|
The Journal News / USA Today Network November 18, 2022 Voters in Stony Point have rejected the latest proposal to sell the grounds at Letchworth Village to land developers. This is good news, but it’s not enough. Real estate investors will soon be back, trying and trying again to wrest this land for the building of houses and businesses, without regard for nature or history, and especially, without respect for the living or respect for the dead. I volunteered at Letchworth Village Developmental Center in the late 1970s, while still in high school. My two summers there had a profound influence on the person I came to be in adulthood, helping an inward-looking teenager grow into an adult who has come to place a special value on the many things that make people different from one another, and also, on the many things that make us the same: our struggles for personal happiness, for emotional fulfillment, for love. But Letchworth isn’t my story. It’s the story of the people who lived there. It was established as a home for the “feeble-minded” in 1911 as an attempt to provide dignity for the lives of its residents, to live amongst the hills and the trees and breathe fresh country air; instead of over-burdening their parents, often so poor, who lacked the means to provide them adequate care; instead of living in degradation in inner city asylums; instead of being murdered in infancy. Many lives were saved, but also, many were destroyed. It was a noble experiment, but it was a failure: under-funding, overcrowding, and poor staff-training culminated in a nightmare scenario for so many, for so long. Things began to improve somewhat in the 1970s, until further cutbacks ended the experiment once and for all in 1996 as the last straggle of residents was moved out, many to community group homes, others to homelessness on the streets of the city. Since its closing, the Letchworth grounds have stood in silent and slow decay. A few buildings have been restored and repurposed, but most have been gradually returning to the elements, their sturdy fieldstone exteriors overgrown with vines, their crumbling interiors—plaster, drywall, asbestos—turning to dust. We establish memorials to commemorate both the great and the tragic. We have Mount Rushmore and we have Wounded Knee. We have the Lincoln Memorial and we have Gettysburg. At Letchworth, we had the many staff who cared deeply for their charges and the many who scarred and betrayed them, and we have all the people who lived here, so many of them deprived of the dignity that was their birthright. The lives saved, the lives lost, the lives fulfilled, the lives wasted; they are here. Letchworth is sacred ground, and should be treated as such. Every effort should be made by the good people of Stony Point, of Rockland County, and of New York State, to preserve Letchworth Village as a memorial park (most buildings may be sealed with their exteriors cleaned), as a museum (a few buildings may be fully restored for educational purposes), and as a place of reflection and nature, to remind us of our past follies, and to prompt us to always, always, try to do better. The last of Letchworth’s former residents will die in the coming decades. Saving these grounds is the least we can do to honor them, and to honor those who preceded them to their graves.
Daniel Silverman is a resident of Rockland County. He is the author of the novel “Letchworth Days.”
|
|||
