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 tried to keep him from being institutionalized, Tommy Hancock entered Muscatatuck State School in Butlerville, Indiana in 1951 at the age of five. He died there three decades later. The story is accompanied by photos that Edith had assembled into a scrapbook about Tommy's life, before and after his institutionalization.
Published as the cover article of the Summer 2015 issue of Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, Jane Harlan-Simmons authored the article as part of the Indiana Disability History Project. Traces is a magazine published by the Indiana Historical Society. The article was selected as the winner of the Society's 2015 Jacob Piatt Dunn Jr. Award.
