Paul Davis: Who’s screaming for welfare of Bryce patients?

I doubt that you can find anyone in any county, any city, any hamlet or any crossroad in Alabama who does not know the name “Bryce.”
For more than a century it has been the last stop for thousands of Alabamians who suffered some sort of mental illness. They had or have a relative, a friend or a relative of a friend of a Bryce Hospital Patient.

It was once the most terrible place a person could go, unless you count the cemetery. Even the cemeteries at Bryce have been desecrated.

It was a place where you sent grandma if she burned the biscuits on a regular basis, if she fell and broke a hip and you didn’t want to pay for a nursing home, or when she truly did have a mental problem.

That has changed in the aftermath of a 30-year-old lawsuit—Wyatt V. Stickney. That changed after the state spent tens of millions for litigation and renovation. It would have been much cheaper to just do the right things first. But folks in Bryce have no voice and even if they did, lawmakers have no ears when the murmurings come for such sources.

Today, Bryce is again at a crossroad. The University of Alabama wants to obtain the remaining acreage around the old hospital. The trustees of the Alabama Department of Mental Health agreed to sell the land to the University, provided the resources were made available to build a new facility,

The university just wants Bryce to go away, quickly and silently. David vs. Goliath — again. Goliath is the house that the Bear built. It is the University of Alabama.

How can Bryce, the David in this setting – simply go away? What does the mental health board, on which I serve, do with the hundreds of patients, the hundreds of employees? That’s our problem, the university maintains.

Well, it’s not. We offered to sell if they provided the funding to build a new facility. They first offered as paltry $38 million. That might build a concrete block compound with chain link fence and razor wire. But we don’t treat the mentally ill that way anymore. Not because we became better people. That change came because of a federal court order. I was in that courtroom when that case was filed. I was there, with Gov. Bob Riley, when that case ended – after 30 years.

The university has upped the ante. It now promises $50 million for our land, way short of what is needed. About three skyboxes short. Thus, the search for an alternative.

We can’t build, the university doesn’t care and Birmingham is laying of out the red carpet for the new Bryce to be housed in the now-empty Carraway Hospital.

Boy, has that stirred up a ruckus. Tuscaloosa County lawmakers are screaming, the City of Tuscaloosa is planning to sue the state, and Tuscaloosa County wants a cut of any money we get from the sale of the Bryce property.

They’re all screaming because of the loss of jobs, 657 jobs and the millions in addition that Bryce spends for goods and services in Tuscaloosa.

Who’s screaming for the welfare of the patients? The university wants the land. The politicians want the jobs. Nobody appears to be concerned about the welfare of the patients.

I walked through Carraway last week with the governor. It is on a site with about 90 acres. Birmingham is offering cash and employees’ occupational tax rebates.

The university wants and badly needs the Bryce property. The mental health board agrees. We just want a new, adequate facility that meets state and federal standards.

And all the talk in the world can’t change this basic truth: The university needs to come up with $20 or $25 million more—the cost of two or three skyboxes at Bryant Denny football stadium.

Is that too much to ask on behalf of the mentally ill?

Paul Davis writes a Sunday column for the Opelika-Auburn News. You may contact him at