Gertrude Thomas: Monopoly on Heartbreak

 One day in 1975, my city editor at The Houston Post assigned me to investigate a story he thought held the potential for scandal. He had received a wire story about a Louisiana judge who had ordered disabled children removed from a Houston caretaker because she has failed to provide adequate educational opportunities for her Louisiana wards of the state. He told me to go get her. When I returned with my story, however, the final result proved far different from my editor’s expectations.

Unknown to me at that time, I had participated in a stunning example of unexpected ways the press can trigger progress. My assignment introduced me to one of the most remarkable individuals I had the good fortunate to encounter during my 45 year-career in journalism: Gertrude Thomas. As a freelance writer eight years later I decided to update on her status and produced this feature story for the April 1832 edition of a monthly magazine called Salt. It styled itself as a publication for “grassroots Christians seeking social justice.”

Once again, I’ve searched recently for any updated information into 2019 on Thomas or her home, but could find no leads. If anyone reading this blog post knows anything else, please update with a comment.

Salt April, 1983

The Gertrude Thomas home: Where beauty is never skin deep

An idea ahead of its time is usually worth its weight in gold to the person hatching it. Often, however, the gold is not the sort of wealth you can put in the bank. Gertrude Thomas is a Houston nurse who had an idea ahead of her time. On the surface, it brought her a life of isolation. It dealt her a monopoly on heartbreak. It forced her to live for 30 years uncertain about the source of her next month's grocery-bill payment.

But the gold still came shining through just as surely as if it had been in the bank. You could see it in her eyes as she watched scenes so horrible you had to look away. You could hear it in her voice as she talked about the lives touched by her idea. You could feel it in the special electricity generated when she contacted others. And, in the end you had to ask how she could handle the burden of such an idea.

"I practiced self-hypnosis," says the 71-year-old founder of the Gertrude Thomas Home—without cracking a smile.

Things are bright for Thomas these days. She is one of those fortunate beings favored by fate. She lived to see the day when time caught up to her idea. She saw the whole community finally lift from her shoulders the monstrous burden she had borne alone for 30 years.

Now, there's even a little gold in the bank account for the woman who gave her entire life to the severely retarded and abused children of Texas.

The first children

Her story actually begins in the middle of her life. In 1950 she was employed as a nurse at Houston's large, public hospital, Jeff Davis. Each month the facility swells— even today—with record numbers of births. It's the only place in town where women too poor for private obstetrical care can come for delivery. It also records its fair share of children born with birth defects. Most of them, in 1950, had no place to go.

An ectopic pregnancy had left Thomas unable to bear children. She had come to the city in 1939 from West Texas with her husband, a painting contractor. After World War II she decided to sign up for nurse training at Jeff Davis. She was steeped in her career in 1950 when a couple of doctors made a suggestion destined to change her life.

Two Down's syndrome baby boys, both less than 1 year old, needed a home. Their parents had fled the hospital. So Gertrude Thomas took them home to the wood-frame house she shared in northwest Houston with her husband.

"That first night I didn't sleep," she recalls. "I was nervous. They both had baby beds and I ended up sleeping with them."

They were there to stay. She named them Danny and Tommy and raised them as her own. But they were just the start. With her courageous act of generosity was born the Thomas Home for Exceptional Children. Between 1950 and 1978 it was the only facility in Texas and Louisiana where the severely retarded could be sent. Even today, it remains the sole home in Texas for the kids with absolutely no other place to go.

In those days a place like the Thomas home operated in society's shadows. In 1976 she explained her home to reporters: "Most people don't even know there are children like these. They are the forgotten ones. But all you have to do is see what they are like, and the problems of caring for them are obvious."

Soon after she had accepted Danny and Tommy, Thomas found herself in possession of a state license to operate a center for 12 children. The State of Texas paid $90 per month per child for her services. Sometimes, she'd even receive a little donation from parents.

"I still remember the happiest time as that first Christmas," she recalls. "My family had never gone in for Christmas trees, but for the children we got a tree. We had about 16 kids at the time. They had all drawn names and the children had packages. Everyone was together. There were no parents. Back then, they didn't visit. They'd just call."

Blind to deformities

About a year after its start, the home received its first hydrocephalic child—a baby with a 38-inch head. Over the years, there have been much worse. A tour of the Thomas home—particularly in its original location—was not a pretty sight. It has housed every sort of deformity at one time or another. Many came as results of child abuse and torture. As the home grew and the staff expanded, Thomas plowed everything into what had become her life's obsession.

She obtained a license for 50 children. She borrowed money to expand her home into a clinic with hospital beds, respirators, and medical equipment. She repaid the loan herself—$96,000 worth. Louisiana contracted to send its infant outcasts and paid $11.40 per day.

"I had never been around retarded children," recalls Jim Vaughn, administrator of Cresthaven Nursing Home in Austin. He visited the home in 1975 to help Thomas as a consultant.

"I was appalled. Here were all these bodies side by side in little cribs up and down the corridors. I told a partner I didn't want to get involved. But as you get acquainted with these kids you don't see the deformities. You see the bright eyes and the smiles of kids who cannot do anything for themselves. I had to help."

