Wednesdays with Dorothy: There’s No Place like Home

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A view of Dorothy's apartment building

In the conversation recorded here, Dorothy talks some more about how people helped he with shopping needs, and she talked about her health battles, but she kept coming back to how glad she was to have her own place – a place to call home. She definitely had a place she looked forward to coming back to when she had been away for one reason or another. She often talked about how glad she was to be living there on her own.

I have friends that help me when I need to go shopping. Ros took me, but she left [moved to another city]. Another friend of mine has, but she hasn’t been back since the tenth of December.  I really like to go out and do my shopping with somebody. One of my friends at church takes me sometimes. I like to go way out to that big Walmart to do my shopping sometime. 

I had a friend from church that used to take me out shopping, but she moved down to Pine Hill. One time she came by and asked me did I want to go with her to Florida. So I went with her down there for about a week, and then when I got back I never was so glad to get back in all my life. I used to love to go out and spend the night until after I had colon cancer, and I had to have that old bag, and everything. I like to not ever learned how to fix that colostomy bag. The nurse would help me with it, but now I can do it. You have to wear the thing a week before you change it. I keep it washed out with hot water. I had that colon surgery June 14 of 2007. 

I’ve really had a good life in Birmingham.  I outwitted cancer – I got over that and I didn’t even let that hold me down. I knew something was wrong, I didn’t know what. I thought I had to go to the bathroom, but before I knew it blood was running all in the floor. I got it all cleaned up and thought maybe it wouldn’t happen no more. Then the next day I went for my doctor’s appointment that had already been set up. They did a colonoscopy and told me I had colon cancer. 

They put me in the hospital about two weeks later and did surgery. I was in the hospital about two weeks. [When I was recovering from surgery] I remember they gave me this ol’ tall walker. Sandra Faye Jones gave it to me and I took off walking ‘til I got lost and she had to show me back to my room [at UAB Hospital]. Then they took me over to the rehab center on June 15. I was there until August 24 when I came back to my apartment. I was so happy to be back where I could have my own coffee, take a shower and wash my hair. [I was so glad to] sit on the porch and sleep in my own bed.

When I got down here to Birmingham after being at Partlow all those years, I felt like I was free of everything. I know that we had rules we had to go by and everything. 

I’ve been here over 30 years now. I remember going down the street the other day with my friend Nioka and her father and I was just thinking to myself, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” And I almost busted out cryin’. I stayed with them over a week when my heat was out during the cold weather, but I was so glad to get back to my own home!

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Wednesdays with Dorothy: Matters of Health

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Dorothy standing
in front of her apartment

As I was walking up to Dorothy’s doorstep one afternoon for our  appointed time to sit and talk about her life, her neighbor who lived in the adjoining apartment greeted me and asked how Dorothy’s story was coming along.  Dorothy’s neighbor seemed like a nice lady, though admittedly a bit eccentric.  She collected plants, storage crates, and cats, all of which could be seen lining her porch and spilling out into the yard.  When I had asked Dorothy about her neighbor, Dorothy indicated that she didn’t want to have anything to do with her. “That lady can’t keep her place clean, she has all them cats, and you hear her wandering around talking to herself. She’ll wander out at night, too, collecting cans and stuff.”

Dorothy had also told me about her upstairs neighbors with whom she had some occasional contact – and she was on friendly terms with them – but she kept some distance between herself and her next-door neighbor. So while Dorothy managed to maintain a circle of friends, like anyone else, she had some limits as to who she let into that circle.

In my conversations with Dorothy, matters of health would come up from time to time. I had been with Dorothy in the hospital a few years before when she underwent surgery for colon cancer.  Before that she has suffered a heart attack and had to have a stent placed in her coronary artery. There was another time that I visited her in the hospital when she was admitted for respiratory problems due to congestive heart failure. On that occasion she was just a just a couple of floors up from where I worked, so I was able to pop in on my lunch break and after work.  With her age and her history, it was only natural that we would talk about her health form time to time.

