Letters to the editor tell many Christmas stories. Our favorite one this year was laboriously typed and mailed from the ward named Yarbrough No. 2 at Milledgeville State hospital. It was signed by a woman patient, and it said:
“On behalf of all the patients who have benefited by the generosity and kindheartedness of all the churches and various organizations of the state of Georgia, I wish to express sincere gratitude.
“I would like to add that through their fellowship and goodwill, we of Milledgeville State Hospital again have witnessed living truth of ‘Peace on earth, good will toward men.’
“Again may we offer our thanks. It is such a wonderful feeling to know you’re not forgotten or forsaken at this season of the year especially.”
Certainly the history of the last five years is one of the brighter chapters in the story of Georgia’s treatment of the mentally ill.
Beginning then, in the administration of Gov. Ernest Vandiver, the state determined to do something about the deplorable conditions this newspaper reported at Milledgeville. Much is yet to be done. But much has been done.
The state under Vandiver, and now under Gov. Carl Sanders, has poured new money into the institution — for high caliber personnel, for construction and for operation.
The medical profession in Georgia assisted materially in analyzing and helping reorganize the mental health program.
Church and lay leaders led a great campaign of voluntary giving which raised nearly a million dollars and constructed chapels of all faiths on the hospital grounds so that patients might worship — and so that religion and medicine might combine their healing hands.
The mayors of the state collect and deliver a great Christmas bag of gifts annually.
Nearly every Georgian has contributed in one way or another, singly or in a group, to the remarkable improvements at the state hospital.
Only a beginning has been made. Georgians cannot tire because the program still has far to go. The humble letter of thanks from the patient at Christmas time is a word of recognition from the troubled people, so long forgotten, who are now remembered — the poor, the sick, the unfortunate.
“Foxes have their holes, the birds their roosts; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
By making a little better place for the ill to lay their heads at Milledgeville, Georgians have begun a good work that tells, in a particular way, a Christmas story.
