Grapevine Center peers remembered at rally
BUTLER TWP — Betty Walker thanked two people during a speech Thursday, Oct. 9, who she said helped her through her mental health struggles that came along with personal strife starting in 2010.
She said she wanted to thank them there, at the Grapevine Center’s annual Remembrance & Celebration of Life Rally, because not everyone who helped her on her journey is still living.
The Grapevine Center’s remembrance rally takes place in early October each year during national Mental Illness Awareness Week. It memorializes those who died over the past year who had connections to the Grapevine Center. Often, these are not just peers who go to the Butler-based center for aid during crisis, but the professionals who keep the place up and running.
Walker said Thursday from under the Carousel Shelter at Alameda Park that she learned to tell people how she feels right away, because she lost 106 people over six years from the Clarion Psychiatric Center, where she received help for her mental health struggles. She said this kind of thinking is what helped her cope with her own difficulties with mental health.
“I feel if one person hears my words and it changes their life, I’ve done something right in my life,” Walker said.
Each year, the Grapevine Center invites people and clients associated with the center to speak and pay tribute to the people who have died in the year since the previous remembrance rally. The center offers several programs for people in recovery, from housing aid to counseling, to operating its drop-in and warming center at 140 N. Elm St. in Butler.
This year, the center paid tribute to seven people: Pamela Barhight-Smith, Jeffry Hysong, Tom Reges, June Ruff, Sylvia Seevers, Dewey Thompson and Thomas McKain.
Dee Fields, who does communications for the Grapevine Center, said paying tribute at the rally also helps bring awareness to the center’s mission, which is to empower peers to mentor, inspire and support individuals for recovery in all forms.
As she explained, an estimated one in five people has a mental health condition, so the more people who talk their own experiences with it, the better.
“One of the biggest enemies of mental health is isolation,” Fields said. “They isolate themselves when they feel this way when they actually need guidance.”
The people who paid tribute to the deceased Grapevine friends were mainly peers of the center. Linda Noa paid tribute to her mother, Pamela Barhight-Smith, at the rally, and reinforced the importance of sharing the stories of the people who populated the Grapevine Center.
“When awareness by the entire community emerges, this leads to the acknowledgment and enables healing to begin,” Noa said. “Something as simple as hearing ‘I believe you,’ could propagate generational healing for the entire community.”
This year’s keynote speaker was Dr. Mark Fuller, medical director of Carelon, a health care services organization with a location in Cranberry Township that takes a whole-health approach to care.
Fuller has worked with people in recovery for 30 years and has seen the perception of people in recovery change over that time. However, the stigma is still difficult for many people to get around, and a lot of people struggle in silence with mental health woes when they could seek help.
“There’s so much pessimism out there about mental health and about substance use, and not near the optimism that we should have; the benefits of treatment, fellowship, recovery, 12-steps organizations,” Fuller said. “It’s only the attitudes, the stigma, the false beliefs that keep the public trapped, but also keep our brothers and sisters trapped.”
Bette Peoples, executive director of the Grapevine Center, was one of the final people to speak at the rally, and in her speech, paid tribute to several of the people from the center who have died since last year.
After accepting a proclamation from the Butler County commissioners declaring Oct. 5 to Oct. 11 as Mental Illness Awareness Week, Peoples said the remembrance rally is a great opportunity for people to share their gratitude with and for one another.
“I know people who usually came to the drop-in center who couldn’t come today because of health reasons, so we are really lucky to be here today,” Peoples said. “I just really really like to see everybody and am really happy to have had a chance to talk.”
The rally concluded with a candlelight vigil, in which people passed a flame from candle to candle to memorialize the people who have died.