During one of our conversations, she talked about an emergency trip to the ER and then went from there to recollect another hospitalization when she had surgery:

When that fluid builds up in my lungs, that’s when I lose my breath. One night I went to bed, I couldn’t get to sleep. I couldn’t get my breath and I called 911. They come and I come out on the porch and flagged ‘em down and they come on in. I told ‘em I couldn’t hardly get my breath. They wound to taking me to the hospital at UAB. Well, Dr. Craig got that oxygen pump and put it on my mouth and they started with me down to the emergency room.  I was on the gurney. Somehow I could see Jesus – I couldn’t see him with my human eye, but I could see him with the eye of my heart, you know. He was standing there looking at me. I reached my hand out and he took me by the hand. I said Lord, I love you because you died for us all. And he looked at me and said, “I love you to, my child.” He was standing there with me. When I reached again he was standing there at the foot of my bed – they had already moved me to a bed and he was at my bedside. I looked up and smiled at him and he vanished.

It really made me feel good. They finally got me to breathing well. The first time I went to the hospital, it was a Sunday night. I had a room on the West side. I thought I could hear a revival going on – I mean it was a good Holy Ghost, Spirit-filled revival. The preacher preachin’ and people singin’ and shoutin’ and coming to the Lord to be saved, and everything. I thought they were singing so pretty, and the devil wasn’t nowhere around because Jesus wouldn’t let him in the picture. I could hear them preachin’ and singing’ and shoutin’ and I never did want it to end. I thought, God’s gonna do something. When I come to I was saying, “God’s gonna do something, God’s gonna turn something around, God’s gonna do something” I was saying it to myself, then I got pretty loud with it. I was really enjoying it – and I finally went to sleep.

When they gave me that shot of morphine when I had my colostomy surgery, I was laying in the room that night. I seen a lady out in the hall, I didn’t know who she was. I said, “Hey lady come here.” She came in and said “What is it Miss Burdette?” and I said I would like for you to get my oxygen straightened out because my urine is going in to my oxygen.”

She said, “No it’s not,” and I said “Yes it is. My feet’s all twisted up and how about you fixing it so I can move my feet?” She did the best she could and said, “Now is that all right?” and I said “Yeah, I think it is,” and I finally went on to sleep. The next day, it must have been in the morning report, because the nurse came in and said, Miss Burdette, I’ll never give you another dose of morphine.”

*   *   *

Talking about hospitals prompted Dorothy to reach back further in her memory when she was younger and had to go to the hospital:

I had one surgery when I was down in Thomasville. Dr. Green had to take a piece of skin off my cervix to see if it was cancerous, but it weren’t.  Then I had to go back and work at the motel. Well I got sick and the lady I was working with had a fellow take me home, well she didn’t know he was dog drunk. We had a good little ways to go, and it was pouring down rain. He kept asking me did I want to go to Westbrook, or somewhere and I said no, just get me home or I’ll get out and walk. He finally got me there. I got out and slammed that car door and went in the house and shut the door. My blood pressure went way up and I had to go to the emergency room!

One of the workers at the center took me to the emergency room. They took my blood pressure. I was so sick I threw up what little bit I did eat. They kept me over night, then I went back to my house the next day.

*   *   *

On another visit I asked her how she managed her medical appointments and kept track of her medications:

Now I have a medicine nurse, comes on Wednesday, or either Friday.  She comes every two weeks. She puts all my pills in my pill box so I don’t get mixed up about what medicine to take when – I take so much now. My friend Lana arranged to have my medicine sent in the mail.

If I have to go to the doctor, different ones will take me. Lana, when she can, takes me, and another friend of mine when I can get her to come by. I hate to call a cab. One time my case manager had a cab come pick me up for my doctor’s appointment, and he didn’t know where he was going.  He took me way down the hill below Family Practice. I had to go back up the hill, and when I got up there, I completely lost my breath. I thought I’d never get my breath back. I used to could walk, but now I never can get up a high place without my legs giving way.

Another time I had a cab to take me to Dr. Hayes’s office, and he didn’t know where to go. I kept trying to tell him and he just went way on, I guess a couple of miles past Dr. Hayes’s office. He asked me, “Is this it?” and I said, “No! You done gone too far!” He turned around and found a guy driving a truck and he asked him where it was. I thought “You idiot, I told you where to go.” Then when we got there and I got out, I thought, “Dear God! I don’t never want to ride with him no more!” It was the same way when I used to go to the Food Stamp Office.  

Next week we will hear Dorothy talk more about how her day-to-day needs were met, and also see how much she loved having her own place that she could call home.

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Wednesdays with Dorothy: With a Little Help from my Friends

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We often use the term “independent living” when referring to people with disabilities living in the community. When I was Program Director at the St. Andrew’s Foundation, we hosted a seminar about teaching independent living skills to adults with developmental disabilities. The seminar leader drove home the point that what we are really talking about is interdependence rather than independence. None of us so-called able-bodied individuals live truly independently. We are all interdependent upon one another for a variety of things. Everyone lives by getting help from others. For those with “normal” abilities, knowing how to find the help that is needed is part of how we make it in society. Or as The Beatles famously sang, “I get by with a little help from my friends.”

Dorothy managed to keep a network of friends who helped her to get by in life. She was able to live her dream of having her own apartment and to come and go as she pleased by enlisting the help she needed from friends around her.  Sometimes help came in the form of social services, and sometimes it came from the friendships that Dorothy had in the community and at her church. At the time of our interviews, Dorothy was in her elder years and needed a bit more assistance in her home than she had in previous years. One day I asked Dorothy about how she managed to get the things she needed in order to live comfortably in her apartment.

I have to have help getting to my doctor’s appointments.  Some of my friends over there at the church will take me sometimes. Sometimes Ros (former secretary at St Andrew’s Foundation) helps out.

I used to go over to the office at St. Andrew’s to get help with bills and appointments. I did have a case manager, she left and I got a new case manager now. The folks at MRDD (Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities) don’t work with me no more.  I’m under a different system where they have a nurse to come in and help with my medicines and a cleaning lady helps me clean and another lady comes to help with my bath.

There were about three or four of them that came yesterday, including my new case manager. They asked if anything ever happened, an emergency or something, like a flood or a fire, did I have anybody to stay with. Lana told her that Ros lived up on the hill or I could go with her. They said something about a shelter, but I do not want to go to no shelter.

My MRDD case managers would always make sure my doctor’s appointments were taken care of and that somebody would take me shopping. Sometimes they would carry me shopping, but Fred Pinto made them stop because they didn’t have insurance on the car in case there was an accident.

Miss Lexis Buford was my case manager, but I’m not with the MRDD no more. Now they’ve got me on Medicaid Waiver. It happened that they moved me from MRDD to Southern Hospitality, then they got me on Medicaid waiver. A case manager came by my apartment.

So they help out where I need help. I’m not with the Southern Hospitality any more. It’s where people come in to give you a bath or launder your clothes or clean your house –other people come in now. I still get out and clean up the porch. I try to pull the weeds out from around the porch.

When I was at Partlow, there was a girl used to wash and iron my clothes till I started working in the laundry and learnt how to do it myself. I’d put my clothes in a pillow case. She would take them to wash ‘em and then she’d bring ‘em back. She was one of the residents there.  I thought about getting me a washer and dryer over here, but there’s no place to put one. Now I have to get somebody else to wash my clothes. The lady that comes over here washed them one time. I used to get e girl that goes to church to wash my clothes. She goes to school now and she can’t do it no more. I used to do it but I can’t walk up the hill to the Laundromat no more, I get plumb out of breath.  When somebody comes to wash my clothes, I have to give them some change for the machines. I used to have some from Southern Hospitality, but I don’t use them no more because I caught one of those ladies going in to my refrigerator. This girl that used to do it, she don’t come up here very often now, She won’t come at all if it’s raining. She don’t have no transportation – she has to get somebody to bring her over here or either she’ll ride the bus.

I’ve got one lady that comes in to help in the apartment every day, and one that comes every other day. Sometimes one of them will wash my clothes but they just put them in a bag and leave ‘em.  They’ll come every other week to wash ‘em.

