Central Islip psych center's cemetery restoration to resume after delays

Restoration of a once-forgotten cemetery that served the shuttered Central Islip Psychiatric Center is poised to resume after delays caused by COVID-19 and funding problems, state and Touro Law Center officials told Newsday.

The cemetery's locked gate, just south of a Touro parking lot, discourages casual visitors. From outside it is nearly impossible to see more than 5,000 numbered grave markers within, most flush to the ground to allow for easy mowing, some hidden by grass and earth. They include those of Holocaust survivors and military veterans, said a rabbi who once served as hospital chaplain.

If the cemetery's current state is much better than it was — Touro officials recalled seeing wine bottles and mattresses more than a decade ago — it is expected to improve with landscaping and installation of a historical marker and plaque planned in spring. Benches will be built for visitors and later a cracked asphalt walkway that runs through the cemetery will be repaved, officials said.

"Work was delayed due to shifting internal resources and the need for OMH to be responsive to the impacts from Covid," James Plastiras, spokesman for the state's Office of Mental Health, which maintains the cemetery, said in an email.

The hospital, which housed a peak of 12,000 patients in the early 1960s, belonged to an archipelago of about 50 public institutions — including Kings Park, Brentwood’s Pilgrim State and others upstate — that dominated psychiatric care in the state for much of the 20th century. After budgetary shortfalls and revelations of poor conditions at some facilities scandalized the public in the early 1970s, many curtailed operations or closed, as Central Islip and Kings Park did in 1996.

Their cemeteries remain. Today the state’s Office of Mental Health is affiliated with 25 across the state, including four on Long Island, with 55,000 patient graves.

"Our goal is to restore respect for the deceased who weren’t respected in life and were forgotten in death," said Samuel Levine, director of Touro’s Jewish Law Institute, which began its involvement because the cemetery houses a small Jewish section and lies next to the school’s Eastview Drive campus. Touro installed a fence and will pay for the benches. Before COVID, its law students helped clean the cemetery during student orientation.

A fraction of graves in the 16-acre cemetery bear names. Most were numbered to protect the privacy of patients and their families. OMH keeps records matching those numbers to names but considers names and other patient records — even a patient’s final resting place — to be "privileged information" not freely accessible by the public, Plastiras said, though family members can request named grave markers by contacting the office.

Rabbi Melvyn Lerer, a former Pilgrim chaplain who also served Jewish patients at Central Islip, said in an oral history that some of those buried at the cemetery survived concentration camps.

He told Newsday he was appalled by cemetery conditions at the first funeral he officiated there in the 1970s.

While patients were treated well at Pilgrim and Central Islip, many were abandoned by their families, he said. "It was a disgrace to be in the ‘loony bin' — that’s the way people used to call it," he said.

Lerer said he convinced state officials to set aside two acres for a dedicated Jewish burial ground, as Jewish custom dictates. He said it was the first of its kind on state property, and that he used private donations to pay for 101 grave markers with names.

Families seeking answers

OMH has gotten hundreds of requests from families about relatives and ancestors buried in its cemeteries, Plastiras said. One came last year from Brian Madigan, 64, a defense contractor formerly from Sayville who lives outside Fredericksburg, Virginia. Madigan tracked his great-great grandfather, Napoleon Hedemark, to the Central Islip hospital in the late 1800s; he died there in 1916, he said.

Madigan told Newsday he approached the state office last fall seeking Hedemark's patient records and the location of his grave to place a headstone with a name, but has gotten no response aside from a form letter.

"I can’t abide the thought of an ancestor’s grave possibly unmarked or marked with a number," he said. "I don’t like my ancestors being anonymous lumps in the ground."

Plastiras said his office gives "careful and thorough consideration" to requests from family members and complies with all those where it is legally permissible to do so. He did not specifically address Madigan's case on the record.

Plans for renovation

Touro’s cemetery involvement dates to a 2013 agreement between the school, the state and a Jewish cemetery association calling for improvements including restoration of stone markers and a memorial, and installation of a new memorial marking the Jewish section. Initial work there could expand to turn the entire cemetery into a "reflection park" and historical site accessible to the public, it said, offering walking trails and a "green space for quiet reflection."

In 2013, OMH estimated the initial restoration work would cost $30,000. It has spent about $11,200 on restoration in addition to maintenance costs.

Plans for renewed work drew approval from Nancy Manfredonia, special projects coordinator for the Central Islip Civic Council, who predicted interest from hamlet residents who worked at the hospital and those living in nearby developments eager for greenery. "We don't have a lot of open space," she said. A reopened cemetery will be a major stop on a history trail the group plans.

Former Touro administrators have called for more changes at the cemetery. In a 2018 Touro Law Review article, former associate dean Louise Harmon said lack of access to the cemetery and grave numbering amounted to "depersonalization" of the dead.

Ken Rosenblum, a former associate dean and Army veteran who volunteers with a state veterans advisory committee, told Newsday veterans' graves should be recognized. "They don’t have to tell me the names, just tell me which are veteran graves so we can mark them with flags." Rosenblum will raise the subject with state veterans' services officials at a meeting Thursday.

Plastiras said the state "respects and appreciates our veterans as well as honors Holocaust survivors."

Rosenblum shared proposed wording for the plaque near the cemetery entrance, which will give history but end with a quotation from the Book of Isaiah: "Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death."