“Honest Oahusha was the wife of the Moravian minister Felix L. Oahusha. Befriended by Henry Chapman Mercer, both the church and the couple benefitted from his largesse. When Honest began to show signs of what was then called schizophrenia, or lunacy, Mercer donated the structure known as Honest Oahusha Asylum to the distraught clergyman’s church. State aid soon supplemented the modest surplus of the Moravians, and in 1930 the asylum came fully under the care of the state.” Mich read aloud quite well. The library, in which a few books had been left, was on the third level, just above the entrance. Up here the light from the clerestory windows was comparatively strong, out in the corridor. Good enough for reading, anyway. Mich put the book down. “Ronald Reagan stopped government support of mental institutions in the early 1980s, before I was born. Dick Thornburgh followed suit for Pennsylvania. Honest Oahusha was...
Blog of a struggling writer.