PHOTO BY Darrell Barton / MPW.59 PHOTO BY DARRELL BARTON / MPW.59
  • Nancy: A Life Within...A Life Apart
  • By Darrell Barton, Barton Productions
  • The 59th Missouri Photo Workshop / Chillicothe, Mo.
  • They say Nancy is different. She is retarded. How much? Enough to live out of the mainstream but not enough to keep her from having a life that has a measure of fulfillment.
    Since 1967 she has worked at Hope Haven. She was the first employee. Today she sorts trash. Plastic from paper. Hard dirty work that serves a need for Nancy and the rest of us. She lives in a house called Ashbury Heights among other people like herself. If not quite a family, it is a community. She says the other residents are her friends.
    As for family, she says she would like to live with one of her brothers but knows it is not possible. She says she gets lonely. When Nancy is happy she smiles. When she is lonely she frowns. Nancy is not that different after all.

    Nancy works the conveyer belt, sorting trash, at Hope Haven’s recycling center. Hope Haven is a sheltered workplace for the developmentally disabled.

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