On Christmas Eve, my husband, Buck, came home and said the newspaper he worked for in Philadelphia was closing and all the employees were out of a job. He fairly quickly found a job with United Press in Cleveland.
I found a job with a private adoption agency and was assigned to work with the foster care mothers caring for the babies until they were adopted. Back then the general policy was not to immediately place the newborn infants directly with the adoptive parents but to evaluate the infants for health, growth and fitness for adoption.
I would pick up a four-day-old baby and take it to the foster home. I took the infants back for frequent medical care and exams and recorded their development and growth. My saddest case was of a precious little red-headed baby girl whose head did not grow. She was not considered adoptable but was loved and wanted by her foster parents. Adoption in this case was strictly considered against the rules. I left soon after, so I have often wondered what happened.
Buck wanted to get back to New England, so he took a job in Manchester, New Hampshire, with the Union Leader newspaper owned by well-known but controversial, publisher William Loeb.
I took a job with the state’s Child Welfare Department in its protection section. I can tell you that single mothers do not like to be reported as poor mothers and have some welfare person come to talk with them. Particularly a childless social worker, who had no idea what she was talking about, and a Southerner to boot!
I did love my work, though, as well as the other social workers, two of whom influenced me to become a birdwatcher with their enthusiastic bird reports.
Enough of this nomadic life. We decided to return to my hometown, Columbia, S.C., where Buck took a job with “The Columbia Record” and later “The State.” I began work at the SC State Hospital on Jan. 1, 1960. A good omen! The first day was a holiday.
The State Hospital was at full capacity, and many patients had been there for years. New and more effective drugs developed during World War II were making marked improvements in mental health patients’ behavior and recovery.
I started at the reception desk in the grand old Babcock Building. Families would come in to inquire about their relatives and give information. I would talk with the ward nurse and get a report. Often, the family would come by after a visit with questions and complaints, asking for a prognosis, and frequently asking about a patient’s release. Sometimes, however, they would request the patient not be released.
I later worked as a ward social worker with individual patients, nurses, doctors and family members for treatment and release planning.
By the late 1960s, many mental health patients were functioning very well, lived in open wards and even had jobs in the hospital. Many of them had been successful in the past, with a good education, but after years of illness had lost a lot, were no longer close to family and just had nowhere to go. I had a chance to work with many of them in my job as director of the Patient Advisory Council (PAC).
PAC was a program much like a student council in a high school. It was made up of representatives from the higher-functioning patients in the open wards. I helped with their meetings where they aired grievances, made suggestions, and elected their representatives to PAC.
We did wonderful things in PAC – we planned talent shows, plays, good citizenship campaigns and held mock voting in the state and national elections. We brought in speakers on popular topics whose presentations were attended by almost half the patients in the hospital. PAC eventually took over writing the monthly newsletter for the entire hospital.
The 12 years I spent working with patients at the state hospital were meaningful and worthwhile. It was not just part of my life’s history. It was part of a history of the times.
Jeanette Smith, 96, a Blythewood resident, has been active in the community’s civic affairs for over 50 years. Her column was formerly called The View from 96.