[NYAPRS Enews] No Longer Anonymous: Gravedigger Gets His Due at a Psychiatric Hospital

[Briana Gilmore]

NYAPRS Note: The NYS Office of Mental Health and a group of passionate advocates resolved a longstanding disagreement last month that will permit the memorial of a Willard Hospital patient in both name and symbolism. The balance-and sometimes clash-between privacy laws and the remembrance of persons with disabilities who were stigmatized and forgotten does not always end so peacefully. See the links in the article below to learn more about the issue.

No Longer Anonymous: Gravedigger Gets His Due at a Psychiatric Hospital
New York Times; Dan Barry, 12/22/2014

Over several decades, an immigrant dug more than 1,500 graves for his fellow patients at Willard State Psychiatric Hospital in upstate New York. He took pride in his shovel's precision. And when he died in 1968, he joined them in anonymity, his grave - like all the others - marked not with a surname on a headstone but by a numbered stake.
That is about to change. After researching the matter, the New York State Office of Mental Health<https://www.omh.ny.gov/>, which oversees some two dozen hospital cemeteries, has agreed to permit a memorial on the grounds to the gravedigger, whose name was Lawrence Mocha.
It is the latest development in a passionate disagreement between the agency, which says that state law protects the privacy of patients with mental illnesses even after death, and a group of volunteers who say the practice only reinforces the prejudices surrounding mental illness. In recent years, these volunteers have worked to uncover the numbered plaques, using shovels and weed killer to remove overgrowth that only underscored the anonymity.
Last month The New York Times<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/us/restoring-lost-names-recapturing-lost-dignity.html> explored the dispute centered on the cemetery of the now-closed Willard facility, in Ovid. A retired schoolteacher named Colleen Spellecy, founder of the Willard Cemetery Memorial Project<http://www.willardcemeterymemorialproject.com/>, has been thwarted by the state in her attempts to erect a memorial at the cemetery in Mr. Mocha's name - using him to represent the 55,000 other patients with mental illnesses buried anonymously in New York, including more than 5,800 at Willard.
Other states have restored names to graves on institution grounds, and the advocacy organization Mental Health America<http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/finding-help> has said that the process helps to reduce prejudice and discrimination. But efforts to change the confidentiality law have failed in New York, although the Office of Mental Health has said that it would allow the use of names if family members of the dead gave their consent.
Last weekend, John Allen, special assistant to the commissioner on mental health, informed Ms. Spellecy by letter that the agency had found a relative of Mr. Mocha's, and that the relative had been provided with news clippings and other information about the issue. "I am pleased to report that the family had given their consent to proceed with a memorial for Lawrence," Mr. Allen wrote.
Mr. Allen also wrote that he would be in touch soon to discuss the possibility of a general memorial to honor all those buried at Willard, as well as plans for a multidenominational ceremony to reconsecrate the cemetery grounds and dedicate the Mocha memorial. He added that the state would like to invite the Mocha family to this ceremony and would assist in travel arrangements.
A spokeswoman for the Office of Mental Health said that these actions did not reflect a change in policy. Still, Ms. Spellecy expressed joy, saying that, among other actions, she would be providing the state with information about 20 families who want the names of their loved ones included in any memorial.
Ms. Spellecy also said that the wording for the gravedigger's plaque had already been written - although the two most important words are these: Lawrence Mocha.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/us/no-longer-anonymous-gravedigger-gets-his-due-at-a-psychiatric-hospital.html?_r=0
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