I was down there 35 years [at Partlow], and then I got out. I was assisted how to use a coin operated laundry and how to match my clothes and everything, and how I used to walk downtown by myself. I’d go down to Five- points and over yonder to Western Supermarket. I’d still love to do it but my legs won’t allow me to do it no more.

Sometimes my cleaning lady will come and fix breakfast. I mostly fix it myself, but sometimes she’ll fix it. I usually fix them veggies strips when I got ‘em. Then I’ll fix toast and eggs sometime, maybe grits or oatmeal. I like jelly and butter, homemade jams, and things.

One time Harry took me over to Sylacauga to try to meet my cousin. She was so mean and nasty and she acted like she didn’t even know who I was. I thought sure she would be glad to see me. We hadn’t seen each other since we were children. She was about seven and I was about five. But she just made me feel unwelcome. I felt like I wasn’t welcome anywhere except at home and at church. 

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Wednesdays with Dorothy: A Speech about Independent Living

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When I was working at St. Andrew’s Foundation as Program Director, one of my colleagues, Edsel Massey, was Outreach Director. Edsel had been working at St. Andrew’s Foundation almost from its beginning. You may remember from a previous post that Edsel went along with then Program Director Harry Hamilton to meet Dorothy when she was first accepted into the group homes.

I remember one day when Edsel got a call from someone at the regional office for the State Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. There was to be a conference at the Winfrey Hotel and the organizers of the conference wanted to let conference attendees hear from mental health clients who were successfully managing independent living. Right away Edsel told them that Dorothy would be the perfect candidate. He called Dorothy on the telephone to ask if she would be willing to go to the conference to tell the people there about her life in the community. Dorothy enthusiastically accepted the offer. Edsel picked her up and took her to the conference on the appointed day. When he returned he was very pleased and talked about what an excellent job Dorothy had done and how she really connected with the group.

It was some years later when Dorothy and I were having our weekly conversations that I asked her about that day.  This was her recollection:

There was this conference at the Winfrey Hotel and Edsel took me out there to give a speech.  I told them about one time when I went down to Five Points. Me and another lady were in Clyde Huston’s I asked for a glass of Wild Turkey, she asked for a glass of tequila. Well I drunk that Wild Turkey, and when I went out, I didn’t know if I was wild or the turkey was wild.  I thought, “Dear God! I don’t never want no more of that stuff!” I told them about that and I thought everybody would fall over laughing. I was supposed to have been making a speech about what we did to live independently. I got excited, and I wasn’t even using the microphone. I was just blaring out and everybody was laughing.

Then somebody else got up there, they were from another place. I don’t know if everybody could hear them. Some lady took us out there. It was at some mental health conference that we went to to talk about living on our own.

One of the conference rooms at the Winfrey

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Wednesdays with Dorothy: Con Artists and Other Dangers

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 A woman living alone in the city faces dangers. Dorothy had said earlier in our conversations that someone at Partlow State School had tried to teach her about danger, but that she never really understood danger until she left the institution and moved out on her own. Today we will hear from Dorothy about the some of the dangers she encountered, some real and some imagined.

The first incident she recalls in one that I remember. It happened while I was working as Program Director at St. Andrew’s Foundation. Dorothy came into the office, visibly upset, talking about how someone had taken all the money out of her bank account. I talked with her some that afternoon to find out what had happened. She had fallen prey to a scheme which others, particularly elderly people, have fallen prey to.  Some con artists had talked her into giving them some money on the promise that they could get more money in return for her.  Apparently, some people took her to another branch of her bank to get her to withdraw some funds from her account. Once Dorothy realized that she had been swindled, she went to the branch of her bank where she ordinarily did her banking to tell them, hoping that she could reverse things, but was dismayed when she found that her account was almost empty and there was nothing they could do. She had not clearly understood that her money would be gone from her bank account when the funds had been taken out at a different bank location.

Dorothy was so upset at the time that I took her home and stayed with her for awhile. She settled down after a while, but I was afraid to leave her unattended for the evening.  I stopped by again on my way home from work. My colleague at St. Andrew’s, Edsel Massey, lived nearby, so I asked him if he would check in on her that night, which he did. Dorothy made it through that trial with some help from her friends, and eventually she was able to build her bank account back up.

