When he was a small child, the state of Oregon sent Kenneth Newman to hell, for life. No one called his name. No one came to save him. In that lonely place beyond the gates of hell, he had to save himself.
Mouth asks,
What do you want?
Kenneth
SAYS
I
want everyone to hear this. I have been through the gateway to hell.
I want my life back from the government. They took my savings bonds away from me, what my dad left for me when he died. Also, out in Sherwood, Oregon, I had a beautiful piece of land from my grandparents. That land was precious and dear to me.
But when I went through the legal system, that was ripped from me, too. They took everything. I want my rightful inheritance.
A photo of Shirley and Kenneth Newman at home by Michael Bailey. Bailey says that Kenneth refers to Shirley not as "my wife" but as "my lovely wife." After all their years together, they are still inseparable.
an interview with Kenneth Newman
by Josie Byzek
photo by Michael Bailey
This interview first appeared in Mouth magazine #64 in March 2000
Kenneth Newman is a man who did not have a boyhood. Experts applied an ugly label to him at an early age. In 1947 or thereabouts, when he was only about six years old, his family turned him over to the state of Oregon — for his own good. The state dumped him into a human warehouse which was named, like most of its kind, as if it were an English country estate: Fairview.
He could well have died there. Many did. But he survived. Like kids do, he made friends among fellow inmates. He found the girl of his dreams there too, Shirley Barnes.
They fell in love, living for the day when they could marry and have children. The state sterilized them both, Kenneth at age 15. That violence against him prompted his first escape.
Fairview closed last year. Kenneth and Shirley Newman had long since escaped, married, and made a good life for themselves in the community.
But Newman will not give up on what he lost, what both he and his wife have lost. He wants an apology from the state, and reparations. This is the story of how he survived, in his own words.
The story of his life --
Circa 1945, before Fairview.
One New Year’s Eve, when I was very small, they put me in a diaper and put a new year baby banner on me. My grandpa and I went outside and he had a shotgun. He held the shotgun in the air and pulled the trigger. BANG!
Then two years later I got put out there.
That year... stick a candle right smack dab in the middle, burn both ends and stick Kenneth Richard Newman right smack dab in the middle of it and make it hotter than hell.
By putting me in.
I didn’t know how to read and write at that time and no one read nothing to me. They said, ‘Well, sign these papers and you’ll get out. These are your release papers.’ That’s what they told me. Okay. No one read to me and I didn’t know how to read or write. That’s trickery, entrapment and fraud. I signed the papers and where I ended up was the sterilization table.
That’s the gateway to hell. Each and every one of us, when we got out we had plans to meet a nice girl, settle down, get married, and have children.
I took off then and I tried to find my parents. My escape route was through the barn section where they have cows, and then I hit the field. On the other side of the field is a whole bunch of trees and brush. I lay down and the state cars couldn't see me.
I hid, got my second wind and ran again. A state car caught me, took me over to where the barns were, to the silo. They were pushing and shoving me.
They said, ‘Do you know what that water is? All that fluid that comes down from the grain? That develops into acid and I'm going to shove you into it!’
I fought him back and took off again. They tried to shove me in there! Then they took me back to the cottage.
I was capable to wash my own face, but they took that washrag to my face and if it was any harder, I swear it would rub the skin off my face.
Making friends at Fairview.
‘The kid’
Mr. White, he’d give the kids a beating out there. There was this kid, I didn’t know his name. He got beat up and he went through the gateway to hell, too.
Then he got out, came back with a car and left the motor running. He waited for Mr. White.
Mr. White crossed the street, finally. This kid tromped on the gas pedal and Mr. White dove over the car, did a flip.
Then the kid took off immediately. I sure would like to know who he was.
Connie
We had a friend out there named Connie. Dr. Bolt did the sterilization to me and to others. He took girls and sometimes boys into a room for a checkup. He was in there all by himself. He had Connie in the room, shut off the lights and had sexual intercourse with her.
Now, Mrs. Piles was the head supervisor there. She opened up the door and what she saw was Dr. Bolt and Connie. Connie was crying.
