Tomorrow morning, June 14, 2019, I set off on a journey that began in New York the early winter of 1947. Questions from a lecture by my friend, Professor Mark Christensen haunt me as I pack my suitcase and map my route: What is my state of mind before I leave? Am I on a …
70 Years ago, A Few Months After Victory over Japan
My grandmother’s diary entry: 11-18-1945: Walked through Central Park—a telegram from John Curry saying he had arrived in San Francisco from Tokyo and was leaving for New York on Friday. This picture, taken two years before I was born, jumped out at me perhaps because of the date. My mother Barbara, oldest brother Chris, about …
My Mother’s PTSD
I’ve prayed so much that her life would straighten itself out – the more I think of it the more I feel it is possible her war experience unconsciously to her was eating out her vitals – how tragic life is for the world. Henry O. Philips, January 23, 1943 Written by my grandfather, a …
Chickenhouse Chronicles: 1950 Holy Land Visit
My great grandmother, Katherine Thomas Philips, had a younger sister named Alice, who married Edmund Garstin. They had two daughters: The eldest, Martha “Pattie” Thomas Garstin, born 1888, died in a mental institution, Normansfield Hospital, Teddington, in 1935. The second daughter, Eloise “Emily” Thomas Garstin, was born in 1889 and died in 1970. Eloise, a name …
My Grandmother Studying Abnormal Behavior, Circa 1953, New York City College
Sixty years ago my grandmother began attending a psychology class at New York City College, studying abnormal behavior. For over half a century she searched in vain for a cure, trying to understand why her daughters had been cursed with mental illness. She left behind thousands of pages of New York City Mental Health booklets, …