The director of Morningside sent a letter to the Secretary of the Interior each time a patient died. On March 1, 1937, Wayne Coe sent the following letter to Secretary of the Interior about Joe Falardeau, whose grave is included in the Virtual Cemetary:

Sir:

Permit us to inform you herewith that our patient, Joe Falardeau No. 1269 who was admitted into our hospital, June 14, 1929 from Cordova died February 26th, 1937. The cause of death was Cerebral Thrombosis. The body was turned over to Holman & Lutz of this city for burial in Multnomah Cemetery.

Respectfully yours,

Wayne W. Coe

The family lore about my uncle said he was taken from a small village on the Yukon River in his childhood because he was acting funny. Actually, my aunt Minnie told me he was hit over the head with a frying pan and was never the same again.  Where did he go, I always wondered?

As I have gotten older, I have begun to appreciate the value of history.  After spending many enjoyable years involved with projects that celebrated the history of Statehood in Alaska, I volunteered to lead a project on gathering the oral histories and documents that pertained to Alaska’s developing mental health services.

The journey of discovery has been fascinating, but I wasn’t prepared for the deep and powerful impact the project would have on me.  I didn’t anticipate we would learn about the people.

Our first discovery was a hand-written list of names of patients at Morningside from the 1920 U.S. Census and, shortly after that, a list of patients prepared for Delegate James Wickersham who, as far as I can see, was a tireless mental health advocate throughout his career.

Then the 1955 list.  I began to recognize family names. One day at a meeting, while on break, I called a friend over to my laptop and pulled up the list, pointed my finger at a name and said “this guy has your last name—ever hear of him?”   What was I thinking!  The reaction of my colleague was immediate and profound.  “That is my brother—and we have been looking for him for decades, said my friend tears streaming down his face.  Later, recovered and thoughtful, my friend asked two questions- when did he die and where is he buried? He and his wife plan to make a trip to Portland to the cemetery where he might find his little brother’s grave.

When Ellen and I went to the National Archives, we had a small list of names we had committed, no matter what, to look for.  On the first day, we found my friend’s brother’s information – he was admitted as a four year old child and died when he was nine.  The notes in the file are brief and found among a list of other names. These I copied and brought to my friend back in Alaska.

My uncle was nowhere to be found – never on any list or in any file as we searched. Day three – 10 hours into our day we are hurrying through files – we are running out of time. We need to go home tomorrow.   I pull a dusty file of trust accounts and there is the name of my uncle. Apparently, the government, actually Morningside Hospital, was holding $.02 or 2 cents for my uncle in an account.  Thanks god for this little detail – pennies from heaven.

I began to understand the reaction of my friend as I viewed the actual evidence on the page. I didn’t know my uncle but I met him once. He was sent to Morningside when we was a young child and then spent the rest of his life moving from one institution to another until he was in his fifties and he was discharged to Fairbanks.  I was a girl in high school when he returned and while he didn’t have what we call life skills, he was a kind and gentle soul. He wrote me a beautiful letter, with immaculate handwriting and spelling.  Shortly after that he died.

Later in life when I was involved in developmental disabilities policy, I often wondered about my uncle. Clearly by today’s standards, he would have a mild slowness and would be integrated into a mainstream classroom. He even may have been a successful student with the right early supports. We will never know.

For me now and for Ellen, a good part of this effort is to see what we can do to provide information to families who are searching for loved ones.  We will do our best to honor these folks and give families answers or the tools to get answers to these unsolved and unresolved questions.

If you have comments, we would love to hear from you.

“The Mental Health Trust History Project Jukebox offers insight into the long struggle to provide quality mental health services in Alaska from the perspective of people who participated. There is discussion about how the mentally ill were treated prior to Statehood when they were sent to Morningside Hospital in Portland, Oregon; how in 1956 Alaska was given one million acres to manage in trust to fund mental health services; a 1982 lawsuit against the State for mismanagement of these lands and funds; the lengthy legal, political, and legislative effort to settle this lawsuit by re-constituting the lands, providing a cash settlement, and creating the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority.

