[Times photo: Jill Sagers] George Moseley, 56, was once a patient at the hospital. Now he has an apartment in Arcadia, from which he carries out his career as an artist. “... They should keep the hospital open for those people that need support,’’ he says. “So that people have a place to come to where they receive true love and understanding.”

By CURTIS KRUEGER

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 27, 2001

Arcadia and the mental hospital - they grew up together. But unless the unexpected happens, many residents will be out of work after G. Pierce Wood closes next year.

In New York City, where people are trained to avoid eye contact, George Moseley would be invisible.

People would turn their eyes from this 56-year-old man who often dresses chin-to-toe in camouflage. After seeing him in mid-argument, alone in the street, they would keep their distance.

But in Arcadia, a town of 6,000 that has nurtured a mental hospital for half a century, people know Moseley. He lives in an apartment in a rambling, white two-story house where he has painted guardian angels on the ceiling and his name on the door:

George
Local Artist
Profsionl

The postmaster turned to Moseley when he wanted a mural in the downtown post office. Moseley painted a tableau of eagles tending to their young. His vision of heaven was used as a backdrop in Heritage Baptist Church's Christmas program.

In a place where the biggest employer is the mental hospital in which Moseley was once a patient, he is just one more thread in the fabric of the town's life. But now the fabric is unraveling. The state says that next year it will close G. Pierce Wood Memorial Hospital, which has about 285 patients and 960 employees.

People in some places might happily say goodbye to a mental facility, especially one that mental health advocates have long criticized as inept and unsafe. Here, where the hospital and community have lived together for half a century, the reaction is dismay.

"When you take a huge payroll like that away from a small agricultural community, it's going to hurt and it's going to hurt bad," said Durward Smith Jr., owner of a local store where you can buy everything from nails to fresh duck eggs.

Just as George Moseley has left his mark on Arcadia with his brushstrokes, the hospital that once treated him has left an indelible impression, too.

In a sense, Arcadia is a company town, and the company is a mental hospital. Losing it makes folks here feel like Detroit autoworkers during the 1980s. The blow is not just to the economy, but to the community's sense of itself.

Walk amid the antique shops lining Oak Street in the historic downtown of Arcadia, and you'll find a storefront showcasing a framed black-and-white photo of a smiling woman on horseback. The inscription reads: Delia Twiss 3-time All-Florida Championship Cowgirl.

That's who you'll find in the back room of the American Shoe Shop, digging a screwdriver into the heel of a work boot that needs a new sole. It says something about Arcadia that in a prime downtown property someone spends a good deal of her time repairing boots worn by ranchers, utility workers and "real working men."

Yes, she says, she remembers when the hospital came to Arcadia in 1947. Ask if people complained then -- if the prospect of hundreds of severely mentally ill patients moving in ever aroused controversy -- she almost seems not to understand the question.

"The town needed it for people to have work to do, because about all that was here was orange picking and farming," she said. "It just kind of boosted the town up."

The hospital sits on more than 100 acres, 7 miles out of Arcadia. Some say that 7 miles has helped, in the same way good fences make good neighbors.

Over the years, the hospital and community did become neighbors, and grew up together. Today it would be hard to find anyone in DeSoto County who doesn't at least know a family with a member who works at G. Pierce Wood. The hospital also opens its doors to workers' families and others.

Once a month, outstanding middle and high school students are invited to the chamber of commerce's Early Bird Breakfast to receive awards. So are employees of the month from G. Pierce Wood, which sometimes hosts the breakfast at the hospital.

Years ago, a swimming pool on the hospital grounds opened to workers and their families on Saturdays. Today the hospital's vocational programs include an upholstery shop where workers and local residents can get furniture redone for bargain prices. A nursery produces plants available to the public during sales. The hospital sponsors soccer and Little League baseball teams.

Every morning, DeSoto County school buses turn into the hospital to pick up children whose parents live in homes on the hospital grounds. Smith, owner of Smith's Ranch & Garden, recalls having sleepovers at a friend's house there and never giving it a second thought.

Hospital patients who have gotten better can be seen on shopping and restaurant trips in Arcadia, and even at the rodeo. A few, like George, decide to stay after their release.

"They're real loving and friendly. They love me dearly, and they'd do anything in this world to help me," Moseley said of people in Arcadia. The town, a dot in inland Florida's citrus and cattle country, offers "a simple life, sort of a backward life that reminds me of the 1800s. Cowboy towns and everything like that."

Many Arcadians found their lives led inevitably to G. Pierce Wood. The institution offered state benefits, stability and something citrus groves and ranches could not guarantee: the possibility of a middle-class life.

Growing up in Arcadia, Luke Wilson can remember his father drilling into him: Get a job with retirement benefits. So after high school, he signed on at G. Pierce Wood and has stayed 27 years. His mother, father and two sisters have worked there too.

"I came out here when I was 18, so I've basically given my life to this hospital," said Wilson, 45, who handles the hospital's illustrations, photography and training films, and writes a column for the Sun-Herald, a local newspaper. He is three years away from the retirement benefits his father urged him to get, so he will have to scout for another state job if the hospital closes as expected in 2002.

[Times photo: Jill Sagers] Amber Price, 21, and her 2-year-old son, Tony Lopez, enjoy dinner in their Brownsville mobile home. An aide in the hospital's ceramics department, she started working at G. Pierce Wood Memorial three years ago. Her parents work at the hospital, too. If it closes, she says, "I feel like it's going to be a big depression. People will be out on the streets, and there will be overcrowded hospitals and jails."

Amber Price, a therapeutic aide, also started at the hospital at 18. Her mother and father worked there. "The job opportunities really sounded interesting. It gave a young person a little better chance to make better money and not have to do such dirty work for it. And you get insurance."

