Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
At Vincent House, there's no you and no me. Just us. And we're all in it together.
By LANE DeGREGORY
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 24, 2003
People must believe in each other, and feel that it can be done and must be done; in that way they are enormously strong. We must keep up each other's courage. -- Vincent van Gogh
PINELLAS PARK -- Carey says he will help price the clothes today. Okay, okay, he will try to work the calculator, too, help add up those receipts from the snack bar. But remember, his hands shake. He makes mistakes. He's sorry. But he will try.
That's okay. It's okay, Elizabeth says. We all go at our own speed here. We all help each other. Jean says she will try to add up the numbers too, just in case. That makes Carey feel better. At least he won't be the only one doing the math. Jean wants to know if she can have her own calculator. Of course, of course.
Peggy agrees to try the computer, to type in those numbers after the others add them. She's not sure she's ready. Does Elizabeth think she can do it? Of course, of course. Don't worry. You can do it. So Peggy takes the swivel chair behind the keyboard, starts searching for the computer's ON switch.
We all do whatever we feel up to here.
WE is an important word at Vincent House. Folks who come through our door can't think in terms of I or YOU. There is no THEM. We are them. They are us. We're all in this together.
We're in the business office right now, sitting around long wooden tables packed with printers and papers. There's a dining room out front and a snack bar -- which is more like a nice restaurant. We have waiters and everything. We have really good food. We make it ourselves. We do all our own work here. We run our own clubhouse. We clean the bathrooms and vacuum and make the budget.
This place used to be three storefronts, a sub shop and something and something else, sandwiched between a mortgage company and a Philippine restaurant here at Buccaneer Plaza. Then, after two years of trying, we finally got money from the Florida Department of Children and Families: $300,000 to run our nonprofit clubhouse for this first year. We got donations from the public defender's office and a plumbing supply shop and Panera bread. We got people to help us put in a new floor and hang wallpaper murals of waterfalls and palm trees. We got a new phone system and Roadrunner Internet for our new computers. New counters and sinks for the snack bar.
We've been open about three months now. We're open every day, even weekends, starting at 8 a.m. and going until 5 p.m. But not too many people know about us. Not yet. So we're having an open house today. To show everyone who we are. What we do.
We're all members of this clubhouse, Vincent House. We named it for Vincent van Gogh. He suffered from mental illness, too. We're all recovering from something here: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression. More than 100,000 people in the Tampa Bay area have mental illnesses. One out of five families has to deal with it. Once you walk in our door, sick or well, staff, visitor or member, you're part of us.
This is our clubhouse. We've never had a place like this.
We all used to be well. We were college students and professors, helicopter pilots and prep cooks. Daughters and dads. Marketing executives and pool cleaners.
Then some of us started hearing voices. Loud, insistent, disembodied voices ordering us to stand up or sit down or go away or not believe anything anyone was saying or believe everyone was talking about us, all the time -- like suddenly being transported into a horror movie and not being able to figure out what's real and what isn't and not knowing how to get out or who is bad or who could help you or even who you are anymore. All of us have been sent to hospitals. Psychiatric wards. Halfway houses. Group homes.
Clyde Kobayashi, 48, was a massage therapist. Then he had a nervous breakdown. Then another. After five he lost his practice, his condo, his girlfriend. He stumbled around the streets for weeks, searching for somewhere safe to sleep, waiting in long lines at soup kitchens to find food. Someone told him about a day-treatment drop-in program at Suncoast Center. There, he heard about Vincent House. He comes here for lunch almost every day now. He brings his massage therapy textbooks to study. He wants to get recertified, get his life back.
Greg Casey, 46, used to sit around his apartment all day, watching soap operas, feeling helpless and alone. Without a car or much money, without a job or place he felt comfortable, he almost never ventured out. Then he heard about Vincent House. Heard it was right on Bus Route 52. Now he comes here every day. He runs the reception desk, takes meal money, answers the phones, works the PA system. He can't wait to get out of his apartment, to get on the bus, to come here.
