A monumental tribute Folk singer Dan Martin sings at Waltham memorial dedication By Mark Benson / Correspondent (Reprinted with Permission from The Community Newspaper Company - The Daily News Tribune, an Edition of the MetroWest Daily News) Thursday, October 31, 2002 WALTHAM - During the late 1970s, folk singer "Ramblin' " Dan Martin spent three years at the Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham. Yesterday morning he took part in a memorial dedication for deceased patients and former Fernald School residents. A crowd of approximately 75 people attended the ceremony at Mount Feake Cemetery to unveil a granite monument honoring more than 300 individuals from Met State, the Fernald School and the local area who were buried in unmarked graves at the cemetery between 1880 and 1946. Martin remembered his time at the now-closed hospital. "There was nothing to do on Fridays and Saturdays, so the staff at Met State brought in an old beat-up guitar for me to play," he said. Martin sang "He Was Always There" at the ceremony, a song he wrote while a patient at the hospital. For Lynn Musto of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, Martin's capacity to create, grow and gain spiritually from his experiences at Met State is exactly what she hopes people today will understand about mental health care. She also hopes that people will think of this when they remember those interred at Mount Feake who were given no proper burial rites at the time of their deaths. "The real message is, despite the debilitating effects of mental illness, people with mental illness lead very happy and productive lives," said Musto, who is part of the Met-Fern Cemetery Project, a driving force that made the ceremony at Mount Feake possible. "For the longest time, the mentally ill were buried in pauper's graves or without recognition. This ceremony is part of an effort to acknowledge the existence of the mentally ill and recognize the positive aspects of what were certainly very difficult lives." Lyn Buckley, Sharon Forest, Stanley Morton and Martin all read the names of the 300 known to have been buried without an individual stone carving at the cemetery. Father Bill Leonard, the last chaplain at Met State before it officially closed in 1992 and the current chaplain at Fernald, spoke movingly about Met-Fern and the deceased. "The Met-Fern committee wanted to make sure that there was a memory of those who had such a trying experience in life and that they be honored in death," said Leonard. "Today, we have ceremonies publicly for Fernald School clients, with the family and friends of the deceased in attendance. But there was no real ceremony for these unnamed and unknown until Met-Fern brought us to this place, by rediscovering these burials at Mount Feake and providing a new ritual for those interred here." One of the members of the Met-Fern Cemetery Project is Paul Ottenstein, a Massachusetts Department of Mental Health consumer advocate. According to Ottenstein, yesterday's ceremony at Mount Feake was part of a larger movement nationally to recognize those who died after a period of mental illness. "Ten years ago, the Danvers Memorial Commission found cemetery sites like these and asked the State Department of Mental Health to help clean up and maintain them," said Ottenstein. He was joined on the Met-Fern Cemetery Project by Musto, as well as Joe Foley, a director at the Fernald, Joanne Ciardello, operations manager at The Fernald Center, and Ross Ellenhorn of the Edinburg Center. "This was the impetus for the Met State project a few years ago and this ceremony at Mount Feake and other projects in other states." The Met State project involved a similar ceremony to the one held yesterday at Mount Feake. When Leonard joined the Met State staff in 1989 as chaplain, he did not know there was a burial ground for hospital patients at the site, the site that was celebrated at the Met State ceremony in spring 2001. Today, however, the knowledge of past burial grounds is increasing, and ceremonies are being held to correct a past error, through the efforts of groups like the Met-Fern Cemetery Project. Mayor David F. Gately attended the unveiling of the tombstone at Mount Feake yesterday. He said the event showed the vibrance in Waltham's community spirit. "We are one big family, regardless of our differences," said Gately. He thanked Deveney & Sons for generously helping fund and create the granite tombstone, the Moose Lodge for providing post-ceremony refreshments at its lodge, Brasco Florist, and the Mount Feake Cemetary staff, including John Duffy and Mike Russo. "Met State and Fernald have been part of the Waltham family for many, many years. We remember our loved ones, friends ... and with their passing, they are still part of our family." Other highlights from the ceremony included a poem read by Franz Wright, winner of prestigious the PEN/Voelker award for poetry in 1998, and a rendition of the folk-gospel classic, "I'll Fly Away," from the Fernald Chorus, including Eve David, Lisa El-Lakis, Gordon Hymers, Pamela Owen, Fran Silvera and Amy Slaughter. The Met-Fern Cemetary Project is a joint effort of mental health consumers, individuals with mental retardation, The Edinburg Center, the Fernald Center of the Department of Mental Retardation, The Walter E. Fernald Association, The Department of Mental Health Metro Suburban East Site Advisory Board and The Metro Suburban East Warmline. Martin's music may be found on MP3.Com.