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"You don't train people to get ready to go out in the community; you take a risk and let them go and see where their strengths are." From 1973 through 1976, the Deinstitututionalization Project gave residents at Muscatatuck State Developmental Center…

It was a "stark" and "demoralizing" environment. From 1977 to 1980, Randy Krieble worked at Muscatatuck State Hospital and Training Center, as it was known at the time. In this video excerpt from a 2012 interview, he shares what a day in the life of…

The Sweetest Little Boy I Ever Knew: A Handmade History for an Institutional Life tells the story of a baby orphaned with disabilities in Nashville, Tennessee at the end of World War II. Despite the loving effort of Edith Mumpower, an older woman who…

"People coming into the business today, I can't imagine them seeing the advancement and the progress that we saw." Randy Krieble talks about witnessing the evolution of institutional custody and control of people with disablities into…

"When I started in 1977, when people were admitted they brought with them what was called their death bag." The bag contained the clothing that residents of New Castle State Hospital were to be buried in. Sue Beecher recalls her employment at the…

“I came back on Monday and one of the clients had a broken limb and nobody knew how it had occurred,” explains Sue Beecher of a visit to Muscatatuck State Developmental Center. In 1998, Sue was working for Indiana Protection & Advocacy and was…

In 1964, Paul decided to interview at the Fort Wayne State School as a recreation aide. They had football and baseball games, dances, and a summer camp. Although these activities were fun, the experience was different in retrospect. The daily living…

When Ruth Stanley moved to Indiana, she took a job at Fort Wayne State Hospital in 1968. She moved on to Central State Hospital in 1982. Ruth talks about the differences see saw in the two state hospitals. One big difference was the higher turnover…

Dr. Sue Gant has 40 plus years of working in the disability field. As an expert with the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation, Dr. Gant spent the late 1990s through 2008 in Indiana assisting with the closure of New…

“Muscatatuck was decertified and lost their ICF/MR certification that they'd had for about 20 years. And that was considerable revenue loss. And so, a decision was made through some -- a lot of discussion to -- that Muscatatuck would be closed.”…