Wow, I was browsing DAYTOP's website and I saw that Frank Lanza's family was given an award of some kind for Frank, which made me do a search on him to see if he was really departed. So I'd like to tell you a little bit of my experience with DV to maybe try and give you a little perspective. In the end, tho, the one thing that i realized as DV grew was that it was a business and that they have to do what they have to do.
I was a resident of DV as a teenager in the early 80's. I have to tell you that what i have heard hear was very disheartening. When i started DV there were 10 facilities. 40th st (which was intake and headquarters and we didn't even have the entire building full) 409 on ninth Avenue (which was re-entry), Millbrook, Parksville, Swan Lake and the 5 outreaches Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, S.I . (which actually opened later during my years there).
When i went to Millbrook, it was a teenage facility, not like it is now. It had a very homely feeling to it. The staff, the residents and there was a maintenance man, I don't remember his name, but i'll never forget him. He was one of the reason Millbrook felt like home. The neighbors accepted us. There was a little red schoolhouse with two old lady teachers, who were someone's sweet grandmother who baked cookies ( you know the ones you only see on tv or read about) only they were real. Down the back road, there was the pig farm, and the creepy old farmer who used to come up every night to take our "pig bucket" slops from the grill to his pigs.
Now at the time, even though it was a teenage facility, there was never more than 70 residents at a time there, male to female ration about 5:1. I was one of the youngest there at 15, and I was one of three black females at the time.
The Staff: Donna Chadoba, Eddie Cinisomo,Wayne O'Connell, Tony Parks, interns, Vito Tomanelli and Robert Wragg. There was another female, but i can't remember her name.
I was there for about 15 months and during that time, they were building a new facility, now known as Far Rockaway) now my time upstate, had it's good times and it's times. I wore a sig, i wore a stocking cap, i was on something called "poison patrol", i sat on the chair, i sat on the bench, and i was never, ever a coordinator. I sat in extended groups, i sat in marathons, but you something as a teenaged girl, although it was hard, i never felt more love than i did when i was in that facility. When we had pool parties, when we had dances, when we performed on stage for the community, when we went to the community church, and although my real family wasn't with me for X-mas, i was with my family.
The best years of my life were spent in a treatment facility and i made some mistakes, but you know what, DV saved my life. DV made me see things, not at the time, but years later, when i went on to have my own family that if i hadn't entered DV, things for me now just wouldn't be where they are.
I have friends that i made in DV that i still have to this day. Friends that call, hang out with and have grown up with.
Now, as far as the changes, yeah, DV has evolved over the years, i've seen that. I've actually been to a facility (fox run) a few years ago, and it's much different. But you gotta realize that times have changed and the epidemic has changed. You can't treat the underlying anymore, you have to treat the epidemic.
It's funny, when i went to re-entry in FR, I saw the change. Not only was DV dealing with drug abusers, users, or whatever, but they were of a different breed. We're talking crack. There's a difference between treating straight cocaine addict or heroin addict, which DV primarily treated when i was there, than a crackhead, the worst type of SA. You can't treat the underlying problem with a crackhead because an underlying problem doesn't exist.
Now to talk about Frank. I knew Frank personally, and I hated him. But i respected him. I respected what he had done in SL. The recidivism rate in SL was almost nil. And Frank had a lot to do with that. if you talk to anyone from SL or Parksville who was there during Frank's tenure, they will tell you, he was not the person he ended up being.
Yeah, he had an anger problem that totally got worse over the years. I remember seeing him some years ago after graduating, I was at 40th St., visiting Kenny Catoe (Anyone who has been in DV knows KC) and Frank came up to me and said, i know you, i remember you, how's your boyfriend? I looked at him and thought, damn, he wasn't around when i split (one of many times) with a guy from Re-entry), how would he have known that? Turns out, that he kept tabs on me when i was in re-entry and thougth that me and this guy was still together.
Frank, in the last years, i had heard had become a very nasty man. But if you knew him back then, you would understand.
alot of the staff that are there that had been there for the longest time, has had to adjust to many different changes in DV. Changes that are normal for the evolution of time. Times change, people change and it's sometimes, especially for those who went through the program in the 70's and became counselors and are used to the DV was.
I'm sorry that anyone who has had a bad experience with DV had it, but if you were a resident, think about this, if you hadn't gone to DV, even if it was just to Detox, where would you be now.
I'm not sure what this all means, but i saw this and felt that i had to add my 2 cents, to defend what was, not what is.
A Proud DAYTOPIAN