Ideas Have Consequences » Publications » Family Security Matters

Ideas Have Consequences » Publications » Family Security Matters: "While I was teaching a lesson last spring about how the eugenics movement led to the Nazi Holocaust, Kathy McDonald, an ed tech who worked in my classroom, called my attention to an obituary in the Conway Daily Sun for the late Walter Henry Berry, Jr. He and his wife had spent their childhood in the Laconia State School, which at the time had been run by the New Hampshire State Eugenics Movement.

The obit showed a picture of white-haired, white-bearded Walter with his little dog, Goldie. Many local residents indicated on the Sun’s Facebook page that they remembered seeing them walking together on Route 16. Some of my students did too, and it made the lesson more real. Last month, they Googled the “New Hampshire Eugenics Movement” and learned that hundreds of NH citizens were forcibly sterilized at the Laconia State School. Walter’s obit didn’t say he or his wife were, but neither did it indicate they had any surviving children. My students learned also that Maine forcibly sterilized hundreds at Pineland Hospital in Gray."

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