Visionary Voices Interview
Earl Duff
June 26, 2013
23:59:22:04 – 23:59:46:20
L. My name is Lisa Sonneborn and I’m interviewing Earl Duff in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania on June 25th, I
think?
E. 26th!
G. Yeah.
L. Thank you, on June 26th. Where’s June going?
G. They all go by so fast.
L. They do, they do. And also present is our videographer Ginger Jolly and Earl, do we have your
permission to begin the interview?
E. Yes.
23:59:47:03 – 23:59:58:21
L. Would you mind telling me when and where you were born?
E. I was born in Abington [PA], in 1945.
Chapter One: Early Career
00:00:33:25 – 00:01:01:07
L. When you were growing up in Abington do you recall having interactions with anyone in the
community who had disabilities?
E. Not really. We had a Down Syndrome student at my elementary school. This is when 1st through 6th
grade that was in a special class. It wasn’t integrated in with the other people. That I can recall that was
the only instance.
00:01:02:00 – 00:01:07:20
L. Did you have any members of your family or any opportunity to interact with folks?
E. No, not really.
00:01:08:00 – 00:02:17:11
L. So what kind of work did you plan to pursue when you were a young man?
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E. Well, I started out going for a degree in history. My specialty was ancient history, thinking that I would
wind up teaching and um I got the bachelor’s degree in ancient history and then I went on to get a
Master’s degree in education. Um, and this was always during the time of the Vietnam war and
everything so it was a time of big turmoil and uh, I wanted to pursue my education before I got drafted
because that was in everybody’s mind at the time; that you’d be drafted. So I wanted to do that until I
finished.
L. And were you drafted or did you wind up teaching?
E. No, no, no. I got a job after I got my Master’s Degree then the war ended.
00:02:18:00 – 00:03:42:16
L. And what was the job you got after you earned your degree?
E. I got a teaching job in Philadelphia school district teaching 8th grade World History and I only lasted a
year. I found it very, um, very much different than teaching the subject I loved and was interested in and
it was more a disciplinary job I had in the school I was in. I was in Olney High School and it was very
difficult. It was not what I wanted to do and so I was unemployed for a while. And then I responded to
an ad at the Philadelphia association for retarded children, which is what they called it then, PARC at
their work training center in Westmoreland Street. And this was more in line with my Master’s degree
training which was basically in learning theory. And I was fascinated with learning theory during the
training at Temple. Uh and uh got the job as a vocational evaluator at PARC and that’s when I first was
introduced to the learning disabled.
00:04:12:00 – 00:04:26:10
E. I got the job as the vocational evaluator at PARC and um that’s when I met my colleagues that I’m still
associated with today and this would have been back in 1969 I think.
00:04:39:27 – 00:06:02:08
L. You said that you were doing vocational rehabilitation. Is that something that you were trained to do?
Did you receive special training?
E. I received special training to be a vocational evaluator. The way the system worked at PARC, at the
workshop, is the BVR, the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation funded each client or trainee as we called
the people. As they came in to be evaluated for work or work placement or work training or work skills,
wherever they fell in the spectrum. So they went through the department of evaluation first where they
had a psychological test. A social history was done and a vocational evaluation and um PARC sent me to
New York to the Tower Training Program that had developed a system of evaluating people and job skills
and job strengths and that’s where I received my training to become an evaluator. And I was up there
about a month and in fact they asked to hire me… I may have moved to Manhattan but I didn’t. I came
back.
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00:06:03:13 – 00:06:37:10
L. So I’m curious about the types of vocational training you were doing for folks. Having people working
in the community, was that a new idea at the time?
E. Um, I don’t know. It was uh I know that JVS, the Jewish Vocational Service was doing training too. I
mean evaluation and PARC had been doing it. I replaced someone who left so I just fell into the role. I
don’t know the history of how long it had been done.
00:06:37:25 – 00:08:41:00
L. What kind of community placements were you able to find for folks?
E. We um... there was a placement counselor in the training center and after we would have a meeting
after the evaluation phase we would send people into the workshop and recommend people for job
placement if they were that ready already or recommend certain training skills be strengthened while in
the workshop. In the workshop, of course, you were limited to sort of production line work but of course
there was janitorial work and kitchen work. There was a full cafeteria there so you could give people
who had strengths in certain areas experience and evaluate them even further to see what their skills
were and Shirley Scott was the placement counselor and she was very good at developing jobs in
industry for people and between her and I we came up with the idea of sending, I guess we called it job
coach. I would go out on the job with the person who was placed and stay a week or two, whatever the
employer was comfortable with for me to be on the job with the person to help them and they really
appreciated having the extra help of training the person the job without having to do it themselves. And
that worked out a number of times. Um, and then I would phase myself out and be there less
frequently. And hopefully the person would then succeed on the job. We had some really good success
with some things come into my mind. We placed one person at the Philadelphia Navy Yard who was
deaf and had to measure propeller blades with a micrometer and we had to teach him how to use the
micrometer and he did a really good job and went on for further training that they offered on the job
training and really was quite a success.
