Local Author Ed Orzechowski: Becoming Darlene-The Story of Belchertown Patient #4952

Darlene Rameau, the eighth child in a family of fourteen, was born in 1956 in the mill town of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Abused and neglected, Darlene didn't respond to her own name. She considered herself an It. At age three she was sent to live with an aunt, where the abuse continued. The little girl didn't speak, but began to hear voices in her head, and when she was seven years old, Darlene was sent to a place called Belchertown State School. The institution had opened in 1922 as the Belchertown School for the Feeble-minded. By mid-century, it had become a dumping ground, housing more than 1200 patients, many of them with severe mental and physical handicaps. Spread across more than 600 acres, the campus had nine dormitories, three nurseries, a school, a hospital, infirmary, and farm colony. Although established with good intentions, Belchertown State School soon grew overcrowded, underbudgeted, and understaffed. Buildings reeked of feces and urine, where wards and day halls overflowed with screaming patients, many of them naked. It was there that Darlene met a sister she didn't know she had, and there that the voices in her head helped her cope. She dissociated from her surroundings, but held fast to a dream of one day getting married and raising a family of her own. When she was "Discharged from Placement" at age 17, she was thrown into the world with no social skills or training about day-to-day living. Yet Darlene persevered. She met a man who had recently returned from the Vietnam War, they married and had two sons. Darlene was determined to raise them to see that the world isn't an awful place. Becoming Darlene follows the publication in 2016 of You'll Like It Here, The Story of Donald Vitkus-Belchertown Patient #3394, which became an all-time best-seller for Levellers Press of Amherst, Massachusetts. Both books are the work of Ed Orzechowski, a retired high school English teacher, radio, and print journalist, who lives with his wife Gail in Northampton, Massachusetts.