For the guardians of aging developmentally disabled residents at the country's oldest state institution, 2007 brought tears of joy and tears of sorrow.
"It just gets me," says Marilyn Meagher, whose 57-year-old sister has lived at the Walter E. Fernald Development Center since she was 4. "After all this time, with everything that's gone on ... people are forgetting who lives there and how long they've lived there."
Meagher leads a group of guardians known as the Fernald League who spent the better part of 2007 fighting to keep Fernald open. The five-year struggle has been going on since the state announced intentions to close the facility down in 2003 but early last year the federal court stepped in to try and thwart those plans.
Relief and satisfaction swept over the faces of Meagher and dozens of other guardians who filled U.S. District Judge Joseph L. Tauro's courtroom March 7. Validating what many of them have argued for years, Tauro ruled moving their loved ones from Fernald could be harmful to residents, many of whom are severely mentally handicapped.
"This is not a game - these people are very vulnerable and very fragile," Tauro said in court. "Let's make sure they go where they want to go."
That same day U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan summarized the results of his yearlong investigation into the quality of care provided for 49 residents transferred out of Fernald since 2003. Though he found the state provided adequate care for those individuals, Sullivan said meeting that standard might not be possible for "some, many, or most" of the 186 residents remaining at Fernald, whose average age is 57 with the average length of stay of 47 years.
The findings reinforced what guardians had been saying for years but the celebratory feelings were short-lived. Having mounted a case for the facility's closure over the past five years, the state announced its intent to appeal Tauro's ruling at the end of May.
In September Gov. Deval Patrick spoke up at the state's position.
"Our decision to appeal Judge Tauro's ruling is about making sure the state has the latitude to provide the care people need in settings, whether they be institutional or community placements, that also make fiscal sense. Fernald is not such a setting," Patrick said in an e-mailed statement last week.
In its notice appeal, the state argued Fernald's 196-acre campus serving 186 residents is too expensive to maintain and pointed to a national trend of moving from institutional to community-based care for the developmentally disabled. Fernald advocates continue to dispute the cost claims and insist residents would not be better served in the community.
"Just like we all deserve the right to live in a place that we want to be, they (Fernald residents) deserve the right to be there," Meagher said. "Everything they need is right there."
Meagher said Beryl Cohen, the attorney who represented transferred Fernald residents in the court case leading to Sullivan's investigation, got notice from the appellate court Friday. She said the state has until Feb. 5 to file its briefing and then guardians will have 30 days to dispute it.
The state intends to maintain a presence on the Fernald campus, with the 24-bed Malone Park building to be run as a state-operated group home. Several times in the past, Fernald guardians have advocated a "postage stamp" proposal that would allow current residents to remain on a portion of Fernald's campus with the state developing the rest. The state made no mention of pursuing this option in its appeal.
"The (state's) outlook hasn't changed," Juan Martinez, spokesman for the Department of Mental Retardation, said last week. "It's still what we said in the appeal."
Going into 2008, Fernald guardians are not the only ones anxiously awaiting the results of the state's appeal. Local officials have been bracing for Fernald's possible closure the past five years and worrying about what the state might do with the massive Trapelo Road property.
"I'll say it again like I have said before, Waltham has been a good neighbor to Fernald and that's the way I'd like to keep it," said Mayor Jeannette A. McCarthy.
McCarthy said the best-case scenario in the New Year would be the state deciding to allow Fernald residents to stay on a smaller portion of the campus and working closely with the city's local delegation in making plans to reuse the site.
Rep. Thomas M. Stanley, D-Waltham, said all indications from the governor point to the state eventually closing at least part of Fernald's campus. When that happens, Stanley said, Waltham will be ready.
"We're not going to stand by and let others decide the fate of our city," said Stanley, who crafted legislation setting up a Fernald Reuse Committee led by the mayor.
For guardians like Meagher what lies in the balance is worth much more than a couple hundred acres of prime real estate. For residents and guardians Fernald represents a complicated history of good times and bad. But most of all, guardians say, Fernald simply means "home."
"They (the state) need to do the right thing and let the residents stay and live their lives in peace," Meagher said.
