![]() Some seemed to be institutionalized because their families just didn’t know what to do with them.īut what does survive is a window not only into who they were, but the time in which they lived. Some suffered from severe delusions, others from physical deformities. ![]() Records are sparse, even for people who lived for decades inside the walls. “At the time, they just put them in a safe place and treated them with what they knew to treat them,” said Sharon Tucker, who led the two-year research project. Some patients spent a lifetime at the hospital for conditions like depression and bipolar disorder that, in modern times, are treated on an outpatient basis. Many of the 110 veterans still there eventually will receive proper military burials, though some are ineligible due to dishonorable discharges or insufficient information available. Members of the local Sikh community are working to claim the remains of two people. Their remains won’t be part of the memorial they’ll be returned to their tribe for a proper ceremony. They came from every state except Alaska and Hawaii. Some stayed just days before they died, others for nearly their entire lives. They came from different backgrounds, for different reasons. Thirty-eight urns likely will never be identified they’re unmarked, have duplicate numbers or aren’t listed in ledgers of people cremated at the hospital. The 3,409 that remain and have been identified are listed in a searchable online database. Since the urns were found by lawmakers on a tour of the hospital in 2005, 183 have been claimed. Hospital officials have been working for years to reunite the remains of their former patients with surviving relatives. Most were patients at the mental institution, but some died at local hospitals, the state tuberculosis hospital, a state penitentiary or the Fairview Training Center, where people with developmental disabilities were institutionalized. “No one wants to be laid to rest without some kind of acknowledgement that they were here, that they contributed, that they lived,” said state Senate President Peter Courtney, who led a successful effort to replace the hospital and build the memorial.īetween 19, more than 5,300 people were cremated at the hospital. SALEM – They were dubbed the “forgotten souls” – the cremated remains of thousands of people who came through the doors of Oregon’s state mental hospital, died there and whose ashes were abandoned inside 3,500 copper urns.ĭiscovered a decade ago at the decrepit Oregon State Hospital, where “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was filmed, the remains became a symbol of the state’s – and the nation’s – dark history of treating the mentally ill.Ī research effort to unearth the stories of those who moved through the hospital’s halls, and to reunite the remains with surviving relatives, takes center stage today as officials dedicate a memorial to those once-forgotten patients.
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