stole clothes, especially shoes, and caused a near riot by heisting Charlie Feldon's new high-top Converse All-Stars one day...
...He didn't care who he swore in front of...
...Trying to make a good impression, I volunteered to mop, and while I worked Jack returned from one of his leisurely strolls (or so Harry said) on the grounds...
...Wait a second," he said...
...He had become completely deaf-and developed related speech problems-later in life...
...Norwood screamed in abject fear...
...A co-worker held him down on the john while I recovered...
...Hmmmh," came the affirmative reply...
...I pulled up to the curb and rolled down the window...
...People were washing windows and mowing lawns...
...Books, magazines, personal papers, packs of cigarettes, and toilet articles ended up in the ward trash cans and waste baskets...
...On a gray winter Saturday afternoon his unkempt self showed up on Weeks Three wearing his army coat and three or four days growth of beard, a shining example for the patients he yearned to liberate...
...The palm came up and as the fingers beckoned he chirped again...
...Khaki sports jacket and black slacks were much too small, exposing wrists and ankles...
...Because of my inexperience, I was assigned to Harry that first day...
...It was an ever-shrinking entity that would continue in that course (135 patients by 1990) during the four years that I was there...
...It fed and clothed itself, even selling garden produce and dairy products on the open market...
...Jack, being a conscientious soul, and refusing to be responsible for such environmental mayhem, urinated on the floor in a comer of his room...
...I saw flashing silver light that faded dull...
...Norwood's face was bloodied, his shirt and coat were torn, and in the confusion Denny Todd came along and picked up the manila envelope of important paperwork that Norwood later searched for in vain...
...Let go, Gracie," he said...
...The place kept its secrets...
...I always called him Dad...
...IN 1986 I MOVED TO VERMONT for a waiter's job at a summer resort...
...In many ways it was autistic...
...Grace glared down the hall...
...He was fond of word games, and was also an avid baseball fan who greedily consumed the sports pages of the morning paper...
...Or you may order directly from the publisher by using the coupon below, or by calling 1-800-955-5493...
...For most of her adult life she had been married to an abusive alcoholic-since deceased-named Sam Hammond...
...It's served up with Tyrrell's trademark biting wit and explained in the context of our cultural crackup...
...Denny stole from other patients and pilfered hospital property for no other reason than to compulsively dispose of it...
...Tyrrell reveals the formative influence on the young, fatherless Clinton of the hustlers and rogues who populated his real childhood hometown of Hot Springs (not Hope), Arkansas...
...Maybe he thought we should pay him for his labors on behalf of the cats...
...Public service," Clinton-style: Bill and Hillary's shameless sponging off taxpayers throughout their adult lives • His adulteries, and hers • Clintan's habitual lateness and mysterious disappearances from state functions - just an endearing fault...
...The overcoat was buttoned to his chin, and the engineer's cap was pulled low...
...You're home...
...Can I come out now...
...Gaunt hardwoods grew out of a carpet of matted brown leaves...
...It mostly went for cigarettes...
...Take a good shower...
...Those cats ate well...
...The daily hour-by-hour schedules of most of the staff...
...Tyrell's revealing interview with a member of Prague's "Communist ruling class" whom Clinton visited during a 1970 trip • Clinton's lies: as outlandish as they are often unnecessary...
...He was always profane, but more so when he didn't get his way...
...Outdoors, if the grounds crew turned their backs, they would be liberated of rakes, shovels, and other tools, all of which Denny consigned to the nearest dumpster...
...enny Todd was bald from a dermatological condition...
...He was a schizophrenic and very obsessive in his habits except bathing...
...I walked in from the Randall St...
...Back 1 the 193o's he'd been diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia...
...We had turned our backs...
...His name was Jim Norwood...
...I didn't know his official level of intellectual function, but he could neither read nor write, couldn't sign his name, and could tie his shoes only slowly...
...r ' YES] Please rush me _ copies of Roy Clinton...
...Todd was 19, afflict ed with both youth and a zealous love of his work...
...The ice was recently off the Winooski, with only rotten gray chunks strewn on the steep, rocky banks that abruptly dropped from the edge of the field...
...entrance and followed the circular drive out behind the hospital...
...How about now...
...He had to be supervised in bathing and toileting, and was sometimes incontinent from his medication...
...Jack also suffered from the delusion that his urine was toxic, and that if he relieved himself in urinal or toilet the waste would find its way to the nearby Winooski River and kill the fish...
...Stay in for a while...
...and saw the easily recognizable figure of the Cat Man coming on...
...He was one of those quietly busy people whose day falls apart when he's given a helper...
...were in fact taking on three new "temps" that week...
...yelled Jim, having as much difficulty with the left arm...