During one of our conversations I asked Dorothy to talk about that day. She recounted the incident and then went on to talk about other frightening incidents that had occurred in her life on Southside.

“This one time there were some folks that tricked me out of my money. I had got my July check and went to the bank. It was in 1993. I went in and deposited my check. Then I told that lady I’d like about $300 to keep for myself and she gave me $300. Then I was coming out of the bank and saw an old Cadillac, it was an egg colored Cadillac. It was a colored man and a colored woman that had a turban around her had, and there was a white lady. They got me and took me up on that little hill. They claimed they were going to take me up to a lawyer and get me some more money. I had met them up at Woolworth’s when I went up there to get my pastor a birthday card. I saw them there [at the bank] and I said well they’re going to help me get some more money. They conned me into going upstairs on the elevator and when I got up there, there wasn’t nothing but doctors and nurses up there. They were in a little hatch back Civic and it was another time I met them three and they took me up there. It was when miss Hardin was working at the bank and she noticed it. I told that little man, you just get me up to that police station, and he wouldn’t do it. He just took me to Chris’s Restaurant. That lady up there said she wished she had got their tag number. They got away and I never did see them no more.

“They fooled me by telling me that they were going to go to a judge and get me some more money (that was the $300). I didn’t have no better sense than to believe them. They had me take my money out of the bank.”

“Not long after that there was a woman named Susan came up one night when it was raining. She knocked on the door and I knew her so I let her in. She went to the bathroom and I forgot I had a pocketbook back there with some money in it, and she locked the door and stole my money out of it. She came in here acting so calm and everything and said ‘What did Jesus say about helping the needy?’ and I said, ‘You don’t argue with me about Jesus, You get yourself out the door or I’ll have somebody put you out of here.’  I didn’t know she stole my money ‘til she left and I didn’t have but three one dollar bills left in my pocketbook. She had asked me if she could spend the night with me, but I wouldn’t let her. She got up and I shoved her on out the door.”

“Three old colored boys came up over there one time. I pushed all three of them out the door and told them to get away from here. They said they were visiting their grandmother out in Hootersville. I told them I didn’t care who they were visiting and I shoved them on out the door.”

“When I first moved here, there wasn’t a light on this street. There was just a light up at the churchyard and on people’s porches. One night I had to go to the bathroom real bad. There was an old tall vine out here and it was dark and I couldn’t see. I thought it was an old man out there. I thought ‘if I move, that old man will see me.’ Then a car came by and the headlights shone on it and I saw it was an old vine – and me about to wet on myself! I had waited the longest, thinking there was a man out there.”

About the Photographs: The pictures above were taken in the Five Points South area where Dorothy often walked in her excursions as she did her shopping and banking

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Wednesdays with Dorothy: Finding Domestic Harmony

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When I was in graduate school in California, one night I happened to see the TV movie, “Like Normal People.” It was a true story based on the book by the same title by Robert Meyers. Meyers tells about his brother, Roger, who is mildly retarded and who falls in love and marries Virginia who also has metal disabilities.  The movie portrays the struggles faced by Roger and his family as they try to deal with his disabilities and it highlights attitudes that existed in society back in the 1970s about romance in regard to people with developmental disabilities. (You can view a scene from the movie that presents this romantic struggle here. A newspaper article about the real life couple can be found here).

I was very moved by the cinematic portrayal that I saw, having no idea that five years down the road I would be working with people with developmental disabilities.  At the St. Andrew’s Foundation, we based our habilitation programs on Wolf Wolfensberger’s concept of normalization, meaning that we tried to allow each resident to live as independently as possible and to enjoy the normal routines and rhythms of life. Forming romantic relationships and domestic partnerships is part of the normal rhythm of life.  Dorothy, by the time I came to know her, had settled into what seemed to be a happy routine living by herself in her apartment. When we had discussed her life at Partlow, I had asked her if she had any boyfriends there.  Later when we were talking about her life in the community, I asked her if she had ever considered getting married once she had left the institution. The story she told had all the drama and humor one would expect when recounting a romantic relationship.