She also looked forward to "being able to go to school plus getting paid for going," a benefit that has boosted many incomes in DeSoto and surrounding counties.

But Price is just 21. She has three years at the hospital, a 2-year-old son, rent due on her mobile home every month and questions about where to go next. One option is to work at the state's new facility for sexual predators on the grounds of the DeSoto Correctional Institution.

"The choices they give you, it's not something you are proud of," she said.

Outside of Arcadia, G. Pierce Wood usually attracted attention only when some sort of "incident" occurred.

Over the years, there were many.

One day after arriving as a patient in 1998, a 21-year-old Pinellas Park High School graduate named Donald Martin died. Tests showed toxic levels of medication in his blood. His probable manner of death was listed as "accident."

When a former Tampa woman died at the hospital after a series of falls, a government-funded advocacy group was "appalled at the level of negligence," and the hospital administrator moved to fire two workers.

Workers at a mental institution are supposed to keep patients from hurting themselves. At G. Pierce Wood, they haven't always succeeded.

The man who stepped up to a table saw and sliced off both hands in 1994 is one of the grisliest and best-remembered examples. In 1998 a patient who was supposed to be under constant supervision spent so much time in a hot bathtub he eventually died of hyperthermia.

There have been other deaths, other scathing government reports and a federal lawsuit claiming the hospital has failed miserably to provide adequate care. Some look at this history and see a problem with staff.

"Because it has been the town industry for many, many decades, there has been an almost inbred way of doing business, of dealing with patients that's very, very difficult to change," said Paula Hays, president and chief executive officer of the Boley Centers for Behavioral Health Care in St. Petersburg.

Carol Miller was brought to the hospital in 1996 to direct and professionalize the social work staff. But she testified in federal court last year that doing so was almost impossible because "a lot of the social workers have been there for many years, and they really didn't see the need to make any changes." Miller, who now works for Boley, testified that in many cases, "There's almost no way to get them to do what you'd like them to do to improve the services."

[Times photo: Jill Sagers] Kathlyn Dixon of Arcadia sorts cardboard boxes for recycling. She is a vocational instructor, currently in the recycling department, and has worked at the hospital for 21 years; her daughter works there as well.

Workers here wince at the memories but say the staff does its best with a group of people who are in the hospital precisely because they are a danger to themselves or others.

"They should not have taken place, but I don't think it's blatant negligence by any means," 27-year veteran Wilson said, referring to past incidents. He said every one is studied and "Whatever it is is immediately corrected to the best of their ability." Wilson said, "People who are often too quick to criticize have not been out here and compare it to movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

As Wood's resident advocate, Frank Burgmann is a built-in critic who prods the administration when necessary to improve care. But he too chafes at the perception of a sub-standard hospital. "I think overall today the care that we're providing ... is much better than it was even two years ago."

Recently the federal government decided to cut $30-million it gives to Florida for certain kinds of hospitals. State officials looked around for something to eliminate, and they found a hospital with problems in its past and a costly lawsuit hanging overhead.

G. Pierce Wood came on the chopping block.

Now the staff and town are striking back with a Web site, fliers and grass roots organizing.

Announce plans for a large mental health facility in the suburbs of the Tampa Bay area and you might see a hundred people show up in opposition. But at a meeting last month, a hundred came to save one.

The crowd filed into the red brick DeSoto County Courthouse annex to listen to the local legislative delegation, which consists of two lawmakers who do not live in DeSoto County. One, state Rep. Lindsay Harrington, has filed a bill to save the hospital, which has since passed out of a House committee.

But the biggest applause of the night came when a maintenance man at the hospital named Tod Backer said, "We expect you to fight to keep G. Pierce Wood, as you promised you would."

That was a zinger aimed at the other legislator present, Senate President John McKay, who vowed in the same room a year earlier that G. Pierce Wood would not close on his watch.

On this night, he spoke bluntly. Of the lawsuit in which the U.S. Department of Justice is fighting to improve care for G. Pierce Wood's patients, he said, "The federal government is going to be successful in that case." He said money spent on the hospital would go further on proven community mental health programs.

Most of all he talked about jobs. He said he had insisted the state create enough jobs to make up for the ones it is taking away. Plans call for 350 jobs at the sexual predator facility, 450 at a juvenile justice center and 300 at another in Punta Gorda.

But folks here remain skeptical, especially when they hear Gov. Jeb Bush saying he wants to cut the state workforce dramatically.

[Times photo: Jill Sagers] Gladys Williams of Port Charlotte, a registered nurse at G. Pierce Wood Memorial Hospital, has worked there for eight months.

One recent morning, three patients at the hospital picked up oyster plants whose leaves were as crisp and brown as shredded grocery bags. They potted them into thick black soil. The horticulture program is one way the hospital gives people basic skills that will enable them to move back into the outside world.

"I think it's a shame, myself," said Larry Yagel, who was supervising, and has worked at the hospital for 27 years. "It's really going to be heartbreaking not to be working with them."

Barry McMillian, who has been a construction worker, truck driver and citrus caretaker, took an entry-level job on the midnight shift 15 years ago. Something clicked. He stayed on and now serves as supervisor of vocational programs.

Now he was standing outside an old corrugated aluminum airplane hangar, a relic of the days before the hospital when these grounds were used for military flight training. Inside, patients and workers were shredding newspapers and baling office paper, part of a recycling program that serves businesses in three counties.

"You rarely find people that like what they do," he said. "Here, I am one of them, simply because you have the opportunity to make a difference in people's lives ... and you don't get a job like that every day."

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