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I dedicate this book to

Siobhan, Malachy, Nina, Conor, and Cormac, my children.

And to Fiona, Mark, and Adrianna, my grandchildren,

for filling my heart with joy, pride, and breathless love.

WILLOWBROOK WARS

A special dedication to some of the warriors of the Willowbrook Wars. It was a place of horror, brutality, and awful suffering with the Stars and Stripes high above on a flagpole in ignorance of the carnage below. When some parents, with the help of some doctors and other workers and a few legal minds, began a desperate revolution, they were called communist Vietcong terrorists. But that they persisted in the movement proves that all citizens are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, even if handicapped, mentally or physically. So, to those who rose up and exposed Willowbrook for the place of despair and death it had become, All Hail! And to the thousands of men, women, and children who suffered and died there, Rest in Peace, and may the atrocities committed there never occur again!

Time, memory, space, and human fallibility prevent me from mentioning all of the Willowbrook warriors and the names of the victims, but here are just a few: Rosalie Amoroso, Eleanore Ash, Dr. Bill Bronston, Kathy Bronston, Bernard Carabello, Tim Casey, Gene Eisner, Bruce Ennis, Ira Fisher, Jerry Gavin, Willie Mae Goodman, Charlie Haney, Connie Haney, Chris Hansen, Jerry Isaacs, Jane Kurtin, Elizabeth Lee, Marie Marcario, Mark Marcario, Anthony Pinto, Ida Rios, Geraldo Rivera, Murray Schneps, Vicki Schneps, Dr.

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For he comes the human child

To the waters and the wild

With a fairy hand in hand

From a world more full of

Weeping than he can understand

—W. B. YEATS

On Sunday afternoons in 1963, the summer I worked in a Hamptons hostelry called the Watermill, myself and assorted staff would adjourn to the beach, armed with a largish cooler chock-full of ice, vodka, and orange juice. One of our number, Dan Cohalan, did a creditable job with the guitar, and, as we knew a reasonable number of songs with choruses, we were able to gather quite a number of children around to join in, and their parents were delighted to have us in loco parentis so they could go off walking, swimming, or having affairs in the dunes.

What a joy it was to hear forty or fifty silvery six- and seven-year-old voices raised in bawdy song, and sung with as much conviction as if they knew what they were singing: