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MinnPost.com, Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007
Grave by grave, group restores Minnesotans' forgotten lives
 

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Mankato Free Press, Sunday, August 19, 2007
Advocacy group marks patients' graves

Mankato Free Press, Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Naming the numbered

Hastings Star Gazette, Thursday, June 10, 2004
Former state hospital graveyard getting a new look

Faribault Daily News, Sunday, September 26, 2004
Dignity now restored
 

Mankato Free Press, Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Naming the numbered
By Dylan Thomas
Free Press Staff Writer

800 St. Peter patients’ graves ID’ed since 1994

ST. PETER – Standing in a secluded cemetery Tuesday afternoon, LaVonne Craig noted that most gravestones have two dates separated by a dash – a short line standing in for all that happened between a person’s birth and death.

“For most of us, that dash is a life,” Craig said.

But many of those buried atop a hill on the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center campus lie in graves marked only by a number. No name, no date of birth or death.

For nearly a decade, Craig and others have gathered the day after Memorial Day to remember those patients who, from the 1860’s until the 1990’s, were buried anonymously under numbered gravestones.

Each year, thanks to the nonprofit group Remembering With Dignity, more and more of those numbered graves are labeled with a name.

Since 1994, the group has identified about 800 St. Peter patients’ graves and given them new markers. Still, nearly 2,000 numbered graves without names exist in several St. Peter cemeteries.

After a short service Tuesday afternoon, Craig pointed to one of the small rectangular stone markers labeled 1591.

“There’s a name in the (RTC) office someplace connected to 1591,” she said.

A neighboring grave, numbered 434, has a second marker identifying the patient, Bert McCarthy, who was born in 1865 and died Dec. 16, 1913.

Jim Fassett-Carman, a community organizer with Remembering With Dignity, said the stone was one of about 2,500 the group has placed across the state. The group is working to place named markers on all the anonymous graves of state institution patients, which number about 12,500.

Fassett-Carman said his group was founded by former patients of the state’s regional treatment centers who had sought treatment for mental illness.

“They knew if they died there, a numbered grave would have been their fate,” he said.

Several times a year, family members come to the RTC to find a relative’s grave, said Mark Lawrence, an RTC groundskeeper.

Lawrence said many find only a number. When they learn about Remembering With Dignity, it is a relief.

“As we know better, we do better,” Craig said.

The wind gently blows through the trees overlooking the sand coulee area at the city's southern boundary. Children play in the nearby yards of the South Pines housing development.

The area is beautiful and unknown to many, a final resting place for 960 former Hastings State Hospital patients. The last burial was in 1964. The patients are buried in the large field, still owned by the State of Minnesota, but only numbered markers at the end of the rows indicate their presence.

First known as the Hastings Insane Asylum, the Hastings State Hospital received its first patients in 1900. The facility treated mentally ill patients until 1978.

Now, a Twin Cities-based group, Remembering with Dignity, would like to put names to the anonymous graves. Families of two former Hastings State Hospital patients placed headstones over their family members in recent years.

One was stolen.

More than five years ago, Boy Scout Ryan Ball of Hastings earned his Eagle Scout badge by clearing the field and installing the numbered markers around the cemetery's perimeter.

The Minnesota Veterans Home now is located on the grounds of the former State Hospital, and the Veterans Home's maintenance department has kept the field mowed.

"Our goal is to mark all the unknown graves of those who are buried in State Hospital cemeteries," said Jim Fassett-Carman, community organizer for Remembering with Dignity. "We hope to have the name, date of birth and date of death of each person."

Fassett-Carman and several members of the group visited the cemetery last week and gained firsthand knowledge of the area.

Fassett-Carman had been in Hastings several years ago as part of a presentation sponsored by Hastings Community Education. Enhancing public awareness is important to the project, he said.

Individual records have been kept on the 960 burials that occurred during the operation of the State Hospital. Further research at the Dakota County Government Center will verify spellings and dates of deaths if they occurred in Dakota County.

Remembering with Dignity was formed in 1994 as a coalition of self advocates and allies, individuals and organizations, working together for the dignity of all people with disabilities.

"We estimated when we started that there were 10,000 graves that were not marked in the state institution cemeteries," Fassett-Carman said. "The number may be closer to 12,000."

Remembering with Dignity wants to increase public awareness about the history and experiences of people who have lived and died in Minnesota's state institution, and wants to collect oral histories and support individuals in telling their stories of living in institutions and place names on the unmarked graves .

In the 10 years that Remembering with Dignity has a worked to mark graves, about 2,500 have been completed -- at Willmar, Cambridge, St. Peter and Faribault.

The group has received some state funding and some foundation grants. The state allocated $200,000 in 1997 for the replacement of headstones at Willmar and Faribault. An additional $250,000 was allocated in 2001 for the work at Cambridge and St. Peter. Individuals have also provided donations.

During this year's legislative session, both the House of Representatives and Senate proposed funding -- up to $300,000 -- as part of the bonding bill. Nothing was appropriated during the session.

Fassett-Carman is hopeful that the state will continue to appropriate some funding, despite lack of action this year. He stressed that the community will be asked to help with the planning and research, as well as providing some funding, once a timeline is established. Actual cemetery work is probably at least one to two years in the future, he said.

Content © 2004 The Hastings Star Gazette

By Pauline Schreiber
Daily News Staff Writer

FARIBAULT -- Members of a coalition working to replace named markers instead of numbered ones on the graves of people who died at Minnesota state hospitals gathered Saturday at the East Cemetery of the former Faribault Regional Center (FRC) to celebrate a decade of success.

"We still have work to do. However, we've come a long way in ten years," said Karen Larson, president of Arc Rice County, who spoke at the "Remembering With Dignity's" 10th anniversary program.

In the 125-year history of Minnesota's state hospitals system, the practice had been to bury residents in graves marked only with numbers corresponding to a burial list with their name. Ten years ago, a coalition of advocacy groups for people with disabilities formed the group, Remembering With Dignity, to work to replace those markers with the names of the deceased.

Back then, attorney Luther Granquist from the Disability Law Center brought a lawsuit against the state to allow disclosure of the names attached to the numbers buried in state regional center cemeteries. He won, and in October 1999, named grave markers were installed in the FRC's West Cemetery for the 486 people buried there. State funding and donations were used for that effort. But no dollars were left over for the East Cemetery.

"There are 1,232 people buried here in the East Cemetery and so far there are only 20 headstones. Most here are still just identified with numbers," David Harris, a member of Remembering With Dignity, told those gathered at Saturday's anniversary celebration.

Two additional stones were laid down Saturday, with members of their families funding the stones, and present for the headstone-laying ceremonies.

"Our voices keep getting louder as we keep telling state legislators that people buried in state hospital cemeteries deserve to have their graves marked with their names," Larson said. "We need to keep talking to legislators until all the numbers are replaced with named markers. Everyone deserves a burial with respect that includes a marker with their name, birth date and the day they died."

-- Pauline Schreiber can be reached at 333-3127 or pschreiber@faribault.com.

Content © 2004 Faribault Daily News