{"id":566,"date":"2018-12-31T12:51:58","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T12:51:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=566"},"modified":"2018-12-31T12:51:58","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T12:51:58","slug":"glenn-dromgooles-texas-reads-column-appears-weekly-at-lonestarliterary-com-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=566","title":{"rendered":"Glenn Dromgoole’s Texas Reads column appears weekly at LoneStarLiterary.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>>> archive<\/span><\/a><\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n

6.19.16\u00a0\u00a0 Disturbing story of abuse begins in Texas<\/h1>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>A well-intentioned program that put intellectually disabled men to work<\/span> on a turkey farm in Texas won a national award in 1968 but eventually became the source of a scandal that rocked Iowa and the nation.<\/p>\n

Dan Barry<\/span> tells the disturbing story in The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland<\/span><\/a><\/span> (Harper, $26.99 hardcover). The story revolves around thirty-two men, most of them former residents of the Texas State School network, who lived in an old schoolhouse in a small Iowa town and worked at a turkey processing plant for sixty-five dollars a month for thirty-five years.<\/p>\n

When Iowa authorities finally intervened in 2009, they found the men living in roach-and-rat-infested squalor and suffering from numerous neglected physical ailments, including one man with a broken kneecap.<\/p>\n

Ten of the men were former residents of the Mexia State School, seven were from the Abilene State School, and others were from Austin, Lufkin, Richmond, and other campuses. They started working on a turkey farm in Goldthwaite, Texas, but in a few years were contracted to a turkey processing plant in Iowa, still under the supervision of the Texas operation known as Henry\u2019s Turkey Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Henry\u2019s boys,\u201d as they became known around the small Iowa town of Atalissa, became an accepted part of the community, singing in church, riding in parades, dancing at town gatherings. In the early years, the townspeople were invited to Christmas parties at the old school, but as the years went by the parties ended and conditions quietly deteriorated.<\/p>\n

Iowa authorities brushed off several early efforts to call attention to the situation, including one social worker\u2019s report in 1974 detailing twenty specific complaints and concluding, \u201cOnce the resident becomes an employee of Henry\u2019s Turkey Service, he for all practical purposes loses most basic human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barry, a New York Times<\/span> reporter and columnist, relates the story in a dispassionate style from a variety of viewpoints, always keeping the thirty-two men at the center of the narrative. The case eventually went to trial in federal court as a civil matter, with a stunning verdict. At the end of the book, Barry summarizes the status of the men, telling when they were born, at what state school they resided, and where they are today. About half returned to Texas to live in group homes or with family. About half chose to stay in Iowa \u2014 under much better conditions.<\/p>\n

PBS and the Times<\/span> produced a Point of View documentary two years ago about \u201cThe Men of Atalissa\u201d that can be viewed online.<\/p>\n

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Glenn Dromgoole\u2019s<\/span> latest book is More Civility, Please. <\/span>Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.<\/p>\n

>> <\/span>Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole 6.19.16\u00a0\u00a0 Disturbing story of abuse begins in Texas A well-intentioned program that put intellectually disabled men to work on a turkey farm in Texas won a national award in 1968 but eventually became the source of a scandal that rocked Iowa and the nation. Dan Barry tells the disturbing story in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}