A 15-year volunteer effort is helping identify the fates of thousands of Alaskans who were shipped to a psychiatric hospital in Oregon.
In this Sept. 29, 2023 photo at the grave of Lucky Pitka McCormick, her granddaughter Kathleen Carlo, left, and McCormick’s great-great-grandchildren Lucia, center, and Addison Carlo place candles and stones on the grave during a reburial ceremony in Rampart, Alaska.
This undated image provided by the Alaska State Library shows Alaska Natives among strawberries at Morningside Hospital in Portland, Ore. For more than 15 years, volunteers in Fairbanks and in Portland have been working to identify the people who were committed to the hospital. Many were buried in Portland cemeteries, some in unmarked pauper graves. A few, like McCormick, have been returned to Alaska for proper burials.
They combed through dusty Department of Interior records at the National Archives, the Alaska and Oregon state archives, and old Alaska court records for any tidbit: the results of commitment trials, cemetery files, death certificates, old newspaper stories and U.S. marshals reimbursement records for the costs of escorting patients.
That entry provided his patient number, which they used to uncover more about Kriska, including that it was village nuns who had him committed.In this Sept. 29, 2023, photo, Brian Cruger holds the cross made for the grave of his great-grandmother, Lucy Pitka McCormick, and with him is McCormick’s granddaughtger, Kathleen Carlo, during a reburial ceremony in Rampart, Alaska. .
The hospital was founded in the late 19th century by Dr. Henry Waldo Coe, initially in his home and later on a bucolic farm in Portland. It operated under several names before it was called Morningside. It was likely letters written by the patients were never sent, and they never received mail meant for them, according to evidence found by retired judge Steinkruger.
In 2012, he began creating his own databases to help families find lost loved ones. He built three virtual cemeteries at , including photos of death certificates, burial sites and in some cases the patients. One virtual site is dedicated to Cordingley found Lucy McCormick’s grave marker in Portland, informed the family — they were stunned — and later watched as she was disinterred.
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