WORKING
AT FAIRFIELD HILLS HOSPITAL
IN NEWTOWN,
CONNECTICUT.
Early Morning Shelton-House
Jerry Haffke Remembers:
Part IX
Back at
Fairfield Hills Hospital
| The next
morning, after eating breakfast at the cafeteria I reported for
class at Shelton House. Mr. Bouton introduced me to the class and
told them that I was a former employee who had been in an advanced
class already when drafted into the Army. It was a fairly large
class with perhaps 15 pupils mixed in age from perhaps 18
to 50 years old. Finding a seat in the back of the class, I surveyed my new class-mates and fellow employees. It was almost like I had never left. Mr. Bouton droned on and on about the "challenges" of working with the mentally ill, with all us pupils sitting there in a trance of boredom. During our first brake, everybody was standing around, smoking and talking. Joining the group, I was soon able to make some new friends. They, knowing each other quite well already since the class had been together for a few month, were quite interested in me and my story, about when I had worked at Fairfield Hills before and my army time... The people who stood out most, the core group, were a guy in his thirties, Kenny from Monroe, who would become a great friend to me later, and there was a red-headed, spirited young woman, Terry, from California whose last name I unfortunately forgot. Then there were two young guys, one from Danbury, George Gilligan and the other from Newtown, Bob Totten and two young women, one black, Thelma Oliver and Elaine M.... (I forgot her last name). -At least, these were the people I remember and with whom, for one reason or another, I had soon developed close contact. The others were mostly older, married people who came to class and left for home every day, precluding a closer friendship since they didn't live on the grounds.
My state of mind,
Having served in the Army and gone through a lot of challenges there
more or less successfully, I felt perky and self-assured for the first time in my
life. In fact, I felt almost invincibly well... to the point of
carelessness about my job at Fairfield Hills and my personal life.
Nothing, in my opinion at that time, could be as "bad" as the Army
and having coped with the Army quite well,-nothing in my civilian
life could possibly shake my self-confidence and
inner-rebelliousness.
Over the years I have learned that somehow I have been blessed with a state of natural androgynous innocence which gave me a certain charisma and protection. People didn't perceive me as a threat because I wasn't threatening to their illusions of power and station in life. This is not to say or imply that I was one of those non-entities,-persons without opinion or drive,-far from it. Only that I didn't project a threat to others because of my complete openness and non-judgmental personality. Respecting myself, I respected others, no matter who or what they were and people could instinctively sense that, especially mental patients. What drove me to the point of exhaustion was the mental pursuit of ideas through books and people,-people who would be willing to offer me insight into their own experiences and life-stories. I was old far beyond my years and yet I looked so young that even at the age of thirty I had to show identification to get a drink. Naturally this also drew me towards friendships with much older people from whom I could gain insight into American history. My mystical admiration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Thelma Oliver Every morning I got up at about 5 a.m. and jogged by Stamford-Hall
towards the ball-field near Kent-House and Danbury-Hall towards "the
loop". The loop was a path, partly paved, which lead eventually
around the entire hospital compound and came out near the
main-entrance of Cochran-House. I don't know why I started running
except that it made me feel good and disciplined. On my runs I
sometimes met Jimmy Reed, the partially American Indian fellow who
would one day save my life from a black patient who, although very
ill in bed, had raised his metal urinal to hit me over the head
while I was bent down to do something with his bed adjustments. I
never saw him raising the urinal and Jimmy, just walking by, caught
this man's raised arm with urinal with lightning speed. Had I been
hit it could have been truly devastating and Jimmy Reed shall always
remain in my memory as a true friend and possible savior. Little did I know
that a girl, Thelma, from my class and her friend Elaine, also from
my class, were watching me every day when I took off running from
Norwalk Hall. Eventually though, Thelma and Elaine would openly look
out of the dorm window and wave to me. In class they began to tease
me about my running and we became friends of some sort. Thelma was a
very pretty black girl with a certain irresistible shyness and a
very characteristic kind of giggle. After classes and work, Kenny
and Terry, the spunky red-head from California and
some others including myself would meet and Kenny would drive us in
his Rambler "Ambassador" to go out for food, drive-in's or to the
"White Birch" inn. We all became close friends and eventually Thelma
too would come along.
We ended up spending the night together at her apartment and she took me back to the dorm in the morning so I could change into my "whites" for class. We were in love and Thelma was the first woman I ever slept with. Yes, at age 26 I had still been a virgin, as unusual as this might seem today. Perhaps it was because I was such a "mental" person, a book-worm immersed in ideas and dreams, or perhaps because I was so shy around women, but I had never even had a "real" girlfriend until I met Thelma. The inter-racial aspects of our relationship never really occurred to me until John Kilpatrick and others told me about the dangers and possible problems. At the time I didn't appreciate John's advice and thought that the others who also mentioned the dangers were just bigots and racists, but I had to learn the hard way about the realities of life in regards to race in America. Knowing that John, my friend, meant well and wasn't a racist at all, I didn't hold his sincere advice against him. I just thought that he still lived in the past and that the days of separation by race were over and done with...
