WORKING AT FAIRFIELD HILLS HOSPITAL
IN NEWTOWN, CONNECTICUT.

Jerry Haffke Remembers:

Part III

The back of Bridgeport Hall (the main cafeteria and kitchen) is on the left. Shelton House would be on the right.
Canaan House looms behind Bridgeport Hall (with school bus in front). Cochran House is visible way in back.

 With our work becoming routine and life on the grounds becoming comfortable and more relaxed, Pete and I used our week ends off to travel around the area with John Kilpatrick, Jerry Hatchey and Gerald Brown. We were often invited to go for a ride as these good friends seemed to vie for our attention and often volunteered to show us the beautiful surroundings of Newtown, Sandy Hook, Lake Candlewood, Lake Lilenoah, Seaside Park in Bridgeport, New Haven, Derby and Ansonia, New Milford and even New York City.

 
Picture on top, I'm visiting New York City and Picture below, I'm in Seaside Park, Bridgeport, Ct.. Both pictures were taken in summer of 1963.

 
New York City Summer 1963 while Pete and I still worked at Danbury Hospital.

 John Kilpatrick took us often to his 'cabin' on Transylvania Road in Southbury, which wasn't finished and had no indoor plumbing either. We had to use an old-fashioned 'outhouse' to relieve ourselves and there was no running water either.
So we often brought large bottles of water with us when we went there in order to make coffee and wash the dishes.   

 Transylvania Road, at least the part of it where John had his cabin, was wild and undeveloped. Although, further up, it became somewhat more civilized and almost suburban. John's brother with wife and children had a fine property further up the road there.

 
 Going to John's cabin seemed like the ultimate 'get-away' to me, like an almost romantic escape from civilization.
Reminding me of the early settlers and the wild West.

 He had a TV there and a little wood-stove, where we would sit in ratty easy chairs and on an old sofa to watch the 'John Burke Show' in the late sixties.
 John and I loved that show because John Burke, a somewhat arrogant and conceited 'talk-show host' managed to have some very interesting people on his program.
 John, like myself, had a sarcastic sense of humor as well as an open mind to an 'alternative view' of history and politics.
 John admired the German people, much more than I ever could and thus had a deep empathy to the German suffering during World War I and II.
Having lived the horror and fear of the Great-Depression in the 1930's, he had never forgotten those day and was thus very empathetic to the plight of the German people.
 Thus we would often discuss the events leading to the second World War and even argue about Germany's role in it.
 I was much more critical of Hitler and the concentration camps than he and thus had to often 'set him straight' on those issues.
 He had a typically American Yankee sense of fair play and justice -a sense I had found quite predominant in the people I met in those days.
 Those were the days and years before 'political correctness' and social engineering poisoned that great American quality of character and made America into what it is today, a society of people who are afraid to trust their own senses and their own judgment.
....A society where people are afraid to speak what they really think, if they dare to think at all.

 
 I am so grateful to have come to the United States when I did in 1963 and was thus able to experience this once great nation with it's truly wonderful people before it was destroyed from within.
 Having experienced, first hand, the indescribable generosity and kindness of the American people everywhere I went, -open-minded, uncomplicated and sometimes refreshingly naive, I am so saddened and angry having had to witness what has become of them today.
 This wonderful generation which has gradually faded away with the generations after them having no idea about what greatness America has lost through betrayal from within their own government.

 The America of 'Leave it to Beaver,' 'Mayberry' and 'Dennis the menace' might have been an idealized picture, but was, nevertheless, generally true.... I have been fortunate enough to witness it!
 Perhaps it wasn't quite as innocent as I felt it to be at the time, but, nevertheless, it was an entirely different and better country then than it is today.... 

 
Picture on left: Visiting the Hudson River on the way to the Bear Mountains in upstate New York, with Jerry Hatchey and John Kilpatrick, summer 1963.
Picture on right: Visiting New Haven, Ct. coast line with George, also a German who worked for a short while in the central linen room. Also in 1963.

 
Picture on left: George and I and on right, Pete, on the same trip to New Haven in 1963.

 Yes, I am not ashamed to say that I loved America and it's people and I felt more at home here than I had ever felt in Germany. It was a truly 'free' country and everything was uncomplicated and 'open,' or at least, it seemed that way.
 There was very little need for 'documentation' like I had experienced in Germany and very little bureaucracy do deal with.

 There was no fear of being accused of 'discrimination' and 'abuse' and people were able to think and speak freely.
Employers could hire you if they liked you without fear that they were violating some kind of insidious 'quota.'
And racial relations (at least up north) were based on personal character and ability, not enforced government regulations and threats.
...You were accepted or rejected according to your character and personality.
 Sure there was 'discrimination' and it was mostly based on a healthy sense of perception... and sometimes there was plain old 'racism,' but that was rare and frowned upon...
...Frowned upon not by enforced regulations and laws, but by peoples innate sense of fairness and justice.

 I have been called a 'German Nazi' by an angered person on a few occasions, but never took it to heart because it was said in the heat of anger and didn't really mean anything...
...For example, a guy whom I really liked, Charlie Galchos, had a room at Norwalk Hall right next to mine.
This was in 1970, and he had a few nights of noisy Christmas parties in his room which lasted almost all night. There was a lot of drinking and raucous singing of Christmas songs. I had one night of it with little sleep and on the second night, at about 2 am, I knocked on his door and asked him to please keep the noise down because I had to be at work in Cochran House in the morning.
  Charlie was not too happy about my 'interference' but promised that they would 'celebrate' more quietly...
...The walls in the dormitories weren't very soundproof and soon after I heard Charlie cursing me loudly, calling me a god-damn 'Kraut' and 'Nazi.' Hearing his curses hurt, it stung me deeply, because I really liked him, but I never held it against him after because I knew that his 'name-calling' was only a surface reaction to my complaint... a drunk expression of momentary anger.