00:08:41:20 – 00:08:49:05
L. Did you enjoy the work?
E. Oh yeah. Yeah this was, this was a very enjoyable; much better than teaching history.
Chapter Two: Three Musketeers
00:08:49:29 – 00:11:18:15
L. All in all, how long did you work with PARC?
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E. I was there 11 years and during that time period, um, the whole Pennhurst, um, situation came on the
news. I remember John Facenda who was a TV reporter reporting it and um then we would hear about
different uh rulings that were being made by Judge Broderick and there was no programs to replace
Pennhurst at the time but we were learning this as it happened. It’s hard to put it back into words now
but um, uh one of the people that worked with me at PARC was now working in a base service unit so
this would have been around 1971 or so and um, we were meeting weekly at that point. Uh I have to go
back someone came to PARC once a week. His name was Sam Scott and he taught the deaf clients at the
work training center sign language. Uh, another handicap, deafness, had this whole history in that time
period where people were being taught oral tradition or oral communication instead of manual
communication and we were in favor of the manual communication side of things so people could learn
to communicate and then learn a language. A lot of the, um, mentally retarded residents or clients at
PARC didn’t have any language. They didn’t communicate in sign language. They lived at home with
hearing parents and really needed a language. And they picked it up quite quickly and he would come
once a week and teach staff and clients that were deaf, sign language. Well he and another evaluator
and myself got together, Carol Meshon was the other evaluator and we started having a Tuesday night
meeting. Meeting deaf people in the community, deaf people that had social workers that came from
Byberry or other institutions and we met once a week to see what we could do to help them.
00:12:06:00 – 00:15:02:27
L. You mentioned two colleagues who you have had a long professional relationship with; Sam and
Carol?
E. Yes. Sam Scott and Carol Meshon.
L. Can you tell me a little bit about them, starting with Sam?
E. Sam was again coming to PARC [Philadelphia ARC] once a week and that’s how I met him; teaching
sign language to the trainees that were at the PARC training center. Um, he was, his parents were deaf
and he was working uh in several places at the time doing the same sort of thing using manual
communication to help people learn communication skills. These were deaf people who were limited in
their communication skills. He went to Pennhurst once a week and um, organized… identified and then
organized all the deaf residents at Pennhurst into one unit then taught the staff and residents there
manual communication. Uh he went to Byberry once a week and did the same thing there. Uh and then
he also had um clients he actually saw in his own home uh to do uh counseling with and was paid by the
Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation because these were people who were uh looking for employment
and BVR was helping them and Sam was part of what whole package of them learning skills so they
could have a job. Excuse me. And um that’s how I met Sam. Carol was actually working at PARC in the
evaluation room when I got a job there. Um she was one of the other evaluators. She had also had the
training uh that I had mentioned that I had had. Um, and she also had training, I don’t really know… I
know it was in Menominee, Wisconsin that PARC sent her to be trained. Um, she was also, um, I forgot
what my train of thought was. Oh Carol, yes, Carol really didn’t have the background in the area. She
had a degree in fine arts but uh I guess you could say she was an activist of the sixties. She was in many
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marches and so she was someone who was always interested in um helping people and uh, I guess we
were all young and idealistic at the time in the sixties. So that’s how we met, at PARC.
00:15:03:25 – 00:16:52:10
L. So you were talking about some of the folks that you were dealing with who may be carried a dual
diagnosis of an intellectual disability as well as being deaf. I’m curious you said you were teaching them
manual communication or sign language. Was that something that had not been offered to them
previously?
E. Yes, most of the deaf people that are classified as mentally retarded never had manual
communication. If they were lucky enough to go to the Pennsylvania school for the deaf, and I'm saying
lucky because most of them didn’t have that experience, they were taught in an oral tradition. It was
actually not allowed to use sign language on campus. Everybody did, you know, when it wasn’t in front
of the classroom but it was frowned upon as the way of teaching back then. Um, and so we were sort of
opposed to that and there was a whole debate of the oralists versus the manualists. But um the sign
language we taught the trainees at PARC was very elemental. We had a build up just identifying words
and we did it through games and things like a picture of an apple and then you do the sign for an apple.
Give me the apple, you know. It was very basic but it was amazing how much people learned that
quickly through the manual communication where the oral tradition, they really, um, when they came
to PARC often the history was oh he sits at home and watches TV and doesn’t do anything was what
parents would tell us when they would come in for their initial interview.
00:16:52:15 – 00:18:41:12
L. I wonder if you could tell me more about that. I wonder what life would have been like for an
individual without having that ability to communicate with family or with folks.
E. They would sit at home and watch TV. Um, we had, these are adults we’re talking about, people in
their twenties, thirties, forties who were still living at home with their parents and not working and
maybe getting into trouble. Lots of deaf people have a history of getting into trouble. They weren’t part
of the deaf sub culture because they did no manual communication. Um, they were mentally retarded in
many cases but sometimes, I think, they were functionally retarded because of the lack of language. Um,
we felt if they could learn a language then they could learn English because the deaf people we knew,
who were normal deaf people, didn’t really think in English. They think in sign language or in uh, not in
English. If you try to think of how you think, you're thinking in English or in a language. Uh, and these
folks didn’t have that um ability. They didn’t have that freedom to think in an expressive language and
being able to express their thoughts. It’s still for the clients I work with now, the hardest thing is to
express a thought for the deaf clients that we have. Um, you know driving a car, cooking a meal, things
like that but actual thoughts are difficult when you don’t have that language that you grow up with.
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00:18:42:05 – 00:20:12:25
L. You had mentioned the Tuesday night meetings where folks gathered to go a little further learning
how to communicate manually and I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about the
meetings like the types of folks who would attend.
