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Local history: Stony Brook Sanatorium in Keene
Topics: Keene, Sanatorium, Stony Brook
Posted by editor Tue Nov 30, 1999 00:00:00 PST
Viewed 3257 times
0 responses 5 comments It sits abandoned, surrounded by a chain link fence-paint peeling, tiles falling from the roof, windows boarded or broken. The weeds have taken over. Memories linger like phantoms in the old rooms and corridors. Local youth say it's haunted.

“That must be the walkway to the cafeteria,” says Norma Baker. She stands next to Jim Devers and points to a covered corridor, which attaches two sections of the building. Norma and Jim came to Keene to reminisce about a time so many years ago when they both were temporary residents of this old building. Back then it was called the Kern County Preventorium and was built on property behind Stony Brook Retreat, a tuberculosis sanatorium for adults located in Keene on what is now the Caesar Chavez Center. Children were sent to the preventorium if they needed to gain weight or if they had been exposed to tuberculosis.

Keene's climate was considered ideal for healing. In 1930 E.A. Schaper, M.D., a physician who resided at the sanatorium stated in a letter to the Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce that at approximately 2,700 feet above sea level, there was very little fog which “makes this location particularly desirable for those having chronic pulmonary infection.”

He boasted of the year-round sun saying, “We rarely have a day when the sun does not shine the greater part of it. This is of particular advantage to us in our work with the children in the Preventorium,” he said, “where sun baths are considered an important part of their routine treatment...I am confident that the location of our sanatorium here is as good as can be found anywhere else in the United States.”

Stony Brook Retreat, owned and operated by Kern County, first opened its doors to tuberculosis patients Dec. 1, 1918. From a modest beginning of just a few buildings, it expanded and grew into what became a modern tuberculosis hospital.

Soon after, Kern became the third county in the state to provide a place for children when it erected the Kern County Preventorium.

Jim and Norma stayed at the preventorium to put on weight. Norma in 1929 at age four and Jim around 1931 at age five. Later they attended high school together in Taft, yet only recently did they discover this unique childhood experience they had in common. 

As they share memories, they soon discover their shared experiences had more differences than similarities. Norma remembers her time there as being relatively pleasant. During the mandatory two-week isolation that all newcomers had to endure, Norma remembers playing creative games with her little roommate. Jim, on the other hand, remembers only isolation. As soon as he got out of isolation, a fight with one of the boys for breaking his toy car landed him right back in. That would happen every time he got out.

“I was in isolation from the time I got there till I left - sweet lovable child that I was,” he says laughing.

Norma remembers lying on the sundeck and being served ovaltine. She remembers earning blue and gold stars.

“You would get a gold star if you behaved yourself and you could go to the movie. If you got a blue star you could go swimming.”

Norma went to the movies twice.

“I thought it was wonderful,” she said.  “I remember walking with flashlights through the woods and the kids were delighted… I just loved that.” 

She laughed and turned to Jim.  “I got to see a movie and you didn't.” 

No. Jim never saw a movie.  He never went swimming, or laid out on the sun deck or even ate in the dining room. Jim did get tied to his bed, first with sheets, then with cord when he tore the sheets. He doesn't remember why. But he does remember that he'd had enough and decided to hop a passing train to escape. That is until a nurse heard about it and threatened him with the horrors of reform school.

Another child who passed through the halls of the Kern County Preventorium was Kimmie Kinnebrew then Kimmie Strickland. Kimmie stayed in the preventorium from 1939 to 1940 and attended fifth and sixth at the one-room school.

“I learned a lot when I was there,” she said. “We sixth graders helped the younger ones with math.” 

Kimmie remembers the red shorts they all had to wear year round.

“You took the material in and ladies made them.”

She also earned gold and blue stickers and enjoyed going to movies and swimming. In fact, Kimmie learned how to swim at the preventorium.
Norma, Jim and Kimmie all harbor an unpleasant memory involving food. Children were forced to eat everything on their plate. For Norma it was a piece of gristle. 

“I couldn't chew it so it ended up on the side of my plate.”

She was marched to the office and a woman told her, “'I'm going to leave the room and I want you to swallow that.”' Norma finally did swallow it, “but it hurt going down,” she said.

Not taking Norma's word for it, the woman came back and searched the room and outside the window for a hidden piece of gristle. 

For Jim, a self proclaimed hearty eater, it was a piece of food that resembled a worm. He was convinced there was a worm on his plate and became sick when forced to eat it. Jim still won't eat sweet potatoes or cherry pie. 

Kimmie didn't like boiled potatoes.

“If a kid didn't swallow, you had to stand up and eat in front of everyone else,” she said. “I stood up a lot because of those darned boiled potatoes.”

Jeff Waldon also has childhood memories of Keene. But his are not of the preventorium but of Stony Brook Retreat. His are memories of a little boy who lost his mother to the tuberculosis sanitorium at the age of two. A little boy who remembers driving with his father and sister every Sunday from Taft to Keene, then a slow tortuous road, and having to stand 50 to 75 feet away from the building while he waved to his mother on the veranda. Jeff's mother went into Stony Brook in 1927 and stayed there until she succumbed to the disease in1937.

Jeff stills gets emotional talking about it. Although the journey was an adventure for a little boy, “they were not happy visits,” he says.  “It's always sad for any child who wants his mother's TLC.” 

Those visits continued until 1933 when the great depression hit and Jeff and his sister were shipped off to Kentucky to live with relatives. Those were unhappy times and he and his sister never talked about them. “It was a touchy subject with my family,” he said.

The sanatorium has been renovated as part of the Cesar Chavez Center, and soon the preventorium also will be restored to its original condition and used as a learning center. The paint, the tiles, the windows - all will be replaced. The chain link will come down and the building will stand looking as it once did so long ago. And the old memories, those childish whispers of the past, will gradually fade into the annals of time.

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Comment From: sol2ride

Touching story, the Stony Brook is listed as a huanted place in the index at

 http://theshadowlands.net/p...

 

Comment From: jewels

It is haunted. Comment From: susster

it looks haunted. whenever i pass it. i saw it in shadowlands, as well as, wells elemantary school. maybe thats why its closed. susan Comment From: brieezy

WHY DID it close?? People stopped being sick...? Who oh Who would know this answer??? Comment From: jyjewels

Agreed. It's haunted.