![]() “She wasn’t on the forefront, she never was in the newspaper, but somehow she seemed so important. “Engla is the quintessential example of a woman with no status, yet somehow she was so instrumental in the whole process,” Foote said. That was enough to inspire Foote to take a closer look. Youngdahl and eventually inspired a statewide movement.įoote discovered Schey’s name in two books about the reform movement, but there was little else mentioned about who she was. A daughter of Norwegian immigrant farmers from Marshall County, Schey worked as an attendant at Rochester State Hospital, and was so outraged by the conditions there that she began a one-woman campaign to lobby for reforms. In Foote’s list of reformers, one person stood out: Her name was Engla Schey. She wanted people to know about the major reforms this group accomplished - and to encourage others to complete the reforms they initiated: “It was a motive that kept me moving forward on a project that took much longer than I anticipated.” In search of Engla “I discovered a deeper motive than to simply produce a final product,” Foote said. In Foote’s mind, telling the story meant writing a book, but as she dug deeper into the history of the mental health reform movement in Minnesota, she knew had an even larger mission. I’d wandered away from what I used to love as a historian, which was studying people, what motivated them and where they drew their courage, so this felt like a great story for me to tell.” I got interested in politics in the 1960s and ended up going to law school when I went back to school. “I only got as far as ABD and then I had a baby instead. “I had been a history major in college and worked on a Ph.D. She relied on her love of history to tease out their stories. It didn’t take long for Foote to realize that she had to tell the story of this campaign and the dedicated and people behind it. These individuals had very little in common except for a clear-headed determination to change the way the state cared for its citizens with mental illness. Luther Youngdahl, Minneapolis Tribune reporter Geri Hoffner (now Geri Joseph), psychiatrist Ralph Rossen and Engla Schey, a psychiatric hospital attendant-turned-human-rights campaigner. The key figures in this effort represented a wide range of Minnesotans, including Arthur Foote himself, Minneapolis social reformer Genevieve Steefel, Minnesota Gov.
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