Ron was one of the few that had normal length hair. Most of us had short hair or flat tops.

Tattletale: the "Wayne Saxton" I contacted was not the one.

I remember, after I got out of TCSH, all through the years, when ever the name Ron Larson came to mind, I always pictured the Ron I knew standing inside an archway on the hall, with your back leaning against the inside of the arch. You were always looking down at your shoes or the floor thinking about something.

Its called sit/stand and stare, and I still do it, my mind is always active, I have looked at things and never seen them because my mind was somewhere else.
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Hair was a privilege

ronl wrote:Its called sit/stand and stair, and I still do it, my mind is always active, I have looked at things and never seen them because my mind was somewhere else.
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Hair was a privilege

I'm like that myself. Some call it "Daydreaming", but I'm usually trying to figure something out or thinking about what I'm going to do next.

I found another former patient. I'm not sure of the time factor that she was there. But she will explain that when she's ready to post. She gave me permission to post the message she sent me, well, you'll uderstand when you read this..............
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I'd be glad to write some of my memories but everytime I get too close I end up back in a serious depression and suicidal. I remember the night I ran away from there because my parents told the doctors they didn't want me back home and there weren't any places to send me so I had to stay in TCSH. I ended up spending 2 weeks in seclusion after turning myself in to a police officer in Saginaw. I remember one asian doctor who was raping the teenage girls and for his punishment they just sent him to a male hall as a doctor. I remember how one of the men I had talked to on my way to the canteen was murdered by one of the male employees and how it didn't make the newspapers because TCSH owned the town. I remember having to stand facing the wall for hours over some tiny err in judgement. I remember getting my first black eye from my roommate because I wanted her to comply with the nurses request for lights out because I was afraid of the nurse. There are some kids I remember. I know there was Dorothy (Dot) (she was over 6 feet talk and built to the max and used to get teased by the guys a lot). Then there was Zola - (the one who gave me the black eye - she and Dot used to play the piano and sing a lot). And a Diane, and Judy (she had curly blond hair and a real temper - she'd put her fists thru the chicken wire in the windows. They had to sedate her a LOT). I remember one 5 year old girl who had spent most of her life in a closet. She never would smile and the nurses abused her a lot over it. It was such a lovely place to be in for my 16th birthday.....NOT!!!!

If you want to add any of this to your forum, feel free. I'll try to keep you updated but I work really strange hours and don't have much free time. I turned out to be a workaholic. 100+ hours a week was normal for me until a few months ago when I ended up back in the hospital for depression.

Amy[/color]

Ron, is this the AMY you knew on Hall 7?
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Mike if I can get more info from Wayne I will.. My motherinlaw thought he worked in the childrens wings, but I havent heard that from wayne so I'm not sure.. I'll see what I can find out for you.

Same Amy,
I had the owners of this forum remove the last names of the other kids that was posted, maybe they do not want to be singled out and found.
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There was only 1 Doctor for us kids in the early days until 1969'ish, we had a social worker who always was with Dr. Thill, I do not recall his name thou. I do remember him being nice and he would go out of his way to get stuff, like guitar strings for me, sheet music and top 10 records. There was this other Doctor in training in 68-69, his name was Dr. Vasquez.

I have some pics Ron. I went up there not long ago not sure how to post them My email is amurphy0714@yahoo.com. if ou ell me your e-mail ill send them to you!

Tattletale:
If you haven't deleted the instuctions I sent you for image posting,
would you forward them to Amurphy?.
amurphy0714@yahoo.com

Amurphy, you need to be signed up with "photobucket" for this.

