Good Morning Gentlemen;
My name is Pat Turner, my husband Jimmy Turner is one of the "Whitehouse Casualties". This weekend when he read the article in the Floridan, he sat down and wrote a letter which I am forwarding to you; Thanks for taking the time to help these guys heal. He was in the Florida School for Boys around 61 & 62 for a total of 10 months.
"Over A Picture"
I one day took a picture of a group of boys, (I was13 years old) and one was holding his crotch and I did not know it until they took me to the "WhiteHouse" by a man named Burgess, who had an upholstery shop at the east end of town in Marianna.
He told me to lay down on an old bed and grab a mouth full of an old pillow that was so dirty and stained that it looked like it came out of the garbage. Burgess had a long piece of leather strap about 2 or 3 inches wide and began to swing it over his head and down on my rear end leaving me numb for awhile, after he had hit me about 15 times I could not hardly get up, he then grabbed my neck and pushed me to the door, he grabbed me again and then pushed me back on the bed for another 5 or 6 licks because he said I gave him a "dirty look". I was bleeding and was sore for about a week to week/half.
I had made up my mind to get even w/him but never did because he turned a tractor over on him and was killed. That made me feel good, it was wrong for me to feel that way but who caused those feelings, Burgess did that to me.
I feel like they were making hard criminals out of teen aged boys instead of helping them. Even today, I live in Marianna, and can't get close to the school without all that he did to me going thru my mind. I am 60 years old and I
don't guess it will ever heal.
Burgess was an evil man that never should have been working at the school. I really think he enjoyed beating boys the way he beat me. The people of Marianna should have known his back side like we did. How can anyone forget what happened to us in the "Whitehouse"?
We were not allowed to talk about what happened at the "Whitehouse". I would have been sent back if I did. I have prayed to God to help me forget but it still haunts me and always will.
I feel like the State of Florida knew what was happening to us in the "Whitehouse", but did not do anything about it and I was scared to say anything because when you have to talk about it to the law or the state it would have
gotten back to Burgess and I was afraid of that, afraid of him.
I personally feel like the graves bear checking out and the "Whitehouse" torn down and bring the names of the evil men that beat these boys at the school out to the public.
Mr.Michael O'McCarthy and Mr. Robert Straley, I want to thank you for bringing this out to the public and maybe after all these years letting us, the "Boys of the Whitehouse", put to rest our feelings and "The Whitehouse Nightmares."
Jimmy Turner
