Indianapolis [Indiana]- Opponents of a state plan to close a home for troubled youth are battling to preserve its legacy by keeping military uniforms, band instruments, photographs, paintings and other artifacts dating back to the Civil War.
Alumni and staff of the Indiana Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s Home in Knightstown and the Indiana American Legion, which supports the home, want a judge to bar the state from removing historical photographs and other items from the campus.
Diana Bossingham, president of the home’s alumni association, said pictures, paintings and artifacts dating from the home’s opening in 1865 remain its property and could later become part of a museum.
Read the full article at the February 14, 2009 MSNBC website.
The Home is not yet closed. Senator David C. Long has seen to it that Bill 1722 was placed in the hands of the Rules & Legislation Committee (killed) and did not bother to permit the Senate to vote on this Bill. The House of Representatives passed it 81 to 17. One didn’t vote and the other obstained; The State has in mind, along with the Governor, to make the Home a DOC. They are saying that it costs taxpayers too much to keep the Home open. It will cost much more of the taxpayers’ money to support a prison. The children are just going to be placed back into the system of Foster Homes and who knows where else. The promise of the Governor about no child left behind and kids first is going down the drain, if he gets his way.
I was a graduate in 2007 at ISSCH and I don’t think this is the right way to go. I loved everybody at that school. If they shut it down you will leave the teachers and houseparents without jobs and most of all they will put the students that don’t have homes out on the streets. This is wrong and they know it. These students are there to go to school and graduate and go on with their lives. Some people are also there because they have no family to turn to, like I did, but with them helping me out I got a high school diploma and am here at Dayton Job Corps, taking a trade in facility maintenance. A lot of students say that they hate being a ISSCH, but I know deep down in their hearts that they love it. Please think twice, because ISSCH is all that they have left and their only hope.
I, a graduate of 1937 class, have tried to contact the alumni association. The form at their web site does not seem to be working. The one email address that I found does not seem to be useable. Is the alumni association now “kaput”?