Audio Interview: The School Librarian Who Helped Save Thousands of Disability Records

Ryan Grant made it his mission to ensure that records from Washington State's Lakeland Village were saved from destruction

Washington State’s school for the feeble-minded—an antiquated term for intellectually and developmentally disabled people—opened at a standalone site in 1915 in Medical Lake, near the Idaho border. Today it is known as Lakeland Village and continues to operate as a state-run institution for 210 disabled people. In 1924, a Red Cross worker described her journey from Seattle to Medical Lake, and what she saw when she reached it:

Lakeland Village, undated photograph

“It is a long, hard trip to the school; twelve hours by train; five hours wait in Spokane; an hour by motor bus and then a mile or so by taxi from Medical Lake, the taxi being a dilapidated Ford. It is also an expensive trip; the cheapest rate amounts to $36. This alone makes the institution beyond the reach of many who most need its benefit.

The Washington institution … has a population of 821. The buildings are commendably plain, around an oblong court.

They are very close together; no playgrounds, no shade trees; no shrubs, no flowers; no school or industrial buildings; no hospital; no dairy. There are six teachers employed and 75 children in school where academic work only was carried on. No manual training is attempted. A few girls are being taught sewing, weaving and basketry, but that training is given to a select few who spend all their time in that room. Three boys are being taught shoe making in a room that is well equipped and could be a means of training many more. With that number of teachers and rotation of classes several hundred children could be benefitted [sic] by training.”¹

Throughout its existence, Lakeland Village produced hundreds of thousands of records about the inmates who lived there and the people who watched over them, including records on the institution’s practice of sterilizing inmates in return for their release.

But as Ryan Grant discovered, those records were at risk of being destroyed before disabled people, historians, and descendants could see them because of a state policy that allows for the destruction of documents after 75 years. Washington State is not alone. All across the United States, institutional records that contain a vast amount of the disability history of the country are at risk.

But as an elementary school librarian in the Medical Lake School District, Grant knew how to advocate for the preservation of those documents and worked with State Senator Claudia Kauffman to address the issue head on.

In January 2024 Kauffman introduced legislation to ensure that the records are studied and preserved for future generations. The bill sailed through both houses in the legislature with and was signed into law by Governor Jay Inslee in March, with funding attached to support the work ahead.

Ryan Grant in his elementary school library.

I caught up with Grant to ask how he became a champion for the bill and what he hopes the stories being uncovered in the institution’s records will mean for people in the present and in years to come. In a moment where many people are expressing feelings of helplessness in the face of adversity, Grant’s clear-eyed advocacy is a reminder that millions of people get up each day and find constructive and important ways to do good and right things.

Audio of our conversation is available at the top of this article.

A transcript is included below.

A CONVERSATION WITH RYAN GRANT [TRANSCRIPT]

ALEX GREEN (interviewer): So I'm here with Ryan Grant. Ryan is a school librarian in the Medical Lake School District in eastern Washington. And we're talking today because Ryan was instrumental in doing advocacy to get a bill about hidden disability records onto the desk of Governor Jay Inslee. In March, the bill passed. It's called “Preserving records and artifacts regarding the historical treatment of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Washington State.”

Ryan, it's a pleasure to be with you today and I wonder if you could tell me just a little bit about how you were drawn to this issue in the first place and maybe a little bit about Medical Lake along the way.

RYAN GRANT: Yeah. The story of these records probably starts with telling the story of Medical Lake. I'm a librarian for the school district, and Medical Lake was founded on the premise that our lake had healing powers. The local tribes used to gather here during the summers. and when settlers first moved in, medical, they became very famous for the salts in the water and known as a healing place. and so early on, when the state institutions were first being built, Medical Lake was a very logical choice for a location in eastern Washington, because of the lake, because of the waters.

And so those sorts of centers are a part of the history of the town since the founding, basically. we have old historical pictures of sanatoriums on the side, and people had come from all over to Medical Lake to get well, to get better. So it started first with the state hospital, eventually moved to the state custodial school, and that eventually became Lakeland Village, which is the facility for kids that first started in the 1920s and is still going in a capacity today, mainly for severely disabled adults at this point. At its height, Lakeland Village had 1200 to 1500 or more students. So my interest was as a librarian for the school district.

