It turned out that Lou Perlman didn’t stay long either. I think he didn’t really want the administrative responsibilities.16
The original planning for the construction of the new Children’s Unit began in the early 1960s, soon after the children moved to CVH. Charles Leonard remembers driving out to the site of the Silvermine Building. Sydney Finkelstein, a member of the hospital’s advisory board, accompanied Leonard. They were sitting on the hillside and looking over the Connecticut River and Middletown hills when Charles said to himself, “This is it, envisioning a beautiful setting for a residential treatment center.”17
And so on 25 April 1963, a report entitled “Proposed Future Hospital Recommendations for Children’s Services” was finalized. It documents the plan:
We wish to move as rapidly as possible towards the establishment of an integrated Children’s Residential Treatment Program under one roof. This would allow children to be evaluated, treated and cared for in the setting of the program designed specifically to meet their needs and carried out by the same professional staff at all levels. It is our opinion that a physically separate children’s center or section removed from the main stream of the adult therapeutic units is necessary for a well rounded, effective and adequate functioning children’s program in all respects.18
By the end of 1963, administrative integration had been accomplished for girls and boys. Louise Nelson acted as nurse supervisor, and eight new employees were on board. The Children’s Unit was finally a separate service, and the new Connecticut Valley School had been opened. The superintendent’s report for that year quips, “The children celebrated the opening of the school by setting off the fire alarm six minutes after the formal opening, much to everyone’s consternation.”19
Oh, well! School commenced with some seventy children attending.
THE NEW CHILDREN’S UNIT (TEMPORARY) SCHOOL
In 1962, when children were first brought together at Connecticut Valley Hospital, planners envisioned and built a separate one-story school building.
Thirteen teachers were hired, including part-time physical education teacher Eunice Wiseman and a full-time physical education teacher, Jack O’Day. Eunice describes her experience:
I started at the Children’s Unit in 1962 as a part-time physical education teacher. I was told I could take the children each day to either the gym or to the pool. Or I could do whatever I wanted with them. Sometimes I would go and get the children and they wouldn’t be ready. The staff would be playing cards, and I would have to round up the kids and get their stuff and take them to the gym or the pool. Then there was a skating rink and once a week I took them there. One day Jack said, “This is your day to take the van.”
I said, “The van?”
“Yes, the van. You can take the kids wherever you want to take them.”
So I started field trips—to the farm, to the bakery, to different places—so we could make interesting experiences. I told the kids when they got in the van, “You better be good because I have to drive and I don’t want any distractions.” They were always good for me.
One of the things I accomplished working there was to convince the superintendent that the kids should be drinking milk. The adults had milk but the children did not. So I went to the superintendent’s office and I told him the children should be getting a pint of milk each day. Finally they agreed with me and so the children started getting milk.
The children were not supervised well. I had children that were bigger than I was that had grand mal seizures. One day one of the girls had a seizure on the steps into the pool. Had we been in the pool, I was not told how I could deal with the child. Fortunately, it was on the steps and I called and they sent an ambulance.20
Eventually they hired a principal, Irving Renn, and a few more teachers. Two of those teachers, Betty Flynn, a math teacher, and Willie Fuqua, a music teacher, both fresh out of school, were hired on the same day in the early 1960s (and both retired on the same day in the late ’90s). Until the school was built, teaching took place either on the ward or in small rooms.
Robert Miller, chief of professional services of CVH, was hopeful in his year-end report: “[D]uring the coming quarter, we believe that our efforts should be directed toward unification of the service administratively with the goal of integrative planning.”21
In 1964 Suzanne Peplow, a social worker, became co-director with Lou Perlman. Lou assumed the clinical responsibilities and Suzanne took over the managerial/administrative duties. This collaboration lasted for a short time. Lou resigned to take a position elsewhere, and Robert Miller assumed Perlman’s duties in addition to his own. Joyce Aksu was appointed supervisor of group living, replacing Louise Nelson.
Marcia Pease-Grant started as an intern at CVH and later became social work supervisor—a role she held until her retirement in 1995. Marcia tells about her early days at the Children’s Unit:
June 1964: I was hired by the State of Connecticut for $6,000 a year and worked mainly on the Children’s Unit at CVH. The ’60s were a time of political stability under Governor Dempsey and the Democrats. Human services were in vogue, and social workers were in demand. The boys’ ward was in Beers Hall, the girls’ ward was in Dix Hall, and the staff offices were in Shew Hall. These buildings were very old and dark even then, and were condemned within a few years. There were forty boys on one locked ward, their gray metal beds alternating with gray metal cabinets, lined in neat rows in one very large room. The outside wall was covered with large windows, but had thick safety screens, which kept out the light. There was a television room and a large screened sunporch, like a cage, on the second floor of the building. There was one large bathroom with exposed pipes, and one boy burned his back rather badly when he accidently leaned against a pipe. The dining room was in Paige Hall. It was huge, and served many of the chronic adult patients. It was very noisy. Worst of all the boys had to walk to it through a second-story walkway, which had wooden sides, but the roof was wire mesh and there was pigeon shit everywhere. Years later I watched this building and walkway demolished, and I cried with joy at the sight.
The school and recreation areas were equally in poor shape; the floors literally undulated from room to room. Overall the girls’ ward was in better, brighter condition, having light beige walls and cleaner windows, bedrooms for three or four girls, a more modern, sanitary bathroom, and access to the outdoors, being on the ground floor. There were usually about twenty-five girls at any one time. The girls’ ward was more violent than the boys’ ward, and at times I was physically afraid of both the girls and the staff. These children, all crowded together, ranged in age from four to sixteen, and ranged diagnostically from autism to schizophrenia to conduct disorder to sociopath to traumatized to simply in no need of hospitalization at all.22
In 1964 a blue ribbon committee recommended that the children’s services be moved to the Silvermine Building. In that same year, the state appropriated $1,000,000 to begin construction of a children’s ward.
[ CHAPTER 3 ]
A NEW HOME
…
In 1965 staff moved the children to a relatively new building, Merritt Hall, where they occupied two wards, the boys’ and the girls’. A third room, a large hydrotherapy room tiled from floor to ceiling, was utilized first as an extension for older boys. It eventually became the Autistic Unit.1
In April 1965 state legislator Marjorie Farmer sent the members of the Children’s Task Force a plan for the organization