Dorothy sitting on her front porch

“There was a time when I thought about getting married.  When I met up with Elmus, I thought he was a real distinguished gentleman. I come to find out a couple of years later what kind of distinguished gentleman he was. He wasn’t nothin’ but a drunk, and all he wanted was money and whiskey and whatever. He stayed with me one night. He slept in the other room [when I was still at the group home]. They found out about it and told him he couldn’t stay there, that that was under the Mental Health Authority.

He said he had been at Bryce Hospital. I met him when I was at ORC (Occupational Rehabilitation Center).”

“I thought about getting married and then I thought, well fitter, if I wound up marrying somebody and they care nothing more for you than anything, what good would that do?  So Elmus, he got mad and broke up with me. I wouldn’t let him have a twenty dollar bill. He ended up marrying Rebecca.  Later on, he claimed that him and Rebecca didn’t have no place to stay. They came down here and wanted to stay with me and I wouldn’t let ‘em. He and Rebecca got married and had their wedding reception at the old parish hall.  Rebecca wanted Elmus to tote her across the floor [threshold], and he couldn’t even hardly pick her up. One of her shoes fell off her foot. They had got married down at the courthouse. He was in his old work clothes and she got married in an old sweatshirt and a pair of blue jeans. I didn’t go to their wedding, but I went to the reception.

“Later on Elmus told me, 'I married Rebecca and she don’t even know how to cook or clean or nothing else.'  I told him well he made his own bed, now sleep in it. And I couldn’t marry him no how, if I had they would’ve stopped my check, I reckon. Later on, I was glad and thankful that I wasn’t the one that married him.” 

~   ~   ~

Dorothy had talked before about preferring to live by herself rather than sharing space with a roommate. She seemed to be one who had discovered that her own domestic happiness came with being single.  Next week we will hear Dorothy talk about some of the frustrations she encountered living on Birmingham's Southside.

Inside her apartment on her way to a party

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Wednesdays with Dorothy: "Finding My Own Apartment"

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Even though I first met Dorothy when I was working at the St. Andrew’s Foundation, she had already moved out of our group homes and had been living in her own apartment for several years.  One of the ways our clients were able to move out on their own and afford their own apartments was by way of subsidized housing through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  Apartments had to pass inspection to be qualified for federal subsidy, which was a good thing in that it insured our clients of finding affordable housing that was up to standard. 

I knew how much Dorothy liked her apartment and how well-kept her living quarters were, but I wanted to find out from her how she came to reside in her small Southside apartment. I asked her to fill me in during one of our conversations:

Dorothy Burdette
(photo taken about the time
she moved to her apartment)

When I moved in to my apartment here, it was March the 1^st, 1980. I had seen the rent sign, so I got somebody to come down here with me. I had to put a hundred dollar deposit down and then it took about two weeks for them to fix it up and I moved in here. A couple of men at Glen Iris Baptist Church helped me move my things in. I started coming to Glen Iris when I was in my first apartment with Virginia. I was down in Five Points and I met this lady who told me about Glen Iris, and that’s how I started going there.

I found this apartment one time when I was walking from church. There was a ‘For Rent’ sign out on the corner. Then I found out that Boothby owned it. A man named Mr. Banks let me in to see the apartment. I had to put a hundred dollar deposit down, and there was a lady at the church that helped me with the rest of it. Me and her became good friends. The kitchen was a mess and the bathroom was a mess. They had an old double sink and I mean I had to clean it up and scrub it. I thought I never would get through. Since then they painted in here one time, some of the paint is peeled off. I’ve been here in this apartment thirty years now.  I used to have to go way up on Highland, way up on the hill, to pay my bill.  I would walk up there every month to pay my bill. Now my friend Lana has it fixed so I pay my rent on line direct from my bank account.

I’ve really been through a lot of messes here – water and everything else. Now it ain’t so bad like it used to be. Water used to leak out of the ceiling and drip down here. I’d have to get up in the cold night to get water out of the bathroom. A water drain busted in the kitchen and it really was a mess.  When I first came here [to this apartment] there was garbage in the back porch that had done got molded. This whole place was in a mess and I had to clean it up.

