Darrell Groves
Darrell Groves remembers happy memories at the Weston State Hospital, but he also remembers the fear he had of some of the patients. He remembers hearing screams from the hospital during thunderstorms and lobotomies.
To get children home at night, all parents had to do was yell, "Patients is loose!" and the kids would come running home. Families locked and bolted their doors, and kids were afraid to go home unescorted. Darrell remembers walking home from the movies at night was the most frightful. Once time, someone came out from the weeds and walked toward him and another time someone grabbed his leg "from under the sidewalk that overhung the river." Darrell could "run from the Water Plant to Dr. Cain's residence in Kitsonville in competitive Olympic time."
As a kid, Darrell and his friends enjoyed playing kick the can. One night, Darrell kicked the can and ran to hide, only to run into a large figure on the side of his uncle's house. He was terrified, thinking it was a patient, but it turned out it was only the next door neighbor.
However, sometimes it was more than just an active imagination that scared Darrell as a child. Once when Darrell, a cousin, and a friend were playing near the West Virginia Glass Factory when they saw a person coming toward them who was without a doubt, a patient. They ran to a friend's father's coal truck and "sat on the running board like crows on a tree limb." When the patient reached them, he stomped on Darrell's cousin's foot before continuing on his way. After a hundred yards however, he turned around. Darrell and his friends jumped into the truck and locked the doors. The patients walked passed them, onto Middle Run Road, and across the bridge. Darrell and his cousin grabbed their bikes and started to follow him when an attendant came running toward them, asking if they had seen a patient. They told the attendant what they had seen and willingly handed over one of the bikes when the attendant asked to borrow it. They doubled up on the other bike. They caught up to the patient and the attendant who has stopped him. As Darrell and his cousin neared, they saw the patient slash the attendant across the face with a spoon he had sharpened and concealed. The attendant did manage to subdue the patient, but Darrell doesn't remember what happened after that. But Darrell said, "Seeing the blood and the wounded attendant made an impression on me that I have never forgotten."
"There was a patient famous for swimming the West Fork upstream every time it flooded," Darrell remembers. Supposedly, this man had tried to swim the English Channel and failed, bringing on a mental illness. "He wore a black wool tank suit from the 20s or 30s. Darrell and his friends also liked to "prove" themselves by doing the same. One time when there was a flood, they were swimming in their swimming hole when they saw the patient swimming up the river. They "attempted to get up the mud slick banks like penguins fleeing the seals." A guy standing beside Darrell told him, "Just stay here, he won't bother you." Darrell stayed and admired the man "for his coolness." Darrell realized he didn't have to be afraid of the patient. Darrell didn't know then that the "cool" man standing beside him "would be the last person hung by the state of West Virginia."
After the 1950 flood, Darrell stopped swimming in the river. A female patient escaped during the flood and drowned when she was trapped in a sewer pipe. "I always felt the river was tainted after that," Darrell said.
Many years later, after Darrell had left Weston, he and his family went to visit his family in Weston. They stayed in a tent trailer in front of his uncle's store. While he was there, six or seven "criminally insane" patients managed to escape from the hospital. All he had for defense was a hunting knife with the point broken off. Darrell remembers that night he "heard every dog that barked, every person who coughed and every step made by those walking to work before daylight in Homewood that night. Patient is loose, had gotten me one last time and I could not run home this time."
But not all of Darrell's memories deal with fear and escaped patients. He remembers watching goldfish in the fountain, delivering produce to the kitchen, attending square dances in the ballroom, caroling the patients at Christmas, and roller skating through the main hallway, dodging the trustees who tried to catch him.
He also had a friend who was born at the state hospital. His parents worked there and lived in the staff apartments when he was born. "He loved to tell everyone that he was born there and watch for their reaction."