E. Well we met on Tuesday nights. We didn’t have any organization. It started off as a social thing to
teach sign language to certain clients, to provide guidance to families that had deaf children. We would
have parents who had a deaf child and didn’t know what to do and because Sam was a part of the deaf
sub culture because his family was deaf, he knew a lot of people and so through word of mouth they
said go see Sam Scott, you know. And we would have clients from PARC come. We would have client’s
families come. Um, people from Byberry came with their clients. These were all people that, um, needed
some sort of help. Uh and this was the voluntary thing. We just did what we could do through the social
interaction of learning sign language. That was sort of our tool to provide the help and uh we did that
for a couple of years.
00:20:13:10 – 00:20:52:01
L. Where the meetings exclusively about learning how to communicate or did, um, you address other
issues with the folks?
E. Well that was the main sort of theme of the meeting but of course other things were addressed. Uh,
job placement, uh I in fact placed a few people in jobs based on them coming to that meeting because I
would know maybe of some jobs for my, based on my day time job I knew that certain employers might
be willing and so we found some jobs for people that came to the Tuesday night meeting.
00:20:54:15 – 00:22:27:24
L. You had said that, um, some folks would come from institutions like Pennhurst or Byberry. They’d be
with their social workers.
E. Mm-hmm.
L. I’m wondering how in turn you reached out to folks in institutional settings or if in fact you did that?
E. Well because of Sam again, he was going to Byberry once a weekend, to Pennhurst, and um I believe
his name was George Kopechnik, was at Pennhurst and they had built modular units and one of the
modular units, uh, had all the deaf people in it. When I first went with Sam to Pennhurst, I would go with
Sam to Pennhurst so off and on his visits. The residents were all over the place in many different wards
but eventually they were all moved to one unit which was sort of a transition between being at
Pennhurst and being out in the group home. The word group home was being thrown about then
because this was the time when Pennhurst, uh, lawsuit was going on and um so the staff they were
actually thinking, at least on the unit that I became familiar with, of moving people out. Uh and uh they
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saw Sam as the contact that they could use to maybe move somebody into the community and that’s
when we first developed the idea of having a group home for deaf people.
00:22:29:00 – 00:23:49:05
L. Why was it that you and Sam, for instance, um had to work to identify people? Why had they not
been identified as deaf when they came into Pennhurst?
00:23:49:07 – 00:25:12:24
E. Well I guess it would seem… it would have been seen as unable to communicate. Um, sometimes the
deaf person only responded after being, uh, after observing you doing some movements and if the
person had maybe copied your movements that might be a connection there. And uh some people were
identified that way, that they understand what you were moving like, if you did this with your hand and
they did that with their hand, you know, it was very basic like that to identify people that might be deaf.
Um, actually hearing exams with the doctor, I’m not aware of. I wasn’t involved in actually identifying
people. I was involved more with moving people out but I know Sam was involved with identifying
people and used whatever skills he has to do that. Uh, often uh just sitting down with the person and
seeing if they understood movement and could mimic what he was saying. Sometimes he would actually
find a person who knew one or more sign words.
00:25:14:00 – 00:25:52:04
L. Is it possible that there had been people sent to Pennhurst who maybe didn’t have a cognitive
disability or a significant cognitive disability but it was their deafness?
E. I would agree with that. We have a resident now who is 92 years old in our group home who’s been
with us since 1984 and uh he was there 50 years and uh, I would say that was probably part of the
reason he was there.
CHAPTER THREE: ORIGINS OF M5 ORGANIZATION
00:25:58:10 – 00:29:02:29
L. So in the late sixties you were sort of working on behalf of some of the deaf or newly diagnosed
residents at Pennhurst. Um certainly as you had mentioned earlier there was a lot going on regarding
Pennhurst closure. There had been an expose by Bill Baldini from NBC10 called Suffer Little Children and
certainly litigation was um being pursued um facilitated by I think David Ferleger and the folks from
PILCOP [Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia] on behalf of the ARC. Lots of conversation about
closing Pennhurst and questions, I think, about how to support people in the community after that. And
I’m wondering how those conversations sort of resonated with you and Sam and Carol?
E. Well at this point, uh, by 1971 or 70, Carol had a job at one of the local base service units and we were
actually meeting and doing our Tuesday night meetings at her base service unit. And she had learned
from [Joe Scarlett] the director of her base service unit this whole idea of group homes. Um, and that
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people were accepting submissions of proposals and that’s how we found out the whole idea was a
possibility. Um of course we had a unique concept of having all the deaf people in one group home that
we could from the Philadelphia area because everything was based on geography on what county you
lived in. So we actually invited Edith Ballard, who was the director of Mental Health Mental Retardation
at the time, to visit one of our Tuesday night meetings at the base service unit. And she did and she was
impressed with what she saw that she got an idea and a grasp on what our goal was. In terms of manual
communication and that people all together in the group, needed to know manual communication so
therefore it would be beneficial for the mentally retarded residents who needed manual communication
to be in a home where the staff and the other residents also use manual communication. So that whole
idea made sense uh what didn’t make sense in terms of the rules were that our potential residents were
from every different catchment area in Philadelphia so this would require a special unique uh group
home that covered all catchment areas or went across boundaries. So we submitted the proposal and it
was accepted and uh Edith recommended one of the base service units for us to locate and to locate our
home in which was in the Kensington area and on Lee High Avenue, we met with the director there.