*Upon his death, my dearest friend John Kilpatrick appeared to my daughter who never knew him, telling her that he was "uncle" John (a name that I called him as a kind of joke) and that he would like her to tell me, her father, that "uncle John wanted to say good-bye to him". This is an amazing story of "life after death" and I shall write about it in a later sequence of my life-story.
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Part XIIIb
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|
While
being stationed in Fort Hancock, working for the General, I had
spent a lot of time in New York City, exploring the many book-stores
in
Greenwich-Village. Thus the newly emerging hippy movement had subtly
influenced my world-view. I had bought and read various magazines
and books ranging from the writings of Herbert Marcuse and C. Wright
Mills to Mao's little red-book and Ramparts magazines. My
consciousness had expanded not through the use of drugs, but through
exploring the thoughts and ideas of a new age and new way of life.
Somehow drugs didn't appeal to me and I can thank only my guardian
angels that I didn't get involved with them, because the temptations
and possibilities were definitely there just waiting for me to take
advantage of the offerings made to me by many new-found
acquaintances. Perhaps it was my experiences with mentally ill
patients at Fairfield Hills Hospital in 1963 which had made me aware
of the fragility of the human mind and the dangers which careless
experimentation with drugs posed, or the reading of many esoteric
books which also warned that drugs were not the way to expand
consciousness beyond the point of illusion? Another possibility
could be that I was just to "square" by nature,-to conservative in a
deep sense, despite my rebellious Gnostic nature, to surrender my
will and mind to unknown substances...
Nevertheless,
my outlook on life and state of awareness had changed from being
very conservative to having acquired a far-left worldview
that called on me, as I
saw it at the time, to despise convention and advocate revolution.
My heart and soul was on fire as I dreamt of a better, more humane
world which seemed to be just around the corner. Of course I was
immature and didn't really know what I believed and hoped for, but
that didn't occur to me at the time. We learn as we live, as long as
we are open-minded and don't get locked-into a doctrine or "ism"
which would stop our growth and humanity. Since I was by nature an
explorer and discoverer, I could never be a true-believer,-a good
follower and disciple to any other "master" than my own state of
consciousness.-And it is that quirk of my nature which, coupled with
a natural state of grace, which has let me venture to "where angels
fear to tread" and walk away unscathed. 
Europe to Soviet Russia, I should rightfully despise the man and
yet, I admire him and don't know why.... Perhaps it is his "New
Deal" and what he did to bring social justice to America which
inspires me so much. He had charisma and was a natural leader,
perhaps it is that which leads me to negate the negative and
accentuate the positive of his personality, but I love this man and
deeply revere him. I feel like I lived during those days in America
and perhaps I did. Reincarnation is a strong possibility to many
people in the world and that includes me. Be that as it may, part of
my love for Fairfield Hills Hospital is the connection of this place
to the Roosevelt administration and it's public works programs. Most
buildings there are monuments to the spirit of Roosevelt's New Deal,
right down to the artworks displayed in it's lobby's. Just walking
into Newtown-Hall, the administration building, one could feel the
pervading spirit of this monumental time. Besides the pictures of
former superintendents, there were
pictures created by artists contracted under one or the other
federal work programs. Pictures which spoke of a dynamic spirit in
the face of struggle and depression.-Pictures that spoke of a new
spirit, of a new form of uniquely American socialism and hope for a
better future for the masses, pictures of workers depicted in
realistic art and of landscapes conveying the ebullient optimism of
Walt Whitman's "I hear America singing"... And through all this I
could always see, in my mind's eye, Franklin Delano Roosevelt with
his broad smile, smoking with cigarette holder clenched between his
teeth, inspiring and cheering on, a country devastated by depression
and poverty, towards his New Deal and hope... Hope in the face of
devastation which only a man of charisma and strength, a unique man
with vision and fortitude could inspire. This man was F.D.R...
One day Thelma asked us
to help her move an electric stove to her newly rented apartment on
Route 25, the Danbury-Newtown road. We all, Kenny, Terry and some
others went with a rented van to help Thelma move. I can't remember
where we went to to get the stove, but I do remember that it was
very heavy and cumbersome to get into her small apartment located in
a duplex house which was attached to a farm. In back of the house
which was sitting on a steep hill, was beautiful small lake. After
the moving was done, we all had pizza at a nearby restaurant and bar
named "Mauro's". 
