Sons and parents

[RJNorton]

(01-14-2015 10:54 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  Just guessing, I imagine the person who completed the form could have added "or private sanitarium," but its exclusion doesn't seem to have been problematic. It certainly didn't prevent Mary from being admitted to a private asylum.

I personally doubt that anyone wanted to put Mary in the state hospital, or gave it serious consideration for any length of time. On a purely practical level, I doubt that the state hospital itself wanted her, as a former First Lady could have hardly been treated like an ordinary patient and would have required special accommodations and privileges, which were easy enough to give at Dr. Patterson's small, family-run establishment but would have been problematic at a large state hospital.

Thank you, Susan. I will admit that my posts/questions here reflect my own feelings about my own mother. If this were my mother, no matter how ill I felt she might be, I could not file a pre-printed form with that specific wording even if I felt assured she would be going to a setting such as Bellevue Place. I would have found another way - I simply could never do what Robert did in the manner he did it.

I believe the Batavia Depot Museum currently houses some of the furniture in Mary's room(s) at Bellevue Place. And, of course, there is Blaine's chair - amazing!