Wallace Johnson, 43, helps run the kitchen. He peels carrots into perfect orange petals, looping them into measured piles. He helps make lunch for everyone who might drop by. For 75 cents, anyone who wants to can get spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread one day; corned beef and brisket another. Sometimes 40 folks show up on the same day, 65-year-old grandmoms and 20-something kids. We all wonder what Wallace is cooking. We can hear him in there scraping, chopping, rustling pots and pans.
It's pretty quiet otherwise. Except when Wallace takes a break. Sometimes, when he takes a break, Wallace wipes his hands on his blue canvas apron. He reaches into the left pocket of his baggy shorts. Pulls out his silver harmonica. He throws back his head. He closes his eyes. He kisses the instrument against his lips and turns this shopping-center-front clubhouse into a Memphis blues club. His low notes make the magnolias in the vases on the tables tremble.
This isn't a place where the police send you, or your psychiatrist orders you to come, or your mom drops you off so she can go shopping. We don't have Ping-Pong tables or macrame or even a television. We come here to work. And to be part of a place we can be proud of, where we're accepted and understood, where we can be around other people like us: People who have battled their own brains; who have sunk into uncharted depths and struggled, sputtering, back to the surface of this overwhelming world; people who are still learning to balance the unbearable pressures of being alive with the will to live this way; people who are searching for joy in the act of merely existing.
At Vincent House, no one wonders why you wander or stare off into space. No one minds or makes you come back to work right away. No one asks why you have to swallow 12 pills with your lemonade. No one minds if you drool or drink Diet Coke all day. We all know the medications make some of us produce extra saliva and give others dry mouth and make most of us gain weight and make our thoughts sound, sometimes, like they're muffled under a thick down comforter. We all take medications to counteract the side-effects of our medications. We don't have to explain that here. No one asks. We know we can't hold full-time jobs or drive cars, most of us. We know what it's like to survive on $700 a month Social Security when we're paying $1,200 for medicine, to have to battle insurance companies and write letters to get what we need. We all know how hard it is to find kind case workers, to make friends. We know how scared we are most of the time. How scared people are of us, because they don't understand.
No one is scared of us here.
So we can start learning to interact with people again without worrying what they'll think, what we might do wrong. We're running a thrift shop, working calculators and computers, typing our own newsletter, answering phones. We're making budgets and counting money. Some of us are making menus, buying groceries, cooking meals. We're finding out, finally, that we don't have to be alone.
Carey Shannon says his hands aren't so shaky. Not anymore. All those hours of pricing clothes for the thrift shop, keying numbers into that calculator must have helped. It feels good to be doing something, to have a routine again.
Jean Johnson and Peggy Parker get the rest of the figures figured out too. It takes a long time, sometimes, like today. Three hours. But they're getting better. Clyde is plowing through pages of his massage study guide. Greg is taking orders for more lunches.
Then Wallace says it's time. Lunch is ready! he calls. And we all find somewhere to sit in the dining room. Real silverware and plates -- no paper or plastic at our clubhouse. And the waiters carefully carry out chef's salad with grilled chicken and home-made croutons, a fresh fruit cup, Parmesan garlic bread and iced tea, caramel-chocolate cheesecake for dessert.
After that Elliott says we're going to have a house meeting. We do this once a week. We make up our menus, update everyone on business stuff and plan our parties or our outings or whatever. We all get a say in everything about the clubhouse. That was Elliott's idea.
Elliott started this place. Elliott Steele and his wife, Dianne. They built Vincent House for their daughter, Athena -- and for people like her; people like us.
Athena was a college freshman in Washington state when she started slipping away. Normally upbeat and capable, pretty and popular, she got confused, then overwhelmed then lost. Schizophrenia. She stumbled through homeless shelters and junkyards, went on and off her medications. Her parents tried to find her, tried to follow her, tried to help.
