An Activist Social Worker in "Respectable" Jobs

Despite now working in "respectable" jobs, first with the Colorado Department of Human Services, then as Director of two county human services departments, my activist streak lasted into the middle 1970s. I was elected President of the Denver Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, then later elected President of the Colorado Association of Social Services Directors.

In the early 1070s, I was one of those who was mesmerized by the ">Watergate" scandal. I don't think I missed a minute of the Senate hearings. I was so impressed at the work done by Woodward and Bernstein, as memorably reproduced in the movie href="">All The President's Men. I held the journalism profession in the highest regard. When I became Human Services Director, I had a regularly scheduled meeting every Friday with representatives from two newspapers, two radio stations, and one television station in Durango. I answered questions with candor and openness. Because of that, controversies erupted all over the place.

Every Saturday I hosted a program called Senior Saturday on the local CBS radio affiliate. Each week I interviewed for the program a senior citizen whom my caseworkers had told me was an interesting character. One day I taped the show at the local nursing home, I Interviewed a woman whose last name was Thayer. She was 99-years-old! She had come to Durango via covered wagon over the majestic Wolf Creek Pass. An old man whose room was directly across the hall from Ms. Thayer's, entered the room to listen to the interview. I watched in horror as the 6 foot two inch Head Nurse roughly pushed him across the hall back into his room. The next day at work I called together all the caseworkers who had clients in the nursing home. They all told me they had had similar experiences. I asked them to document each incident. We filed eleven "grievances" with the state, and the nursing home lost its Medicaid and Medicare funding. The local medical society came at me like a swarm of hornets! I had never realized how much money there was to be made by medicating residents of nursing homes. Two years of hearings ensued. Lawyers in three-piece suits from Philadelphia argued the case for the nursing home. It turned out that the nursing home was owned by a vending machine company out of Philadelphia! The nursing home finally agreed to rectify the problems. They fixed up the joint so you would never know it had been the urine-soaked place it once was. Guess who became it's administrator? Lil! Guess who brought his own mother to live there a decade later? I!

I also tangled with the Superintendent of Schools over his regime's failure to report child abuse to our department, and with the Community Centered Board for allowing disabled adults to be improperly paid. The Community Centered Board, I learned the hard way, had powerful politicians and lawyers on its board, including an ex-Governor. One day in my weekly meeting with the press, I told the press that disabled citizens there were being paid ten cents an hour to tie fish hooks. I said the board could, if it wanted, find jobs that would pay minimum wage, and thus take many of the disabled off the welfare rolls.