A Special House/Home In Orangetown, Maggie Conway's

A SANCTUARY OF WARMTH IN A COLD WORLD, By John Allen Murphy

The hamlet of Orangeburg in Rockland County New York was once home to one of the nation's largest State government facilities serving people with serious mental illness.

It was built from 1927 to 1931 on 600 acres with the name of Rockland State Hospital, and had 5,768 beds with a staff of 2,000. By 1959 it had 9,000 beds.

Over the years, many other related facilities were built on the 600 acre campus as the bed numbers in the hospital were reduced to less than 600 beds.

Rockland State Hospital was once considered the “best planned asylum in the country,” but like so much of our world it was subject to dramatic change. Its name was changed to Rockland Psychiatric Center, most of the land was sold for other purposes, and most of the more than one hundred stone buildings were abandoned and replaced with modern structures for the patients.

The change from 1931 to now is an ongoing historic saga, except for one small building on the south east edge of the shrunken campus named the “Maggie Conway House.”

It is a bridge from yesterday to today with a never changing heart. It is an oasis of kindness to those who badly need kindness

The story begins in the 40’s/50’s, when Maggie Conway moved from her childhood home in Florida to New York and began working at the hospital and living in its staff quarters. After marrying and having children she needed to find larger living quarters, which she did at the Post-WWII Camp Shanks housing in the Town of Orangetown. In time the Federal Government offered the housing for purchase, but practically speaking, not to people of color. In 1955, Maggie, who from her earliest childhood years was taught by her parents to always buy/own your own home even before buying a car, decided to buy a privately owned house on the edge of the Rockland State Hospital campus.

To be able to afford the house, Maggie decided to become a "Family Care Home" provider to folks being discharged from the hospital. At that time, a "Family Care Home" was limited to four people of the same gender, so she applied for a license and was told that it would take a long time to secure a license because there was a great demand for licenses to take in lady discharges. Being Maggie, she asked for a license to serve males because no one in Rockland wanted to serve men of color who were victims of mental illness.

That is when Maggie clearly demonstrated who she was, and for a long time four gentlemen shared a loving home with Maggie and her children.

However, it soon became evident that operating a State licensed Family Care Home could not be done at her high standard on only $150 a month per person, so she applied to be a Boarding Home. For many years after (up to 1999, around 4o plus years in total) Maggie made a loving home for 4 to 15 gentlemen of color recovering from their hospitalizations, and for her children.

When Father Time told Maggie it was time to retire in 1999, she offered to sell the house to Loeb House, Inc., which is a Not-For-Profit local charity that is the largest Rockland County operator of community residences for the mentally ill. This offer was made with the understanding that its mission and name should be kept as a tribute to her past. Loeb House, Inc. still operates the Maggie Conway House as a

boarding house for 20 good folks of all colors and genders to whom life has been cruel. It is a much-loved oasis that exists with very modest government funding and the generous support of the Rockland Community under the name of “Joseph’s Home, Inc.,” a charity named after my brother. However, even with the generous support of time, labor, goods and food, the Maggie Conway House needs a face lift, especially in its five bathrooms.

When I recently talked to Maggie, who at age 92 now lives in the South West, I asked her how she became such a kind person. Her response was that as a little girl in Florida her parents told her to always feed the “missionaries and tramps" who rang the house bell asking for food. A small act of kindness that often meant sharing what little there was.

Ergo, Joseph’s Home, Inc. will be asking all the local plumbing businesses, plumbers and handymen out there to volunteer to join together to upgrade the facilities by contributing supplies and labor so that the bathrooms are what everyone would like to see. Of course, we will also accept cash donations.

More often than not, the best act of kindness is not the grand gesture but a quiet act of brotherly love. Visit www.mealtrain.com/rocklandvets or www.mealtrain.com/04ywd5

Sincerely,

John Allen Murphy

Co-founder of Loeb House, Inc. and Joseph’s Home, Inc., and

Chairman of the Rockland Psychiatric Center Board of Visitors

murphy6288@Icloud.com