WORKING AT
FAIRFIELD HILLS HOSPITAL
IN NEWTOWN,
CONNECTICUT.
Jerry Haffke Remembers:
Part II
The second day working and living at FSH
The relentless ringing of my alarm clock
awoke me at 6 am. It was a beautiful summer morning and the view from my room
window made me feel as if I had woken up in a country resort. I heard people
walking already in the hall-way and the muffled sounds of water running in
adjacent rooms. Going to the bathroom, I ran into quite a few early birds coming
and going. Sleepy looking guys, hair all ruffled, who greeted me numbly. Gerold
Brown came down the hall, towel around his waist showing off his hairy chest
almost proudly, already with a cigar in his mouth. Right behind him
was "Stasionitis"
the Baltic refugee, whom we had met when first coming to Fairfield State
Hospital. He was wearing a long bath-robe and greeted me by pointing to Gerold
and exclaiming: "He Jude" (he is a jew)... Gerold, pointing back at Stasionitis,
retaliated: "he nazi", laughing good-humouredly. As I later found out, those two
were inseparable and constantly poking fun at each other. Gerold was indeed
Jewish and spoke quite a few languages, including some German and some Russian.
Thus he was the only one poor Stasionitis could communicate with, since his
English was very limited and his German about on the same level, they
communicated in a mixture of broken English, German and Russian. Gerold was an
odd character, just like Stasionitis and seeing those two together was always
like watching a comedy routine.
Coming back to my room, I knocked on Pete's door to make sure that he was
up. He responded and we agreed to go to the cafeteria at seven. Washing my face
in the sink, shaving and brushing my short hair, I was still in a daze. Suddenly
my life had become completely different, with people all around me and new
discoveries coming almost every minute. Having always been drawn to "odd"
people, outsiders and "characters", I suddenly found myself living in a place
almost entirely made up of them.
Pete
and I left the dorm at around seven and walked past Stamford Hall and Plymouth
Hall to the cafeteria. Coming into the lobby, we ran into Jimmy Fowler who was
just putting up a CSEA flyer onto the bulletin-board there. He greeted us with
great warmth and told us that he had looked for us yesterday evening at the dorm
but hadn't been able to find us. We told him that we had gone to the drive-in
and the movies. He responded by telling us how important it was to join the
union and, walking with us, until we reached the serving line. The cafeteria was
already quite busy, but the general mood seemed much more subdued then during
lunch and supper. Nancy wasn't there, but Gert stood at the end of the counter
by the tea and coffee urns looking somber and imposing. She was the cafeteria
boss and by her appearance and demeanor, you knew it. Two employees and a
patient were behind the counter serving hot oatmeal, farina, boiled eggs and
dishes with cooked prunes. I took everything plus tea and milk and went with
Pete and Jimmy to a table. Eating breakfast, Jimmy often got up and went to talk
to people at different tables, passing out flyers and joking. Soon Harold
Huntington, this huge guy, whom we had met the previous day came to our table
with his breakfast tray. He told us that this was his day off and that he was
driving to his home-town, Cooperstown, New York. Normally, he told us, he worked
the afternoon shift in Greenwich House as a ward-charge. More people were coming
and going and soon I saw Gerold Brown and Stasionitis come in and seating
themselves at the table next to ours. The food was great and I went to the
counter to get another bowl of oatmeal. The eggs were perfect, not too hard and
not too soft and the tea was very strong, like the kind one would find in
England. The only ones who didn't smoke were Jimmy Fowler and Stasionitis. I
noticed that Jimmy had a slight stutter which could be embarrassing at times
because he often spoke fast and with emotion, which seemed to make the problem
worse. He was all union, dedicated and a true believer. A great guy all in all,
who could get on your nerves with his constant union talk though. Harold
Huntington was a good conversant and it was a pleasure talking with him, but he
was also very sloppy with food running down the side of his mouth as he ate his
eggs and oatmeal ravenously, spilling some of it on his shirt. Stasionitis and
Gerold were arguing loudly at the next table in three languages. I just loved it
all and felt completely at home there. So many interesting people and so much to
learn and observe! Yes, I was exactly where I wanted to be, with strangers who
became instant friends, with great food and the most gorgeous surroundings in
New England.
We left the cafeteria at quarter
to eight and walked over to Greenwich House and our job in the basement. Joe
Tinto was already there, seated behind his desk, happy to see us. The others
came drifting in gradually and were all there by eight. Working with Howard
again, it was easy for me to get into the routine of filling the orders sent
over from all the different buildings and wards. I delivered four laundry
baskets, on my own, to the
four
wards of the building above us, Greenwich House. Howard picked the four best
patients for me to help with the delivery and off we went. Up the elevator we
went to 1A the male geriatrics ward and infirmary. It took me a while to find
the right key, but I eventually managed to unlock the ward door. The employees
there, men and women, greeted me with great friendliness. Most of them wore
white pants and T-shirts and some of them wore Johnny-coats over their T-shirts.
