Penny’s Life Begins at 40: Determination Overcomes Disability

Penny Roderick was 18 when she lost her mother to cancer. Mildred Roderick was just 39.

“Please, God,” Penny prayed every Sunday as her own 39th year drew to an end. “Just let me live to be 40.”

On New Year’s Eve 1986, Penny Roderick turned 40. For the birthday she thought would never come she got a string of beads, some new coloring books, and a rush of determination.

“The day I turned 40, I just said, ‘That’s it. I am going to become my own person.’ ”

To do that she needed a judge’s permission. That meant opposing “Aunt Hedy,” the conscientious and well-meaning guardian who for 11 years had managed her money and cooked her meals, shampooed her hair and picked out her clothes.

Born With Cerebral Palsy

Hedwidge Rheaume, whose soft voice still carries traces of the French accent she brought with her from Canada in 1939, had promised Warren Roderick during her church work that “the Lord would provide” for his retarded daughter.

Born with cerebral palsy, Penny was diagnosed mentally retarded and that’s how she was raised, the only child of loving, protective parents. At school, she was placed with the other slow learners, in the “ungraded” class in the basement.

At some point she stopped going, but not before she had learned to read and to question, two things she never stopped doing. Later, that hunger for knowledge would get Penny noticed by the caseworkers who would help point the way to a new life.

But in 1967, the year her father died of a heart attack, Penny’s prospects were limited. A letter from the school superintendent was all it took to strip away her legal rights.

When it came time to appoint a guardian, “I was obligated,” said Rheaume, who’d served as godmother four years before when, at her urging, Penny was baptized.

She sent Penny to live with relatives and foster families for a time, but by 1975, “I didn’t know where to turn,” Rheaume said. “She just had bad luck. Within a few years, people would die. After the fourth or fifth place, I decided to try it myself.”

For the next 11 years, Penny lived by her guardian’s rules. But it wasn’t Aunt Hedy who helped pick out the striped dress and navy blazer Penny wore to the Sagadahoc County Courthouse last summer.

On July 14, the day she calls “my real birthday,” Penny got the gift of a lifetime: A probate court judge gave her a month’s freedom--30 days to prove she could finally make her own choices.

“Special people--that’s the term I like to use for mentally retarded--should have more rights for themselves,” Penny said.

“They should be treated more like equals. They should be taught to do everyday things, like how to shop and do laundry. They should not be held back just because they’re retarded.”

Today, Penny lives alone in one of two independent-living apartments managed by the Elmhurst Assn. for Retarded Citizens. Hers is the one that smells perpetually of PineSol and Mr. Clean. “My friends always tease me. They say, ‘Penny, you cleaning AGAIN?’ ”

For now, a court-appointed conservator controls the $20,000 that Aunt Hedy’s careful investments have earned Penny. Most of it is tied up, said conservator David King, a Bath lawyer who is “eagerly looking forward to the day I can say: Here’s your money.”

Meanwhile, she lives on her $385 monthly Social Security check and $100 a month she earns cleaning under an Elmhurst training program.

But her life is her own. And in the six months since the judge officially granted the petition ending her guardianship, Penny has taken to homemaking with a vengeance.

She does her own laundry, shops for groceries and cooks increasingly elaborate meals. Sometimes she shares them with her boyfriend David Johnson, who lives downstairs.

On a tour of the one-bedroom apartment, she points out her touches: the fruit bowl on the table, the spider plants on the sill. Her prized collection of Lawrence Welk records. And the new coloring books that are “more of an adult nature.” She lays claim to each piece of furniture with a proprietary pat as she passes.

Shopping lists and menus papering the refrigerator attest to her progress from her first tentative sandwiches to burgers and frozen fish sticks, stuffed shells and chicken a la king.

“I love to do laundry and grocery shopping,” Penny said. “I love paying bills. I love to cook! I’ve made hamburgers and meat loaf. Also blueberry muffins, which was exciting. And pudding! Did I mention pudding?

“I think this has been a very good year for me. My life has changed so much. I’m like a big kid in a grocery store.”

To Elmhurst’s 35 other retarded clients, she’s also a symbol. They watch her dash purposefully to market or laundry, a tall, slender figure in a stylish denim jacket, cropped brown curls escaping a knit stocking cap.

Beyond the clapboard houses, iron lampposts and brick warehouses of this sturdy old shipbuilding city, she underscores changing views toward the handicapped.

“I think there are probably some people who don’t believe in all this independence,” said Alice Clark, an old friend of Penny’s whose daughter is retarded.

“I’ve thought about it both ways, but so far I can see only good. I’ve never seen her so happy. If she can have a little more freedom at this stage of her life, she certainly deserves the chance.”

In November, Penny voted for the first time. “I exercised my human rights,” she said, her shoulders squaring at the memory.

Her caseworker, Jean Lockhart, thinks Penny “hasn’t even scratched the surface yet.” Soon, Jean plans to help get her started as a hospital volunteer, with hopes it will lead to a job. “I’ve always wanted to work at a hospital--I’m a great nurse,” Penny said.

People with IQs lower than Penny’s can learn to “lead relatively normal lives, be self-supporting and blend into the community,” according to Dorin Zohner, a psychologist who tested her.

Self-Assured Walk

An outing to a restaurant gives her a chance to practice the self-assured walk that is replacing her old shuffle. “It’s important not to look retarded,” she said. “I’m looking more normal than ever.”

