Fernald fight all about money

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

For the state it's about money. The Fernald School sits on hundreds of acres of prime property just off Route 128 in Waltham. It's a gold mine waiting to be tapped.

For the families of Fernald residents, it's about a place they've called home for 30, 40, 50 years. It's their son's home, their sister's, their daughter's.

Home is a place where people know who you are. It's not only a house or an apartment or even a room. For the old, the sick, the infirm - for the residents at Fernald - home is a bed, their bed, their place by the window.

But beds and people and everyday routine are not on any spreadsheet. Money is.

What isn't factored into the budget is human emotion. The emotional cost of picking people up and moving them around as if they are chairs. One can go here. And one can go there. What difference does place make? As long as people have a roof over their heads.

Yes, but . . .

Place is important. A bed is important. Old people in nursing homes know this. They've lost one home already. And they worry that if they are hospitalized for too long, they won't be able to go back to their current home - not that they like it but it's theirs, one of the few things that still is.

So they worry that they'll be sent to another facility, or to a room down the hall. It won't be their room and their bed.

It saves the state money to move people. Money is the end all.

Fernald School has a bad reputation. For decades, children were locked up there, poor and uneducated children, children with mental retardation and children with no place to go. They were labeled. They were abused. Some were treated like lab animals.

This is its history.

Its present is quiet attrition. Fernald School now is home to a dwindling population of severely disabled residents who are dying off. There have been no new admissions for more than 25 years. This is a home on life support.

The state wants to pull the plug now and relocate its fewer than 300 residents to community settings and nursing homes. This makes fiscal sense.

But the state doesn't understand that closing Fernald is like shutting down a small town. Fernald is a village of people with a shared history, people who have been together a long time, a community not just of residents but of families who depend on one another.

The residents at Fernald are old and their parents (those who still have parents) are very old. Relocation, change, a disruption in routine - these are hardships.

Gov. Mitt Romney insists that the residents would be well served in a community setting. Some of them might be. But many would wind up in nursing homes.

Government is supposed to exist to help the neediest. Who is needier than Fernald's residents? All the families are asking for is time. Let our children and our siblings live out their lives where they are, they plead. Consolidate space. But don't cut back on services. Just, please, wait a little while longer. Then sell the property. That's what they're begging. They've asked a federal judge to intervene.

The buildings at Fernald are old and the concept of institutional care is old, too. Everything changes. Except how people feel.

My grandmother lived in a run-down building in a city that was getting shabbier by the day. Come to the country, my mother begged. Come live with us.

My grandmother said no. This was her home. She stayed.

Everyone's home is different. But everyone's home is the same. It's the place you cling to, the place where you feel safe, the place where family gathers and in the end the place you want to be.