Walter Fernald School for the Feebleminded
Profile: Joey Coleman
by, Leyla Shapiro and Yuval Finzi Loew
​
The State Boys Rebellion by Michael D'Antonio is a historical nonfiction book about the Walter E. Fernald School for the feebleminded. In the book, Fernald was shown as a place of abuse and brutality. The patients were bullied by the staff and one another. It was racist and was built with the idea of a hierarchy. The children were not well educated and uncared for. The main focus of this book is on the story of Freddy Boyce and his experience as a patient at the school. Freddy was constantly treated as the victim. He was taken advantage of and mistreated by his peers and the staff. Fernald’s original purpose was to provide a place for children to get better. Children were supposed to be educated with a final result of the children going home to their families. This was not the case with Freddy. He was neglected and left at Fernald after being abandoned so his experience right off the bat was very negative. This continued through his whole time at Fernald because of the extreme mistreatment he received.
With each person comes a different story, however, and that is the case with Joey Coleman. He was also a patient at the Fernald School but had a very different experiences. He came to the Fernald school with a very supportive family who were caring and attentive. Joey had an experience at Fernald that was the total opposite of Freddy. He enjoyed being there and benefitted from what Fernald had given him. Joey passed away but his story has been retold by his siblings, Bob Coleman and Helen Cushman. They undoubtedly believe that sending him there was as the right decision. They both agreed that everything that was involved in his experience was great, including the staff, activities and just the overall feel.
​
When Joey Coleman was born, he was diagnosed with down syndrome. He was the youngest of six siblings. At a very early age, Joey was diagnosed as what the doctors called a "special child." After seeing a pediatrician, it was decided that he would be able to make the most out of his life by going to Fernald. He arrived at Fernand when he was an infant and was sent to the Green Nursery. On Sunday afternoons, Joey’s siblings were allowed to visit but could only look at him through a window. After seven months in the nursery, Joey was transferred to a larger nursery called Wheatley and when the weather was nice, Joey was allowed to go outside. Joey stayed in Wheatley until he was five years old.
Later, Joey was sent to Lavers Hall, where he was given his first form of education. Joey practiced different housekeeping chores including sweeping, mopping, etc. Joey’s
​
It is our hope that this website will become a hub for the many stories of people who lived and worked at the Fernald School. Below is the first of those stories, a profile of Joey Coleman, who was a student at the Fernald School. If you have a story to share, please contact us!
dormitory was a large open area with about fifty other children. Joey enjoyed his new work and the interactions with other people. The caregivers paid a lot of attention to him. During the holidays, Joey was allowed to go home, making him very enthusiastic but he was just as excited to go back to Fernald afterwards.
When Joey reached the age of eleven he moved to Withington hall. Here, Joey received his own room since he had proved that he was mature enough to take care of it. Joey started training for menial jobs and he helped to prepare meals in the kitchen. Even though he seemed to be a little slow, he was very good with the training. Joey was able to do almost all of the work and was especially strong in the jobs that involved repetition.
At fifteen years old, Joey was offered his first off campus job at the Protestant Guild for the Blind, located off of Trapelo Road and Belmont Street. During this occupation, Joey was taught how to take the bus alone. He enjoyed participating in his work and because he was payed weekly with the very positive result of Joey learning how to manage his money better.
While Joey was at Fernald, he had a lot of very positive interactions. When it was time for him to come home, Bob would usually meet him at the front door. When he was returning from a break Bob would help him bring his things back to his room. In the building Bob would hear shouts back and forth between Joey and his friends. Bob said, "People were interested if you were a visitor they wanted to say hi." They would all come up to him and Joey and ask where they had gone and what they had been doing. Once inside employees would meet Joey and take him back to his room where he would unpack. Joey was living on his own domain. He knew when someone had been in his room while he had been gone because the second he returned he could tell if anything was out of place.
When Bob was asked why this place was so unique with what is provided he said that it had a very dedicated group of people that were involved in trying to help. Bob said, "You hear negative stories and things that were not too flattering….I did not encounter any of that." There was no such thing as special education back in the fifties and sixties and so around 1968 things started to improve. Howe Hall stuck out in Bob’s mind with all of the dances, movie and the bowling. Bob also mentioned that on Lexington st there was a skating and bowling place called Wallace and it was very active for many residents. Bob felt that Fernald facility had an institutional setting that was not very pristine but even still there was a lot of positive activity happening there.
At twenty years old, Joey was seen fit to live off campus. His parents worked very hard to find a place for him to live. Joey ended up moving to 45 Forest st in Lexington, a home owned by “Lexington Friend.” He lived in the house with six other people and they were all overseen by a married couple that monitored the house, their chores, and the meal preparation. Joey had his own room. He was actively involved in the house by shoveling, raking and helping out the neighbors.
Next Joey worked in Malden at a place called Triangle for two to three years. He started to get very bored of his tasks there so he decided to do some developmental testing. He considered looking for a job with a different location, either at the Marriott in Newton or at Brandeis University as a member of the maintenance team. Joey ended up working at Brandeis until he was fifty-four years old. At that point, Joey was living in Lexington and had been taking public transportation for a long time. He would get picked up every day by a van from Lexington friends that dropped him off at a coffee shop and then he would walk to Brandeis.
Over time Joey’s social life started to pick up. On Mondays he went to sing along singers, Tuesday was square dancing, Wednesday was bowling and Thursday was swimming. He even tried out for the special Olympics. All in all, Joey was really enjoying his life.
While Joey was at Fernald he participated religiously at the Chapel of innocents with Richard Cardinal Cushing. The cardinal liked children with special needs so Joey went every Sunday. Joey had a lot of friends with different faiths, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, etc. He also liked to help the people at church, especially the elderly and those in wheelchairs. Sometimes Joey brought his guitar because he loved to sing. Joeys life continued like this until he passed away but he lived a life full of joy.
Joey lived a life in which he had to overcome down syndrome while Freddy was perfectly “normal.” This played out in the way that they were both treated. The staff looked at Joey as needing extra care while Freddy could fend for himself. Also, Joey had his family behind him for everything. They were constantly checking on him and making sure that he was improving. The staff knew who his family was so that helped towards their attentiveness towards him. Freddy on the other hand had no family that cared about him. He was not taken care of by anyone and because of that, the staff at Fernald saw that he was not important. Based on both of the boys backgrounds they were accounted for by Fernald in very different ways. They also had very different outcomes that make Fernald look both good and bad. This gives people very conflicting views of what Fernald was and what it did for people. Most see it as a terrible place but there were cases like Joey’s where Fernald lead to hope for a better life.
edit me. It's easy.