News Highlights

Jeffrey Meyer touched many, taught important lessons

Parents started Harry Meyering Center

Harry Meyering Center was named after a Minnesota State Mankato professor, but its inspiration came from a talented though mentally handicapped man named Jeffrey Meyer, who died Jan. 22.

2008-01-25
By Dan Linehan, Free Press staff writer [published in The Free Press, Mankato, MN, 1/25/2008]

Jeff stories abound.

There was the time when he stormed into former West High School Principal John Barnett’s office and demanded a coach be fired for losing a game Jeff thought the coach ought to have won.

Or how Jeff loved to have retirement parties, not because he wanted to work less or be a less avid West fan, but because he liked the white cake and ice cream.

Or how he’d sometimes be the sole fan at West softball practices with his Scarlet hat and probably wearing more red.

Most of these stories tend to involve West sports, Dairy Queen or practical jokes.

Jeffrey Meyer, who had Down syndrome, died Tuesday at 64.

But those who knew him said his real gift was how he became the smiling, joke-making face of the mentally handicapped.

“Jeff made a very significant contribution to how young people feel about people with handicaps,” said Barnett, principal at West for 24 years. “Generations of students at West really, really liked him.”

And it was Meyer’s parents who started the Harry Meyering Center in 1973 because they didn’t want their son institutionalized far from home.

The center now cares for about 140 people in its central location and in several assisted-living apartments in the area.

“Thankfully, there were people like Roland and Jean who said ‘This is not good enough for our son,’” said Cindy Lee, director of the center since 1974.

Jeff was born in Taft, Calif., while his father was in the military.

Roland Meyer remembers his commanding officer offering to have Jeff institutionalized in California and transferring him to a base on the East Coast.

It wasn’t a threat — the officer knew that fathering such a child would hurt Roland’s chances for promotion.

The family declined, but education for those with handicaps was far different in the 1950s and ‘60s than today.

As a boy, Jeff was enrolled in the Union School in Mankato, which is now the office complex Union Square. Those with disabilities were in separate classes, as integration wouldn’t be the practice for decades to come.

He then went to Lincoln Middle School, then to the Faribault State Hospital, a government-run institution with thousands of people, said Jeff’s brother, Philip.

Four years later, Jeff was in what his family thought would be a better place, a Kentucky facility. But when he got lost on a plane ride home and ended up in the wrong city, his family realized they needed a better solution.

In the ‘70s, options for the mentally handicapped were limited.

There was no such place in Mankato, but Jean and Roland wanted one. So, on Feb. 5, 1973, the Harry Meyering Center opened. It’s named after a former Mankato State University professor.

There were no state regulations at the time, so the Meyers were left to run the dormitory-style building the best they could.

They billed county welfare offices. Some paid, others didn’t.

“Income never did catch up with expenses,” Roland Meyer said.

By 1974, the Harry Meyering Center had 45 clients. Many were locals, or those who had been living in Faribault but enduring a long bus commute each day to MRCI in Mankato.

A few years later, new regulations caught up with the four-story complex on Colonial Square, on Ramsey Street in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

The current location, on Homestead Road near the Minnesota State University campus, opened in early 1976.

It has changed from a dormitory to a series of apartments with a shared common space and a separate bedroom. The idea is that clients can learn skills to help them live independently.

The Meyer family has remained connected to the center, as a Meyer has served on the center’s board of directors since 1973.

For most of his adult life, Jeff was largely independent with a job at MRCI, a checkbook to balance and staff at the Harry Meyering Center checking up on him three or four times a week.

He lived in a downtown apartment and wore out many pairs of shoes during his walks to West.

“He was very motivated to be independent, very proud,” Lee said.

And, by all accounts, a raucous fan.

“There were games when, if his favorite team wasn’t winning, he could get loud,” said Don Krusemark, coach of the softball and wrestling teams at West.

Despite his sometimes over-the-top devotion — whenever West lost, it was because the refs cheated, and “East” was a dirty word — he was a friend to the players and coaches.

“He was always giving you a handshake and asking you how you’re doing,” Krusemark said.

So it was all the more difficult for Jeff when his health declined and he returned to the center, unable to attend as many West games as he would have liked.

Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are common for those with Down syndrome as they age, his family learned. About six months ago, his health worsened progressively as the disease wore away at his brain.

His funeral is Saturday at 11 a.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Family members recall that Jeff was at a Dairy Queen when a tornado alarm sounded.

Shortly afterward, the family got a you’ll-never-guess-where-I-am sort of call. Jeff, and the rest of the crowd at the restaurant, were huddled in a neighbor’s basement.

For years later, his family would have to call him whenever a tornado alarm sounded because they knew he would soon be on his way toward West, or maybe the Dairy Queen.

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