I also have two, disabled children of my own. My daughter is profoundly Deaf. My son has epilepsy. And the kids today, the students today have grown up in an environment where inclusion just been the way it has been. The child with Down syndrome is there with you. The Deaf student is there with you.

And when they hear that, that wasn't always the way it was, it's something that they need to know and that's something that they need to understand…how we got to where we are. And there were struggles that the developmentally disabled community went through for decades to get inclusion to be where it is. And, sharing that history with them and seeing them make those connections, it means a lot to me as a father, means a lot to me a resident of the town.

So, when I saw the bill come up, basically my understanding is that they opened a closet they hadn't one day and discovered boxes upon boxes upon boxes of records. And that’s important to me, that those stories be remembered. kids were sent from all over the state of Washington to that school, and a lot of them were forgotten. A lot of them moved from Lakeland Village on to the hospital. and there they stayed. To honor their memories, I think doing the work now is critical for us, not just to make amends for the mistakes of the past, but to be able to explain to the kids this is why it was wrong. This is why we know more. This is why we do better.

ALEX GREEN: It's really profound and those connections, I can see how quickly and easily this stuff can get lost. And to your point, found in a closet. I understand that there were 3000 patient file boxes. There were 18,000 more at another retention center that were found. And the state currently has a retention process of 75 years. So things could get held on to for some time. What was the risk to them and why was 75 years actually still a risk to them overall, [in a way] where additional legislation was needed?

RYAN GRANT: Because a lot of the times they would just destroy the records after 75 years, even if they hadn't been looked at, even if they hadn't been scanned, even if they hadn't been fully archived. And I, I respect our state archivist. She's in a tough position with the finances of it, the effort required. So it was really good to see the state put the money into this project to say, you know, we can't just let these go, the 75 year limit be damned. You know, we…we’ve got to record this.

Eventually those records may be destroyed as you know, records are. But we've got to have a copy. We've got to digitize this. We've gotta make sure this isn't lost. It has to happen. It's a huge project, and archival work is one of those things, you know, it's not the easiest spend in the state budget because, you know, not everybody cares. It's not a big thing. It's not a bridge. It's not a building. It's librarians working in a dark room with a mimeograph machine.

But it's critical, absolutely critical. And it was good to see them put the effort and the money into it.

ALEX GREEN: I think it sounds like people really understood that this connects directly to the lives of people today. and that that resonance, just as you were describing before, even the need to carry this on to their children. I do wonder, say a little more about what will the bill do? I know it is a lot of work ahead. What what's the kind of, set up that it puts in place above and beyond those 75 years, right?

RYAN GRANT: So the University of Washington in Seattle has a center on disabilities, and these records will be sent over to the University of Washington for the folks with particular experience in, disabled advocacy to work through.

I'm a little bit of two minds about it, honestly. They're the ones who can put the most heart into the work. they're the ones with the deepest understanding of disability history and disability rights. I do worry a little bit about losing those records from eastern Washington to western Washington. And I wish that there was a way to do more of that work locally.

But there is that tension between the folks with the disability knowledge versus the folks with the geographical and the historical knowledge of an area, and I haven't seen how they're going to meld the two to make sure that the history and the geography and the disability rights pieces are all recognized. But it'll be interesting to see how that goes.

ALEX GREEN: So they’ll take those in for now. And then what is their job to do other than kind of, cataloging needs to figure out what they have? What what's their next step to have to do overall?

RYAN GRANT: The next step will be to present the stories, you know, where these kids what did we find? A story I always like to tell about a Lakeland Village student, as a basketball player, Jimmy Rhodes, who for a while he was the best basketball player in Eastern Washington.

