Karen Gorr: Make Your Dreams a Reality
Karen was born in 1937. Her family consisted of her parents and a brother David who was two years older. Karen was born with cerebral palsy (CP). When David was three, he fell out of the family's Model A car and struck his head on a cement curb. After that, he started experiencing black outs. When David and Karen were five and three, their father passed away. Their mother Mabel worked very hard as a waitress to support her children.
The people in their small South Dakota town were quite malicious and didn't understand how anyone could have one, let alone two children, who desperately needed medical help. Mabel took the children to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and to the Crippled Children's Home in Jamestown, North Dakota. They were turned down at both places for three reasons:
- They were fatherless;
- they were poor; and
- they were two children with "handicaps" in the same family.
One doctor suggested that Mabel do what the Japanese do with "imperfect" children – take them to a high cliff and push them over the side. Mabel never went back to that doctor again.
My name is Karen Gorr. At age three I was placed in an institution, where I spent 10 and a half years. It was not a pleasant experience at all.
My mom was finally able to take me home for the summer after 10 and a half years and told me that if I could learn to walk in those three short months that perhaps I could stay home and go to school, in a so-called normal… with normal children again.
I did go to a country school, started in the 3rd grade at age 13 and I graduated 7 years later from high school. I went to college and I became a physical education teacher.
I now live in Minnesota with my husband Bill and we have a healthy, active daughter who just turned six years old.
Things went from bad to worse. Mabel had to have a tumor removed and was given only a 50/50 chance to survive. Now she had to find someone or someplace to care for her children.
The children were placed in the South Dakota State School and Hospital for the Feebleminded at Redfield. For Karen this began her 10-year battle to leave the institution. For David it would end sooner. When he was 12, he had pneumonia and died during a "black out."
The children went to "school" in the institution five days a week, where they sang songs and did arts and crafts. Karen was lucky. A kind, motherly woman, who was also a patient in the same building, taught all the children to read, print and play Parcheesi.
David was more mature, non-aggressive and quickly learned how to avoid mistreatment. Karen had to fight off illnesses that plagued her frail body, but that was nothing compared to the emotional and physical abuse she endured. At mealtimes, the children were given 15 minutes in which to clean their plates. Karen would get the food down, but often it wouldn't stay down, and she would be beaten by the ward matron with a butter paddle.
To prevent Karen from kicking her covers off at night, her bedding was tied under her bed. Sometimes another girl would pour water on Karen's covers to indicate that Karen had wet the bed. This was an "unforgivable" sin to the ward matron, and Karen would be beaten with the butter paddle.
Karen was beaten often. She could not physically defend herself, so she defended herself verbally. Her "big mouth" made matters worse, and made the beatings last longer. Because of her aggressive disposition, Karen was used as a guinea pig by the doctors, who gave her nine Phenobarbital pills a day. After that Karen became a "pet" with most of the ward matrons.
Fearing her own demise, Karen begged her mother to take her out. When she was 13, Mabel took Karen home for the summer. She told Karen that if she could learn to walk, she could stay home. Karen became determined to achieve her goal of freedom. She learned to walk. Why? Because she was allowed to eat her food slowly, so she gained weight and physical strength.
In the fall of 1950, at the age of 13, Karen was allowed to enter school in the 3rd grade. In 1958, she graduated from high school at the age of 21. Karen graduated from college five years later and went on to get her masters degree in Special Education.
Karen did her teaching internship at the Crippled Children's School and Hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the same institution where she had been a resident ten years earlier. At that time Karen was not able to talk about the years she had spent there. Some of the same nurses, teachers and therapists were still there. Ironically, she was now their equal. However, they were extremely unfair and overly-critical of her performance, so Karen decided to apply for a job on the outside.
The fateful day for her very first job interview arrived. Karen had spent many hours in preparation. She knew she had to look neat, clean, and well-dressed – the standard for every working person. Her biggest concern was her speech. "Remember to talk slowly and enunciate each word slowly and clearly!" kept going through her mind as the appointed time for her meeting got closer.
Mr. Nerd arrived. She was introduced by the School's Director and was left in a large conference room. After answering several questions, Karen began to feel very confident and at ease with Mr. Nerd. It appeared to her that she probably had the job of teaching about ten Sioux Indian children in a one-room schoolhouse. She asked for a couple of days to think it over. He agreed, then he dropped the bomb on her.
"Miss Huffman, would you please walk around the room for me?" She was stunned. He repeated his request to which she replied, "I can hop like a bunny, too. Would you like to see me?" End of interview. End of Mr. Nerd.
The next interviewer was much kinder and more interested in her qualifications and abilities, rather than her disability. He hired her to set up a Special Education classroom in Parkston, South Dakota and teach five children with learning disabilities.
Karen taught for over twenty years. She also married and had a daughter of her own. Karen eventually decided to talk about her past and her years in the Institution for the Feebleminded. From that time on she has worked to improve the conditions and education offered in many state institutions. Karen also served as a consumer member on the Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities.
There was no independent living movement in place to provide advocacy and support for Karen. She, like many people with disabilities, was inappropriately placed in an institution, but Karen made it out.