Tales Of Fairfield Hills: Taking The Bad With The Good

By Nancy K. Crevier

(This is the eighth in a series of Tales of Fairfield Hills, stories shared by local residents who worked and lived there when the property was a functioning psychiatric institution. Now owned by the Town of Newtown and being re-created, the property’s past has been the subject of stories, some of which may be tainted with truth, some which may be purely fabrication. These tales, though, come from the hearts of those who knew it best.)

Registered Nurse Donna Bowe considers the nearly 30 years that she spent as an employee of Fairfield State Hospital as “the time of her life.”

Just 25 years old when she started working there in 1969, Ms Bowe was assigned to the geriatric unit. “I was never afraid of any of the patients,” she said. “Oh, there were times people got hurt, but I never did. The old folks were warehoused there. It was sad. They were victimized, and so was the staff, by financial economics. They received just custodial care, because we were so understaffed. We cared for the patients, and we mopped and buffed the floors, and folded laundry. We did what we could for them,” said Ms Bowe.

When the director of nursing, Mr Boughton, approached her to oversee a detox and alcohol program in the 1970s, she was pleased to do so. “That challenged me. It was a good job. I worked three days a week and I had three kids at the time, so that was great. It was a good salary with very good benefits, and they educated me. How could I say no?” she asked.

Before the implementation of the drug and alcohol program, said Ms Bowe, not much was done for people suffering from addictive behaviors. “Nobody wanted to work with them in Cochran House. They were just considered drunks and throw-away people.”

Starting the program was a “baptism by fire,” she said. There was a huge learning curve, as a program like this had not been undertaken before. “Inch by inch, we grew. I hired people who already worked at Fairfield Hills, and had the education, but weren’t being used to suit their abilities. They were better suited to this program.”

Through education, family therapy, and social work, patients improved and many eventually ceased to be on a merry-go-round of hospital stays and relapses. “We became very well known for our treatment program in the area,” said Ms Bowe, using very few medications, and teaching addicts to deal with the anxieties that led them to abuse substances. Many of the recovered patients have gone on to open their own clinics or to work in programs in the surrounding communities, she said.

Working As A Team

“I worked just 40 hours a week. I loved the patients, and I loved the people I worked with. We worked as a team,” she said. Knowing that her co-workers were there to back her up is one big reason she felt fearless in an environment with many unstable people. “For example, we had one guy who would come in, and we knew he was violent when he was drunk. So a team of us would go together to bring him upstairs. If there was a Code 99, everybody came! We had pool balls thrown at us, some of the patients could get rough, but it was just part of the job,” recalled Ms Bowe.

Staff and patients were like family, she said. “We would get patients clothes if they were being discharged and needed clothing. If a patient needed a coat, or hat, or mittens, someone had them and would give them to the patient. If they liked candy, we’d buy them candy. For the little extras, the staff went into their own pockets and gave it to [the patients],” she said. On Thanksgiving Day and Christmas, the staff made sure to prepare a holiday meal for the patients. “We did what we could for them. For the most part, they knew we were on their sides,” she said.

The alcohol unit broke up in the 1980s, said Ms Bowe, and she was placed in Canaan House, caring for the chronically mentally ill. “They all made me sad. You gave them what you could, and your time, when you could. But one nurse could be responsible for 90 patients. It was understaffed, but it was a good and kind staff. I never,” she said, “ever saw any signs or heard of anyone being abused.”

Chauffeuring groups of patients through the tunnels between buildings was a regular part of her job, and one that she did all by herself. “We had no cellphones then, no beepers even. I look back on it now and say, ‘What on earth would we have done if anyone attacked us?’ There was no one to help us. But I never had an incident. I guess I was the authority figure, and if you were good to the patients, they were good to you.

“We never saw ghosts in the tunnels, even late at night. Remember, [the hospital] was built in the 1930s, and it was probably a horrible, horrible place back then. I believe in ghosts, but I never heard of anyone seeing one there,” Ms Bowe said.

The last four years that she worked at Fairfield State Hospital, until it was closed in 1995, Ms Bowe worked with the adolescent unit. “It was a wonderful place, with a wonderful staff. A lot of the young people were there for depression, or because they were trying to hurt themselves,” she said. She considers the adolescent program to have been highly successful. “I still see some of my patients around, and they’re doing well now,” she said.

Closing Fairfield State Hospital was the “grand idea” of the state, said Ms Bowe. “The plan was to close Fairfield Hills, and have the patients in area communities in supervised group homes. That worked for some, but not everyone. So where did they go?” Some became homeless, she said, and others turned to crime, or became violent and ended up at Garner Prison. “A lot of our patients who had relied on the drug and alcohol program ended up in jail. Why,” she wondered, “did it have to be all or nothing? Why did it have to either be open or closed, with no happy medium?” Even one building left to assist people who really could not get by on their own would have helped, she said.