Her husband had died in 1964, and since then Thomas had bravely run the home alone.

"She totally dedicated her entire existence to caring for these kids," recalls Vaughn. "She was totally consumed. She put in 24 hours per day. And she poured everything she had into the place to keep it going. She lived month to month. It seemed like less than half of the people paid."

But bureaucracy discovered her in 1975 and responded with a telling blow that opened her doors to media attention. Acting on the report of some federal agency investigator, a federal judge in Louisiana ordered the state to remove its 33 children from the home. His reasoning? They weren't getting enough "educational stimulation."

Members of the local press descended on the home in droves, expecting to find an expose of cruelty. The federal ruling had made the place sound like a dilapidated halfway house for sick children run by someone greedy to squeeze a meager profit from public welfare funds. What they found instead was Gertrude Thomas inviting them to come inside and make suggestions as to how she could improve the level of "educational stimulation" among her patients.

"The highest IQ she has out there is 17," a Houston pediatrician chided the press.

As they toured the facility, the reporters quickly realized the ridiculousness of the federal ruling. They also gained respect for the woman who had surrendered her life to care for a family of children with members so fragile they were little more than vegetables.

"She provided health care and love for children who had no place else to go. Doctors had told them they would not live," says Vaughn.

With the Louisiana children headed home—many against the wishes of their parents—a major source of income dried up. Vaughn decided to pitch in and help. He wrestled with a way to get funding from a federally sponsored program for retarded children. But Thomas' expanded home would never pass muster as a medical facility under the required guidelines.

"Finally," he recalls, "we were fortunate. A parent was interested in perpetuating that facility. He made arrangements and contacts with people who owned a nursing home in south Houston."

The benefactor and his partners have avoided publicity about their role. What they did was buy a medical-nursing home and turn it over to Thomas and her staff. The new Thomas Home opened on May 1, 1978.

Patron saint

Besides a gleaming new structure, the new facility boasts a larger staff. Of 35 workers before, only two had been nurses. Now the Thomas Home has an in-house physician, a director of nurses, day and night supervisors, and all the other support troops needed to handle its patient load of 150. Gertrude Thomas is salaried for life and enjoys a status somewhere between director-emeritus and patron saint.

She comes to the facility every day from her home, still located in the original Thomas Home. When some of the children need more specialized emergency care, she helps drive them to Houston's Texas Medical Center where they can get some of the best treatment the world has to offer. She says she plans to live a lot longer and continue building her family. But for now, her memories serve as important lessons for all.

"I remember the night we moved after 28 years in our home. A lot of mental pressure was relieved. But it was hard to go in the old building. Everywhere I looked there was a baby bed," she sighs. "Even today, when it turns cold at night, I'll wake up and wonder if the kids are warm.

"I have brought many a child through some sickness only to think, 'Oh, my God, why did I catch him in time?' But next time, I always knew, I'd do the same thing."

She recalls the first two patients, the boys she raised as sons. Danny died in 1961 at the age of 11.

"He had a bad heart. He was sick for a couple of days and I took care of him at the house. Doctors wanted to put him in the hospital but he kept having massive convulsions. When the convulsions came they would scare him. What could they do at the hospital? I just took him to bed with me and that's where he died."

Her other "son," Tommy, proved more sturdy. He became her right-hand man at the old Thomas Home, "a good stool pigeon. He'd walk around and see a kid that was dirty and run and tell. He'd unload the dishwasher. He was a perfectionist about whatever he did."

But as he grew older, Tommy needed less confinement than the hospital atmosphere of the changing Thomas Home. At age 32, he's now living in a home in Beaumont for people capable of more active lives. When he moved, Thomas refused to go along: "I didn't want him to associate me with the place. He's happy now and he has friends. I'll visit and say, 'You want to go home with Mama?' and he'll say, 'No.' It doesn't make me feel bad. I know he's happy."

The faces of parents

She also recalls her last vacation: "I took one in 1963. My husband was dying with lung cancer. We went to Las Vegas."

But most of all, she says, she recalls the parents. At first glance, they could seem like a calloused bunch offering phone calls instead of visits, apathy instead of help. But most of the children with Thomas over the years couldn't have gone anywhere else. Not even the wealthy could have cared for some of the deformities she accepted.

"They never got too bad for me to take. Some of them didn't even look like human beings. In the last few years if I had a sick kid I'd take it to bed with me."

But facing the parents, particularly the fathers, remains among her hardest chores.

"The parents are the ones who touch me the most," she says. "More than once I've stood here sobbing with a father who has had to hold everyone else in the family up while making arrangements. He's been the rock of strength. Then, here, on the last step he suffers the final straw. He surrenders his child and it all pours out."

Many parents did come often to visit their kids despite their inability to do much more than just hold them. But that might be the most important contribution of all. For of all the different kinds of defects and wide varieties of children, Thomas says one common denominator prevailed among them all.

"Sometimes," she says, "the only response they understand is love. But they do understand that. Every one of them."

There's no doubt Gertrude Thomas has proven she's an adult who understands it, too.