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A MAN OF EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTER, PART EIGHT AND FINAL CHAPTER

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A MAN OF EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTER PART EIGHT AND FINAL CHAPTER By Fred Wickert You have read the description, in Howard’s own words of his life in Letchworth Village. You may be interested to know a little about Letchworth Village. It began as a dream of a man named William Pryor Letchworth. He was a philanthropist who devoted his life to helping the mentally afflicted in New York State. Letchworth pushed for and won approval for state purchases of a 2,000 acre site in the Hudson valley. The area at the time seemed to be the most accessible to New York City because of excellent bus and rail service there. Unfortunately the train service ended in 1957. The original planned layout was for 130 buildings in six groups. The facility was to be known as a Home For the Feeble Minded and Epileptics. Later on, the state was to rename it in honor of the man who had worked so hard to bring about the creation of the place, and it became known as Letchworth Village. It was, at the time it was built, the finest such place in the world, and was a new era in the improvement of the treatment of the developmentally disabled. It even had a research facility. It was the first of its kind as an inclusive community with its own farmlands, waste disposal, power-plant and water supply. It quickly, like other facilities in the state, became greatly over crowded and under staffed. It reached a peak in 1967 of 5,000 residents. In 1971, Letchworth Village was included with Willowbrook, an institution in Staten Island, in a nationally aired documentary by a young reporter for TV station WABC in New York named Geraldo Rivera titled, “The Last great Disgrace.” The documentary exposed the horrible conditions in those institutions and won him the Peabody award. Because of the great publicity derived from the documentary, there was a federal class action lawsuit which forced changes to be made and also was a major contributing factor in the passage of a federal law, called the “Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980.” The state began placing the residents in group homes or community residences. Howard Reidy was fortunate enough to have been placed in Family Care. The last of the residents of Letchworth Village left in 1997 and the Town of Haverstraw turned off the heat and the power. Most of the property is now a golf course called Patriot Hills Golf Club. Only one of the original six groups of buildings remains open today, as a day care facility. Nearby, along a hiking trail about a half-mile from the village is a two-acre area overgrown with brown grass. There can be found about 850 one-foot high “T” shaped iron markers with only a number on them. These mark the graves of those residents of Letchworth Village who died there. Our Howard Reidy, a man of extraordinary character, was spared that indignity. We will miss you Howard Reidy – May you rest in peace.