Independence was an unlikely prospect for Penny as recently as 1980, when Eric Berg came to Elmhurst as executive director. “She was clumsy and needy, a scared rabbit who constantly asked for approval.”

“A real basket case,” Penny agrees.

That started changing four years ago, when Berg put her to work for Windows Too, the cleaning service run by Elmhurst to prepare clients for jobs in the community.

“Penny had never been a producer,” he said. “But when she joined Windows Too, she started to change. Suddenly, the more responsibility you gave her, the more she did.”

Windows Too, where Penny had felt the first stirrings of self-confidence, “was a turning point,” she said. “Before that, I hated everything. When I began working, my whole disposition changed.”

Enter Jean Lockhart, a pragmatist whose brisk voice and no-nonsense manner conceal limitless patience. Jean moved to Bath in 1985 to be near her mother and younger sister, an Elmhurst client. She went to work for Elmhurst in 1986, supervising the Windows Too night crew.

It didn’t take long for Penny to stand out.

“She wanted to know things. She’d discuss things she’d read in the paper. She’d ask me what Dow Jones meant. What ‘beneficiary’ meant. Here was this woman with so much potential. She could read and write! And yet she had no skills whatsoever,” Jean said.

In the small, mint-green house she shared with Aunt Hedy, Penny’s sole chore was to keep her bedroom picked up.

“I knew she worked hard at her job, and for that reason, I didn’t feel she should be made to do more work when she got home,” said Rheaume.

Yearned for Responsibility

Life at Aunt Hedy’s “was really good in the beginning,” Penny said. “We understood each other. I had my job and she had her job. For fun, I watched TV and I had my coloring books. Sundays, we went to church.”

But gradually, her job at Windows Too made her yearn for more responsibility at home, too. That she was not allowed to use the stove or run her own bath water irked her, as did Aunt Hedy’s taste in clothes. “I used to have to wear things like green polyester slacks. They made me look more retarded, and that made me sad.”

‘Got Compliments’

Rheaume said Penny “always got compliments in church.” And rules were necessary because she was working at church during the day and couldn’t be home to supervise.

“Hedy is a very good woman,” said Penny’s friend Mrs. Clark. “She might have had strict rules, but she felt responsible for Penny. I’m sure she looked after her the same way she herself was brought up.

“Penny didn’t complain with Aunt Hedy, and she always looked nice and clean and well cared for. She had a nice home, she was warm, she was supervised. Of course, she did not have the freedom she has today.”

Mounting Frustration

But Jean was aware of Penny’s mounting frustration. “She complained a lot about not getting to do things at home. After a while, we’d just say, ‘Well, that’s what happens under guardianship. You don’t have any rights.’ And Penny would say ‘I do too have rights.’ ”

Jean decided to go to work on Penny’s domestic skills. They started spending lunch hours at the long, butcher-block counter in Elmhurst’s laundry room where, with the precision of a scrub nurse, Jean would set out mayonnaise, tuna, bread and utensils.

“She’d get mayonnaise all over herself and all over the counter. Tuna sandwiches were disastrous, and egg salad wasn’t much better. Watching Penny peel an egg was a real trip.”

It took a month, but Penny managed to shell the eggs and spread the bread without tearing them to shreds. Soon, Jean was sending her on grocery missions.

Between sandwiches, they’d talk. “Invariably, she would bring up her guardianship. She’d say: ‘I’ve got to become my own guardian.’ ”

Familiar Refrain

Those pronouncements were a familiar refrain around Elmhurst. “We’d set things up three times before. We’d even gotten the state advocates (for the developmentally disabled) involved,” said agency director Berg. “Each time, Penny would back out at the last minute.”

Then Penny turned 40. She took the information Berg gave her, picked up the phone and called Joe Witt, the state advocate.

“He met with her, and she did all the talking,” said Jean. “We were supportive, but it was definitely Penny’s affair.”

Tests by staff and independent psychologists showed Penny’s IQ to be slightly above 70, the cutoff for mental retardation. That hurt her campaign to end guardianship as much as it helped, because it cut her off from the state’s free legal services. But Roberta Ouellette, a legal-aid lawyer in Portland, agreed to take on the case.

Penny decided to keep her petition a secret. “I didn’t know how Hedy would react. And when I get aggravated, I tend to mouth off. This time, I kept my mouth shut.”

Disliked Secrecy

Rheaume said the secrecy wasn’t necessary, that she had already decided to find a new guardian. “I’m not getting any younger. If I’d known there was a semi-private apartment available, I’d have looked into it myself.

“But they went behind my back, and that hurt my feelings. All I wanted was for Penny to be well cared for.” Ward and guardian still haven’t made peace.

In a letter to Probate Judge Ronald Hart, Rheaume recommended continued guardianship.

“Penny is 40 years old, and I don’t have much hope that she will improve beyond her present level,” she wrote. “Penny has very little homemaking skills and if she were to live on her own, I would be seriously concerned . . . “

Jean and caseworker Charlotte Allen promised Hart they’d supervise breakfast and dinner preparations for a month. They made plans to work on Penny’s weaknesses. They bought her a new outfit for court.

And on July 14, they were with her when the judge agreed to the 30-day trial period.

Tasted Champagne

Back at Elmhurst, Penny’s friends popped the cork on the first champagne she had ever tasted. It was so wonderful they had to remind her to sip slowly.