“But for my experience, I was very lucky to work where I did and to work with the people I did,” said Ms Bowe. “I’m very proud of what we did there.”

Student Nurse

Doris Travis was a student nurse at Fairfield Hills in the late 1950s, and at that time, she said, there were very few medications available for the patients. Tub treatments, lobotomies, electric shock, and even insulin shock were the accepted treatment at the time. “I had to assist in the electric shock treatments, sometime 30 in a row,” she recalled, and it was successful in calming patients, for the most part.

It was also as a student nurse that Ms Travis met her husband-to-be, Gene, who worked in the maintenance department at Fairfield State Hospital. “There was some kind of café up the hill, where Walgreen’s is now, and a lot of us that worked at Fairfield Hills would hang out there. That’s where I met Gene,” she said. It was not terribly uncommon, said Ms Travis, for nurses to find the loves of their lives in other Fairfield Hills employees.

“I remember one of my classmates tried to impress one of the male aides on the ward. She picked up what she thought was an empty tray of food from a patient, and dumped it all over herself. She did end up marrying the guy, though,” said Ms Travis.

Even as a young nurse, she was not afraid of the patients, she said. “I did have one experience: there was a woman who had to stay in her room. But one day as I was walking by, she grabbed my hair and cap and gave it a good pull; then she jumped back in her room!”

She returned to Fairfield Hills in 1958, after she became an RN, and spent more than 25 years caring for patients in nearly every building, starting out in the geriatric unit in Greenwich House. From there, Ms Travis moved on to Kent House, the men’s unit.

“At first, I worked in the medication room — I was locked in, of course — putting up the meds for six wards, all three shifts,” she said. She moved up to the sick ward in Kent House after that.

“I liked the patients there. I think the men respected the white uniform. There was one man that I think had a crush on me. He used to write me letters, and even sent a couple to my house,” said Ms Travis. “We had groups that we facilitated, and they taught me how to play pinochle. I had a number of patients who would follow me around and want to help me. I think some of them appreciated the time we could spend with them,” she said.

She remembered one patient, Henry, who used to escape frequently. “He wanted to go home. One afternoon he got out of Cochran House. The ambulance driver had left the keys in the vehicle, and Henry got in it and got all the way to Torrington. He was laughing when they brought him back,” Ms Travis recalled.

The security guards were good friends and real rascals, Ms Travis said. “They could be devils. They let us up on the roof to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. I don’t think we were supposed to be up there. Another time,” she said, “The security guards got hold of an Easter Bunny a patient had given me. I don’t know how they got in my car, but there it was, in the driver’s seat, when I went out after my shift,” she laughed.

It was while she worked at Kent House that she became pregnant with her first child, and the men on the staff threw her a baby shower.

Working in the women’s wards was actually more challenging than working with the male patients, said Ms Travis. “The women were a little wild. One used to stick pins in herself, just to get her way, or to get attention,” she said.

Staff was very supportive of each other, and of the patients, Ms Travis recalled. “I had an employee at Greenwich House who would bring in overly ripe bananas. When the ice cream came up — which was made right there on campus — she would mix it all up for her patients. They loved that. Another girl, and her husband who worked in the mailroom, would bring in little snacks for the patients. Others,” said Ms Travis, “brought them books and things.”

Not Enough Resources

There were times when understaffing made the job more difficult. “As a supervisor, sometimes I was in charge in the evenings of the whole hospital. I visited every building each night, at least once. There would be a charge nurse in each building. If there was a problem, they would call me, whichever building I was in. I went in and did what I could to help when we didn’t have enough staff,” she said.

“I worked with a lot of the doctors up there, over the years, and they were very good. I liked Dr Ramaschadren. He was in Canaan House when I was working there, and he was a psychiatrist. If you had a medical question, he was always there to explain. He was a friendly little man. I remember one Halloween, I had to have some fun. I came in to work with cat ears on and painted whiskers. Dr Rama thought it was the greatest thing. I’m a little kooky, so I guess I fit right in!” Ms Travis laughed. “I also liked Dr Freedman and his wife, Dr Altman. They were very nice.”

Ms Travis retired in 1989. “There were some crazy things that went on, but the patients were well cared for, and I think most of them were happy,” she said.

Closing Fairfield State Hospital was a horrible decision, in her opinion. “I know they put a lot of patents out, and I know a lot didn’t do well. And,” she added, “for folks who had family [in the hospital], who were then transferred to Middletown, it was a burden then for them to visit. It was sad.”