The ward-charge, Louis Murat was busy mopping the floor of the large lobby.
Nevertheless, he stopped, came up to me and shook my hand while introducing
himself to me. He was sweaty from mopping but preceded to introduce me to some
of the others there. A friendly black guy named Dover Seawright and a beautiful
young black woman named Dorothy Harper. There were about three more people
working there but, as they were busy working on bed-patients I didn't get to
meet them. Greenwich 1A and it's female equivalent 1B were probably the
busiest and most demanding wards in the whole hospital, and only the employees
on those two wings were permitted to to wear T-shirts and Johnny coats by Mrs.
Adams. Everybody else had to wear white trousers, a white shirt with black
clip-on bow tie and a white jacket for men and a white dress with white jacket
for women. Mrs. Adams was known to come into the cafeteria and reprimand anybody
who didn't measure up to her standards. She even reprimanded people for their
shoe-laces not being tied in a "correct" bow. She also did frequent inspection
tours through the various buildings and wards checking for cleanliness and
making sure that patients and employees were dressed properly. Even we, the
workers in the linen room, had to wear the same uniform.
Mrs. Adams and her coterie from the third floor offices in Shelton House
usually ate at the other, smaller, dining hall close to Shelton House,
Stratford Hall, but would occasionally
appear for breakfast or lunch at the main cafeteria at Bridgeport Hall. She
lived in an apartment located on the second floor of the office building
"Newtown Hall". Thus she was always on the grounds, day and night, to keep a
weary eye on "her" employees.
Having
met most of the employees of Greenwich 1A, I continued my delivery to the other
three wards. On 2A I met a wiry black man named John Cavenough and some others.
This was strictly a geriatrics ward with most patients up and about in the
day-hall. On the third floor of Greenwich House was an operating room and a
couple rooms for sick employees as well as X-ray and Sterile Supply. The
employee doctor, Dr. Kyle, had an office on the first floor where employees
could see him and get prescriptions for medications which could be filled for
free at the pharmacy located in the "morgue building", called Yale Laboratory.
Some years ahead, when I worked as an Aide on Greenwich 1A, I would bring bodies
through the tunnel to this ominous looking building. My last count, there was a
book in the morgue room where we had to sign the name of the dead patient, the
time and day of delivery and our own names, was 67 bodies which I had brought
there on stretchers through the tunnel from Greenwich house. I remember that
there was a weird elevator going from the basement to the morgue. It was like a
large open box with only enough room to put the stretcher with body in, while we
had to walk up the stairs, unlock the morgue door and then push a button on the
elevator shaft to bring the body up. If one hadn't closed the door to the
elevator box in the basement just right, the thing wouldn't budge and I remember
having to run back down again to re-close
the door to make it move. On one occasion we couldn't budge the thing no matter what we did and we ended up having to carry the body up the stairs without the stretcher. I always hated that dank and ominous looking building, especially at night. Autopsies were performed in a room next to the morgue and often when one wasn't careful which refrigerator door one opened in order to place the body onto the sliding slab, one would pull a slab open which already contained a body on which an autopsy had been performed with a huge Y cut sown together with large stitches. Not a pleasant sight indeed!
Having delivered all my laundry orders
to the four wards in Greenwich House, I returned with patients and empty carts
to the basement linen room.
Proud
of my first "solo trip". After that I went also "solo" with four patients and
carts to Shelton House. This was quite a trip through the dank tunnels, leading
directly under Bridgeport Hall where a huge elevator door was located. From
there, at meal times, food carts heavy with food, were pushed by patients and
kitchen employees, through the tunnels, to the various buildings. Only Cochran
House, the newest and most modern building had it's own kitchen. All the other
buildings received their food through the tunnels from Bridgeport Hall.
There were many tunnel crossings where one had to watch the building
markings and arrows pointing in order not to get lost and end up at the wrong
place. Arriving in the Shelton House basement, I saw a huge storage cage with
many old and broken wooden chairs and other things. The elevator was almost next
to it and I delivered my laundry and clothing baskets with more introductions
and small talk. Returning through the tunnels again, with my empty carts, close
to Bridgeport Hall, I ran into a crew of about five people, all patients,
sweeping and hosing
the
tunnel down. We stopped to wait for them to finish their hosing down and
continued past them. Suddenly I saw Jimmy Fowler again wearing a Johnny-coat
over his always immaculate white shirt and tie. He explained to me that he was
the "tunnel-supervisor" in charge of keeping the tunnels clean. Well, now I knew
where he worked. Arriving back at the linen room just in time for lunch, we all
went across the street to the cafeteria. Again, a long queue of employees were
waiting to be served. Pete had been delivering linen to Cochran House and told
me that the basket for Cochran were brought over by truck and then distributed
by him and Manuel (another linen room employee) to the seven different wards
there.
