A Hundred Year Story, Part 48

Breaking Up a Fight; Visit to an Insane Asylum

By Elton Camp

(For those coming in late, this is in the mid sixties when I was a teacher in a large
high school in Georgia.)

Among faculty duties was to monitor hallways before and after school and even
during the two-minute break between classes. We were even asked to keep the
bathrooms checked. The task existed in theory only. None of us did it. One time,
however, I had to break up a fight. It was one morning before the start of homeroom. I
was at work in my office. A student rushed in with an exciting report.

“There’s a fight going on in the hallway. You better come quick.”

Since the school had no security officers, I deemed it my responsibility to

intervene. The altercation was taking place only a few feet from my classroom door. It
was between two tall, muscular boys. Either of them could easily have overpowered me.
Students were crowed around to cheer them on. I yelled out an order. “Stop that right
now!”

It did no good. They continued to exchange heavy blows. If it continued one or

both would be severely injured. I shoved in between the two, placed a hand on each
boy’s chest, and pushed them apart. It wasn’t too hard to do, I think they really wanted
somebody to make them stop, but neither wanted to appear to lose. “If you hit me, I’ll
have you both arrested,” I warned.

Boys who were watching the fight quickly seized them both and moved them far
enough apart that the fight didn’t pick up again. The crowd quickly dispersed. I went
back to my office without any attempt to determine their names or take them to the
principal’s office.

Mr. Dollar somehow learned about the incident. The next morning, during
homeroom, he came to my classroom door and called me into the hallway. “Who were
those boys fighting in the hall?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I truthfully responded. “I was
busy and only did what was needed to stop it.” “Well, next time, get their names and let
me know,” he instructed. He didn’t try to make a big deal out of my failing to follow
what he seemed to consider proper protocol. Nothing in the faculty policy manual spoke
to fights, so there really wasn’t much he could say.

It was the next year before I learned who one of the boys was. I had Alex Byars
in my advanced biology class. He and a couple of other students sometimes came by
after school to discuss scientific ideas. Somehow, the subject of the fight came up. “I
was one of them,” he admitted with a sheepish grin. Since he was such a nice boy, I was
glad that I’d handled it in such a way that he didn’t get into trouble.

My promotion to department head became possible when Mr. Thomas finally

retired. He’d taught chemistry at the school for decades and advanced to department
chair mainly because of longevity. He’d long ago become incapable to serve in that
capacity, yet nobody wanted to demote him.

It would’ve been hard for the principal not to give me the position. I’d been in
charge of putting on a district science fair the year before. The fair was a massive
undertaking. I did far better with it than anyone else had in the past. Responsibility for
the district science fair rotated among the science faculty of the three white high schools.

It was actually Mr. Thomas’ responsibility, but he wasn’t capable of doing it or

much of anything else. He should’ve retired years before he did. “Do you think you
might see to the science fair?” the principal asked with some degree of trepidation. It
was an awkward situation.

“Yes, but I’ll do it in Mr. Thomas’ name,” I responded. “I don’t want him to feel
embarrassed.”

Sometimes a good deed is rewarded. That was the mechanism for my

advancement. The division chairmanship that I received significantly enhanced my
resume and likely was a factor in my getting employed at Northwest Junior College.

It was the first year of integration of the science fair, so that complicated matters.
I was able to bring it off without friction. The brochure that was always produced had
been of quite low quality, but I was able to turn out one that had a professional look. The
county coordinator of science instruction and I had done all the work, but at the banquet
that followed, we weren’t recognized nor were we seated at the head table. The persons
who had done nothing, including Mr. Thomas, took the prominent positions. We didn’t
care. We were just glad it was over. We got a free meal at a fancy place out of it. The
dining place was the Black Angus out toward Ft. Benning. At the time, it was the best
steak house in Columbus.

The last year I worked there, the principal assigned me as advisor to the Allied
Medical Careers Club. Membership was for students who planned to enter any of a
number of medical fields. The ladies auxiliary of the Columbus Medical Association
arranged for various tours and speakers, some of them actually interesting. As the wives
of doctors, they could get what they pleased.

We visited a hospital pathology lab where dissections were performed. The lady
pathologist held up a blackened human lung that she’d removed from a corpse. “This is
what happens to people who smoke,” she warned.
 One of the more cocky boys slumped and fainted flat on his back on the floor.
When we got him up, he had blood all over his sweater. That set off a chain reaction of
faints among the students. I began to feel a bit queasy myself. The doctor’s wife and I
were glad when the ordeal was over. “I’ll never arrange for students to see a place like
that again,” she declared with determination. “That scared me half to death.”

The club field trip that stands out the most was by a Trailways bus to the mental
institution at Milledgeville, Georgia. At that time it held over 12,000 inmates, and so was
the largest insane asylum in the world.

In past years, the inmates had been used in numerous experimental medical
procedures, including electric shock and prefrontal lobotomies. The lobotomies involved
operations on their brains. In the early stages of development of the drastic operation, no
anesthesia was used and little attention was paid to employing sterile equipment. The
patients usually died. By the time we visited, such things were long past.

When we arrived I was surprised to find that it looked a lot like a college campus.
It boasted many elegant buildings and well-kept grounds. If fences existed, they didn’t
let us get into those areas. The facility expected us and arranged an orientation meeting.
There we were divided into small groups to be escorted to the various divisions. The
guide of the group I accompanied was pleasant, friendly, and quite surprisingly candid.

“There are many people here who aren’t mentally ill in any way. They perhaps
were, but recovered long ago. We can’t release them because there isn’t anywhere for
them to go. The stigma of mental illness had been so great that their families announced
their deaths and buried weighted caskets. There’s no way they can show up.”

Another guide told of a specific case. “We have a young Orthodox Jewish
woman in our ward. Her parents had her placed here when she converted to Jehovah’s
Witnesses. Orthodox Jews just don’t do that. They’ll let her out only if she promises to
leave the Witnesses, but she won’t agree to it.”

A few years after that, class action litigation ended forced confinements of people
in mental institutions. Milledgeville, along with similar places in other states, was
cleared out and closed.

The flip side of that gain in human rights was a huge increase in homeless people
roaming the streets. Some of the inmates had been turned out with no place to go and no
way to earn a living. Medication could control the condition in most of the patients, but
without institutional supervision, many of them failed to take the prescribed drugs. Some
of the former inmates were so mentally ill that they needed to remain institutionalized for
life. That usually didn’t happen unless they demonstrated that they were a threat to
society when they killed or seriously injured someone.

The guides let us have direct contact with mental patients who were deemed not
to be dangerous. Some of them had compulsive behaviors. For example one woman sat
in a straight hair and rocked toward the wall all day every day. She took breaks only to
sleep, eat and use the bathroom. Others jabbered aloud continuously and exhibited
strange tics. Another woman had a fetish about rings. She moved among us to touch and
turn our rings. “When I get out of her, I’m going to find me a man and have some fun,”
she declared. “I’ve escaped before and I’ll do it again. They can’t watch me all the
time.”

In years past, escapes had been common. Due to the definition of “insanity” in
use at the time, the general practice had been to declare the escapees sane and make no
effort to locate them. The fact that they reintegrated themselves into society was taken as
proof that they weren’t insane anymore.

Others of he inmates seemed totally normal on the surface. They chatted with
sensibly and amiably. It was a strange, disturbing experience. I don’t know what the
students thought about it.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)