Chris Calhoun (b. 1934) was a decorated war veteran whose battle not only with his own mental health, but the entire mental healthcare system in Florida, would result in over 100 State legislature reforms—but at the deep personal cost of suffering years of unthinkable abuse during his years of institution.
A native of Opa-Locka, Chris served in the Korean War, and at the age of 19 earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his heroic efforts in the Battle of Star Hill at Sanggasan. However, he would return home traumatized by the horrors of war and found it increasingly difficult to transition from the military back to ‘normal.’
He became paranoid, getting into fights with the neighbors who he believed were spying on him, and accusing his wife of infidelity. His sanity reached a breaking point on Valentine’s Day, 1956.
That day, Chris decided he no longer wanted to live. But, knowing his wife and young daughter would not receive his $25,000 worth of life insurance from a suicide, he grabbed a gun and began shooting wildly from his front porch, hoping to engage police in a shootout that would kill him. He chose Valentine’s Day because he was under the delusion that his wife was having an affair with an officer. One neighbor was injured in the chaos.
Police arrived, but Chris turned the gun on himself, firing a shot into his chest and barely missing his heart. As he drifted into unconsciousness, he was relieved to hear the officers saying that he would probably die soon. He felt like his suffering would finally be over.
He had no idea it had only just begun…
Even the hellscape of war could not prepare young veteran Chris Calhoun for what he would experience at Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee.
After his attempted suicide-by-police, he was admitted to FSH on the grounds of being “mentally unstable.” It would take another 20 years for his actual condition—post traumatic stress disorder—to receive widespread recognition and improved treatment.
But even in 1956, when Chris admitted to the facility, FSH was considered a dinosaur among asylums, having been converted from an arsenal built in 1830s and changing little since then. Regardless, it was State’s only mental institution until 1947, and even served as its first penitentiary during the Civil War.
Chris would find out upon his arrival that the staff at FSH were more concerned with sadistic punishment and torture of their patients rather than treating or rehabilitating them.
He and other patients were subjected to abuse including rape, electroshocks, beatings, solitary confinement in “strip rooms,” “choke outs,” and even slavery, with Black inmates being rented out to wealthy families and farmers for $1 a day as labor.
The few patients with concerned family members, like Chris, had their suspicions written off by staff who blamed everything from epilepsy to psychotic outbursts.
Chris would soon learn that it would to little to complain, or worse. Although he had detailed some of the abuse to a letter to his sister, and she attempted to contact a State legislature about the hospital’s inhumane conditions, she was only able to get a single attendant fired. This resulted in the staff punishing Chris, who they now perceived as a threat, even more severely.
Fearing that the staff would soon take away his pens and paper, he recorded much of his abuse in the margins of his Bible.
Finally, in 1960, one of his letters made it to the Tampa Tribune and journalist Martin Waldron. The investigation and subsequent article did not bring about widespread change, nor did it free Chris, but it finally bring the facility and its conditions into public attention.
It was not until 1961 when, as similar horror stories about mental health institutions were being exposed across America, a Florida congressional session led by Sen. Chesterfield Smith and his committee on State institutions published the results of their investigation of Florida State Hospital, confirming the allegations of abuse made by Chris Calhoun.
His vindication would finally arrive in 1962, when Gov. Farris Bryant ordered immediate action to free many wrongfully-institutionalized patients, including Chris.
This was little compensation to a man who had served his country, then lost 6 years of his life to a corrupt institution. Although they remained friends, he and his wife divorced. He would go on to graduate from a technical school where he studied plumbing.
All the while, he kept a promise in his heart to his fellow inmates—especially the “lost souls” who had no loved ones to care about them—that he would someday have their story told. He moved to California, where he hoped that he could meet someone who would make his story into a movie.
In 1980, a producer who hired him for maintenance work was so compelled by Chris and his heroism that wrote a screenplay treatment. It was picked up in 1988 by the British independent film company Hemdale and was released under the title “Chattahoochee,” starring Gary Oldman as Emmett Foley, a character based on Chris.
In promoting the film, Chris praised the accuracy and meticulous research of the film crew in retelling his difficult tale. At the premiere, he wore red-and-white Western apparel, emphasizing his role as the “cowboy crusader” for mental health care.
He explained that the red symbolizes the suffering of patients, and the white represents hope. He did not wear his war medals, but instead proudly displayed a simple pin that read “Paint a different picture of mental illness.” At the time, he expressed a desire to see a memorial built at the FSH cemetery to honor the hundreds patients who did not make it out alive.
Though he has retired from the public, Chris is in his late 80’s now and still a voice for those seeking justice and better treatment in America’s mental healthcare facilities.
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