...Grace's heaving breath came through the little screen...
...After we'd locked Grace in, Pete spoke to her through the wire mesh of the little window in the middle of the door...
...The chair stopped, then we forced it forward a few feet...
...Page after fast-reading page crackles with Tyrrell's signature wit and his fresh discoveries about both Bill and Hillary...
...he had called...
...I'll help you get him out of the car," he said enthusiastically...
...Never spoke clearly, always mumbled...
...I thought this the most promising thing that I'd heard on my first day on the job...
...To him we weren't necessary evils, just unnecessary...
...To rate the latter meant he was being assaultive too...
...On the positive side, Denny had an interesting mind for a schizophrenic...
...president...
...Didn't move at all until we heard Norwood cry out, then we jogged rather than ran...
...You just asked that ten seconds ago...
...He had a birdlike face with a sharp nose, and greasy black hair streaked gray...
...We began the half mile drive back to the hospital grounds...
...On a whim I applied for a ward position at nearby Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury...
...Charlie Feldon was the great-grandson of a legendary nineteenth-century financier, but he couldn't count change...
...Her severe religious delusions were refuge from the horrid squalor and deadening work that had been her daily family life...
...Mist touched the tops of the long ridges as the sky lowered...
...I wasn't in the mood to wrestle with a big man in my tiny car on my day off...
...He knew you...
...It hadn't been his best day...
...A few patients and staff sat nearby at a picnic table...
...Some times her behavior warranted seclusion, and it was then that you realized that she was a handful...
...All this earned him years on a locked ward...
...And still others need custodial care, and even if they could contemplate it, could not leave of their own volition...
...I didn't want him or me to get hurt...
...He outlasted me, for sure...
...We had to supervise his baths and showers...
...I asked...
...At some point years before the hospital authorities had decided to leave the burrow alone...
...I placed the styrofoam bowl before him, and handed him the white plastic spoon...
...If you called him, Denny would tell you he was in the running shower when he wasn't...
...ASYLUM IN VERMONT A MEMOIR The deinstitutionalization movement from the 1960's sent hundreds of thousands of the mentally ill out onto the streets...
...The river was higher from the melted ice, but seemed to flow no faster than usual...
...It was mid-March 1990 on a raw, gray afternoon hinting snow...
...Bill Smiley suffered from Organic Brain Syndrome (OBS), a type of dementia usually associated with severe head trauma...
...The Cat Man kept them well fed with scraps gleaned from the main kitchen or the small serving kitchens on the wards...
...He knew where he was headed, and put the brakes on the wheelchair...
...Like many such state institutions across the country it expanded throughout the twentieth century, both in the sheer number of patients (about 2,000 in the 1950's), and an infrastructure that included a truck garden, carpenter shop, laundry, a sewing and knitting shop, and a 4oo-acre dairy farm across the river...
...one OBS symptom is the loss of short-term memory...
...Norwood was hysterical, and Howard tried to calm him (and not laugh at the same time) while they awaited the arrival of the R.N...
...Denny didn't like this, and as you leaned against the wall or sat on the edge of the great tub, he would ask from behind the shower curtain: "Is this good...
...35 The American Spectator . September r 9 9 6 manila envelope under his arm, began to walk toward the dayroom...
...A few people could be seen on the distant walkways, but most human activity remained inside...
...Denny could be very histrionic...
...He took an unrelentingly condescending attitude toward the hospital staff...
...And he explains how these factors combined with Clinton's Sixties-era radicalism to create a new, more dangerous type of career politician...
...When I knew him the Cat Man was old and had two great loves: trains and cats...
...The overwhelming evidence - enough to convict any lesser citizen - that the Clintons are guilty of tax fraud, obstruction of justice and lying to government agencies (for starters) No one has done more to lay bare the truth about Bill Clinton's character and career than R. Emmett Tyrrell and The American Spectator...
...He knew the Roman emperors...
...She had a half dozen grown children, and had suffered an equal number of miscarriages...
...Jack had left his calling card...
...There was one P.A...
...New staff were many times terrified by this, but the veterans just laughed...
...She spied Norwood down by the office, and stiffened...
...Why the Evil One never entered the right eye wasn't explained...
...She had been responding well to medication, and seemed with it, though that was always debatable...
...Out of the car, Dad...
...The one story that sticks in my mind is the day she went after a visiting "patient advocate," a thing that always endears a patient to the staff...
...I looked a last time at the river, turned and walked back to the pavement...
...Like a puppy, he always returned to the same spot, and Harry (and whoever was on the evening shift) would periodically check the room for a fresh puddle...
...He had a pot belly and flabby muscles, but was quick when he hit you...
