Friday, August 3, 2007

Ashes of 2 Oregon mental-hospital patients laid to rest after six decades

For more than six decades, the cremated remains of brothers Robin and Wade Graham were stored in anonymous little copper canisters on shelves of the crumbling Oregon psychiatric hospital made famous as the movie set of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

The Grahams were finally buried next to their parents in Grangeville's Prairie View Cemetery, after a service Sunday attended by more than 20 family members — some of whom never knew the two existed — after their years in exile at the former Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Ore.

The weekend burial in this north-central Idaho town comes after Oregon lawmakers in April passed a law making it easier for families of patients who lived out their lives at the mental hospital to reclaim their ashes. The unclaimed bodies of 3,600 mental patients were cremated and the remains put in copper canisters from the early 1900s to the 1970s.

READ MORE @ Associated Press
LEARN MORE @ Mental Health Association of Portland