Again I noticed people observing us und talking. But now we were much more
self-assured and relaxed. Nancy was there and greeted us with a friendly "Hello"
and Gert was still standing at the end of the long serving counter. We had
spaghetti with sauce and Italian sausages, minestrone soup, garden salad and
home-made ice cream. Getting our glass of milk and tea, even Gert gave us a
restrained smile. The meal was heavenly and all the food made me drowsy and
content. Sitting with all the other people from the linen room, I saw John
Kilpatrick and another guy from the third floor of Norwalk Hall, Harry Sadowsky,
walk in. By the time they had gotten their food and were through the line, we
had to leave to return to work. John gave us a friendly wave and went to sit
with Harry at the other end of the dining room.
Back at the linen room we were busy stocking the shelves to the count of fifty
with laundry and clothing which had just arrived by truck from the laundry and
we had to hurry to get the job done because there were more deliveries to be
made. Next to our linen room was a huge bathroom with open toilet stalls and
many sinks for patients and we heard loud slapping sound coming from that
direction. Nobody else seemed to hear it except Pete. We dropped the linen in
our hands and ran next door where the sounds came from and found one of our
patients, a real nice intellectual looking fellow sitting on a commode slapping
his exposed belly furiously. He seemed to pay no attention to us at all. We
didn't know what to do, or what to say to him and went back into the linen room
where Joe Tinto, our boss, told us, laughingly, not to worry because, slapping
himself was an everyday occurrence and part of his illness. I had been curious
about him since coming to the laundry room because I found him most pleasant and
refined and couldn't understand why he was a patient at Fairfield State
Hospital. After a short while, when he came back into the linen room to continue
with his work, he showed no signs of embarrassment or any kind of disturbed
behavior. I was shocked and puzzled and decided to talk with him when we were
done with putting the laundry away.
Having finished putting laundry away I had to deliver more baskets to
Bridgewater House, an all female "disturbed" building, where I saw female
patients in "hydro-therapy", which meant, as was explained to me by an aide
there, that the bath-tubs they were in and which were covered to only have the
head exposed, had warm, comfortable water circulating constantly through the
tub. Seeing about six of them placed in a row with only heads sticking out was
quite a shock to me, but the patients seemed very content and comfortable. Most
of them had their eyes closed, listening to the calming music of Mozart which
came from a record player in the large, tiled room.
With the work winding down and only
thirty minutes left before going "home", I went over to this patient who had
slapped his belly so furiously in the bath-room. He had always been very quiet
and self-absorbed, but I had noticed that he had followed most of our
conversations and seemed very interested in me. His name was James Hamilton, he
introduced himself to me with a friendly handshake and when I told him my name,
he said that he already knew it from when Pete and I were introduced when we
first came to the laundry room. He struck me immediately as very intellectual,
well read and well versed in many subjects, ranging from history to medicine. We
talked for a while about Germany and the second world war as well as about why I
had come to America. I could not find anything "wrong" with this intelligent,
slim looking middle-aged patient who spoke so eloquently about subjects which
were far above a "normal" conversation. When I finally felt comfortable enough
with him, I asked him frankly why he was at Fairfield State Hospital. He seemed
glad that someone was interested enough in him to ask this question and told me
that he came from a very well to do family who had turned their backs on him as
soon as he had been diagnosed as "mentally ill". Continuing, he told me that he
had gone to Harvard University and then to Harvard Medical School to become a
doctor when, during his first autopsy there, he had experienced a sudden mental
collapse or "nervous breakdown" and was thus forced to discontinue his studies
at Harvard. Since then he had developed what is described as a
"manic-compulsive" disorder which made him slap his belly whenever he had a
bowel movement because he was so afraid of becoming constipated. Another
symptom, of which I hadn't become aware yet, was that he compulsively had to
wash his hands. This disorder had become so overwhelming that he couldn't hold a
job. Having had treatment by many Psychiatrists in the Boston area without
results, his wealthy family had finally disowned him and committed him to
Fairfield State Hospital, because it was one of the most renown mental
institutions in the nation... And also because it was far enough from Boston, so
that his "mental illness" would not affect their "social status". Another part
of his illness, he told me, was his homosexuality which had also been a huge
problem with his family, since he had been arrested many times for "loitering"
in public bathrooms. He could see in my face that I was deeply moved by his sad
story and, taking my hand in his, told me not to feel bad for him, because he
was quite happy at Fairfield State, being able to read as much as he wanted and
not having to worry about food and shelter, he was quite content. Being able to
make some pocket money through his work, he said that he had all a man could
want. I understood, because deep down he was me in many ways, except for his
homosexuality.... Although I sometimes questioned what my feelings for women were.
