Bittersweet Memories

A few miles from the city of Peoria, Illinois at the bottom of a beautiful bluff overlooking the Illinois river, are the remains of an old set of stairs. For more than a half-century after the turn of the twentieth century these stairs led from a train station located at the bottom of the steep hill up to the grounds of the Peoria State Hospital. This stairway, partially covered by weeds and debris, itself, is today a forgotten reminder of the once stately facility which was located there.

It is impossible to know just how many patients, nurses, doctors, workers and visitors used these stairs over the years to gain access to the hospital grounds. These stairs, depending upon what one reads or to whom one talks, were a stairway to heaven, to hell, or to somewhere in between. Only one thing is sure, everyone who climbed these stairs was profoundly affected by what they found there...

This book seeks to understand what really happened at the hospital during its fascinating history and to do so as accurately as possible. In the end, the individual reader will be allowed to draw his or her own conclusions regarding the Peoria State Hospital and the thousands of men and women who, at one time or another, called it, no matter how briefly, ''home.''