This project was started in 2007 by the Oral History Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks with funding from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority.”

“James Ebana was sent to Morningside Hospital when he was about 17 years of age.   It appears he had epilepsy and that was the reason he was sent away, a decision probably by the missionaries at the Church Christ Mission.  His death certificate indicates he passed away on March 21, 1942 at the age of 27 years.  The death certificate shows his immediate cause of death is as “Tuberculosis of the Lungs” which he had for 5 months and “Psychosis due to Epileptic Deterioration” for 11 years.  Holman and Lutz was the funeral home and he is buried at the Multnomah Cemetery which is now the Multnomah Park Pioneer Cemetery located at S. E. 82nd and Holgate Blvd in Portland, Oregon.

Kate was unsure where her brother was sent.  She knew the name Morningside Hospital, but thought it was in Washington.  Searches for Morningside Hospital were non-existent.  In 2005 through Ancestry we located his death certificate.

The following is what little we know about James Ebana…

James Ebana was born around 1915 in the Lower Yukon region of Interior Alaska.  He was the fourth child of Cecelia and Jim Ebana.  Cecelia was an Alaska Native from the Bonzila area, born around 1885 and died of tuberculosis in October 1917 at her home in Iditarod.  Jim came to Alaska when he was young and worked as miner. He died in 1955.

The family was living in Discover Creek, Iditarod when Cecelia Ebana passed away in 1917 leaving behind 5 young children:  Florence age 4, Emily age 3, Kate age 2, Jim age 1, and an infant child named Will.  Emily, Kate and Jim were sent to live at the Church Christ Mission at Anvik, Alaska.  Florence was also sent to the Anvik Mission, however she moved to the Holy Cross Mission.  There is no information on the infant child Will and it is presumed he passed away after Cecelia’s death.

Emily, Kate and Jim Ebana are listed at the Christ Church Mission in Anvik in 1930 US Census.  Emily died shortly after the census.  She was 16 or 17 years old. James was sent to the Morningside Hospital in Portland, Oregon.  His sister Kate Ebana Chase never saw or heard from her brother once he left.  Kate often spoke of James and wanted to know what happened to her brother and longed to bring him home to Anvik.  Kate passed away in October 2005 without ever knowing his whereabouts.”

In August 1910, the Fairbanks Daily News Miner noted that Sam Bonnifield arrived in town after walking the Valdez Trail. He spent a year recovering on the family farm in Kansas. The newspaper celebrated his return by saying, “No man ever lived in the North who has more real friends than has Sam Bonnifield, and the entire community will be glad to have him here once again.”

In October 1911, the Alaska Citizen ran the headline “Sam Bonnifield is Insane Once More.”

“Sam Bonnifield was taken into custody by the Marshall’s office on Wednesday last on the charge of insanity, and placed in the federal jail. He has been unbalanced for some time, but his condition only became very noticeable the day of his arrest.

Bonnifield has never entirely recovered from the mental breakdown occasioned three or four years ago when the First National Bank, of which he was president, went on a script basis. He was taken Outside for treatment at the time of his breakdown and later walked into Fairbanks over the trail.

A few days before his arrest he drew quite a sum of money from the bank and distributed a part of it among the laborers around town; the balance he carried across the river and played with it in the sand.

When arrested he violently talked about President Taft, Cardinal Gibbon and other of prominence, saying that money is their god.”

Sam Bonnifield was found to be “insane” by a jury of six men and taken to Portland. He was admitted to Morningside Hospital on December 23, 1911, where he stayed until June 26, 1914. A few months after his discharge, he received a letter from Dr. Henry Waldo Coe, the head of Morningside Hospital, verifying that he was “recovered”. Dr. Coe went on to give him the following advice:

“All that I can ask of you is that you do not take life too earnestly or strenuously. As I understand it, you are not compelled to do two men’s work. You have worked hard and are entitled to an easier time. Take an easy time.”

Not much is known about Sam’s life after his stay at Morningside. He died at the age of seventy-seven in Seattle.