Charles Victory Faust
 

We visited a new dogpark today which turned out to share a boundary with the Western State cemetery. I visited this grave.

On the drive home, along a busy road, I noticed something in my rearview window - a baseball was bouncing down the road, alongside my car. Weird.http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/10/20/u7yqemer.jpg

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Had to look him up...Amazin' Story!.

Charles "Victory" Faust
 

Very Cool Scott!

Thanks for sharing

From talking with 71buc, I already knew Faust was buried at the Western State Cemetery, but was surprised that we accidentally parked next to it. The cemetery itself is really a pleasant enough place, and they are restoring it - adding nice markers with full names and removing the numbers - but dying at Western State in 1915 was no way to go.

Even today, it's reputation scares people being held at other places - they think that if they get sent there it is because there is no hope, and it's a one-way ticket. That's not true, but it's the belief that somehow gets perpetrated at other facilities where people with mental illnesses are being held. In Pierce County, they are taken there for long-term commitment hearings, and even that experience is horrifying for them. I can only imagine what it must have been like in Charlie Faust's day.

Edited to add - there are over 3,000 people buried in a relatively small area. Originally, all had small stones like the one below the readable one in the picture, that simply have the grave number. Quite a few have been replaced with what looks like marble markers, that are about four times the size of the old stones. Maybe 1/5 or fewer have been replaced. Charlie Faust's marker is a unique type, so I'm guessing it was done privately. Also, his was the only grave with flowers.

So Western State was a looney bin, er, secured facility? Because the occupants of a cemetery pretty much already had their tickets punched, except in the movies.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV...640_SY720_.jpg

Neither. It was, and is, a psychiatric facility. At one point the mentally ill were sent there simply so everyone else could pretend they didn't exist. They lived and died there. Now they live there and get some care - it's primarily for longer term 'treatment' than the other facilities in the state. It's also where the judge will send mentally-ill criminals where they can 'recover' so that they can be sent to a regular prison or be executed.

Western State and it's reputation was cemented when Frances Farmer was committed in 1944. The Frances Farmer "Wing" of the hospital is a bizarre look at the history of mental health practices in Washington State in the early 1900's. Though the most infamous, besides Western State there was also Green River Hot Springs, Soap Lake, and Medical Lake as mental health facilities in Washington at the time. These are terribly sad stories. I had not heard of Victory Faust, and thank you for sharing. Recovery is a process, and very possible.

I forgot about Frances Farmer - what a gut-wrenching movie.

I had heard the stories about the institutions, but it was really scary to hear patients at other facilities talking about their fear of being sent to Western State. Thinking about it more, I'm wondering if that fear wasn't fostered by the staff at the places where they were being treated. Where else would they get that impression?

For the most part, staff members were to be commended - a tough job, and they chose it - even the ones at Western State. There were two issues; however, that made it impossibly difficult for them: a lot of people with mental illnesses simply behave like angry, evil people and the staff have never seen these people when they were their normal selves, so they had no baseline. Also, it's tough even for family members who DO have the baseline, to put up with the abuse from their 'new' loved one. One thing I really wish could happen, would be for the staff members at these places to see people after they are back to normal - I think it would be eye-opening.

I know when laymen like us see mentally-ill people who have gotten treatment and are completely back to normal, most of us consider it an anomaly - a miracle of sorts - and it doesn't push us to take the necessary steps to help the others who haven't been 'cured'. I feel lucky to have spent a number of years living in Belltown, downtown Seattle, and gotten to meet a lot of very special people who are just like us, except they are probably more compassionate and generally more creative and intelligent. And they can take a punch better than most of us.

The bouncing baseball is weird!

If anyone coming to the thread doesn't knw who Faust was, here's a link to the story and illustration I did of him: VICTORY FAUST

Odd, but I didn't think about the baseball until I was creating the post.

Thanks for providing that link.

Fred Snodgrass tells his story on the Glory Of Their Times cd.

Fantastic recollection on the Glory CD.......recommend it highly........