Found in NJ: Totowa's Abandoned Asylum

2022 UPDATE: Now totally demolished; a health care center is on the site today.

This is the North Jersey Development Center, a 188-acre compound of buildings, forever shrouded in mystery and permanently closed in 2014.

The property overlooks and abuts Echo Glen, a suburban development in Totowa where my parents bought their first and only house. A high fence, which was topped with barbed wire when I was a boy, separates the center from this neighborhood, which was built on top of swampland so that none of the cookie-cutter houses have basements.

According to asylumprojects.org, the Development Center opened in 1928, preceding Echo Glen's construction by 30 years. Originally known as the North Jersey Training School, the center served "625 mildly retarded females" in 1953 and included a 275-bed nursery, making it the only one in the state that housed children. The source here is a 1969 study published by the "New Jersey Association for Retarded Children."

One anonymous post on Google Books claims that many locals in the 1950s considered the center to be a school for promiscuous, wayward girls or an experimental asylum where a variety of psychology trials were staged.

By the 2010s, the facility housed nearly 400 adults, dwindling to 190 residents before being shuttered. Some residents were moved to the Hunterdon Developmental Center, which offers care for a wide variety of neuro-developmental disorders, including Down syndrome.

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When I was a boy, Totowa's Training School housed men, women and children in several dozen dormitory-style cottages. There were 35 buildings in all, including a school, chapel, healthcare facility, auditorium and swimming pool. 

I know this first-hand because I once attended a packed performance by Bozo the Clown at the auditorium there. Also, as an altar boy, I spent one summer assisting Fr. Lynch from nearby St. James parish as he celebrated Mass at the chapel.

Fr. Lynch was a tall man who rested his elbows on the pulpit and crossed one leg casually behind the other as he delivered his folksy sermons. He thought it might do me good to accompany him to the Training School every Sunday.

After folding himself into his compact car, Fr. Lynch would drive us down Minnesink Road and into the compound, past neat rows of cottages. Upon our arrival, the chapel was always packed with a well-dressed crowd of young residents and their families.

I was always intrigued by the congregation's responses during Mass. Prayers were loudly half-sung by the residents, who enthusiastically emphasized all the "thees" and "thous" in the Our Father and Hail Mary. At that point in Catholic Church history -- in the years following Vatican II -- there had been a concerted effort to encourage people to recite all prayers using "you" and "your."

"Why does everyone here pray the old way?" I asked Fr. Lynch.

"They pray the way they were taught," he replied. "It's comfortable and reassuring."

Today, decades later, at St. James itself, everyone prays the old-fashioned way, anyway.

I don't remember much about Fr. Lynch beyond that summer. He left St. James soon afterward, and the priesthood too. He married, according to one rumor. He died in Vietnam, according to another. In the pre-Internet era, there was no way of knowing for sure.

In the 1980s, the state changed the Training School's name to the more-PC "Development Center," but the name outside the main entrance has always stayed the same.

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Visiting my Mom the other day, I noticed that even the front entrance of the place is now enclosed behind a chain-link fence.

I stopped to take these photos -- and, in doing so, a couple of things occurred to me.

For one, everything in Totowa looks smaller than in my memory. It always does.

For another, I can't remember a single word of any one of Fr. Lynch's sermons, but I still, to this day, recall his kindness to everyone I saw him interact with that summer.

And finally, standing outside the locked gates, I heard no ghostly cheers for Bozo the Clown nor any echoing petition that Thy kingdom come or Thy will be done.

Instead, in 2016, the only sounds haunting this place can be traced to the traffic in the near distance, as everyone else speeds past on Route 80.

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A 2018 update to this post: "Totowa Under Attack."

Roosevelt Island, Google Style

Google has once again taken it upon Itself to make an automatic video of some time I spent taking photos.

And who am I to argue with my peripatetic search-engine friend?

So here's the short video, featuring photos I took on a beautiful late Saturday morning in New York. Nancy and I were walking past Tram Plaza at 60th Street and Second Avenue, when I suggested that we get a close up view of the intriguing, abandoned Smallpox Hospital (aka, The Ruin) we see on Roosevelt Island when we sometimes walk along the East River at Peter Detmold Park.

There was a tram approaching overhead, and we knew we'd be on the island in just minutes.

"I'm game," my wife said.

Yet another reason I love her.

PS- The Ruin has its own Instagram account and website.

Jersey Proud

Henry James, Reviled

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

There appears to me, moreover, as I look back, no more telling aspect of this book review more extraordinary than the mere fact that, in spite of my tension and increasing anger at Henry James’ writing style, I literally saw it through to its damnable conclusion. Adorable as was the sound of Emma Thompson’s voice in truth, I now reflect, that I had, in a seemingly imperceptible manner, even grown to hate her too!

Would exasperation, however, if relief had longer been postponed, finally have betrayed me? It little matters, for relief arrived. I call it relief, though it was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least change, and it came with a rush – a plain-spoken man’s disembodied voice that broke forth with the salutation, “Audible hopes you have enjoyed this program!” When, in fact, I had not.