00:29:48:16 – 00:31:32:26
E. I forget the name, but it was the base service unit that covered the Kensington area and their office
was on Le High Avenue on the hospital there and um Carol, Sam and I met with the director of the base
service unit saying that we had a proposal that we could open up a group home and uh Edith Ballard had
recommended his catchment area. Well then he was asking us our backgrounds and why we were
opening up a group home. We explained our whole philosophy and the whole idea of manual
communication and how all the residents would be deaf. And um so he asked us our name and
everything and we hadn’t even been incorporated yet. We were in the process because that was part of
the thing; you had to be incorporated and because of our varied background; mine being in learning
theory, Carol’s in fine arts, and Sam as officially in English Literature, he said we were like the three
musketeers. So we said okay, that’ll be our name; 3M. We weren’t allowed to take 3M legally so we told
the lawyer just pick the next highest number and it became M5 and that’s where we got our name but it
also signed well in sign language; M5 so it worked out because people would say where are you going?
We’re going to M5 tonight. So that’s how we got our name because people wondered how in the world
did you get that name?
00:31:33:10 – 00:33:26:25
L. As you said group homes were really just coming on to the scene in Pennsylvania. Was there any kind
of a framework for you to follow?
E. This was all new, I mean we were breaking ground and all the little things, zoning even, uh once we
were funded we bought a house and uh our belief was that contact the zoning board, tell them what
you wanted to do so they could tell you what was needed in the home. And months went by when we
were pursuing this and we finally learned that you have to open up the home, then inspect it, find the
violations, and then you correct the violations. You can’t really open up a home without violations. You
had to open up a home then be inspected and be in violation and then correct them. But it took us so
8
long to figure that out that in the process we sold the home and rented three smaller homes which was
easier to do because of zoning with three people it wasn’t consider a multi-family dwelling. See
originally we thought we’d have eight residents so therefore it was a multi-family dwelling and it was a
unique creature and the whole zoning board, there were no group homes for unrelated people with
staff that aren’t related living in and uh but it was much easier with only three people to get through the
zoning because it was a single family home and uh it was workable and we did that. And we pursued it in
several catchment areas at that point to find enough homes.
00:34:13:16 – 00:35:35:22
L. You talked about having a group home where the residents were all deaf and I wondered what you
thought would be the benefit of having a group home that was comprised of all people who were dually
diagnosed with deafness being one of their diagnoses? What did you think would be the benefit and
what did you hope to offer these folks?
E. We hoped to offer these folks an ability to learn language and from that maybe gain skills in English
and be more successful getting a job or just with life in general. Uh, we also hoped that if they learned
manual language they’d be able to fit in more with the deaf sub culture; the normal deaf sub culture.
Plus we were hiring staff at the time that were either in school to become interpreters for the deaf or
deaf people looking for work. So we thought that would help these people transition into the deaf
culture; sub culture. That was our goal. Not really the regular culture but the deaf sub culture and then
from there they could deal more with relationships in the overall culture but that was the basic original
goal.
00:35:35:23 – 00:36:18:11
L. And what did you think that would give folks that entry into the deaf sub culture was important for
what reason?
E. To be accepted. I mean these were people that were not any group who they were isolated. They
were really isolated. I mean if you think of deafness, how much it isolates you, uh because you don’t
have a language. The deafness deprives you of the language. It’s devastating and so we thought this
would help facilitate otherwise they would remain isolated.
00:36:20:05 – 00:39:18:17
L. I’m curious with your first series of group homes, you said you had rented three apartments. Um, how
was it that you found residents for your homes? How did you recruit people to…
E. Well, all the residents in the beginning came from Pennhurst. Uh, from the unit that I was describing
at Pennhurst where the deaf residents were grouped together and uh it was my job to go visit the
clients at Pennhurst and gradually get them used to the idea of moving out. Uh most of these folks had
been long term residents at Pennhurst and that was home for them. I would take them out to dinner. I
would bring them snacks. I would take them, you know, on trips. We would go to the group home for
dinner. We would go to the group home for maybe a day visit. Go on activities with activities with staff
9
that might be working at the group home and do it very gradually and once we had a few residents we
only started with one resident per home. We didn’t fill the home in a week. We did it gradually. At least
you could in those days. I think its different now. You have time frames and everything but we did it very
gradually. Some of the residents did come from the community. We had one resident who was living at
home who had been to the Pennsylvania school for the deaf but because he had been taught in an oral
tradition it was very hard for him to break him of his habit of trying to speak and no one could
understand what he said. It was… he thought people could understand what he said because he had
been trained for years to speak that way but he really couldn’t but he was a quick learner in terms of
manual communication. And uh he was someone who moved into one of our group homes. All the
resident and all the staff got… the manual communication really tied them together. You could see the
give and take, you know just everyday stuff. You set the table, you wash the dished, you know, hand me
this, hand me that, did you do this, did you do that? They didn’t have that before the manual
communication. That’s sort of give and take between people didn’t exist, you know so this was a big
change and just that was a real positive achievement. Uh we had another resident from the community
whose father happened to be the president of a very important company in Pennsylvania. It was actually
a nationwide company.
00:39:44:14 – 00:40:57:18
L. You said for many people Pennhurst had been home for most of their lives, um, was it… were people
reluctant to move?
E. Some were, some were. After a few of our residents were placed the people in the unit were looking
forward to coming with me because they would hear about it, you know, from the staff there. And uh
when all nine residents were finally placed and uh we were in the community about a year but
Pennhurst was still open. Pennhurst took a while to have everybody placed. I took all nine of them back
to visit and they went back in their newest clothing and everything that they were all very proud of.