Connie is dead and gone now. You know the dying confession, that's powerful, it'll hold up in any court in the land. I got it on tape.
Bernie
There was a nice friend at Fairview named Bernie. He got pneumonia. I turned around, I didn't see Bernie no more. I don't know where he got to.
Later, people said, "did you hear about Bernie? He died. He had a high temperature."
Now, if you've got money, Fairview gives you what you need. If you don't have the money, forget about it. Park it. They could have saved him, but they didn't. Money talks. If you don't have it, you're screwed and tattooed.
Jimmy
Some of the people they took to the Oregon State Hospital. Do you know what shock treatments are? They gave a darn good friend of mine shock treatments.
He's a nice colored guy, his name was Jimmy. They gave him so much shock treatment that it fried his brain.
When he went home for the weekend, he lost it. He lost his cool with his parents and became violent. He tried to choke his mother.
Shirley
I met my wife out at Fairview. Her name was Shirley A. Barnes. I was at Hohman Cottage and she was at Kaye cottage. She was out in her playground and I was out in mine. She was sitting by a fence and had a lap full of candy.
I was little at the time. I reached my little hand through the fence and got a piece of candy. From that time on we looked at each other.
A first community placement, circa 1969.
They tried to separate me and Shirley. They put her up in Pendleton, Oregon, to work at a nursing home. They stuck me down in Coos Bay where I worked on an assembly line and didn't have any chance at seeing Shirley at all.
She wrote a letter to me that another guy was fooling around with her and I said I'll be right on up.
I withdrew all my money from the bank and bought me a car and I was on my way up. I conked out of gas, the police caught me and took me back to Fairview.
Fairview put me on a locked ward and on a punishment block. Do you know what a punishment block is? It's a great big huge block, it's heavy and they put leg shackles on you and shackle you to the block and you push it. They won't let you off of the block. If you stop pushing it they add double time to you. It's heavy.
A second community placement.
Later they transferred me down to Salem and I worked at Samples, a restaurant, as a dishwasher. After I got the job at Samples, I lived at the Tioga Hotel. Every payday I called Shirley up in Pendleton. Then I called Mr. Stella up at Fairview. He said, ‘How would you like me to go into your bank account?’
I said, ‘What for?’
He said so he could send Shirley a Greyhound ticket to come down to live with me. So he reached into my bank account and got the money.
Then I talked to Jim, my manager. I said my girlfriend's coming down. Anything she wants, can you deduct it from my paycheck? He says sure and when she came down, he took it out of his own paycheck, not mine.
1970, the wedding.
The next day I got wheels turning in my head and Shirley's wheels were turning in her head. We got in a taxicab, went to see a doctor, got a blood test and our marriage packet.
Our caseworkers said we could get anyone off the street as a witness. I said no, I'd like to have you, you are our caseworkers. We'll have your names on our marriage license.
Then I called Mr. Stella, and Ralph Stephens picked up the phone.
I said I'd like to have you talk to someone.
'Talk to who?' he says.
'Talk to my wife. Remember Shirley A. Barnes? Now she's Mrs. Kenneth Richard Newman. She's married to me now.'
He says, 'You're married?' He stuttered and he stammered for a while. He was surprised.
He said, 'Hang on, I'm going to go get Mr. Stella. Don't you hang up on me now.' He came back and said, ‘Don't you hang up, you stay right there, I'm going to go get him.'
Now on Ward 26, that's the maximum security ward, what I was on when they caught me before, I had leg shackles and irons on my feet to stop me from running away. So when Mr. Stella came to the phone and he says, 'Kenny, stay right there, I'm going to send a car down to you,' immediately my thought was, they're going to send a car down and they're going to haul me back.
So I said, ‘We're going to be gone, we're going to California.’ They believed that, so they went to California, and we went back towards Salem. We hid out under their noses.
I got my old job back and I got a place to live in Salem. I proved that I could make it.
On my birthday that year, May 28, 1971, I got a letter [from the state.] I thought, oh hell, how in the heck did they find me?
But I was glad I opened it up because that was my release papers and Shirley's release papers, from Fairview. That's how we got out.
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