Keeping house
(photo by Marvin Clemmons)

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Wednesdays with Dorothy: Making the Transition from Group Home to Apartment

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St. Andrew's Episcopal Church
(our offices were in the Parish Hall)

“Hi, Charlie. How you doin’?” Dorothy greeted me as she came into my office. 

“I’m doing fine, Dorothy,” I replied, “How are you?”

“I’m purty good. It’s kinda cool out there today. I took my time comin’ over here. I wanted to wait ‘till the traffic died down before I left the house.” 

This was the day for Dorothy to pick up her Food Stamps. She would always come by the office for one of us to give her a ride down to the Food Stamp Office.  Dorothy lived five or six blocks away from the St. Andrew’s Foundation office. She usually walked everywhere she went and would often come by the office for various things such as help with paying bills, or getting a ride to an appointment.

“Charlie, I brought you and Harry and Edsel some Hershey bars – and they’re still fresh. I just got them this morning.” 

“Thank you Dorothy, that was very kind of you.” I said. “I’ll enjoy that later this afternoon.” 

There were several of our former clients who were living in their own apartments in the Southside neighborhood. They were among the earliest to come out of Partlow State School as a result of the court order in the Wyatt v. Stickney class action lawsuit against the State Mental Health Department. One of the things that made the work of the St. Andrew’s Foundation successful was that our office was not only in close proximity to the group homes, it was also near enough to the various apartment buildings were our graduates, like Dorothy, resided. They were technically no longer under our care, but we had a relationship with them and they knew they could come to us anytime they had a question or a problem. Each of our “graduates” had a case manager with the state mental health department, but the St. Andrew’s Foundation was there to provide continuing support for them even though there was no financial remuneration. We were essentially providing volunteer services, but it was for people we knew and cared about. They had a history with us and a trust of friendship. It was that relationship that helped them to live successfully in the community.

Toward Independent Living

Before Dorothy and the others were able to move into their own apartments, they had to be taught some basic independent living skills.  After they had mastered those basic skills, they would live in a supervised apartment and would be evaluated prior to moving into their own apartment in the community. In my conversations with Dorothy years later, she recalled those days of transition into the community.  

The Women's Group Home (left) next door
 to the Intermediate  Group Home (right)

“I was at the group home for a few years before I moved into that first apartment.  When I was at 1116 [the Intermediate Group Home], Debbie (she used to live in the group home), she came in with several other people. They started putting down mattresses in the floor. We called Alice (one of the group home staff) and she called Francis (Saint Andrew’s Foundation Director). They told them that they could not stay there. Another time, Elmus came over and they had to tell him he couldn’t stay.”

“When it came time for me and Virginia to move into our own apartment, we were delayed because Virginia wasn’t quite ready, and they wouldn’t let us move until we were both ready. It didn’t work out, because I left her and she couldn’t manage.  I lived there about six months, I guess, before I moved out.”

“When I moved out from the group home and shared that apartment with Virginia, I didn’t like living with her because she fussed and cussed all the time.  I went out and left her; I moved to another apartment with another roommate.  I think I was there about two or three months then I moved in here.  I lived with Virginia in that apartment for six or seven months. Her sister came and got her and took her back home with her.”

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Next time Dorothy will tell us about how she found her apartment and what it was like moving into the community.

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Wednesdays with Dorothy: Freedom to Shop

(This is part of a series. For Table of Contents go here)

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One of the buildings at Partlow State School (photo by Naaman Fletcher)

Finding Appropriate Care

At the time of the Wyatt v. Stickney case, there were “over 3,000 residents living in overcrowded and inhumane conditions who had no legal alternative.”(1) Many of those residents were rather high functioning mildly retarded people who were even used by the mental health system to help run the institution. As Dorothy has recounted, they were called upon to help with the care of many of the severely handicapped residents and were enlisted to do the washing, cleaning, and cooking alongside employees and always without pay. Those at the "Boy's Colony" did the agricultural work that brought in income to the institution.(2)  It was these residents who surely knew that they were being denied options in life that they wanted to take part in.