They didn’t want to be there. They didn’t want… they looked around. They just didn’t want to be there.
That was not where they wanted to be anymore. They wanted to be back in their group home so it was
a real good feeling that they had made that transition. I mean it was really quite dramatic to see that
they didn’t want to be there.
00:41:46:15 – 00:42:46:02
L. I’m wondering if the families of folks you were transitioning from Pennhurst to group homes; where
they were they involved? Were they excited about the possibility of community? Were any of them
reluctant for their children?
E. Some were very excited. Some were happy. Some were very reluctant. We had one family who uh
they swore that their son would be the last person to leave Pennhurst because they had heard horror
stories about what a group home was. Um, other families couldn’t have been more supportive. They
were thrilled. Uh, there child wasn’t in an institution anymore, they were in a real house. Um so we had
the full gamut of responses from families. Not all of our clients had families that were involved at all. I
would say it was a very small proportion of the residents we had that had actual involved families.
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00:42:52:20 – 00:45:47:04
L. You had said earlier, Earl that obviously this was all very new; the whole idea of group homes was very
new. I’m wondering sort of what licensing requirements perhaps, um, were mandatory, um and what
you might require of staff.
E. Well we were there before licensing. We were there, everything was new. Um we heard that in future
there would be licensing regs but they hadn’t existed yet or hadn’t been created yet. Uh and we were
always the ones who put our foot in, like we called wage an hour to come to our home to see if we were
doing things right. In those days you had staff sleep over night and you didn’t pay for them to sleep over
night since you were providing a bedroom for them but they were really on call. They were at work. And
of course wage an hour told us this was all wrong. You had to pay them for every hour they were in the
group home. So we alerted the city that the whole state was in violation of wage an hour regulations for
group homes because we had invited them into see what we were doing. So they sort of did a blind eye
because we would have had to pay all the past hours but we knew from that point on we had to pay for
all hours worked which holy changed the budget because you didn’t have it in the budget for overnight
hours for people who slept there so that was one of the things we did. Uh of course the zoning thing, we
were at many zoning hearings. Um we never really had much problem with the community except for
one of the group homes we had which was at Alden Park Manor, where um the neighbors of the
apartment we rented didn’t have a problem with us but the management did. Uh, and uh didn’t want to
renew our lease. This is when we went to them to rent a second apartment and uh so we hired David
Ferlerger to sue the city and uh not throw us out of the apartment. And we won our case in the end.
PILCOP [Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia] being a big help to us and Eleanor Oak and so they
were all on our side and fighting us being thrown out of this apartment building and in the end the
apartment building had to agree to rent one of its units to handicapped individuals. We had long gone
since then because it took so long for the whole case to be heard but we did achieve victory in that if
you want to call it that.
00:45:47:15 – 00:47:46:04
L. What you just described opens the door for something very interesting I think which is how you
approach community with group homes. I know you had very specific ideas about how to approach the
community about the group home and how to be sure that the folks in the group home became a
welcomed part of the community and I wondered if you could tell me about that.
E. We did it gradually. Again we would go into a neighborhood and this is a house we’re renting. Um, we
would invite the neighbors in and you know have snacks for them or something so they could see...
because of course we’re furnishing the home, painting it, fixing it up, whatever so they could see that
we weren’t some horrible… I didn’t know what people thought they thought group homes were some
horrible thing that would degrade their community and they didn’t want that in their backyard sort of
attitude. We were afraid of that attitude. We didn’t want our people to be ostracized. We wanted to fit
in and so that’s one of the ways we did it. Um some of the other ways we did it were actually meeting
the neighbors before we even moved in. We may have, in one of our homes, we knew the person that
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owned the house and so she knew the neighbors because it was her home so we were able to meet with
the neighbors because of her contact with them to explain who we were before we moved in and then
again once we moved in, invite them to see what we were doing. And that’s the best way we found to
move in and to make sure that the residents were dressed appropriately for the situation and the staff
were dressed appropriately for the situation; to just blend in and to just move in quietly.
00:47:46:25 – 00:48:38:26
L. And how did the community generally respond?
E. We, except for that one problem, didn’t have a problem and in that one instance we didn’t have a
problem with the neighbors. They were perfectly happy with us. It was again with the management who
had this feeling they shouldn’t be renting to us because we were one of those experiments. In fact we
were told “We don’t want to rent to those animals” which was often a familiar feeling you got from
people back then. You know it was uh a lot of education has happened to the public since then. It really
is uh quite a different world we live in now than we did back in the late sixties.
00:48:40:05 – 00:50:48:22
L. I wonder um again as you were trying to figure all of this out, how to make a group home work, how
to support people successfully in the community, what requirements did you have of the staff of group
homes?
E. Well in the beginning of course, we wanted staff with manual communication. We were in
Philadelphia, in those three group homes until 1984. In 1984, well actually before 1984 we also had a
group home in Chester County for one deaf resident. This was by himself. Um we were, um, funded
though for a three group home proposal so we had two other residents move into his group home so we
had one group home in Chester County and three in Philadelphia. And um in 1984 because of funding
and everything we decided to move out of Philadelphia. At that point the clients were really going along
pretty well. They had all established relationships with one another. They were moving towards goals of
being employed. They had day programs except for one person who refused to do anything but go
fishing in the Schuylkill River and um he was a unique person and he, uh, persuaded the system to adapt
to what his needs were and his desires were. But outside of that we felt it was okay for us to leave and
that everything would be okay and so the base service unit in which the group homes were located at
that time, uh, took over the group homes and the staff. The staff basically stayed and we expanded in
Chester County at that time. Um, I don’t know if that answers your question.
