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The Press Enterprise

September 22, 2009

Patton hospital's unknown dead are remembered

By: Chris Richard

Visitors place flowers at the burial site of Antonio Saver in a field at Patton State Hospital. A ceremony at the site remembered those who died in the mental institution and were buried in unmarked or mass graves on the property. Photo: Kurt Miller, The Press-Enterprise.
Visitors place flowers at the burial site of Antonio Saver in a field at Patton State Hospital. A ceremony at the site remembered those who died in the mental institution and were buried in unmarked or mass graves on the property. Photo: Kurt Miller, The Press-Enterprise.

At the center of a weed-choked lot on Patton State Hospital's western boundary, Antonio Saver's relatives have marked his grave with a simple stone cairn, in keeping with Saver's Serrano Indian traditions.

All around the little pile of stones, the sun beats down on the rocky soil. Saver's is the only grave among the 2,022 in Patton's potter's field to bear any identification at all.

On Monday, activists for the mentally ill and relatives of people whose unclaimed remains were buried anonymously at Patton held a service to honor the dead and to call for a memorial.

"The state could be maintaining these graves if they wanted to," said Goldie Walker, of San Bernardino, Saver's great-granddaughter. "This is just a shame."

Mark Cochrane burns sage over the original grave marker of great-great-grandfather Antonio Saver at Patton State Hospital. Photo: Kurt Miller, The Press-Enterprise.
Mark Cochrane burns sage over the original grave marker of great-great-grandfather Antonio Saver at Patton State Hospital. Photo: Kurt Miller, The Press-Enterprise.

Patton spokeswoman Cindy Barrett said hospital officials are waiting for a committee established by state law in 2002 to complete plans for a memorial.

She agreed that the current site is bleak. "It's out of our hands," she said.

Patton officials maintain a map of gravesites. So even though the sites are indistinguishable to a visitor, officials know where they are, Barrett said. They're also storing the concrete plaques, each engraved with a number that once marked the graves. Barrett had no information on when or why the markers were removed.

Authorities stopped using the field in 1933, Barrett said. Now, if a patient dies and the body isn't claimed, it is given to San Bernardino County authorities, she said.

Speakers at the memorial event -- one of nine held throughout the state Monday -- said the neglect was in keeping with California's long-running disregard for the mentally ill.

Having a proper burial "would restore these people's dignity as human beings," said Michael Stortz, an attorney with Disability Rights of California.

Walker said her great grandfather was a victim of cultural misunderstanding.

He arrived at Patton in 1906 after people reported him making a disturbance in the Santa Ana River wash. But what looked like erratic behavior to authorities was actually Saver carrying out Serrano mourning rites for his deceased son, she said.

Since he spoke no English, he couldn't make them understand, she said. A month later, he died.

"He was like wild bird in a cage," she said.