Being always on a quest for knowledge, I often wondered why women didn't seem as
important to me as to so many other fellows who seemed to have very little else
besides women and sex on their minds. The few women which I had met and felt
attracted to seemed to be more of a distraction than a needed companion; as I
found them much too self-indulgent, simple-minded, opinionated and manipulative.
Their beauty so enticing and stimulating was, nevertheless, not worth the price
of subjugation to me. Finding men not attractive at all, if not physically
repulsive, I knew that I wasn't "gay", but often wondered about my "sexual
identity". I knew though that I needed to be free to explore my unquenchable
thirst for knowledge and that women just didn't seem to fit into this quest.
At Fairfield State Hospital I found many men who seemed to have the same
problem. They weren't sexually "gay", but seemed to prefer the company of other
men to the company and "pursuit" of women. They were "loners" and "characters"
just like me, thriving on behavior and conversations which most women would
resent. Most of the older employees had either been married and divorced, or
been "confirmed bachelors" all their lives. Living on the grounds, in an all
male dormitory, we had all found our "heaven" and refuge. There were indeed some
openly homosexuals living there, but the majority were just plain "outcasts" and
"eccentrics" like me.
Anyways, to continue my story,
James Hamilton and I became good friends and I often brought him pocket books,
magazines and good newspapers, like The New York Times to work...
Years later, in 1980, my wife and I had bought a house in Waterbury near
the Prospect line. She was working then, part time, in a nursing home in
Prospect and one day asked me if I knew a James Hamilton. Asking her how she had
heard that name, she told me that a patient at the nursing home had overheard
someone mentioning her full name and then asked her if she was Jerry Haffke's
wife. He then proceeded to tell her what a great guy I was and that he vividly
remembered me from the Fairfield State linen-room. I was stunned, elated and
heart-broken, all at the same time! My good old friend James had remembered me
from 17 years ago! Knowing that they must have shipped him out to this private
nursing home during the seventies, when "politically correct" social workers and
psychologists began to infest the hospital with their "humanitarian" pretenses.
I felt heart-broken and very, very sad for James, because I knew that Fairfield
State Hospital had been his home which he loved. I went to see him there at this
one storied, flat-roofed and functionally designed, for profit enterprise,
called "nursing home" with very little grounds to walk around in and couldn't
contain my anger when I realized how cooped-up he lived there. There was neither
store nor movie-theater, neither library nor coffee-shop. James looked old and
frail when I saw him but his eyes lit up with joy when he realized who I was.
Sure, the building was modern and carpeted throughout and the nurses and aides I
saw there seemed friendly enough, but the whole place had no class, no real
architecture and style like Fairfield State Hospital. The ceilings were low and
the hallways narrow and I felt as if enclosed in a large casket. Poor James, I
thought, he loved the campus like ambiance of Fairfield State, he loved to walk
through the many trails on the grounds, meditating in solitude, or sitting in
the coffee shop observing the people coming in and out while sipping his coffee.
And here he was transplanted from his "home", from his campus, to this modern,
non-describable box for "the useless". James knew what I was thinking, as he had
known 17 years ago and once again took my hand and assured me that everything
was okay. But he convinced neither me nor himself. We both knew the truth.
Leaving, with both of us having tears in our eyes, I kissed him gently on the
forehead and took my leave, to never return there again. I just couldn't bear
the pain to see him there withering away while waiting for death to free his
noble soul.... I just couldn't bear it!
If you have
worked at Fairfield State (Hills) hospital, especially from 1960 - 1980,
I would love to hear from you. Please don't hesitate to e-mail me at:
discoverer73@hotmail.com
If you remember me, all the better...
I now live in Savannah, Ga.
Continue
to page III of "Working at
Fairfield Hills Hospital"
Return
to Page I and Index
Go back to Page I of Working at Fairfield Hills Hospital
If you have
worked at Fairfield State (Hills) hospital, especially from 1960 - 1980,
I would love to hear from you. Please don't hesitate to e-mail me at:
discoverer73@hotmail.com
If you remember me, all the better...
I now live in Savannah, Ga.
For more
pictures from Fairfield Hills go to:
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/starsbelowme/album/576460762337228785
Other websites of
interest with many pictures from whom I have stolen some:
http://www.fairfieldhills.com/bldFFH.html
http://www.fairfieldstatehospital.com/
I want to thank those
websites above for their efforts of keeping the memory of Fairfield State
(Hills) Hospital alive
and for the pictures taken after the closing of this once remarkable
institution. And I hope that you, who took and
published these pictures don't mind sharing them with me and my viewers. I have
attempted to contact
www.fairfieldhills.com by e-mail,
but the mail was returned to me as undeliverable. So I figured that
you wouldn't mind my "stealing".