L. It does.
CHAPTER FOUR: M5 MOVES TO CHESTER COUNTY, PA
00:50:49:10 – 00:53:59:05
L. You had mentioned someone that you were supporting in Chester County and I know you were
supporting them at the same time you were starting in Philadelphia. Chester County approached you
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because this individual was very unique and the circumstances in which he came to you were very
unique so maybe you could tell me…
E. Chester County approached us. This was the early seventies when we were first getting going. They
had a deaf client in prison, in Chester County Prison that was diagnosed as mentally retarded and he had
been lost there. And the district attorney at the time said something must be done. He needs to be
placed out of prison. So they asked us to evaluate him to see what his needs were and we felt he might
be a good candidate for a group home. That the reasons he was in prison, he would get into a lot of
trouble with his family. He lived in Coatesville and he was getting into trouble all of the time but it didn’t
seem anything too terrible. He had been in Pennhurst briefly but had set a fire in Pennhurst and then he
left Pennhurst. Um, he had stolen. He had a lot of misdemeanors against him but we felt that we could
help him. Uh, and if he was supervised he would be okay in a community setting and uh that’s how it
started. He was put in a group home that we started with two other hearing residents. Uh, then he had
an incident with one of the hearing residents which put him back in prison. He stabbed the resident. Uh
and we realized at that point that he needed 24 hour one on one supervision and we said we would take
him back only if we could set up a program like that for him and he’s been with us ever since
E. Sometimes he has an issue of becoming anxious and we have staff that has been with him for quite a
few years that can read his behavior and we know how to avoid an episode. Uh we know what his needs
are at those times. He needs a break from his routine. He might need to go to a movie. He might need a
day off from work. Uh, for some reason or another he needs a break from his routine and usually that
works really well and we’ve avoided major episodes for years. Um, and uh he’s pretty much working in
the community doing really well.
00:54:00:10 – 00:55:54:18
L. Is this someone that you also had to teach manual communication?
E. Oh yeah. He, although he had to P-State, Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, he basically lived at home
in isolation of language, uh and he needed very basic sign language in the beginning. Uh you know cards
with pictures on them. Give me this, give me that. Very basic things. Now he can speak in sentences and
he communicates in sign language. It’s his language now. You can see its how he wants so communicate.
Because he is mentally retarded though he doesn’t give you the alternatives a normal deaf person
would. A normal deaf person will read your face and see maybe you're not getting what they're saying
and then try another way of saying it; try more gestures, less sign language, maybe some acting out.
Whereas the more handicap deaf person doesn’t pick up on those nuances and just uses the one means
of communication. In his case the words he’s learned in sign language and if you don’t get it and you
look concerned than he looks concerned and then you got concern going back and forth with your face.
So uh that is one thing you can see with him but um we can usually overcome it by questioning his
words because some of his words are mixed up but he’s using sign language as his language now and uh
he just doesn’t realize that everybody doesn’t quite understand the way he signs because he has his
own unique flavor to his sign language.
00:55:54:20 – 00:56:49:00
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L. So given what you’re describing, how important is continuity of staff and care to his success?
E. We’ve been very fortunate in all our homes in Philadelphia and in Chester County. We have staff that
has been with us 25 years or more. I would say more than 50 percent of our staff have been with us 10
years or more and we find that a really positive valuable asset because uh they know how people react
to certain things. They know what the people’s needs are that are not expressed maybe through
language and um the people feel confident in who they’re coming home to every night. So that’s a big
asset to have longevity in the staff. Yeah.
00:56:57:10 – 00:57:31 :20
L. I want to go back for just a minute, Earl, to when you were sort of in two counties; when M5 was
existing… you had three group homes I believe in Philadelphia, you had one in Chester County…
E. Right.
00:57:31:22 – 01:00:55:27
L. Certainly during the time when Pennhurst was dispersing its residents into the community I’m
wondering if you were getting pressure to expand as an agency or as a provider.
E. Oh yes. We were getting pressure to expand um especially in Philadelphia. Um, they said we were a
mom and pop organization which we liked but it was said in the negative way. Uh and that was one of
the reasons we left. We just uh we felt we could provide a quality care to the number of residents we
had. Where we had hands on supervision of the staff. Um, this would be Carol, Sam, and myself and uh
we didn’t want, we are a mom and pop organization. That’s what we are and that’s how we operate. We
have a unique philosophy in that uh which was unusual back then especially of positive reinforcement.
We didn’t feel the word no helped at all and we felt that all the negative way that people are treated
was not the way that this should be done. Uh we live in a culture that does punishment as part of its
culture but we didn’t feel that was the way to go. We saw enough punishment that brought nothing
around to uh helping anybody and we… and from the learning I had at Temple University in learning
theory, uh, I felt the same way. So did Sam, so did Carol. We came to that conclusion through our
independent ways. Sam actually had training as a family therapist at Children’s Hospital where he
became a family therapist for families with a deaf individual and um he was taught by Sal Minuchin and
Jay Haley who had authored some books that we all read and they had put into words what we felt. And
so that became our philosophy of running our group homes. Uh which we put into our codes and
practices which all the staff read but we would hire people based on our feeling they could perform in
this way; in a positive way and that was very important to us. And so expanding to become a larger
facility was not what we wanted to do. We wanted to provide this situation as positive as we could in a
hands on way and that’s why we stayed small; why we left Philadelphia. And Chester County fostered
that with us. They didn’t pressure us. They always asked but they didn’t uh pressure us. They were more
than helpful in uh setting us up and supporting us and they still are. It’s a nice county to work in.
