On Memorial Day, families will gather to remember the sacrifices their loved ones made in service to this country. They will tell stories, maybe take out old photographs and medals for the grandchildren. How sad, then, that the stories of so many Connecticut Civil War soldiers remain hidden under a meaningless shroud of secrecy — stories that could be of great benefit to researchers and veterans who are living with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The state legislature missed another chance this year to rectify this injustice. Lawmakers should have, but didn’t, overturn a 2011 law that seals from public view medical records housed in the state archive, including the records of Civil War soldiers who were treated for “soldier’s heart” at what is now known as Connecticut Valley Hospital.
A bill proposed in February would have lifted restrictions to medical records 50 years after a patient’s death and other government records 75 years after death, bringing Connecticut into line with federal rules and sufficiently protecting legitimate expectations of personal privacy while allowing access to the testament of history.
The bill made it out of committee but never got a vote.
Opponents claimed the bill would treat those who needed public assistance differently from those who could afford private care by making their records public after their death. State Rep. Theresa Conroy, D-Seymour, claimed that citizens have “a right” to have their medical records remain private “even into the hereafter.”
Forever? Balderdash.
Infamous Killer’s Records Withheld
Consider the case of Amy Archer-Gilligan, whose killings a century ago inspired the comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace.” She was ruled criminally insane in 1924 after being accused of murdering residents of her home for the elderly in Windsor.
When researchers sought to examine her files, she had been dead for decades. She had no surviving relatives. Neither she nor her family could be embarrassed about her medical records, because she died in state custody in 1962 and has remained dead ever since.
But the state Supreme Court decided last year that her records — more than 200 pages’ worth — must remain secret, despite whatever researchers might learn about her condition, treatment and care while in state custody.
Civil War Soldiers’ Too
The same misguided thinking restricts researchers from accessing the records of Civil War soldiers.
In 2014, Central Connecticut State University history professor Matthew Warshauer testified in favor of a bill that would have made those records available to researchers. It got the same treatment as this year’s bill: a favorable report out of a House committee, but no vote.
In his testimony, professor Warshauer said he wanted to conduct “valuable historical research into the treatment of veterans a century before the term PTSD was invented to describe the lingering results of wartime trauma,” according to a Courant report.
It’s easy to imagine that those servicemen and women who died fighting for this nation would gladly have done anything they could to help today’s veterans — many of whom return to civilian life with the same sort of mental damage suffered by the soldiers of history.
Their stories are surely harrowing. But without knowing them, can we properly remember them at all? Can we honor their sacrifice by hiding records in a filing cabinet?
Or should we trust our brightest minds to analyze the information with care and respect, to put it into historic perspective, to destigmatize it, to help us understand and heal those who still carry the scars of war?
This state law that continues to stigmatize the sufferings of soldiers, that keeps us from fully acknowledging the real effects of our nation’s bloodiest war, dishonors us all.