Finally, Elliott brought his daughter back to St. Petersburg. He was an executive chef for Hyatt Corp. His wife owned a veterinary clinic in Seminole. They put their careers on pause and devoted themselves to their daughter.
Athena had spent time at a clubhouse while she was in Colorado. That's where Elliott got the idea. We have 168 clubhouses like this in the United States; 400 around the world. The main thing about a clubhouse, Elliott says, is to help us take charge of our lives again, then get us working. We're learning skills now. We want to start getting jobs by summer. Who wouldn't? We all want to earn wages, like everyone else, be independent, be able to eat out or buy cigarettes or go to the movies. Elliott says eventually we might be serving in restaurants, making meals, doing data entry. Even a few hours a week, even minimum wage, would be a big achievement. And Elliott and Elizabeth Caryl and Stacy Freskos, (they're our staff) they promise they'll train with us and learn our new jobs as we do. That way if we're having a bad day or don't feel up to it or whatever, they can fill in for us. They will fill in for us. So no pressure.
So anyway, after Elliott and Dianne finally got Athena back here, they all started working with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Elliott worked with Pinellas County police officers and helped train them for crises. Then he started setting up our clubhouse.
Athena is 28 now. She saw Vincent House just before it opened. But she won't be here for our official ceremony. She's in the hospital again. The doctors say it's better if her parents don't come by, don't call. So Elliott stays here with us every day, helping us price clothes and pay bills and print newsletters and make menus and grill chicken and plan outings. We go somewhere every Saturday. The folk fair, a Devil Rays game, Clearwater Aquarium. We go on nature walks and have picnics. Athena will be part of this place too, once she gets out.
"Okay, so do we have any recommendations for next week? For what we want to do?" Elliott asks. He's standing beside a big wipe-off board, in front of the palm tree mural, holding a red marker. We're all around the tables, 21 of us, scraping up the last crumbs of our cheesecake.
"Lowry Park!" shouts Carey. "I love that place, all the animals."
"Any park!" Anthony Altieri says. "That place we went last week. We played football. And had hot dogs. And the ice cream man came, remember?"
"That was great!" Carey says. "I remember. Let's do that again."
Elliott looks around the clubhouse. People who wouldn't venture outside of themselves three weeks ago are offering opinions, speaking out. Soon, maybe, he'll be watching them go off to work. "Well, maybe we could try something new for next Saturday," Elliott offers, smiling above his salt-and-pepper beard. "We could stretch. There's so much out there to experience."
"We could get a TV," Joe Stabile offers. He's been sorting receipts into plastic bags. Keeping track of members' duties on a sign-up sheet. He enjoys the meals. He appreciates the camaraderie. But he misses the free time. We all do. But this is better than being bored, we all remind him. Better than being alone. We all served plenty of time in front of the TV.
In the back of the dining room, Debbie Seagraves starts wringing her hands. She's 48. She used to be a physical therapist. Then a car accident crushed her spinal cord, muddled her mind. She searches the ceiling. She's not sure how to say this.
"I want to sell my art," she says. "I can do art. I don't want TV."
A man named Art, who doesn't want to share his last name, agrees. "We come here to get away from that," he reminds fellow members. "We're here to work. This is our work, here."
In day treatment, in group therapy, even with case workers, we spend so much time trying to sort out our problems. So much time talking about what's wrong. You can only do that for so long until you drag yourself down even more, you know? Art says. Here we work on what still works, on what can be right again.
"So don't change too much," Debbie begs us. "Don't change anything at all," she says. She clasps her hands. She searches our faces. A slow, shy smile tugs at the corners of her mouth.
"Really. Please," she pleads. "We finally got a good thing going here, for us. I don't want it to change."
Vincent House is part of an international organization of 400 clubhouses. For more information on the International Center for Clubhouse Development, or on specific program policies and goals, log on to www.iccd.org.
Vincent House will hold a free open house for the public from 4 to 7 p.m. today. The new clubhouse is in Buccaneer Plaza, 6715 49th St. N, Pinellas Park. For more information, call (727) 521-2426.