Roy Exum
There are two days a week, this early in the morning at first light, when a white van with a black stripe passes in front of my house. I know where that van is going because I know it provides life. There is a precious woman now in her 40s, her body so twisted with physical and mental horrors since birth that all she can do the other five days a week is to lie in her bed with the TV on. Alone.
She lives in poverty. Her sister, in her 70s, works as a house maid. Her brother, in his 50s, is a sometimes yard man. But twice a week that white van gets to their house, and everybody is up at 6 a.m. to help load the joyous woman in the van, and off to our famous Orange Grove she goes. She cannot talk but I have never seen her that she didn’t have a huge smile on her ever-happy face.
I know too much about her. I am on a two-man committee that is restoring water to the house – yes, water, because the supply lines leak so badly. I have a deep fear, a morbid dread if that fits better, that soon some horribly-misguided idiots are going to take the white van away and steal the only joy that this human being has ever known in her entire life.
The state’s Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities has already announced it will disband Orange Grove’s well-functioning and widely acclaimed Recycling Center in 10 days, forcing its 45 employees to find work in our general population so they will not feel stigmatized or whatever idiotic notion they use as an excuse.
Understand, not a soul among the displaced 45 has a realistic chance of getting a job; it is only some wacko’s way of sending less money to Orange Grove and the 450 people it tries to serve. (Honestly, can you imagine what the insurance rider alone would cost a company that hires in intellectually or physically-challenged employee?)
While no person or organization in the intellectually disabled community has the courage to confront the bullies in Nashville (the retribution alone would be terminal), the word is Orange Grove’s Industrial Training Center is next. Longtime Orange Grove employees are already being laid off. (The kitchen staff is down to three people.) The therapy services have been dissolved. And – get ready for the nausea – effective immediately, Orange Grove’s day program and its children’s services are no longer accepting new clients. This is utter madness!
Orange Grove insiders, well aware the urgent need for greater children’s services (autism alone has needs that cannot be met) and day care are hardly going away for the families of such loved ones. Orange Grove has an entirely different sphere of people it serves – the families desperately need outside help to care for these children who – please – are hardly anyone’s “fault”.
These inside voices promise me that the state’s DIDD staffers are heartless, that these “experts” lead by intimidation and not-so-veiled threats to take away further government allocations. The DIDD amply demonstrated that just this past winter when an “informative session” in the center’s packed auditorium turned into the worst wake I have ever attended. I saw entire families crushed that night as state employees callously and openly bashed Orange Grove’s hopes for the future.
As I think of the woman who rides in the white van, I strongly believe if our society soon forces her to be bedridden at home for seven days a week – taking her away from the only friends she has to stimulate her fragile soul that she will most surely die. Oh, we are going to send a social worker every once in a while? The state quit making home visits three years ago. This woman’s two weekly visits with people “just like her” is a glorious medicine no bottle can contain nor some penny-pinching beard-stroker can ever understand. Read this slowly: Orange Grove is all she’s got!
The DIDD takes a radically different view. They want to integrate our helpless – let’s be candid – with those who play Little League sports, come from families that never struggle and – again to be blunt – bully and taunt and tease anyone who is weaker unmercifully.
There are stories every day about kids who refuse to attend a Down syndrome child’s birthday and – stand by – an investigation that is nearly completely by the district attorney and the sheriff will show bullying and hazing in Hamilton County is clearly as out-of-control as a California forest fire. Any Orange Grove parent – the real experts – will assure you these plans, these actions and the goals of Tennessee’s DIDD office are absolutely insane.
Sure, the whole thing is about money – stealing it away from the most delicate souls in our society. I heard an interview with the great actor Morgan Freeman once who proclaimed, “Attacking people with disabilities is the lowest display of power I can think of.” And he’s right. If we fail to stand up for Orange Grove we will stand for nothing.
Orange Grove is so strapped for cash right now that if I were governor I would call an emergency meeting of the legislature for instant financial aid for like organizations that are desperate all across our state, this just seconds after I declared the state’s DIDD office a total and complete failure for allowing such an unconscionable horror to occur.
Fire ‘em all? I am talking about escorting the lot of the DIDD out with state troopers. It could easily be argued that it is already blatant neglect by state government that this travesty has gotten this far … really, I am telling you no new clients are being seen at Orange Grove when we all know kids with challenges are born in our hospitals every day. Morally that is as wrong as any misdeed in the state’s history.
Chattanooga and Hamilton County have a brilliant history of fighting for our own. Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis, Kingsport need to join us in a coalition that would “strongly recommend” every member of the state legislature spend a day, from waking up in pajamas to brushing teeth just before bed, in the company of one intellectually challenged child from that lawmaker’s own neighborhood. Sure, dress them, feed them, endure the tantrum, feed ‘em again, answer the same question repeatedly … the whole thing. I can assure you any vote forthcoming would be unanimous.
I know of a young family whose baby was just born, to be polite, with an uphill climb ahead. Should I call and tell them Orange Grove is taking no new patients? It would give me the chance to add therapy has now been discontinued but, hey, it’s statewide so this isn’t about your baby. How in heaven’s name can Governor Bill Haslam accept that the disregard for our weak and mentally challenged will become a highlight of his tenure? Sure he’s responsible because the DIDD is within his reach to vigorously rattle and shake.
The untold horror in the statewide massacre is that our rural areas, counties that hardly have the resources our cities do, cannot defend themselves against the Nashville tyrants. The moronic “model” the state proposes is “volunteers” to enrich our physically and mentally disabled and that these people who worked at the recycling center can get jobs in the common workplace. While that in itself is laughable – or unbelievable if you’d rather – our rural areas have little or no jobs for anyone – regular people -- and those with mental and physical handicaps have no chance, not at all. Every person in this state knows that is a true statement.
I know of no crisis in Tennessee right now that is worse than what our state leaders are doing to our handicapped. It is morally, ethically, and spiritually wrong. Please help me keep the woman who rides to Orange Grove twice a week alive. So help me, it is all she’s got.
royexum@aol.com