View all my Goodreads reviews

Tweets I Never Sent, Revealed

See that tweet in the graphic? I didn’t send that today.

It pokes fun at journalists, and I work with journalists for a living. In fact, I admire them a great deal IRL. (Let’s keep that a secret, though.)

Just like PR pros, journalists are usually smart, busy and underappreciated… with jobs that depend on their reputations.

So I paused, hit delete and lived to tweet another day. (I'm @bvar, by the way.)

Less than 140 characters isn’t always a great conduit for nuance – or humor. At least not in the hands of non-comedians.

This brings to mind a non-tweet from a few years ago, when my colleagues at the Verizon Foundation gave me a big, re-useable check so that I could participate in a photo op with a New Jersey non-profit where I was a board member. We had submitted, and been approved for, a $5,000 grant to support a program that helped kids in foster homes as a result of domestic violence.

The prop check was sitting in my office a few days later, when I put the finishing touches on a press release about Verizon’s buyout of Vodafone’s 45% interest in Verizon Wireless. The total cost would be $130 billion.

I used a dry eraser to wipe away “$5,000” and replace it with “$130,000,000,000.” I was about to replace “CASA for Children of Bergen County” with “Vodafone” – thinking about the photo I could tweet – when I paused.

I thought, “This is a very big deal for these two companies… for their shareowners… for the large retirement funds and pension plans that hold stock here.” It’s the kind of money that has impact on jobs created, taxes paid, new product development, infrastructure investment, philanthropy.

My efforts were better spent finishing the press release than staging a snarky photo. It’s all well and good to be authentic and irreverent, until someone gets hurt.

The other day, I happened to be carrying a tray of cookies (having volunteered to supply “snacks” the next time I called a late-morning team meeting) while news stories were being written about what others were calling Verizon’s use of cookies in Internet advertising programs.

A tweetable photo of a plate of Verizon cookies? How authentic! How irreverent! How of-the-moment!

Pause.

No! The issue does not actually involve “cookies,” for starters. So maybe my efforts would better spent helping to explain this to journalists, something that takes more than a tweet – like this post.

To sum up… if you’ve read this far and you’re looking for authentic, irreverent, of-the-moment humor, let me just say this:

I highly recommend these new Ricky Gervais commercials.

Why Media Training Is More Important Than Ever

There's nothing like an election year to prove the value of media training.

From Rick Perry’s “oops” moment to Marco Rubio’s robotic sound bites, there are ever-present echoes of memorable on-camera blunders that have shaped perceptions, ruined careers and changed history:

• The sweat on Richard Nixon’s upper lip in 1960.
• Jimmy Carter’s deferral to his 13-year-old daughter when discussing nuclear weapons with Ronald Regan in 1980.
• The look on Lloyd Benson’s face when Dan Quayle mentions JFK’s name in 1988.

All these are seminal moments in traditional media training courses, and the lessons are so ingrained in our culture that they have become part of our collective awareness.

A 2012 episode of “Modern Family” featured Claire Dunphy, running for town council, participating in a hilarious mock debate as she prepared to face an opponent on public access TV. Surrounded by family members who point out her every eye roll and flawed gesture, her young daughter pointedly asks a simple question, “Mrs. Dunphy, why are you running for local office?”

Claire pauses and stutters, and you don’t even have to know what happened during Roger Mudd’s 1979 interview with Ted Kennedy to know that her candidacy is doomed.

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If you’re a public relations professional, you should have a thorough grounding in this history, and in the basics of media training. There are many courses and workshops on the topic.

For example, April 6-8 in New York City, Ragan Communications is sponsoring a “PR & Media Relations Summit” – and on the opening afternoon, I’ll have the pleasure of teaming with media trainer TJ Walker for a two-hour pre-conference workshop. With TJ, things promise to be hands-on, with great practical tips to prepare any client to face a camera or important interview.

Even if you feel as if you’ve been there, done that, you may want to join us anyway… because, like every election year, there are new lessons to be learned.

Politicians are always on the cutting edge of media trends. No matter what your politics, you can learn PR from them. Remember how President Obama raised millions in campaign contributions via an email with a folksy subject line that just said “Hey”?

This year, while potential voters may abhor or delight in the Republican debate about the size of Donald Trump’s body parts, I think the new lesson is that everyone can benefit from media training.

No longer is media training a tool to prepare clients or corporate executives – instead, media training is an important life skill for the rest of us.

“Remember, the mic is always on…” used to be the #1 rule in media training. But this particular election season has brought home the point that the mic and camera are everywhere – and you have to act accordingly.

Look at Chris Christie, standing to the side of the stage following his endorsement of Trump. It was Christie who inadvertently became the story.

Today, everything is magnified – a tug on Trump’s leg, the color of Bernie Sanders’ suit, whatever that was on Ted Cruz’s lip -- and nothing is outside of the camera’s field of vision.

This election year, we’re all part of the story, for better or worse.

