Reunion planned by former residents in Nevada Children’s Home

Thursday, Oct. 28, 1999 | 11:46 a.m.

Shaw's office was on the grounds of the former Nevada Children's Home, a state orphanage, and Jack Guerrero, 63, was a former "home kid." The two talked for a couple of hours and as a result, Shaw and his staff decided to help former residents put together a reunion, scheduled for Saturday.

The roster of residents of the home, which opened in 1873, numbers 3,300 youngsters. For some, it was the only home and family they ever had. But many residents have both sweet and bitter memories.

"The attitude and handling of the children changed with the times in society," said Guerrero, who remembers hardships and good times when he lived in the home from 1943 to 1947. "It was the circumstances and the environment we lived in."

Before and during World War II, the institution was self-sufficient. The residents farmed, did housework and laundry, cooked and cleaned, earning 25 cents a week.

Like many other children, Guerrero wasn't a "whole orphan" with both parents deceased, but a "half orphan" who had one parent living. Many children came from families who were incapable of supporting them.

"There wasn't a sophisticated child-welfare system or government-assistance programs in place then," Shaw said. "Almost immediately, they had to redefine the policies to include half orphans and dependent, neglected and abandoned children."

As society developed more systems to care for children, the doors were opened to children "in need of supervision," Shaw said. In the mid 1960s, former resident Pat Reddick said, "things began to go downhill."

Children from broken homes who had gotten into trouble and delinquents headed for the juvenile prison in Elko instead landed in the Children's Home, Reddick said, "bringing their ways to the other kids."

The children were put in small cottages with adults serving as cottage "parents." While some were motivated to care for children, others were not, instead taking advantage of an easy government sinecure.

When the home was closed in 1992, all records were deposited in the state archives and are not available to the public because of confidentiality, Shaw said.

When attempting to trace former residents, staffers spoke at service clubs, broadcast information to media and on the Web, and contacted some who had attended reunions in 1968 and 1972 with a former superintendent, Roland van der Smissen.

Sue Ballew, the staff member in charge of putting together the reunion, expected to find about 30 former residents. Organizers now are expecting about 10 times that many.

"The best contacts are the kids themselves," she said.

In only a few months, Bonnie Nishikawa of Carson City has contacted many of the children whom she, her brother, Earl Boice, and her sister, Ella Fowlkes, knew. The Boice siblings spent most of their childhood in the orphanage.

At an earlier reunion, van der Smissen had given Nishikawa boxes of photographs, many group photos, for her to distribute to former residents. From the books containing old rosters, she also took down names, parents' names and places where residents had been released and began to contact them. Calls and letters gradually trickled in.

Not every resident cares to return, organizers say. Each of them knows someone who never has acknowledged the past and feels a stigma about having lived in the orphanage.

"A lot of people don't want to come to the reunion," Guerrero said. "But it's healthy to deal with it. If we can put it all aside, so can they. It can eat on you like cancer."

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The event starts at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at 711 E. Fifth St., between the gymnasium and the Western Nevada Boys and Girls Club on the grounds of the old home in Carson City.