L. Thank you.
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01:01:25:05 – 01:01:58:04
L. Earl I’m going back to, if I can, to something we touched on a little bit earlier. By the time you were
working in Chester County, 84 I believe,
01:03:15:14 – 01:06:42:05
L. Pennhurst was in its final days of closure and I’m wondering if you can talk to us a little bit more about
some of the reactions of families when you were transitioning their family member from Pennhurst into
the community; perhaps some of their concerns and how you addressed them?
E. The situation was to open up three group homes in Chester County to replace the three in
Philadelphia. We had to take clients that weren’t deaf because there weren’t enough deaf residents in
Pennhurst from Chester County so we opened it up to clients that were communication impaired. Um so
we were looking at people that have Cerebral Palsy that couldn’t speak, people who had syndromes
were resulted in unable to speak. These were all people who could hear but they couldn’t communicate
through verbal speech. Um, one of those residents, his parents were adamant that he would not leave
Pennhurst and they even said publically that their son would close Pennhurst. He would be the last one
to leave and when he moved into our group home, um, I think it was Bill McKendry who was the director
of Chester County at the time, came to visit him at the group home because he was the last Chester
County resident to be placed in the group home. And they had this horrible feeling that their son
wouldn’t be taken care of, he’s be abused, taken advantage of so we expected them to come every day
and visit him which they did, especially his father. His father came every day and shaved him and
gradually became a believer in the group home for his son and turned out to be a very positive thing.
When his father passed away his mother continue supporting her son in our group home and it turned
out to be a positive thing even though it started out to be almost scary because the father actually came
in the first day he was here with movie cameras and took films of the home and you know was bound to
find something wrong you know but it turned out okay in the end. Um, for the other Chester county
residents we had the families were actually rather supportive. Uh we had one mother who was thrilled
that her son wasn’t in an ICFMR anymore where he didn’t really get a lot of special care and was in a
group home here. Um, and we had other family members who were basically not involved with their
child or their sister or who we would try to get involved. Especially on holidays and things like that so we
really only had the one negative experience.
01:06:48:00 – 01:08:58:00
L. I’m wondering when families saw their children succeeding, if that to reconnect with their child or
even helped, um, other family members reconnect with the clients you were serving; seeing how well
they were actually living in community.
E. Yeah I would agree with that. Um, it developed into people actually going home overnight; let’s say
for Christmas and things like that where I know when they were in the institution that didn’t happen um
for those particular people. So I think that helped. Um as time went by though we had people coming
more for the community because Pennhurst had closed at that point and Emeryville, we had taken all
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the clients from Emeryville that Chester County had also. Um so it’s a whole different, it’s a whole
different situation when you have clients from the community. Uh it has to be addressed in a different
way. The family is mainly facing getting older and having this older person living at home. The person
isn’t in an institution where they’re safe somewhere, you know. Um they have to do something now
because they’re getting older and we see more and more of that now. Uh…
E. One instance is we um, I happened to be going to a funeral for a neighbor; an elderly woman who
died whose son happened to be mentally retarded and at the funeral the brother approached me
knowing what I did for a living because now he had his brother and he didn’t know what to do. And we
see more and more families in that situation.
01:09:01:05 – 01:09:48:03
L. I’m wondering if um you're also seeing opportunities for the folks you served to connect with their
extended families. Maybe in ways they hadn’t done before.
E. Um I’m really can't answer that because uh we have a total of 13 residents and we really only have
two families involved with those 13 residents. All the other residents, their families…. Of course our
residents are getting elderly. We have residents in their seventies and we have one resident who is 92.
So they’ve outlived a lot of their immediate family so I really can't answer that question in our situation
because again we are a small agency.
01:09:49:15 – 01:12:23:28
L. So in talking about maybe the system sort of a change of tact, the system serves people with
disabilities, all systems really changed for many reasons because of the time shifts, ideologies, maybe
even administration. I’m wondering what your assessment is of where the system is today?
E. Well um there’s so much more oversight today bureaucratically that it’s almost a hindrance because
um for us as a small agency, it seems overwhelming at times of all the compliance issues and all the
regulations and everything. Um, that um… I can see why the need is there but uh when you boil it all
down it’s the people working in the home dealing with the residents that is the core of the situation. The
core of the uh service you’re offering. No matter how many regulations you make, uh, it’s not going to
change how the people interact. Again our hands on supervision of the staff and um the discussion, an
open discussion with the staff; you have to respect your staff and that’s where it’s at. The regulation can
be overwhelming for somebody starting up now. If we were starting up I don’t think we would get
started. There’s so much. I mean back when we started we were just pioneering an unknown territory.
We had an idea and we were able to follow it we’re able to work within this current structure just fine
but it is kind of overwhelming at times what we have to do in terms of complying with all the rules and
regulations. Luckily uh that’s sort of my bend. I can do that. Carol works as the program specialist
dealing directly with clients and staff and we have a third person now who replaces Sam Scott who deals
with behavioral issues so um we all have our roles in this whole situation which works out for us as a
mom and pop organization.
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01:12:24:20 – 01:12:45:04
L. I’ve heard some providers say that they felt that they could support their residents more creatively
um back in the day. I wonder if that’s something you feel?
