From the Houston Chronicle:ATALISSA, Iowa – For more than a century, the bright blue schoolhouse has stood near the crest of a windblown hill on the eastern flank of this farm-belt hamlet, unnoticed by those who pass on the highway to busier places and of little concern to the 270 or so residents who were happy that it served some good purpose.
It hasn’t always been blue, and it hasn’t been a school in four decades. Everything changed in the late 1970s when the “Henry boys” arrived and turned the derelict, three-story building into their home.
There they stayed until Feb. 7, when the fire marshal shut the building and state human services officials removed the men amid reports that the place was not fit to live in.
But to hear locals tell it, there is little truth in statements about “deplorable” conditions at the unlicensed group home from social workers and journalists, whom they accuse of obscuring what could be a more legitimate scandal — economic exploitation of dozens of mentally disabled workers from Texas.
“They say the place was going to fall down, that it was a disgrace how the city let this go on — that wasn’t the case at all,” said Don Passmore, a former mayor and member of the town council. “This really hit home with me. It wasn’t that way at all.”
Passmore, who has lived here for most of his 81 years, said he went to the bunkhouse, as it was known, once or twice every year when he was head of the local fire department. He checked out the old boilers and saw that the fire extinguishers were up to date. The bunkhouse wasn’t pretty, he acknowledged, but it offered comfort and plenty of space. The city owned the property and rented it out for $600 a month.
“You never heard any of them complain about the place,” Passmore said. “In the summer, the boys planted pretty flowers. They put up rows of crosses for all the soldiers from Iowa who were killed in Iraq.”
The “Henry boys,” so called because they were employed by Henry’s Turkey Service,were long past boyhood before they ever arrived in Iowa. Some were once residents of Texas state schools for the mentally disabled. They were gathered by West Texas businessmen Thurman Johnson and Kenneth Henry under an agreement with the state, the precise details of which may never be known.
Technically, the men were contract workers. They and others like them were sent to a variety of states to work in meat-processing plants, with Johnson and Henry providing for their care.About 60 were sent here to Atalissa, a tiny town in eastern Iowa. Their numbers dwindled as they got old or sick or died. Seven were taken back to Texas to “retire” in December. When officials arrived at the bunkhouse earlier this month, only 21 remained. Those men have been placed in a care facility in the Iowa city of Waterloo, where they have been unavailable for comment while authorities decide what they should do next.
Inevitably, conversation about the men in Atalissa these days turns to the topic of mistreatment.Randy and Dru Neubauer, the caretakers for the men at the bunkhouse, said they didn’t think the men were paid fairly for their work at the turkey plant in nearby West Liberty. Most of their earnings were sent to Henry’s Turkey Service for their room and board, they said, leaving each man only $60.03 a month.
“To us, that just wasn’t fair pay for all of the hard work that they’ve done,” Dru Neubauer said.Each man also was entitled to a federal disability check of up to $674 a month. The Neubauers said those checks were also signed over to Henry’s, located in Goldthwaite, about 50 miles west of Waco.
Officials at Henry’s Turkey Service have refused to answer questions from the Chronicle about their operations or the men’s pay. Iowa state officials and three federal agencies have opened investigations into the Texas company and the treatment of the men.
Local residents believe it was not the men’s home life that was the problem.
“If they were cold or not being fed or were mistreated in any way, they would have said something to me,” said Cheryl Honts, who has owned the town’s convenience store for 15 years. “They were not stupid, and they certainly were eager to talk. I never saw any with cuts or bruises or marks, and they obviously were fed plenty.”
Many press accounts emphasized the deficiencies of the bunkhouse or contained inaccuracies, such as the assertion that the heat came solely from small space heaters or that the windows were covered only with loose-fitting plywood. There were honest concerns about the home’s wiring, and the bathrooms undoubtedly needed repairs.
What often went unmentioned, however, was that the men’s rooms generally were clean and tidy, that a large common area included a pool table and a corner for watching a large, flat-screen TV, that the freezers contained plenty of food. Most of the men had their own televisions, stereos and reclining chairs.
The Neubauers said they were not provided money to make interior repairs, especially after the death of Johnson last year.
By agreement with the city, improvements and upkeep on the inside was the responsibility of Henry’s Turkey Service. But if the place was as bad as some state officials claim, Dru Neubauer said, why didn’t they shut it down on one of their periodic inspections? And why did the men who lived there take so much apparent pride in it?
“They were not neglected, and they were not abused,” she said, holding back tears. “We took them to doctors and dentists and chiropractors. We did all kinds of recreational things with them. I just treated them as though they were part of my family. They called us Mom and Dad.”
The plant where the men worked offered steady employment until recently, when its contract with Henry’s Turkey Service was not renewed because production was going to be scaled back. The work was physically taxing, and sometimes the hours were long.
“The community and those who knew them had a lot of respect for them,” Honts said of the men. “They did hard jobs that a lot of people wouldn’t want to do,.”
In a place so small, most residents came to know at least some of the men, who built their own float for the annual parade and sometimes entertained neighbors at parties in the bunkhouse. Every Sunday morning, a large contingent of them would show up at Zion Lutheran Church, where they had their own Sunday school class and sometimes sang for the congregation.
They seemed happy and never complained, remembered the church’s pastor, Lynn Thiede. As she put it, they had purpose here.