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Families seek restored cemetery for deceased, mentally ill relatives |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Sunday, 15 January 2006 |
Harlem Valley - Imagine only recently discovering that someone in your family, whom you may have never met, suffered from mental illness. Imagine also learning that that family member died while confined inside a state mental institution, and is buried on the grounds in a cemetery of mostly unmarked graves and plots that will never have visitors or flowers.
That was the fate of hundreds of patients at the former Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center (HVPC).
Some patients had families who visited and were given a proper funeral when they died, but many were confined during a time when a stigma marked the mentally ill.
For those, they lived anonymously behind barbed wire and concrete, and they died the same way. They're buried in one of two cemeteries on HVPC's grounds.
Overgrown and decayed
Those cemeteries have, over the years, become overgrown and decayed, ignored like the lives of many patients who lived behind the center's walls.
Now, as the stigma of mental illness abates, more and more people are discovering unknown family members who were patients at the center and were buried at either of the center's Gates of Heaven cemeteries. The Gates of Heaven belie their name, looking like weed-invested fields dotted with cracked and moldy concrete stones.
Now, the Benjamin Co. the new owners of the property, along with the Town of Dover, are being asked by family members and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to give the deceased at the cemetery some dignity, by cleaning up the plots in conjunction with the Dover Knolls Development plans.
"In these two cemeteries repose the remains of more than 1,000 people. They are in a pretty failed state of condition," Sean Moran, director of outreach for NAMI, said.
According to Moran, NAMI was informed about the condition of the cemeteries several months ago when a woman discovered that her grandmother had been a patient at the psychiatric center and had died there.
Stigma
"Mental illness was a family secret. This patient had four children grow up in foster homes, and they never knew her. It was heart-wrenching for her granddaughter to find this out," Moran said.
Moran said the granddaughter went to find her grandmother's grave, and was horrified to find the condition of the cemetery.
It was then that NAMI contacted the town and the Benjamin Co., requesting they fix up the grounds as part of development plans for the former psychiatric center.
"The National Alliance on Mental Illness wishes to voice its concern regarding the future of the two cemeteries located on the grounds of the former Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center, plans for the redevelopment of which are currently under your review," a letter, sent by NAMI, to the town states.
"On the grounds of the former Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center, repose the remains of hundreds of former patients, many of whom spent decades in the facility.
"While some interred there have no living heirs, many are still loved and thought of by surviving family members. Through genealogical research and through the wiping away of the stigma that has surrounded mental illness within families, many individuals have only recently learned that they have a relative interred on the grounds of former state facilities," the letter states.
"We ask that any redevelopment plan you approve provide detailed assurance that both cemeteries are maintained, and if necessary restored, to a standard you would expect for the final resting place of your own loved ones.
"In this planning process, the Town of Dover and the Benjamin Development Co. have the opportunity to provide the interred with a dignity in death they had too often been denied in life," the NAMI letter states.
New owners
According to Cathy Schibanoff, local representative of the Dover Knolls Development Co., planners for the project, and part of the Benjamin Co., the cemeteries were part of the sale of the grounds. She noted the cemeteries were in a failed state when they were purchased.
"I'm pretty sure the paperwork in the sale reads that we have to maintain them in the manner we received them, and the state did a horrible job," Schibanoff said.
Schibanoff said in the past few years, as the local representative, she has been receiving numerous phone calls from people trying to trace family members. She directs them to the state archives, and to the locations of the cemeteries.
"The one at the southwest corner of the property has pretty easy access, but the other on the east side is way up in the mountains. Both are totally overgrown, and it makes it very difficult to find anyone," she said.
Schibanoff said there are absolutely no plans to develop on the cemeteries, and that the developers are working out a plan to restore them as much as possible.
"We will work to clean them up," she said.
According to Moran and NAMI, it isn't asking much of the developers to give those interred in the two cemeteries a small bit of respect and peace.
"We have yet to receive a response from the town or the Benjamin Co.," Moran said.
"We are just asking they give these people some dignity," he said.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15907234&BRD=1703&PAG=461&dept_id=71557&rfi=6 |
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