On the other hand there were the severely handicapped residents who were warehoused and abused at the hands of poorly trained employees supervising the “high-grade” residents who participated in the care of the “low-grade” residents. In those days, parents of severely handicapped children were routinely advised by medical professionals that institutional care was the best option for their children, not realizing the detrimental warehousing conditions of those very institutions.

When I was Program Director at the St. Andrew’s Foundation, part of my duties included gathering information about new residents coming into our group homes. I will never forget the conversations I had with parents, almost always mothers, about their adult children with developmental disabilities. On one occasion, a mother described how she had been assured by the doctor that Partlow was the right place for her eight-year-old son, and how she watched as a staff person took her son’s hand and lead him away on the day he was admitted. My own daughter was around five years old at the time. I thought of how I could not bear to think of placing her, with her normal coping skills in some institution away from home, yet so many who lacked those very skills, were routinely institutionalized “for their own good.” We cannot minimize the hardships faced by parents of children with developmental disabilities. As a society we must offer resources to help. We must not, however, resort to insufficient means of caring for those children and their families.

Adventures in Shopping

Dorothy Burdette loved to shop, perhaps more than any other activity. When talking about her experiences at Partlow State School in juxtaposition to her life outside the institution, shopping was often the big comparison in her mind. At Partlow there was no freedom to leave the campus, no freedom to make decisions, no freedom to shop. Here are some of Dorothy’s adventures in shopping when she was finally able to leave the institution.

Dorothy Burdette

“Robbie worked at the group home. He made me mad one time. He said, ‘You owe me a cup of coffee, and I gave you a ten dollar bill.’ I said, ‘I didn’t ask for no money from you Robbie and furthermore, I don’t owe you no coffee! You owe me some!’ And later on he did get me a cup of coffee.

“What happened was, he took me to get something for my birthday, and he wouldn’t let me get it. It made me mad with him.  It turned out I didn’t have enough money – I was ten dollars short. We ended up going to Woolworth’s and getting some coffee.”

 “[When I needed to go shopping] I used to go downtown by myself half the time. I remember one time I went with Jim when he worked there. I got some of them week day panties and some of those soup labels – they used to make them like what came on Campbell’s Soup cans- and I got some of them. Cathy said they were for little bitty young ‘uns and I didn’t have any sense getting things that were not big enough for me. She told me I didn’t know how to buy the right size. It made me mad, and I told her, she didn’t know what I didn’t have, and I’d get what I wanted to and it wasn’t none of her business.”

 “I liked to make my own decisions about what I bought. When I was at Partlow, we couldn’t go out shopping, and we couldn’t make decisions about the clothes we wore or the things we bought. For our clothes, they would order cloth for the sewing room, then they would sew it into clothes and give ‘em to us. They had different staff that would come in and sew.”

 “Once I was at the group home, I went several times to shop and Cathy would always get mad. She’d say, ‘You always go off and leave us – you don’t wait for us.’ I’d get my cart and away I’d go. She said, ‘Can’t nobody keep up with you, you don’t wait on nobody.’ Usually they would take about two or three of us at a time when we went out shopping. I always went with who I wanted to. I didn’t much care for Cathy, she had a hot temper.”

“I liked the food better [at the group home] that at Partlow, and I liked that I could go with the group home staff to do the grocery shopping.”

“I remember my first Christmas in Birmingham. In the group home, we would go out to do Christmas shopping and to look at all the Christmas lights.”

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References cited:

1. The Legacy of Wyatt , http://www.mncdd.org/parallels2/one/video/wyatt.html
2. Penley, Gary, Della Raye: A Girl Who Grew Up in Hell and Emerged Whole (2002). Pelican Publishing, p. 71.

Photographs:

• The photo from Partlow State School was taken by Naaman Fletcher years after the institution was closed down. Naaman's photos are featured on his blog What's Left of Birmingham at http://leftbirmingham.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html .
• The photo of Dorothy was taken about the time she left Partlow. It was one she kept on her dresser in her apartment.

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