E. Yes that’s true but of course we worked through that. We try to do that anyway.
01:12:46:00 – 01:15:00:07
L. You had talked about um the importance of staff several times during our conversation and I think it’s
pretty commonly acknowledged that staff in group homes aren’t particularly well paid for their work.
E. No.
L. But despite that M5 has an incredibly reputation for longevity of staff and I'm wondering if you can
tell us why.
E. Yeah we don’t… we probably pay less than a lot of providers in fact. The problems with once you’re a
provider and you have increments you have to base it on where you start it. You can’t come in with a
higher starting part but we are totally available to our staff 24 hours a day seven days a week. Both
Carol, Marjorie and myself and um any problem they have, we will help with. We’ll drive out. We have
two nurses, a part-time nurse and a full-time nurse. We actually need that now because we have so
many elderly residents living with us and their health needs become more and more. And the whole
health industry now is a different animal too. I mean there’s so many specialists involved with these
clients now but it used to be the GP or the PCP or whatever you want to call it. Um, but I think providing
all that support for the staff and listening to them, um enables them to work for us. We’re also very
flexible. If you can only work Fridays once a month then you work Friday once a month. If you can work
every other Saturday, you work every other Saturday, we try to fit the hours to what their lifestyle is. So
we have a lot of people that work sort of odd shifts because that’s when they can work. We always
found if the people wanted to work in that field anyway, even if they work only from Saturday to Sunday
night, it’s be better to have them then to try to fit them into 9-5 or something.
CHPATER FIVE: FUTURE OF M5 ORGANIZATION, REFLECTIONS ON CAREER
01:15:06:25 – 01:15:26:27
L. You mentioned that you and Carol are still working.
E. Mm-hmm.
L. Sam is not?
E. Sam is in his mid-eighties now and reluctantly, very reluctantly retired a year ago. Uh, very
reluctantly! He still throws it in our face.
01:15:28:05 – 01:16:31:29
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L. So I’m wondering, Earl, um you’re such a hands on organization as you’ve described. Um how do you
handle succession planning for when you and Carol might retire also?
E. Right well we have a plan for that because we’re looking at that happening over the next two or three
years. We’ve already replaced someone in our office who was a vital person in our office; a financial
person who had been with us forties years. Who really, the financial end of this business is an
overwhelming part of the business now so for someone to be able to step in and replace that person
was… refer… we’re… that’s where we wanted to start because that’s sort of in the office but we are
grooming people from within the agency to take our shoes and I don’t think I’ll ever be retired, if
anything maybe part-time person as an assistant to the program director or whatever; maybe even
volunteering.
01:16:34:10 – 01:17:30:05
L. Has M5 accomplished the goals that you and Carol and Sam set out to accomplish when you started
so many years ago?
E. Oh geez. I don’t think I’ve ever addressed that idea. I would assume we have. If you look back then
when we started, um maybe we’re more realistic now and less idealistic and people uh have
accomplished a lot but maybe not be uh totally independent like our original, you know, dreams were
but have gained relationships with people, gained language, uh have an active happy life. Happiness is a
big part of what we want to accomplish and I think our people as they are as happy as we’ve been able
to help them become, yeah.
01:17:32:10 – 01:17:48:21
L. When you look back at your own work,
01:17:48:22 – 01:18:32:19
L. …when you look back on your career, what are you proudest of?
E. What am I the proudest of? I would assume just the daily operations of the agency. I think we’re still
here doing what we felt we should be doing and what we wanted to do. I love it. It’s um… it’s what I… I
didn’t know this in the beginning but it’s what I wanted to do and I'm happy doing it. Uh if I have to
come in here seven days a week it’s not a problem because it… it has, it has a benefit.
01:18:34:25 – 01:19:16:11
E. The actual operation of the group home; its daily operation is what I’m proud of. I think we have a
quality agency that helps people be happier in life and that’s our goal really and I think we do that and
we work on that and we accomplish that on a daily basis and that’s what I’m proud of.
01:19:18:20 – 01:19:46:02
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L. Is there anything that you had hoped to accomplish for M5 that you haven’t accomplished yet?
E. Well you always want more money for your staff and I never turn a penny down. If there is some
funding somewhere I find it and get it to them if I can so I would like them to be more appreciated by
being able to reimburse them better.
01:19:48:05 – 01:20:41:08
L. I’m wondering if you consider yourself a leader in this field.
E. No. I’m one of those people who does the work, you know. Back in the beginning when there were
people making waves and trying to get this all started, um, we were on their bandwagon for sure but we
basically preformed a task, provide a service, worked in that way. Um, if that is leading other people to
do it, I guess it is but um, we didn’t see it that way. We saw it was just how do we get this done? How do
we do this? Do we do it this way? Do we do it that way? And just went forward to try to solve it and
that’s how we’ve always been.
01:20:43:07 – 01:20:56:05
L. So you had an idea, um a vision for supporting people in the community, um, that’s been realized for
maybe about forty years and counting?
E. Yeah it’s hard to believe.
01:20:56:15 – 01:21:35:16
L. Would you say that you, Sam, and Carol are still the three musketeers?
E. Oh yeah, yeah, the three musketeers or the three dancing bears; one or the other. No we still are who
we were back then; the idea person, the person who plows forward with the work, and the person who
uh thinks and accomplishes goals, creates goals.
L. Which are you?
E. I’m the plodder.
L. Thank you.
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