The 17th annual Memorial
Service in the cemetery of Connecticut Valley Hospital will take place on Wednesday,
May 27, at 1 p.m. As in each of the past 16 years, clergy and laity from
Middletown and other Connecticut communities will recognize and honor persons
buried in numbered, anonymous graves, speaking publicly their names, dates of
death, and ages at death. Individuals were buried in this year’s group of 100
numbered graves between May 1950 and August
1955. At the end of this year’s ceremony, the original intention to visit all
the gravesites in the cemetery over a 17 year period will be fulfilled.
The 1,686 numbered graves in the CVH cemetery are a
moving testimony to the stigma that persons suffering from mental illness have
endured over the years — a stigma that endures to this day. The memorial
service is designed to restore the dignity and identity of Connecticut Valley
Hospital patients whose names have been kept secret over many decades and to
bring attention to the ongoing ways in which individuals with psychiatric
disabilities are still feared and shunned by many in our communities.
The Memorial Service will last approximately one hour.
In case of very severe rain, the ceremony will be held on Thursday, May 28, at
1 p.m.
The CVH Cemetery is located on Silvermine Road east of
the main CVH campus. Take Bow Lane east past the State Veterans Cemetery on
your right. Proceed a bit farther and turn left on Silvermine Road. For those
traveling south on Rte. 9, take exit 12, turn left onto Silver Street and go about
½ mile, past CVH and the Connecticut Juvenile Training School. Turn right onto Silvermine Road and you will
come to the cemetery.
For more information, call The Rev. John Hall at 860-398-3771.
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