By Mary O’KEEFE

I had an entirely different column for this week. It was done, and you have no idea what a great feeling that is to just have it completed; however, then I attended the Glendale City Council Special Meeting on Tuesday morning with LA County Supervisor Kathryn Barger and I realized there was another Women’s History Month story that I needed to share. 

The meeting dealt with several issues. One topic of discussion was Rockhaven, which as our readers know by our past CVW coverage is a pretty important topic for many not only in our area but beyond. 

Rockhaven Sanitarium was founded by Agnes Richards in 1923. The story of this woman’s business has been well documented, there have been tours of the sanitarium, books written, short documentaries produced and of course talked about—a lot —- at Glendale City Council meetings. But while I was listening to speakers plead for the City to simply put tarps on the roof to protect the historical buildings —- which have certificates and everything as they are listed in the National Register of Historic Places — it was then I began thinking of what Agnes Richards really did. 

The 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, was first introduced into Congress in 1878. It took 42 years for Congress to actually certify the amendment, in 1920.  Forty-two years to debate, ignore and debate again the right for women to vote for the men who would lead their country. There were of course women who were leaders at that time but a lot of those stories have been “lost to history” as the saying goes, including the fact that Jeanette Rankin of Montana was the first woman to be elected to either branch of Congress well before most states allowed women to vote.  And that thought of “lost to history” is what made me realize I had to rewrite my column. 

Agnes Richards never thought of herself as a feminist, or a part of the women’s suffrage movement. She was a medical professional, a nurse, who witnessed unjust treatment of women who needed mental health services and she had a solution. She began by purchasing houses along Honolulu Avenue that she turned into an oasis for women in need of mental health care. The buildings were homes, not institutions. The walls had pretty wallpaper and artwork, the furniture was comfortable and inviting, there were places where women could sit outside in a garden, and a water fountain. She did all of this three years after women won the right to the vote. In addition to being a business woman that who focused on woman’s issues she also was a divorced woman. There was a stigma attached to just about everything she was doing and yet, she did it. 

I was raised a feminist and wasn’t sure if Agnes’ history meant more to me because I had been in the fight for so long but when I asked a female middle school student about this history she said the fact that Agnes could do what she did 100 years ago, inspires her. 

The meeting with Supervisor Barger covered several issues facing Glendale including open spaces in South Glendale and the unhoused, and this is where history can play a role. The quote “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it” is probably the most well-known and completely ignored quote of all time. The key words in the statement for many is the “doomed to repeat it” but I think the part we should focus on is the “do not learn.” This seems to be the key and if we would look at the history Rockhaven alone we could learn so much. For open space, Rockhaven was originally purchased by the City in 2008 to be a park and library. It was to be an open to the public space. Now, it is not in South Glendale but it is still an example on how  to partner public space with open space. It is something that for years seemed to be ignored as developers built high rise housing in Glendale, with the philosophy that housing is the number one issue while ignoring the balance of public open space.

Then there is the unhoused. In California  in 1967 then-Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act which basically ended the practice of institutionalizing patients against their will. There were issues with this practice, Rockhaven’s history can give example of that when it only took the signature of a husband to commit a wife to an institution, so the Act did seem to protect some but it fell short for many when California relied on community treatment facilities that were never built, according to CalMatters. 

Then in 1980 the Mental Health Systems Act (MHSA) was signed by then–President Jimmy Carter; this provided grants to community mental health centers. In 1981 then–President Ronald Reagan along with Congress repealed MHSA. This law was known as the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 and forced many federal mental health institutions to close. 

Rockhaven was in business during these upheavals in the 1960s and 80s, but history shows that Agnes and later her granddaughter Patricia Traviss continued to stay the course. They treated women for a variety of mental health issues. The women were helped and many were able to go back home but imagine what would have happened if Agnes had not been there? How many of those women would be on the streets as unhoused? Even if their families could pay, or they had insurance, many of the women had families that had no choice but to walk away from them due to their mental illness. How many women living on the street now  would have benefited from the foundation of what Agnes created? This is history we can actually learn from so why would we not want to highlight this forward–thinking business woman’s philosophy. Glendale’s unhoused program is one of the best in the state, perhaps the country, so why would they not want to show an example of how 100 years ago a women founded a facility that was proactive in mental health treatment?

Learning from history is so easy and yet not readily done by societies. But especially now with history being rewritten in so many areas it is important to keep tactile history alive, where you don’t walk through a virtual facility that was created by someone with an agenda in mind, but real buildings that contain echoes of long past voices. 

The main issue of Rockhaven now has to do with our unprecedented rain and the leaking roofs. It seems a simple thing to treat, even temporarily, by putting tarps up. We see blue tarps as we travel throughout Southern California every day because roofs leak. The rain is going to continue, so as we are thankful for the rainfall we also must remember there are consequences to the storms especially when they are ignored. 

The rain is expected to continue through today, then dry out for a few days but another cold front with scattered showers may be in our future starting Tuesday night, according to NOAA. 

We are still in the traditional wet season which goes from October to March/April,  said Lisa Phillips, NOAA meteorologist. 

Granted, in recent years we haven’t had as much rain, but this has always been Southern California’s wet season, so no one should be surprised that rain falls during these months.