He led all schools in scoring in the 50s. And this was at a time when, you know, the basketball page in the newspaper was the first one that you read every day. Sports writers were king. Basketball was the big sport. But we forgot Jimmy because he was at Lakeland and when Lakeland stopped having sports, you know, it…those are the stories. I think that there's other Jimmy Rhodes is in those files. I think there's other kids’ stories that are really, really neat and would really resonate with the kids today. And that's my understanding of what they're looking for is how do we tell these stories? Can we make museum exhibits? Can we do articles?

My understanding is that there's some video, too, that they found when they were going through this. You know, what can that show? What visual representations can we find of what Lakeland was? And what can we learn from that? And that's what the U-dub will be really good at, I think, is, you know, their library system there is top notch in being able to tell those stories.

They'll nail it. I really believe that.

ALEX GREEN: Passing a bill is not easy. Typically it's not very easy at least. Tell me about how this bill came forward, how you heard about it, kind of what its story was, and getting passed because it sounds like it went through, relatively quickly. Right? It was introduced in early January, and it was on the governor's desk by mid-March.

So, what's the story behind all of that?  

RYAN GRANT: It was first…in Washington this year, this was our short legislative session. Only 60 days. So about nine weeks to be able to get anything done. And when a bill is introduced in the short session…a lot of the times they don't go anywhere. So for this bill to be introduced for the first time and get all the way through in under 60 days was a really positive sign that the legislators understood why this mattered.

And, for it to get the budget proviso to be able to pay for it too was really, really good. But no, you're right Alex that it was first filed on January 10th. It was out of the state senate by February 13th. Flew right through the House with very little…I don't think there were any amendments on it, honestly. Everybody agreed. It went right through and yeah, the sponsor of the bill had some expertise with developmental disabilities, which I think gave it a little bit more cachet. And then there was nobody who testified against it in any stage. The developmental disabilities community, the history community, the university community, everybody agreed this was the right thing to do.

Sometimes in the disability world, people would rather not [support disability causes]…but everybody was on board with this. We have to tell these stories. We have to reckon with the history of these residential centers, and it was good to see everybody come together and say, “Yes, this is important. We got to do it.”

ALEX GREEN: It's just remarkable. The history of these places is, of course, very, very, it's very difficult. It's very fraught. There was a lot of abuse. It's coming to light more and more. I wonder, do you think that a bill like this could have passed 20 years ago, or have things changed where the ease you're describing reflects some kind of deeper change in our mindsets?

RYAN GRANT: That's a good one. I think we're in a moment, I really do, where we're comfortable grappling with the history in a way that we may not have been, at the turn of the century. We're having a lot of deeper discussions about the Native education system, and this really piggybacks on that very well, too, that, you know, we sent these kids away, the Native kids, the developmentally disabled kids.

Why did we do this? What were we thinking? How did we decide to do better? 20 years ago, I think we probably could have hand-waved this away. “Old records, doesn't really matter,” but now we are really looking to tell those stories in a much different way, a much more profound way. And I think, I think this bill passing as easily as it did is probably a sign of, you know, [that] we're in the moment for it happen and good for us.

ALEX GREEN: You mentioned that, you know, there is a loss geographically. We I think everyone in every state sees that that, that, on one hand, you can you have the resources for the disability community to really grab on to this and make it a focus in western Washington state. But you do lose the town and the and the towns were an integral part of the life of these institutions.

And I would imagine that that in Medical Lake, as with where I live and plenty of other places where institutions were that you have, people whose entire lives are caught up in the history of, of this place, who works there, who lived there, who had relatives there. City government, I'm sure, was involved in serving these places and vice versa, the schools as well.

If you could see a component of this coming home and Medical Lake kind of having a say in what it could contribute to this, what do you think their contribution could look like?

RYAN GRANT: I would love to see folks who worked at the hospital going back to the 50s and 60s involved in this. I'd love to see, you know, with what we can do with remote work meetings anymore, let's have these discussions with people all around the state together. Just because the records are in a place doesn't mean that the people have to be. We have developmental disability advocates all over the state who could really contribute to this.

And what you're saying about the geography, old city records are over at the archives in western Washington. Now, the initial county records are over in western Washington now. it's hard to get to. So I really want them to consider the local voice, you know? Yes, we're not the experts on developmental disability here, but we know the history of Medical Lake and that is so tied in with the institutions and why they were here.

