Lawmakers secure $250,000 for memorial at Sonoma Developmental Center

Supporters of the Sonoma Developmental Center expressed thanks to state Sen. Bill Dodd and his colleagues for securing $250,000 to create a memorial wall for the more than 1,400 people interred in unmarked graves at the bucolic Sonoma Valley site.

The center, closed in 2019 after 128 years of service, was the oldest and largest state facility for California’s most developmentally disabled citizens.

“These people were often forgotten by their families and by the state,” said Brien Farrell, president of Family Advocates United, a support group of parents, relatives and friends of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The memorial will honor the unnamed people buried in a cemetery at the 880-acre facility, as well as “everyone who was cared for there and the dedicated staff,” Farrell said.

In an email to Dodd, D-Napa, and his chief of staff Ezrah Chaaban, Farrell and Kathleen Miller, a former president of the group, noted that the “Glen Ellen and Sonoma Valley community welcomed our loved ones. Many volunteered at SDC.”

“Now, the legacy of care and compassion will be remembered forever,” they said.

Farrell, a former Santa Rosa city attorney and schoolteacher who now lives in Vallejo, said his sister lived for 60 years at the center and was transferred to a Fairfield facility that continues to provide quality care.

Sonoma County Supervisor Susan Gorin, whose district includes the center, also lauded the creation of a memorial to the people buried there dating to 1892.

“We need to remember the importance of that sacred ground as their final resting place,” she said.

Gorin said a Permit Sonoma working group is in the process of drafting alternative uses for the sprawling, largely undeveloped property that encompasses some of the North Bay’s most beautiful and valuable land.

The alternatives will be discussed at a series of community meetings in late August or September, she said.

In a news release, Dodd said, “People laid to rest at this institution should receive the respect and dignity they deserve. Their lives will be remembered.”

Dodd credited state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, with helping secure the funds for the memorial.

The project wouldn’t have happened, Dodd said, “without the hard work” of Chaaban and the “dedication of family members and disability rights advocates.”

“This memorial, for so long just an idea but now taking shape, reminds us all that dignity is a human right,” Miller said in the news release.

“It’s been 100% teamwork between SDC families, the state and county on the transition of the Sonoma Developmental Center,” McGuire said in the release, calling the memorial “a rightful and fitting tribute for the residents and their families.”

The new funding augments a previous $150,000 from the state Department of Developmental Services, and preliminary design work has begun under the California Memorial Project.

Farrell said the combined funding is sufficient to erect the memorial, but there is no schedule for its completion.

Christian Pease, a photographer and former center employee whose portraits recorded the facility’s last residents, said in the release the memorial would be fitting “at this historic, beautiful and yet poignant site.”

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.