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proud gonzo
2/16/2006, 07:50 PM
Along with 3 other OU journalism students, I'm working on a history project about the Griffin Memorial Hospital. I'll give you more details later, but if anyone knows someone who worked there or was a patient there and would like to do an interview, please contact me.

TIA
Stanley1
2/16/2006, 07:54 PM
Never been there.
Mjcpr
2/16/2006, 07:54 PM
Never been there.

Thanks, that was so helpful.

:rolleyes:
Stanley1
2/16/2006, 07:55 PM
Thanks, that was so helpful.

:rolleyes:

Go play in the street Pat.
SoonerInKCMO
2/16/2006, 08:15 PM
My grandmother used to work there ... her second husband was a patient. Too bad they're both gone now - they'd have some good stories for you.
Beef
2/16/2006, 10:23 PM
When my friends lived on Symms, one of the patients would come in uninvited and drink our beer. He was a very large and frightening man who almost never wore a shirt, so we just let him. He said he worked at Griffin, but we didn't believe him. I have no idea how to get a hold of him. Your welcome.
OklahomaTrombone
2/16/2006, 10:28 PM
Didn't a patient escape there and kill somebody in that old building that music majors park behind?
proud gonzo
2/16/2006, 10:30 PM
I don't know. I know that's "crazy dead guy house" but I don't know the story.... i shall have to investigate
Jimminy Crimson
2/17/2006, 12:19 AM
I wish they'd restore the church. It's a beautiful building.
OUstudent4life
2/17/2006, 12:41 AM
talk to Dr. Sarah Tracy (I think she's still associated with the Honors College). We had a large section of her capstone class devoted to the history of that place

fun facts about GMH:

It used to be one of the worst facilities in the US. They even made a movie about it called "The Snake Pit," tho everything turned out OK in the end. Anyway, back to real life...after WWII (I'm pretty sure), a war reporter came to work for the Daily Oklahoman. He got turned on to the poor status of the hospital, and wrote several stories about it. The stories were run in the Sunday Oklahoman with some pretty graphic pics (for the time)...the stories also got picked up by Reader's Digest. The reporting led Oklahomans to raise a pretty decent amount of money to get the place fixed up and run correctly, and it became, for a time at least, a leader in US mental health. It really didn't start to majorly deteriorate again until the US gov't focused pysch care back into smaller, community-based centers.

GMH also used to own the land from it's current location pretty much all the way to Lake Thunderbird. If memory serves, it had a fully functioning farm on it's property, and was pretty self-sufficient.

My wife's dad used to work there (before he passed away) as a night-shift nurse. He took my wife's HS boyfriend on a tour...the area where they kept old patient records still has tissue samples on file...creepy. The hydrotherapy room (not a pleasant form of therapy) is still there, too.

Oh, and the state's only cannibal is housed there currently. He was abused as a kid and ended up eating his dad. From all accounts, he's kinda nice. The nurses used to tell him when the student nurses and pharm students were rotating through, and he would freak them out.

"Do you like YOUR dad?"
Jimminy Crimson
2/17/2006, 12:49 AM
Oh, and the state's only cannibal is housed there currently. He was abused as a kid and ended up eating his dad. From all accounts, he's kinda nice. The nurses used to tell him when the student nurses and pharm students were rotating through, and he would freak them out.

"Do you like YOUR dad?"


I didn't know cannibals were so funny.
I bet they taste like clowns!

;)
Stanley1
2/17/2006, 12:53 AM
Link to info on the cannibal?
OUstudent4life
2/17/2006, 12:54 AM
Link to info on the cannibal?

I don't have any...it's all just heresay, of course, but I've heard this from a couple of people (before HIPPA ;))
BoogercountySooner
2/17/2006, 07:51 AM
I remember as a small child in the 60's going by Central state as we called it then on Easter Day and watching the Patients hunt Easter Egg's, entertaining as a child but somewhat disturbing now. I had a early morning paper route a mile or so North of Central State and sometimes the alarm would go off there and I would be scared to death that a deranged killer was going to attack me in the dark!
SoonerBorn68
2/17/2006, 08:02 AM
Anyone remember the glove man?
Mjcpr
2/17/2006, 08:54 AM
So GMH = the Vinita looney bin? I'm lost here....where is this place?
IB4OU2
2/17/2006, 08:55 AM
I remember as a small child in the 60's going by Central state as we called it then on Easter Day and watching the Patients hunt Easter Egg's, entertaining as a child but somewhat disturbing now. I had a early morning paper route a mile or so North of Central State and sometimes the alarm would go off there and I would be scared to death that a deranged killer was going to attack me in the dark!