 Isn't it true that we all tend to have outburst of anger, calling people names at that moment and then regretting it?
...Is that so evil, so unforgivable, that we need government regulations and laws to get revenge?

 I always felt that one's character and personality overcomes all prejudice, not laws which stifle free expression and un-complicated relations between peoples of all races.
...We all have our 'quirks' and inherent characteristics and are thus vulnerable in so many ways. Is it so terrible to occasionally be subjected to criticism, name-calling, or even a joke?
 
 People of all races and ethnicities have learned to adapt and get along in America, long before 'politically correct thought control' became the law.
 Seeing what enforced political correctness and anti-discrimination laws have done to this country and the free interaction of it's people, I can not help but be abhorred.

 America, the real America, is now only a memory. It is a giant dying a slow and painful death.
 

 
Picture on left: New Haven Court House where I would eventually receive my citizenship in 1969. On right part of New Haven harbor.
Both pictures taken on the same trip in late November 1963. Please notice the flag on top of the court house flying at half mast.
This was due to the assassination of president Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
 

 Please forgive my ranting about the glories of the past. I believe though that it is all part of my story and thus part of my life, not just work, at Fairfield State Hospital, another giant of a past era destroyed by the same forces which destroyed America.

 Fairfield State Hospital, to me at least, was an expression of this once great country, just as president Roosevelt and his New Deal...
...It was the expression of a social consciousness which only this great statesman could have wrought during a time of 'depression' and burgeoning, ruthless Capitalism.
He was able to find a middle-ground between capitalism and social need.
 What ever his faults might have been, he was able to answer the social needs of the American people not only with a charismatic personality but with deeds, of which one, Fairfield State Hospital, was just a minimal, but nevertheless, important example.
 Certainly the hospital had been founded and started before his administration, but the real Fairfield State Hospital was the work of his spirit. Most buildings were added through laborers working for his Public Works Administration and his vision of a better and more compassionate America was a major factor in the expansion of Fairfield State Hospital.

 In early September of 1963, Joe Tinto relayed a message to me that Mrs. Adams wanted to see me and Pete at her office.
We instinctively knew what it was all about.
Our happy, carefree days at the central linen room had come to an abrupt end.

 On the way over to Shelton House I told Pete that I didn't really want to take Psychiatric Aide classes because I really liked working at the linen room...
 True, it was mindless work, but I enjoyed it and liked the people working with me.
Pete felt the same and we decided to ask to be able to continue working where we already were.

 Knocking on the door frame of Mr. Adams' open door on the third floor, she asked us to come on in.
...Sure enough, she told us sternly that it was time for us to take the test over again as she thought that we had shown our ability to deal with patients and employees well.
 I started to tell her that we were really happy at the linen room, but she would have nothing of it.
She was determined that we were 'ready' and thus told us to see Mrs. Schwaller immediately to take the test again.

 One simply did not argue with Mrs. Adams, that much we knew already and thus we left, thanking her.
Mrs. Schwaller gave us a new sheet of questions and we started to answer them...
...Well, our English, our conversational English, had definitely improved, no doubt about that, but, reading those questions again and trying to make sense of them, was still a big problem.
Plus, we were just as nervous as we had been the first time, because we feared that we would flunk again and be deeply embarrassed by our ignorance.
Simple math problems, like multiplications and divisions, which normally were easy to solve, became, with our nervousness, seemingly unsolvable.
 Looking at each other's answers for help became even more confusing. Pete had different answers than I and working over the math problems again, I could still not come to the 'right' solutions.
So I just gave up and handed in my paper when Pete too was done.

 Mrs. Schwaller came back, overjoyed, telling us that we had passed with flying colors and telling us that we would start classes 'next week.'

 We both were dumbfounded and couldn't see how we could have possibly passed.
And to this day I have a sneaking suspicion that either Mrs. Adams or Mrs. Schwaller had 'doctored' the papers in our behalf.

 Be that as it may, our time in central-linen had come to an end and we were on our way to become Psychiatric Aide Trainees.
 Joe Tinto was already aware of our appointment and lamented that he was loosing 'two good men.'
Everybody in the linen room seemed to feel sad about our leaving as we had all grown to like and appreciate each other.

 Pete and I had more than just doubts about our 'advancement' because we were worried about what would be required of us during our training. The only thing that gave us some comfort was the hope that we, if we didn't 'measure up' in class, could probably go back to the linen room...

Picture taken from a trail on Fairfield State Hospital property in 1963. The hospital is on the left
where one can make out one of the white towers and the roofs of some buildings. Homes in Newtown
are visible, nestled in the rolling hills.
Unfortunately I have no pictures of the buildings of FSH because we were warned
not to take pictures on the grounds to protect patients privacy.

Continue to page IV of 'Working at Fairfield Hills Hospital'

Return to Part I
Working at Fairfield Hills(State) Hospital - How I came to Fairfield Hills Hospital - Summation of my
immigration story - Arlington, Virginia and Washington, DC - Meeting Pete in Danbury, Connecticut - Mrs. Morrell's
Guest House - Working at Danbury Hospital - Hearing about Fairfield Hills Hospital - Getting a job there - Mrs. Adams
and Mrs. Schwaller - Central Linen Room - A Listing of Former Employees at FHH--People I Knew and Loved -