I was at a store yesterday and seen a bottle of Jade East, Than I remembered the Jade East craze which went through Hall-18. I recall that when someone got a bottle of it we all use to wear it and I must have been crazy, this stuff really smelled awful. (Like wet tennis shoes)
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Illegal Drugs:
There was this other Ron in the early days and he was my age, Mike should remember him. He was there before I arrived and he left in about 1967.
One Saturday when I was on hall-20 I seen him driving around Hall-18 in a 1963 Chevy Supper Sport Impala. I got in his car and we went for a ride, He had this tar balls and called it hash. This was the first time I ever smoked illegal stuff, as I recall I was stoned on this sweet tasting stuff by the time we got back to the grounds of TCSH. I remember we ran out of matches and I got the ideal of dropping a small piece of it into his cigarette lighter in the car, this did work, but the lighter got to hot to hold.
Than in the last years There was this other local kid my age and his name was Sherman who was admitted. He use to go into town and get pot/joints from his school friends. I once went to his house and it was real close to the grounds. He took me to some of his friends house and they were a band, called Yellow. They lived in a basement house, it had no house on top of it. I remember it being cold inside this basement house. I also remember they had a headphone amp for the guitar, and I really liked this device, I could play and only I could hear it. They smoked pot too.
Sherman took me to another friends house close to downtown, they had this fattest Basset hound I had ever seen, also the girl's boyfriend was an cartoon artist, and he painted the stairway to the basement with his creations and they smoked pot also. His paintings were real good too. I had a folder with all my songs and I let them read it but I never got it back. It would be a miracle if someone read this and knew these people and they still had my folder.

Mike I sent the directions on...

Hello. I've been following this forum since I found it a couple months ago. I recently went to Traverse City for the film fest, and ended up visiting the old hospital for an event. The place impacted me in a way I never expected. I searched for information on the internet and found this forum.

Thank you to Ron, Mark and now Amy for sharing your experiences. Though heartbreaking, these stories need to be told. It takes tremendous courage. For those of us who survived childhoods that no child should have to, sharing those experiences - bringing it out into the open - will hopefully lift the veil of secrecy and prevent continued abuse of children and adults by people entrusted to take care of them. People need to speak up.

Ron - I look forward to your book. I hope you can find a way to incorporate the experience of the girls in your book. Maybe in time, with Amy's input? If I had been born 10 years earlier I could have been there. I grew up in a troubled home, escaped into drugs, was defiant and ultimately gay. I'm a successful, happy business owner now. But, born just 10 years earlier? Could have been a very different story. With my Irish, feisty personality I would have been in trouble!

Again, thank you so much. I look forward to learning more.

~Peace

Thank You Rita
"WELCOME" To the forum

click image for a full-sized view

Tattletale wrote:Mike I sent the directions on...

Thank You "Tattletale"

Forgotten story:
This was the summer of Love Peace flower power, and I had this friend on hall-18 he was Darrel and he was the piano player I have mentioned with the dark poetry, Well Darrel was into the summer of love stuff that he would not even raise his voice to anyone, a true hippy at heart.
Well there was this gentle giant Wooten, He was the only African American kid on hall-18 at that time, he was 100 pounds over me and at least 1 head taller, One day he started picking on Darrel and it lead to pushing and shoving on him ..... Darrel did nothing except take all Wooten put out, well this was upsetting me because Darrel and I were real close at this time. Than just after school as we were walking up the stairs Wooten grabbed Darrel's foot and tripped him in the stairway, I was 2 steps above Wooten so I was at his height, I no longer could take this repeated abuse from Wooten to my defenseless friend so I reacted and Wooten and myself had a fighting match and the staff let it go on for about 5 minutes before we were separated and forced to sit in those hard wooden chairs across from one another to cool off. I was expecting more punishment but none ever came.
As we were cooling off and may I add the fighting match was a draw. Wooten told me the staff made him pick on Darrel because they wanted to break him of this peace and love stuff that was taking over his whole life. He also told me that I was not in the mix so he never figured me to fight him as he was so big and I was so small. We both became very good friends after that.
Darrel never said thank you for defending him, he acted like it never happened.
May I point out this fight was brought on by the staff and would have never happened. I was just caught up in it by mistake. I did thou surprise everyone with my courage and was never in a fight after that. I proved the Love, Peace, Flower Power did have its limits.