That was just me ringing a bell.........little bro. :eek:
crawfish
2/17/2006, 08:56 AM
Anyone remember the glove man?

Of course.

It was always fun sitting in McDonald's listening to him argue with himself. :)
Harry Beanbag
2/17/2006, 09:12 AM
Is this the place in North Norman? IIRC, it's on the west side of either Sooner or Sunnylane coming from OKC.
Hamhock
2/17/2006, 09:14 AM
So GMH = the Vinita looney bin? I'm lost here....where is this place?


It's in Norman..North side of town. My fraternity did a couple of community service projects there.
proud gonzo
2/17/2006, 02:47 PM
bump
okienole3
2/17/2006, 02:52 PM
I think you guys are getting Griffin stories confused with Connections. Connections was the old halfway house on Chataqua (sp) and Boyd. That is where the glove man and the dude who chopped off the other dude's head, not to mention the other loons that used to roam Norman came from. Griffin patients are housed up. I know a security guard out there. As for the church, it has asbestos and won't be restored any time soon. It is cheaper to let it rot than clean it out.
mdklatt
2/17/2006, 02:55 PM
I delivered pizza there once. A patient had somehow gotten to a phone to make the order. He paid me in pennies, and while I was counting them some other guy grabbed my hot bag (the insulated bag we put the pizzas in) and ran off down the hall screaming. Good times.
mdklatt
2/17/2006, 02:59 PM
I think you guys are getting Griffin stories confused with Connections.

I delivered pizza to there once as well. ONCE. That place was a helluva lot worse than Griffin. "Halfway" house my ***, those people were all the way crazy. The first thing I see when I get there is four people playing a card game on the front porch...with imaginary cards. Once I work my way through the door there's a guy walking around bare-assed with his pants down to his ankles. The employee who ordered the pizza was cowering in fear in the reception area, and jumped when I started talking to her. When I came outside some guy was having an argument with my car. It sounded like my car was winning.
Mjcpr
2/17/2006, 03:02 PM
He paid me in pennies, and while I was counting them some other guy grabbed my hot bag and ran off down the hall screaming. Good times.

That sounds very painful.
Sooner Born Sooner Bred
2/17/2006, 03:15 PM
Isn't there a lady names Nurse Ratchett who works there?
Petro-Sooner
2/17/2006, 04:46 PM
Is GMH the same place that President Boyd started walking to when he first came to Norman thinking it was the OU campus??? How old is that place?
proud gonzo
2/17/2006, 05:26 PM
It was founded in 1896... I don't know if that's when it opened as a private college (it was a women's college first) or if that's when it opened as a hospital.
Mjcpr
2/17/2006, 06:47 PM
It was founded in 1896... I don't know if that's when it opened as a private college (it was a women's college first) or if that's when it opened as a hospital.

Oklahoma must've pwned everyone else when it came to women's colleges back in the day. Seems like everything was a women's college. NSU started as one, GMH apparently, pretty sure Bacone in Muskogee did.....

Glad somebody finally wised up and pointed them toward the kitchen.

:D


*runs away*
BoogercountySooner
2/17/2006, 07:46 PM
That was just me ringing a bell.........little bro. :eek:

How do you ring a siren ya goofball!!:D
OklahomaTrombone
2/18/2006, 12:14 AM
Oklahoma must've pwned everyone else when it came to women's colleges back in the day. Seems like everything was a women's college. NSU started as one, GMH apparently, pretty sure Bacone in Muskogee did.....

Glad somebody finally wised up and pointed them toward the kitchen.

:D


*runs away*

TU did as well.
SoonerBorn
2/18/2006, 10:07 AM
To answer an earlier question - Griffin Memorial is on the east side of Norman, basically on the NE corner of 12th (aka "Sooner Rd.") and Main Street.

Some of the dormitories from when it was a college now make up East Main Place, which is on the south side of Main Street.

At the corner of 12th and Main is the Community Services Building (where I work). It used to be a veterans hospital. Several non-profit agencies are housed there and enjoy really great lease rates, which allows them to put more of their limited funds into their services. The current Griffin campus "proper" really starts behind the Community Services Building ("CSB") and goes north and west.