The grave of Anna Cox is hidden in a southwest Lincoln neighborhood, ringed by seven manicured lawns, buffered by clusters of trees.
The anonymity of her resting place can be likened to how she spent 43 years of her adult life, out of the sight of her children and former husband, family and friends, on a quiet campus on the southwest edge of Lincoln.
It was known then as the Nebraska Hospital for the Insane. Now it's the Lincoln Regional Center, a treatment center for people with mental illness. It has changed much over the years since Anna Cox died there in 1947 at age 75.
In a ceremony this month her great-grandson and his wife, Tim and Pam Cox, dedicated a headstone -- the first one for the secluded cemetery that is the burial site for 250. The rest have only small concrete markers stamped with numbers, many of those covered by mowed, dried grass. Â
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The descendants who come to the Regional Center to pay tribute to long-ago relatives they never knew, in anonymous graves, are a sign it's never too late to reach back and give them dignity, said Rachel Johnson, religious coordinator at the Lincoln Regional Center.Ìý
Tim Cox went to the Pawnee City courthouse more than 20 years ago to do a little research on his great-grandparents and learned they had been divorced in the early 1900s, before his great-grandfather, A.D. Cox, moved with their children to Montana.Ìý
After Tim and his wife Pam retired, they learned his great-grandmother Anna Cox was buried in Lincoln, at Haines Branch Cemetery, which is part of the Lincoln Regional Center.Ìý
Last year, on a trip from Montana to where they have now retired, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, they saw Anna's peaceful but hidden gravesite. And Tim Cox wanted to do something to commemorate her life.Ìý
He wanted to know her, and what was his great-grandmother's point in life.Ìý
"You know, at the time that all transpired, women did not have any rights at all," he said.Ìý
Nobody should condemn his great-grandfather for whatever his role was in sending her to the Hospital for the Insane, he said.
"We really don't know what really did happen. There's always two sides to a story. We all need to think about that."Â
According to Lincoln Regional Center records, Anna Cox was 33 when she was admitted in March 1904 from her home in Pawnee City. She was divorced by that time from her husband Arthur, her occupation listed as "housework." She had six living children, the record said, the oldest around 11, the youngest 4 months old. Â
Her behavior had been erratic for about nine months, the records said. Doctors diagnosed her initially with subacute mania, meaning her condition had a recent onset, or had a somewhat rapid change. When she arrived she spoke rationally, was controlled, quiet and even cheerful.Ìý
Over the next few years, things changed and doctors would describe her as sometimes having outbursts, violent at times. Still, she was known as an excellent worker, even if at times they described her as a bit incoherent.Ìý
By the time Anna Cox died in 1947, after 43 years locked away, her diagnosis was listed as dementia praecox, more commonly known as schizophrenia. Her cause of death was a deterioration of her heart and lungs.
There's a lot, even looking at the records, the family doesn't know. With no photograph, no one now living has ever seen her face.Ìý
But Pam Cox knows that never seeing her children, never knowing their fates in those decades at the asylum would be enough to make Anna, or any person, go slightly off the rails.Ìý
Johnson performed the remembrance ceremony for Anna Cox in early August. It was obvious to her from reading the records that Anna needed to be there, she said.Ìý
"She was safe here. And she was cared for here. And she obviously cared for people here," Johnson said.Ìý
Even with her situation, her life had great meaning and purpose, she said.Ìý
At the time she was admitted, 588 people resided at the mental hospital.Ìý
Besides her lifetime of work at the hospital, in the dining room and on the wards, Anna Cox sewed, dusted, cleaned and kept her living space in order.Ìý
"Anna came here after having everything she knew and cherished taken from her, and despite her yearnings, she was never able to leave," Johnson said.Ìý
But from the beginning to the end of decades there, something allowed her to overcome her losses and dig deep to faithfully serve staff and patients who moved in and out of the mental hospital, Johnson said.
Instead of thinking of Anna's story as sad, she will think of her as a pioneer in mental health recovery, she said, and of her fortitude, strength, hope and compassion.
"Or better yet," she said at her service, "let's reclaim her and many like her with a commitment to dignify their journey of recovery, and ours, with the simple recognition: What spirit."