I probably need to reach out to my local legislators and say, you know, let's make sure that we're not forgotten when it gets over there. But, yeah, just making sure that we don't lose that piece. I think it's really critical.

ALEX GREEN: More broadly, I'm, I'm curious. You are an educator. You have very close ties to disability issues, personally and professionally. What does disability-centric education look like in 20 years for us? You take projects like what you've done here, which are which really bring stories into the fabric of our history. And you clearly have an eye toward where those stories can be things that kids see themselves in and that's pretty visionary stuff. And my heart, of course, also is in, in seeing connections between the lives of the disabled in the past and our history, our more collective history. What do you see as, even in a dark history like this, the promising places where we can take a future generation?

RYAN GRANT: I would tie to what we're doing around—and I know it's a bit of a loaded term of public education right now—but the work that we're doing in diversity, equity and inclusion education for students, even here in the K-12 level, understanding that every kid has a right to be able to access education the way that that works best for them. and whether that's personalized education, whether that's specialized schools for that, specialized programs, making sure that every one of the kids can achieve at their own level, their own best level,

The tenor of the debate right now…it's hard some days in public education because so much of this is just been vilified. And, you know, “what are you doing to the kids?” We're doing our best to help them, all of them. And in the disability realm especially, you know, how do we help kids with sensory issues, which is a big one now. How do we help the kids on the autistic spectrum do the best that they can? These were throwaway kids 70 years ago who went off to Lakeland Village. You know, we keep them in the schools now. And that is to our credit that we do that we keep them with their families now and that is the love that that takes is profound.

And we've come a long ways because of that. What that looks like in the future, a lot of it's going to be funding, you know, you have to put the money into these kids, but they're worth it. And it's the right thing for us to do. it's teaching the kids that our differences are okay, you know, value that, treasure that. You're different. I'm different. We all have our differences. You know, what is the right way to make this public system for everybody work for everybody? And the kids get it. The kids get fairness. The kids get, you know, what I need is different than what John needs is different than what Steve needs. And, you know, I don't want to lose that stuff.

ALEX GREEN: Right on. WelI, I hate to ask one last question that almost everybody who's come to a major completion point of something very successful has reached, but you mentioned going around the state and that there could be ways to engage us all; engage all kinds of different communities. And, of course, Washington State has been in the news for some, some battles over some, state, hospital, state asylum records.

Are there more records out there from other institutions that you know of? And is that a kind of avenue that people are looking at next now that now that they've seen that this can be successfully done in a collaborative way?

RYAN GRANT: Yeah. Two ways I'd go with that. There was a hospital in north central Washington that was closed down several decades ago, and we have not even scratched the surface of reckoning with that history. That one is going to be the toughest one, because when it closed it, they basically lock the doors and we don't know anybody who worked there anymore because it's been that long. And, figuring out the history of North Central Hospital is going to be a project.

I think two of the advocacy groups, you know, today, it's the Arc of Washington—you know, 50 years ago, it was [called] the Association for Retarded Children because of how the language has changed—some of those early advocacy groups have records and history, too, that boy I'd love to see and recorded, you know, the very beginning of, you know, disabled people advocating for themselves. There are some really neat stories there around the state, and I'd love to see those captured, too, because if it wasn't for their voices speaking up, who knows where we would've gone with it. So yeah, the advocacy groups and the shut-down hospital, there's more out there. There's a ton out there for us to do, and I'm glad to see the state taking those steps to get it done.

ALEX GREEN: Right on. Well, Ryan Grant, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me about this and sharing all of your remarkable work and your dedication as an educator to seeing disabled kids in all that you do know.

RYAN GRANT: Thank you for having me, Alex. Appreciate it.

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[Un]Hidden explores the connections between disability histories and our world. If you have a connection you think we should explore, reach out to us here.

1. Margaret McLean, letter, May 8, 1924. Massachusetts Archives WEFSS Administrative Correspondence Box 28 Folder 2.