Court asked to order opening of regional center burial records

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By ERIC OLSON / The Associated Press

OMAHA — A historical society is asking the Adams County District Court to order a former state psychiatric hospital to open records revealing the identities of 957 people buried in the hospital cemetery.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Adams County Historical Society in Hastings contends that the burial logs are public records and should be available for viewing.

Nancy Kinyoun, the hospital’s health information manager, has said she can’t release names of those buried because of statutes protecting patient privacy. The state Attorney General’s Office upheld Kinyoun’s position in a May opinion.

Kinyoun declined to comment on the lawsuit. Spokeswomen Jeanne Atkinson and Kathie Osterman of state Health and Human Services were out of their offices Wednesday and did not immediately return messages.

San Francisco attorney Thomas Burke, a Hastings native who is representing the historical society, said his client isn’t asking for medical records, just the identities and dates of the deaths of people buried in the cemetery between 1889 and 1950.

Graves in the cemetery, on the west side of the hospital grounds, are marked by small headstones with numbers.

Burke said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the names of former hospital patients buried at private cemeteries in and around Hastings are available to the public.

The state no longer uses the hospital, now called the Hastings Regional Center, for adult psychiatric services.

From 1948 to 1973, patients whose bodies were not claimed by relatives were buried at public expense in the Blue Valley cemetery near Ayr, Neb. Public records from Blue Valley reveal the names and death dates, in addition to noting whether the person had been a hospital patient.

The release of hospital burial records, Burke said, “may compel the state to admit that there is nothing shameful or embarrassing about those individuals living today who suffer from mental and medical problems that would have led to their institutionalization in earlier times.”

Catherine Renschler, the historical society’s executive director, said she has wanted the hospital to open its burial records for years. She said she receives several inquiries a month from people who want to verify whether they have family members buried at the hospital.

The lawsuit notes that the hospital admitted patients for reasons other than mental illness — such as domestic and financial trouble, tuberculosis, overwork and sunstroke.

“We’re hoping to get this changed so the people who are buried there aren’t treated as shameful, second-class citizens,” Renschler said.

Advocates of opening burial records say it’s a matter of human decency to acknowledge that former institution patients existed.

Laws and policies on releasing names of people buried in state institution cemeteries vary across the nation. No comprehensive list of states that have made the names public is available, but Texas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Washington, South Carolina, Maine and Wisconsin have done so.

In Nebraska, families can obtain patient records, including burial information, by court order on a “need-to-know” basis. Renschler said families shouldn’t have to go to the expense of hiring a lawyer to find out burial information.

The historical society’s lawsuit asks the court to order burial records open at state-owned cemeteries in Lincoln, Bellevue and Norfolk.