Tales From Fairfield Hills: Down On The Farm

By Nancy K. Crevier

In every city there are residents who are troublesome, and residents who are upstanding. And that is no different when that “city” is a psychiatric institution, said Harland “Pete” Zeno, who worked on the farm and grounds of Fairfield State Hospital (later known as Fairfield Hills Hospital) from 1948 to 1989.

“It was a little city, all by itself,” the Newtown resident recalled. He saw some unnerving things during his tenure there, and he saw a lot of good things happening.

“I did see some brutality toward the patients,” he said. “The trouble was, some of the people in charge of patients had no training,” said Mr Zeno. Lacking an understanding of mental illness, those staff members sometimes bullied patients, he said. “When a patient came into the hospital, they had no respect anymore. They became a number. A lot people would repudiate what I say,” he added, “but I saw it.”

Overall, though, the patients who worked on the grounds and on the farm were treated well, said Mr Zeno. “When I first started, we had two of the finest foremen, Walter Shaw and Lester Reynolds. Mr Reynolds lived in the house that Bob Geckle lives in now. Mr Reynolds had been gored, and he always walked with a limp. We knew all the patients and liked them. Most of them would never touch an employee,” he said, but he did remember some instances that served as reminders that the patients needed overseeing.

“One day, there was this patient in the trailer behind the tractor, going out to the field. He was a fellow that the others picked on a lot. I happened to look over and saw he had an ax, and was going to hit the tractor driver with it. I saw it, and warned the driver in time,” he said.

There was no need to call security, though. “We just quieted him down, and went on.”

Another time, a patient inadvertently endangered Mr Zeno. “He was working on top of the silo, spreading corn around. He got close to the roof, and his big fork got in the way. So he just dropped it down. I had just stepped away from where it fell, and boy did it come apart. [If I had stood there] a few seconds later, I would have been right under it. We hadn’t thought to send up a rope with him, or tell him to lower the fork down,” Mr Zeno recalled.

It was not the first time he had a nerve-wracking experience involving the silo. “When I first went there, they had built a tile silo, but didn’t put any ladders on it. You had to climb up, using those railings that ran around it. Then there were planks across to the other side, to the entrance on top. It was probably 40 feet high. I was way up, crawling on my hands and knees to an opening in the roof, just so they could push that pole up the middle through there, for goodness sakes!” A ladder never was installed on the silo, he said.

Another early experience that has stayed with Mr Zeno is one of his first days, driving the truck back onto the grounds from the farm area. “The gates would close behind you, and they’d check the trucks. There, underneath my truck, was all this rope and the knives we used in the fields. I didn’t know. No one told me I had to take all that stuff out!” he exclaimed.

“They were doing lobotomies [at Fairfield State Hospital] then,” he said, “but I can’t say I ever saw much difference [in a patient] afterwards.” (A February 20, 1948,, article in The Newtown Bee states, “At Fairfield State Hospital during the past fiscal year 100 brain operations known as frontal lobotomy have been performed, according to a Digest of Connecticut Administrative Reports to the Governor just published by the State of Connecticut. When successful, a frontal lobotomy results in a ‘resurrection’ of the patient, according to William F. Green, MD, Fairfield Hills superintendent.”)

“The detail men in charge [of the farm work] were so good to the patients. They didn’t work the patients too hard,” said Mr Zeno.

A Garden

On Queen Street

One of the men in charge was Frank Thompson. Mr Thompson passed away more than 20 years ago, but his wife, Dorothy, said that he supervised the farm and grounds at Fairfield State Hospital beginning in the early 1950s, for 33 years, before he retired. “Frank knew all about farming. He grew up on a farm in New Milford,” she said.

“The garden was on Queen Street,” said Mrs Thompson. “It was a big operation then. They would bus the patients down to pick the vegetables and then the trucks would take the vegetables back to the kitchens to prepare the meals,” she said.

About 30 acres was dedicated to growing produce, Mr Zeno said, supplying enough for three hospital kitchens and extra that was sold to the public. Patients also staffed the greenhouse, where flowers were grown. Both Mrs Thompson and Mr Zeno recalled that all of the buildings and rooms had beautiful flowers in them, grown in the greenhouse.

The plan when Fairfield State Hospital opened, Mr Zeno understood, was for it to be as self-sufficient as possible. While the farm was in operation, it nearly was, he said. “The farm itself made about $120,000 a year, selling what we produced,” Mr Zeno said. He recalled driving trucks loaded with tomatoes to the old prison, outside of Waterbury, where they were canned and returned to Fairfield State Hospital for consumption.

Fairfield State Hospital not only grew vegetables, but raised livestock, as well. The current Second Company Governor’s Horse Guard barn on Trades Lane was once the cow barn, Mrs Thompson said, housing nearly 130 Holstein cows. “I think there were probably 20 or 25 pigs there every year, too,” she said, “and chickens. The patients did so much of the work — milking the cows, caring for the chickens. They loved it.”

Below the cow barn was the root cellar, the slaughter house, and the pig barn, Mr Zeno said. The chicken coops were off of Queen Street. Not that many patients took care of the cows, he said, but there were a few exceptional patients who did, “and they treated those cows like they were their own,” said Mr Zeno.

No Fear

“Fairfield Hills was quite a nice place,” said Mrs Thompson. “We lived in a house on Wasserman Way. It was the first house down past the road to the prison. It’s not there anymore. And we lived in two different houses on the grounds, too,” she said.

There was never a sense of fear, being in such proximity to the patients. “We had two little girls, and they would walk the dogs down to the cabbage patch. You watched out for them, of course, but we weren’t afraid.”

Her husband oversaw the state employees, but had contact with the patients. “Frank was not afraid. He loved the patients,” said Mrs Thompson, despite receiving a broken nose when one inmate hauled off unexpectedly and punched him.

Mr Zeno remembered the incident. “He was a strong boy, and boisterous, that patient,” said Mr Zeno, “but he still came down to work afterward.”

Being an employee of the state was very good work, said Mr Zeno. “I lived in the dormitory, in Danbury Hall. We had meals, showers, clean towels. It was like living in a hotel,” he said, and ideal for a young man.

For Mr Zeno, one of the best parts of working at Fairfield State Hospital was the atmosphere. “It was great to be working with all those men. Up until then, I had worked all alone [on other farms],” he said.

“We had our favorite patients, sure. There was an Italian guy, ‘Pisano’ we called him. He was always so happy. One we had a lot of fun with was Gleason, but he just turned blue and died out in the field one day. Heart attack, I guess. He was a great guy, and worked in the creamery, too,” Mr Zeno recalled.

Both Mr Zeno and Mrs Thompson recalled a gregarious patient who was happy to wave and call out to cars passing by.

“One patient used to have a big car dealership. His wife had him committed, for some reason. He sputtered about that all the time,” said Mr Zeno.

It was around 1968 when it was deemed that the hospital was using the patients as “slaves” to work the farm, and it ceased operation.

“It was a shame when they shut it down,” said Mr Zeno. “After it closed, I would have my lunch on the grounds and the women [who had worked the farm] would see me and come to the windows, and yell, ‘Pete! We want to come out!’ It was sad. The gardens were therapeutic. It was good to get them out in the sun, I think,” he said.

“It was so sad when they closed it down,” agreed Mrs Thompson. “When they animals were gone, they cried. Why wouldn’t they? It was part of them,” she said.

“They used to have a saying,” said Mr Zeno. “If you weren’t crazy when you got there, you would be. Any person, sane or insane, with no responsibilities, will become depressed and go downhill. You have to have something going on, and they had that with the farm. To take that away, that wasn’t right,” he said.