Sitting near the Dixon Youth Soccer fields and the roller hockey rink, the cemetery and its tombstones from more than 100 years ago are all that is left of the old school. That and the memories of those who once worked there.
“I began as an innocent,” French said. “Any kind of sex abuse was unknown to me. Physical abuse was almost unknown to me.”
French wants people to remember the horrors of the old Dixon State School for a book she’s writing. It is something she knows well since she worked there as a teenager and later as a college graduate. Now she’s interviewing everyone she can find for a book about the place that was once one of the largest employers in Dixon. She has interviewed more than 70 people and is looking to talk with more people with any connection to the school.
Her book tells how employees used plastic bats to hit the boys and men staying at the school on their heads. And some of the “boys” were up to 70 years old. It also shows there were times when employees at the state school showed compassion for the people who were institutionalized.
“I remember I could smell the cottage with the boys and young men well before I got there,” said French, who worked at DSS as a teenager during the summers of 1966s and 1967. She worked there full-time after college in 1971. “The boys and young men would refuse to wear clothes and spend their day playing with their bodies.”
The DSS was originally designed in 1918 to care for epileptic patients. The program was later expanded to care for what they called “feeble-minded.” The school was shut, and the state turned the site into the Dixon Correctional Center in 1975.
Parents with mentally disabled children were encouraged to institutionalize them, according to French. There was little room to move, and there were no activities for them. Not even TV.
French has interviewed people who were either employed or stayed at DSS. She has also interviewed people who had family members kept there. She is trying to collect photos and recordings to help her with her book.
“The first summer I worked there, I was assigned to the cottage for girls,” French said. “Most couldn’t move and had to be spoon-fed and have their diapers changed.”
The girls spent most of their time in the beds staring at the ceiling, according to French. She remembered there was one girl who could sit up.
“After working the summer at the girls’ cottage, I asked to be given something more interesting,” French said. “The teenage boys and young men refused to get dressed or wear underwear.”
There were times they could get pants without underwear on the boys, only to have the boys dirty them, take them off, and throw the pants around the room.
“Despite everything, there was still love,” French said. “People who worked there stayed for a reason.”
Anyone who knows someone who has any connections to the DSS, French asks that you contact the Lee County Historical Society at (815) 284-2134. She is also looking for help getting her book about the state school published.
5 Responses
Hi there. I worked there from 1980 until 1983 when Dixon developmental center formerly Dixon state school closed down and then became a prison. It was my first job out of college. I first worked on the CV cottages, children were housed there until they were moved to the Howe developmental center.
It did not become the Dixon Correctional Facility until 1983.
Hi my husbands grandfather, Fredrick Calvert, was born in 1890 . He lived in Dixon Illinois and worked at the Dixon State School for most of his life. He died in 1972 and was still employed at the school. His job was to make sure everyone had enough linens and were always clean. He also owned the Dewey hotel in Dixon which he provided safe living environments for the elderly men once or if they got out of the school. My husbands mother was placed in the school sometime in the late 1930s. Although she had no disabilities she was placed there cause her parents died of TB and she wasn’t allowed to attend regular school. The law placed her at the school because they had no other place to home her. She unfortunately never learned to read or write. The grandfather saw that she didn’t belong at the school and helped her escape the school and she then married my husbands father and had five children.
I worked at Pre- Voc both as a teacher assistant and later as a teacher for deaf/blind and multi disabled. I would like to talk with you Kathy.
Hi hello there , My grandmother worked at Dixon State School from 1966 up to 1982, she went ahead and retired since they was turning it into a prison, her name was Irene Edwards and she was dedicated, but I do remember even though I was 10 yrs old,, so they was fixin to be in process to turn into a prison, so my grandma was trying to be interviewed and she told them get that camera out of her face and she was trying to walk to get into her car, anyway I really like to see that interview of that, anyway thank you and hopefully I can anyone that remembers my grandma Irene Edwards or Edna Edwards which is her first name but she usually by Irene most that really knew her, thank you and I like to hear more stories from there