Recently, a unique mobile rally and car parade commemorated the 33rd anniversary of the closure of Willowbrook Psychiatric Hospital on Staten Island. Opened in 1947, Willowbrook was, by today’s standards, a horrific institution that warehoused people with developmental disabilities, mental illnesses or any other condition that made them look, act or learn differently. For those unfortunate enough to have been born with or develop a disability or mental illness during that era, placement at Willowbrook meant a life of neglect, abuse and horrifying, inhumane conditions.
I have my own personal horror story of how mentally disabled people are treated. When I married Ellen, she had a son, Ricky, who could not speak or cry and who is now blind. I married Ellen because of the love she had for Ricky, who eventually had to be placed in a special school, Wassaic, in upstate New York. That broke our hearts.
A few weeks after we left Ricky there, we went back to visit him. He had lost half his body weight, was wearing four diapers and had a black tongue. We took him to a pediatrician, who cried when he saw Ricky’s condition. He was later placed in another facility, where he was put in a steaming hot tub and scalded.
Ricky is now 62 and living in a group home, where I visit him often. But I can never forget his wretched treatment, or what it did to him — and to all the members of his family, who love him. The unconditional love for a developmentally disabled child is like no other love imaginable.
Thankfully, we have evolved far from that unenlightened time, and have become a more empathetic human race. On Long Island alone, there are about 5,000 people with developmental disabilities living in smaller group homes and receiving care that far exceeds anything we could have hoped for in the past.
Harvey Weisenberg, a longtime resident of Long Beach, served in the State Assembly from 1989 to 2014.