Forest Haven Asylum Personal Accounts Collection
In Memorium
The following list of names belong to those known to have passed away at Forest Haven Asylum between 1928 and 1991 due to abuse and/or neglect:
Josephine Gaines • Marjorie Haas • Earl Veit • Donzer Ray Fonville • Marie Dickens • Vernon Brown • Dora Mae Christian • Deborah Lynn Key • Theodore Turner • Ruth Mae Boaze • Richard Smallwood • Cheryl Ann Bush • Patrick Wyman Dixon • Robert Allen Watts • Nancy Williams • Joanne Marie Curtain • Alonzo Fouch • Helen Andrews • Calvin Nielson • Joyce King • Richard Julius Braddy • Joshua Brooks • Viola Tillyer • Ernest Durity • Kevin Paul Turner • Marguerite Spaulding • Brugiere Palmieri • Steven Vasquez • Cecil Gobble • Lee Robert Shipman • Isaac Lloyd Williams • Daniel Bern • James Scott • Reginald Lovette • Antonio McCullers • Betty Tunstall • Lawrence P. Toney • Hazel Harris • Phyllis Mallory • David Abney • Stephen Sellows • Dorothy Simmons • David Wyatt • Peter Chipouras • Grace Marie Arnold • Antonio Silva • Eugene Robinson • John Wesley Hanna • Clara French • Levander Johnson • Male, full name unknown • Eduardo Echaves • Kenny Holmes • Emma Williams • Cassandra Cobb • James Henry Wilson • Henrietta Green • Kenneth Arnold Gavin • Denise Allison Smith • Steve Edward Moore • Melvin Seymore • Fred Brandenburg • Freddie Deperini • Francis Hanfman • Sheila Payne • Louis Parnell • Gloria Marie Davis • Roy Calloway • John Motika • Raynard Olds • Herbert Scott • Sara Walford Martin • Tony Snider • Helena Taylor • Charles Rowley • Kermit Gleaton • Gary N. Thomas • William Hillery • Michael Gilliland • Antonio Lucas • James Fairfax • Lemeka Edon • Eleanor Gleason • James Smallwood • Margaret Marie Bicksler • Hilda Redman • LaVon Green • Christopher Lane • Thelma Goldberg • Henry Laker • Dennis Edward Jackson • Carlis Spears • Nannie Jones • Reginald Murray • Desmond Brown • Hazel Pinkney • A. Rowe • Geraldine Howell • Patrick Dutch • James Dean • Joseph Addison • Annie Williams • V. Bennett
Mattie Hoge: April 2nd, 1912 – September 15th, 1987
Mattie grew up as the deaf and undersized runt of twins to a single mother. At age 7, she entered Maryland School for the Blind at Overlea, also a school for deaf children. Mattie’s mother died when she was 12, at which point she became a ward of the District with her fate in its care.
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At the age of 17 Mattie was declared “feeble-minded” and under period laws committed to Forest Haven. In 1930 the District tested Ms. Hoge and pronounced her “severely retarded,” justifying the institutionalization.
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For 57 years she remained at the site. On June 10, 1987, a judge ordered the District to immediately release Hoge – then 75 – and place her in a Group Home. Recent tests had indicated her IQ could be as high as 95, just below “normal.”
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"WE ARE DEALING WITH AN INDIVIDUAL WHO . . . HAS SPENT 57 YEARS OF HER LIFE INSTITUTIONALIZED, WHEN IN ALL LIKELIHOOD SHE SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN PLACED THERE AT ALL."
– D.C. Superior Court Judge Gladys Kessler
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Hoge was not re-tested until after a Federal lawsuit demanding improvements in care and treatment of Forest Haven residents was filed in 1978. The deaf elderly woman – by this time partially paralyzed from a stroke – told attorneys she had never been tested by someone who could communicate with her.
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In a suit filed on Hoge’s behalf in 1985, Judge Kessler ordered the city to create a timetable for moving the wheelchair-bound Hoge from Forest Haven to a Group Home. The District was also ordered to hire staff fluent in sign language, and to pay $55,350 to update the Group Home’s entry so it was wheelchair-accessible.
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Psychologist McKay Vernon testified he examined Hoge and found that her IQ was at the lower end of the normal range. He also said the staff at Forest Haven had failed Hoge by neglecting to place her in an environment where she could communicate with others through sign language.
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"TO DEPRIVE A PERSON OF INFORMATION FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS OF HER LIFE IS, SHORT OF PHYSICAL TORTURE, ABOUT THE WORST THING YOU COULD DO.
– McKay Vernon, psychologist who evaluated Hoge
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Court documents gave the following outline of Mattie’s life: In 1929 Hoge was improperly diagnosed and admitted to the District Training School, the institution as it was known before later being re-named Forest Haven. On Nov. 4, 1930, a psychological test determined her IQ was 34 and that she had a mental age of 5 to 6 years.
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However the documents state “…no accommodation was made for {her} known hearing impairment and sign language was not used by the examiner.” Hoge was not tested again for 48 years and no court reviewed her commitment from 1930 to 1984.
She suffered from the debilitating effects of a stroke she had in 1966 and used a wheelchair ever since. She had a hearing impairment that worsened over time; now she was completely deaf.
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After her mother died in 1924, Mattie Hoge was placed in a foster home. Her foster parents reported she was difficult to control, and in 1930, at age 17, she was placed in Forest Haven because her father “was not financially able to care for her.”
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Since at least 1972 Hoge had been housed “with residents who are severely and profoundly retarded . . . with whom she is unable to communicate at all,” according to court documents; her family argued it had been much longer.
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In 1985 Hoge’s court-appointed lawyers filed a lawsuit asking that Mattie Hoge be released immediately, and that the city pay $5.5 million in damages. The case would take years to maneuver through the legal system, but by June 10th, 1987, a judge acknowledged Mattie was not retarded and ordered her to be released.
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THERE’S NO WAY TO RIGHT A WRONG OF 57 YEARS.
– Donna Waulken, Hoge’s court-appointed guardian
Hoge would enjoy just three months of freedom after her 57-year containment; the 75 year-old passed away on September 15th, 1987.
Five months later, on February 5th, 1988, a D.C. Superior Court jury awarded Hoge’s estate $80,000 in damages.
Virginia Gunnoe: 1909 – 1984
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Virginia Gunnoe was born in the Dominican Republic in 1909. Her family immigrated to Virginia when she was a child, and the household spoke very little English. Gunnoe eventually became a domestic worker in Quantico, and married at 13. By the time she was 24 she had five children.
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It was Typhoid fever which first landed Virginia in the doctor’s office. When doctors subsequently admitted her to Forest Haven in 1933, her children were taken away from her and she was kept at the facility against her will. At the time it was not uncommon to see poverty-stricken non-native speakers labeled “retarded” and institutionalized – especially during the Depression.
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Gunnoe did suffer brain damage as a result of the Typhoid fever, but it was relatively minor and she retained near-complete motor functionality. She was still an accomplished seamstress at the institution – the most skilled resident in the tailoring shop, according to Forest Haven nurse Gwendolyn Walls.
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Virginia’s language barrier earned Ms. Gunnoe the label “moderately retarded” by Forest Haven officials, and like so many other Forest Haven official records – they are missing now.
It wasn’t until thirty years later Hoge’s youngest daughter Mary discovered her mother had not abandoned them, was still alive, and committed at Forest Haven. In 1963 the 32 year-old lobbied officials for her mother’s release: “I kept telling the officials that she wasn’t insane (the legal reason for the incarceration of the mentally handicapped) – but they wouldn’t listen.”
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"ONE OF THE [OFFICIALS] TOLD ME TO NOT WRITE TO HIM ANYMORE."
– Mary Hunter, Virginia’s daughter
Persistent inquiries by the family eventually yielded results. In June of 1978 Federal Judge Pratt signed a consent decree to release 1,000 of the Forest Haven residents to community treatment centers.
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Gunnoe was among those allowed to leave because her family offered her a home. After 45 years of institutionalization, Virginia Gunnoe – by this time aged 69 – was finally reunited with her family.
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She now had six grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren she had never met, in addition to her five children she had not seen since 1933.
Virginia received varying words of encouragement – depending on lucidity of the source – from her fellow residents as she left her Forest Haven cottage for the final time:
“Don’t do anything to come back.”
“Why can’t I get out of here, like her?”