...in particular whose smugness annoyed us...
...Then he had the accident...
...He looked at the bright, clean faces of the trim young men-including himself-in their crisp uniforms, and his gaze seemed to ask: Why...
...We pulled up to the Weeks Building...
...Don't forget to scrub...
...Denny knew the state capitals and the presidents...
...And he wasn't above going through the trash if the kitchen pickings were lean...
...We're here, Dad," I said...
...The place was settling toward night...
...We'll get you a sedative and you can come out in a little while...
...She charged...
...1 have enclosed $24.45 per hardcover book (356 pages) and $4 shipping, and handling per order...
...The ride delighted him, so I drove slowly, allowing him to take in the passing scene...
...He had left a note stating that, after torching the barn, he would derail a Central Vermont Railroad freight train...
...Once, while toileting him, he whacked me so hard that he knocked me out of a stall in the Weeks Three men's room...
...Hmmmh," he sounded his assent...
...The original hospital buildings date from the 189o's, when the first shackled patients arrived by train from the Brattleboro Retreat...
...When I knew him he was in his fifties, and due to a steadily deteriorating motor function, got around in a wheelchair...
...Z7 The Cat Man celebrated the 4th by burn ing down the barn on the hospital dairy farm...
...Dare Signar..re Phone r Name rtddrs . C ,t, sane Zip REGNERY BUMS M AI L TO: Regnery Publishing, Inc...
...Bill pulled his right arm in close, which I liked...
...I kept to the brown grass of the hay field, wet, but not muddy-and made my way to the river...
...He had been there for fifty years, long before they had come to work there...
...You're a good boy," Jack said softly as the one eye stared...
...What could this mean...
...He simply picked up the pail and walked on...
...One afternoon the Ward Charge washed her hands of him, wrote an order for seclusion, and cleared it with the on-call doctor...
...Many a day upon arrival at work, I would see the handle of a broom or shovel protruding from under the lid of the dumpster by the staff parking lot...
...We should all be fired, and those whom we tormented with daily care should be set free to live the earthy, rewarding life of Jim Norwood: champion of the oppressed...
...But I didn't want any more good-byes...
...Hold on...
...Deal with Jack" made me uneasy...
...Many former patients do well in group homes or supervised apartments...
...Got Sam Hammond," she panted...
...There was a dilapidated wooden three-car garage at the edge of the grounds that was used to store riding mowers and tools...
...He wouldn't budge...
...F 11 -cc, or money order payable to Regncrs• Publishing enclosed CaII , 1-800-955-5493 O Charge my: J VISA U MesterC and J An, Express "Here is the complete story of everything you had ever heard about Bill Clinton, plus a good deal that you hadn't heard...
...VSH had about 20o patients on the census when I arrived in the fall of 1986...
...the tips of the flat fingers bronzed from nicotine...
...It was full of cats...
...Jim Marsha, Marty Dunster, and I began to escort Bill down the hall...
...To my surprise they hired me...
...The staff soon got wise to this maneuver, and the doctor ordered that Denny's showers be supervised...
...He drove an olive drab Volvo and wore an army fatigue coat of matching color...
...When he got too obnoxious, we would wheel him into his room or a seclusion room...
...Don't take medication if you don't choose to, they would say, and don't cooperate with the staff...
...A quarter-million-dollar trust fund in a Boston bank paid the state of Vermont to provide him with care...
...I always do that about this time of day...
...I didn't connect his seatbelt as I couldn't be sure of his reaction...
...He looked like a deranged Abe Lincoln...
...But his other great passion kept him busier...
...She was obsessed with children and their nurturing and welfare, and wandered the ward cradling a pillow in her arm as if it were an infant...
...About halfway down the hall Bill had a seizure that the doctors called "Catastrophic Temper" and began to struggle violently...
...I squeezed the smelly mop into the squeegee in the plastic yellow pail...
...The one eye taped...
...If not, Denny would draw a bath, splash some water on his shiny pate, then drain the tub without getting in...
...Bob says things about Bill Clinton that even Hillary wouldn't say...
...He wandered around in all weather in a long, gray overcoat and engineer's cap...
...his memory for details was incredible...
...ROBERT NOVAK or C.rd S L.F...
...I silently savored my victory, only to have it snatched away when the arm shot out like a catapult, bouncing me off the wall...
...But he was good with faces...
...I got out of the car and explained my problem to Todd Perkins, one of the staffers seated at the picnic table...
...Once I found him wandering in downtown Waterbury on my day off...
...Behind it was a deep burrow that went right under the floor...
...Staff, fellow patients, and hospital visitors were all subject to a generous sampling of his colorful cursing...
Vol. 29 • September 1996 • No. 9