Last week, posting on Wired’s site, Jason Tanz called this the rise of marginal media:

“The Christie videos were just the latest installment in what might be the defining video format of this election. Call it marginal media, in which background activity overwhelms the intended subject… Hillary Clinton was overshadowed by the surreal stylings of ‘Sticker Kid,’ who mugged, jerked and danced throughout her stump speech.”

PR practitioners can stage the best speech and help compose the best shot, but Tanz makes the point that when everyone has video cameras in their pockets, you can’t really expect people to look where you want them to look or hear what you want them to hear.

Today, we’re all potentially in the spotlight of someone else’s story. And in the 2016 election year, marginal media may trigger a shared cultural moment that will again change history.

Think of the anti-war demonstrators outside the Democratic National Convention in 1968. While under physical attack, many began a chilling chant that resonates with a different meaning in 2016:

The whole world is watching. The whole world is watching.

IABC Career Panel: The Happy Recap

Me, on the right.

Here's the happy recap (Mets fans will appreciate that reference) of IABC New Jersey's recent panel on obtaining and enhancing a career in communications.

The post is from Deirdre Breakenridge's website. She's in the center of this photo by Kristin Nestor, with Sandy Charet on her right.

I posted my own preview of the panel last month, and it was a pleasure to meet so many Rutgers students on what was probably the rainiest night of the century.

For All the Saints

I posted this on Instagram on the rarest of dates, February 29, to tuck this away in a remote crevice of time...

When I was a boy, I spent several weeks every summer surrounded by these religious images. They’re still there, right where my grandmother left them, in the spare bedroom of her house, where I took these photos last weekend. I thought of these images yesterday, while attending the funeral of a friend who died too young from cancer. It was a beautiful, and touching, service. Everyone was eloquent in their remembrances and tributes. And yet, after the last of these, when we all joined in the Lord’s Prayer, we used the archaic English formula: “Our Father, who art in heaving, hallowed be thy name…” Why do we do that? It’s as if the language of everyday life isn’t important enough for prayer. These stilted prayers are like the religious artifacts in my grandmother’s bedroom. Curios from an ancient past. These days, I don’t need statues to remind me that saints exist. I know they exist by the absence in my heart: my grandmother, my father… and now my friend. While I feebly struggle, they in glory shine.

A photo posted by Bob Varettoni (@bvarnj) on Feb 29, 2016 at 8:27am PST

Find a Unicorn and Teach It to Fly

I'm speaking at an IABC-NJ professional development event at Rutgers next week and posted this preview on the organization's website...

Observing George Washington’s birthday yesterday, I couldn’t tell a lie:

When my colleagues on the IABC-NJ Board, Kristin Federico Nestor and Jeryl Turner, first suggested an event called “Obtaining and Enhancing a Career in Communications,” I thought a more honest title might be “Finding a Unicorn and Teaching It to Fly.”

After all, great comms jobs are hard to find and harder to excel at. And the ever-changing nature of what a career in communications looks like these days is not for the faint of heart.

But Kristin and Jeryl are fearless — and well-connected. They’ve lined up two of the industry’s best to lead an informal panel at the Rutgers University School of Communications & Information in New Brunswick on Wednesday evening, Feb. 24 (ticket info and more details here).

• When it comes to “obtaining a career in communications,” there’s no better expert than Sandy Charet, who has been recruiting for the PR and corporate communications industry for over 20 years. As president of Charet & Associates, based in Bergen County, she has led her firm to grow along with the changes and developments in the communications industry. She regularly places top talent in fields such as digital content, integrated marketing, social media, employee engagement and corporate social responsibility.

• When it comes to “enhancing a career in communications,” there’s no better expert than Deidre Breakenridge. If you were at IABC-NJ’s spring social last May, you know she’s an entrepreneur and the CEO of Pure Performance Communications. A 25+ year veteran in PR and marketing, Deidre is the author of five Prentice Hall and Financial Times Press books. Based in New Jersey, she speaks nationally and internationally on the topics of PR, marketing, branding and social media.

As the keynote speaker at our chapter’s spring social, Deidre asked, “Are You the Modern Day Communicator?” She stressed that the future of communications is now, and emphasized how as communicators we must drive that future. Sandy has also been a friend to our chapter. At a career development seminar this past July, she encouraged the audience to work with purpose and passion, pointing out how job candidates are often more concerned about salary and title. She closed with a favorite quote from Confucius: “If you choose the job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

I’ll have the pleasure of joining Sandy and Deidre on the panel at Rutgers on Feb. 24. I plan to provide the perspective of someone who has been lucky enough to have spent a long career in communications. I’ll likely mention the value of professional development, and the value of organizations such as, well, IABC-NJ.

With constantly updated skills and a supportive professional network, you may find that building a career in communications really isn’t unicorn-impossible. It does take some work, though. It might be right up there in difficulty with finding true love and making it last.

But I know that’s possible too. After all, I was reminded of this the day before yesterday, on Valentine’s Day.