Roy Exum: To Help Our Helpless

  • Saturday, July 16, 2016
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

There can be little to no doubt in anyone’s heart that the state of Tennessee’s Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (DIDD) is mightily determined to shut down Chattanooga’s famed Orange Grove Developmental Center, which has gloriously cared for our area’s physically and mentally challenged citizens since 1953. The DIDD is now choking the wonderful center on Derby Street exactly like some noxious kudzu vine will kill a native dogwood in wide-open view. We must face this … or fail the helpless, not a one of whom can fend for themselves.

The “real reason” is both complicated and simple. The “complication” comes because the state of Tennessee has been fighting expensive federal lawsuits for over 30 years, this after the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980 created absolute havoc in the lives of what were once called “feeble minded persons.”

The “simple” reason is that our state’s lawyers have skimmed literally many millions allocated for the same “feeble minded persons” in Tennessee courtrooms for as long as the 1980 act was first approved by Congress and now idiotic rules, senseless regulations and inept leadership has stymied both federal and state funding to the point where, as if by plan, our much-needed development centers can no longer operate.

This year it looks like Nashville’s Clover Bottom Development Center will be shuttered after years of turmoil. Back in 1923 Clover Bottom opened as the “Tennessee Home and Training School for Feeble-Minded Persons.” While we no longer refer to our intellectually and physically challenged that way, we realize that in truth they are handicapped – not challenged – and have allowed the crazies outside our asylums to do harm to far more than the 450 clients at Orange Grove who are severely threatened right now.

It is not anyone’s fault that some people are born with lifelong infirmities. But as a civilized society, the burden must indeed fall on the public to care for our own instead of the stricken families who in no way can offer the counseling, the health care, the constant needs, and the lifestyle our United States should provide to our most fragile.

The DIDD started shutting down development centers when they first bagged the Nat T. Winston and Arlington Developmental Center in West Tennessee. This year – yes, after 30 years of lengthy and costly court battles – the state will close Clover Bottom and also put plywood over the windows of the huge Greene Valley Development Center in Greeneville, where once over 1,000 clients were served.

At all of the above skeletons, the clients have been separated into group homes, much like the 60 odd dwellings  Orange Grove pioneered years ago. So far these homes are not being threatened. Instead, the DIDD is determined to close the main Chattanooga facility and – to be very blunt – Orange Grove is no longer accepting new clients in the children’s program or the day program.

The DIDD will force the closure of the recycling center next week, eliminating 45 jobs for those who can’t find a similar opportunity anywhere. The counseling office is gone. The Industrial Training Center is on the short list. It hardly takes a Sherlock Holmes to read the tea leaves, as horribly alarming as they may well be.

Right now Orange Grove is as doomed as a U-boat in the Northern Atlantic at the end of World War II and the explosion, which the DIDD had hoped would be muffled, has triggered an outcry for the families who will be affected, the employees who have dedicated their lives to the care of some “students” now in their 60s, and to an entire community that realizes Chattanooga has a gem that has been polished for generations. That same gem is now being crushed in a way it will never be replaced.

Candidly our hands are tied. The Supreme Court ruled (Olstead vs. L.C. ex rel) that “unjustified institutional isolations of persons with disabilities is a form of discrimination” and that “perpetuated unwarranted assumptions that person so isolated are incapable or unworthy of participating in community life.” The court even found development centers “severely diminish the everyday-life activities of individuals.”

After 50 years of cheering for Orange Grove, I can summarily state such an opinion is unmitigated B.S. (“blowing smoke.”) Our children and our day care clients go home at the end of the day. They go to their own family’s homes – far better than a group home – and then they return to Orange Grove to be with their buddies, laugh and joke and love one another in what any Chattanooga family is the perfect solution to an unconscionable problem that lasts an entire lifetime. And now our state government wants us to abolish what works the best of all?

Every single person in our tristate area knows this is so morally wrong, and so hideously twisted, because Orange Grove has proven for years just the reverse is true. The clients – the only ones who should ever matter -- adore the place. Miracles happen every day. Joy hangs over the place like the morning dew, but with the political deck so cruelly stacked against us and the DIDD appearing more ruthless by the day, maybe our best bet to fight Nashville is with our ballot boxes.

Greene County legislators failed, as have other alarmed lawmakers across the state when their constituents were forced away from the daily activities and services the centers have provided for years. The true discrimination, of course, is that the state has shamelessly jerked away a huge part of everyday life for anyone with physical or mental challenges.

There is the true discrimination that defies any argument. Our handicapped – and they realize it best -- can no longer be with their friends, their teachers, their aides in a daily setting and that is outright criminal. Anyone who has ever attended a Special Olympics Games can predict the absolute failure of what is now happening beneath our very eyes.

So here’s a possible solution. Every state legislator in our area is running for office. Early voting has already started for the Aug. 4 primary and bigger decisions will come in November. Granted, any candidate siding against Orange Grove will commit political suicide so let’s turn the coin: let’s gently demand our legislators so eager for every single vote to get it in gear and show dedicated efforts and desperate results in the next two months to thwart the DIDD invaders.

We shouldn’t settle for one-sentence lip service: “Of course I support Orange Grove.” No, I am talking about the birth of some superstars in the next two months who will actively embrace a workable solution, who will be keen for financial ideas and put them to use, who will convince the governor to call off his yapping attack dogs so that the “every-day activities” of our fragile individuals will not fall prey to Nashville dunces. Let’s make this a year when our elected officials earn our vote rather than expect it for nothing.

We are blessed with a great delegation in Nashville but why there hasn’t been a hue and an outcry I cannot fathom. I saw the look on State Rep. JoAnne Favor’s face on a night last winter when the DIDD first announced its takeover. County commissioners, judges and other elected officials were there, too. We all blinked when somebody should have been arrested.

The pending demise of Orange Grove Center will affect every single life in our community. Wouldn’t you love to listen to the parents of the Clover Bottom Center or Greene Valley after they close this summer? Sadly, we will still hear the cries and, like it or not, when Orange Grove falls, we will have failed 450 clients who can, in no way, protect nor defend what have been the happiest days of their lives.

royexum@aol.com

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