A Visit to the DeJarnette Center

About the Center

Dr. Joseph S. DeJarnette, a slightly demented mental health professional and eugenicist poet, was lucky enough to have an asylum for troubled children named in his honor in Staunton, Virginia. DeJarnette, Superintendent of Western State Hospital, believed in the sterilization of undesirables.

Quoth DeJarnette in 1938: "Germany in six years has sterilized about 80,000 of her unfit while the United States with approximately twice the population has only sterilized about 27,869 to January 1, 1938 in the past 20 years ... The fact that there are 12,000,000 defectives in the US should arouse our best endeavors to push this procedure to the maximum ... The Germans are beating us at our own game."

His poem "Mendel's Law" says it best:

Oh, why are you men so foolish, you breeders who breed our men
Let the fools, the weaklings and crazy
Keep breeding and breeding again?

Though the center named after him didn't sterilize its wards, the place certainly must have had an oppressive karmic atmosphere.

Our Visit

Now that the statute of limitations has passed on trespassing, I can confess that I visited the ruins of the DeJarnette Center several years ago with my friend and fellow writer Matthew Warner. We intended originally just to take pictures of the outside of the building, but I discovered a broken window at ground level--one that was exactly the height and width for a person to enter.

So I did. I'm like that, compulsively curious.

How Do I Get In?

I'll admit I'm slightly chagrined that the achievement about which I get the most e-mail happens to be breaking and entering. Worse, almost all of those messages are poorly-spelled demands for instructions on how to get in.

I'll just say two things to people tempted to send me such e-mail messages:

  • If you need someone to tell you how to get into a building, you obviously aren't legally, philosophically, or karmically meant to be there.
  • No, I won't help you.

What Happened to the Funny Captions?

They seemed disrespectful to the staff and patients of the DeJarnette Center, plus a little silly and embarrassing after a second read. This is a place of interpersonal history, redolent with the emotions of the people who lived and worked there.

Show Me the Pictures!

Very well. There are two galleries: