High Achievers: Dixmont's History Helps Carlow Graduate Build Reputation as a Documentarian by Andrew Wilson
On September 19, 2006, when half a million square yards of earth slid across all four lanes of Pennsylvania state route 65, burying the highway as well as the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks that run parallel to it in Kilbuck Township, thousands of western Pennsylvanians’ lives and daily commutes were disrupted.
Fortunately, no one was injured by the slide, which Pennsylvania Department of Transportation engineers blamed on bedrock made unstable due to blasting done by the construction crew working to turn the site of the former Dixmont State Hospital into a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
Dixmont State Hospital
While community activists, who opposed the development, were ready with a quick, “I told you so,” for many area residents, it was just another chapter in the continuing saga of Dixmont, which had been conceived in the 1860s to provide new, more humane methods of treating the mentally ill. The hospital, named for the 19th-century social reformer Dorothea Dix, who selected the site, offered a rural alternative to chaining the mentally ill to the walls of jails or poorhouses. Patients could spend time outdoors tending animals or gardening. As therapy for the mentally ill evolved, so did Dixmont’s methods of treatment. Eventually, however, public officials came to see Dixmont as having outlived its usefulness, and it was closed in 1984.
For the community, the Dixmont property came to have a supernatural quality to it, helped—no doubt—by the stigma that mental illness carries for so many people, as well as, in more or less equal parts, by the deserted site’s ghost town feel and the numerous urban legends that circulated in the community. It long had the reputation of being haunted, and more than one local resident suggested that the landslide was caused by the ghost of Dixmont.
Kate Guerriero
Carlow Alum '00
Carlow University alumna Kate Guerriero doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she does believe in history. Dixmont’s History Helps Carlow Graduate Build Reputation as a Documentarian The Carlow Journal Guerriero, the owner of Stargazer Video Productions, produced a documentary about Dixmont.
“When I was doing my research, I discovered that the first of four landslides occurred in 1865 after they had begun excavating the hillside behind Reed Hall [Dixmont’s main building] to make way for the new Eastern Wing Extension,” says Guerriero, who graduated in 2000. “Originally, it was thought to be related to a leaky reservoir, but it was later discovered that the ground had a major defect—a large fi ssure that ended up extending a hundred feet or so. For the next 13 years, Dixmont’s managers struggled to keep the hillside intact before fi nally resolving the issue in 1878.”
That’s just one of the things she discovered while working on The Dixmont State Hospital: A Historical Documentary. The fi lm premiered at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center in Pittsburgh on July 19, 2006, and attracted both a good crowd and good reviews. Patricia Lowry, the architecture critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote that “...Guerriero, who lives in Hopewell, shows much promise as a documentary fi lmmaker, and we look forward to seeing where her passion for Pittsburgh history takes her next.”
“The documentary began as my independent study project in video production during my junior year at Carlow,” says Guerriero, who was a double major in communication studies and philosophy. “Carlow was one of the only schools that I thought would be good for me. Representatives from other schools told me that I wasn’t college material, but Carlow’s representative was so nice, and took me seriously.”
Looking back, Guerriero says she can understand why some schools may have viewed her with suspicion, and even admits that some of the criticisms may have had some validity.
“I wasn’t a bad student, but I always wanted to do my own thing,” she says. “At Carlow, I received support when it was needed, but I was always pushed to do the best I could possibly do.” While Guerriero credits many of her professors with helping to unleash her drive to achieve, the common wisdom among the faculty is that her drive already existed. It just needed to be steered a little bit.
“Kate is a very fine writer with a thirst for learning,” says Michael Balmert, PhD, chair of the communication studies department at Carlow. “She distinguishes herself as an independent thinker, who approached issues with passion, conviction, and insight in all of my classes. She wasn’t afraid to challenge me or others on ideas—and I loved it!”
James Carmine, PhD, a philosophy professor at Carlow, echoes those thoughts, but emphasizes Guerriero’s entrepreneurial spirit.
“Katie’s what I’d like all Carlow women to be,” he says. “She’s strong, intelligent, willing to do things that are out of the ordinary, and she’ll stand up for what she believes.”
Kate Guerriero, owner of Stargazer Video Productions
After graduation, Guerriero worked in New York City for a couple of years, but soon returned to western Pennsylvania.
“Being an independent person, I always wanted to have my own company. However, I kept putting it off, waiting until I had saved enough money, or Kate Guerriero, a 2000 graduate of Carlow University, is the owner of Stargazer Video Productions in Hopewell, Pa. for just the right time to start my company. Finally, I said, ‘it’s now or never,’” she says. “In 2004, I picked up [the Dixmont documentary] again and revamped it from start to finish. I was thinking it would be one of my portfolio pieces, but I really wanted to show it to people, so I approached the History Center to see if they could help me.”
Guerriero says the History Center was very generous to a beginning filmmaker and small business owner. They provided the space, and helped by promoting the premiere on their Web site and through press releases sent to the local media.
Her passion for history is what motivated her to complete the project, but her interest in the subject arose in an unusual way.
“I remember my family always used to pass Dixmont on our way to my grandmother’s house, but I just thought it was a regular hospital,” she says. “When I was at Carlow, one of my friends told me about this abandoned mental institution on Route 65, and I got into this argument with him because I said it wasn’t a mental institution. So we took a ride up there.”
Walking amidst the deteriorating buildings that graffiti artists and other trespassers had violated many times, Guerriero’s first thought was that the “creepy old institution” was ripe for telling a ghost story, but that thought soon vanished.
“It was the thought of the people and the history that convinced me,” she says. “People worked there, and some lived and died there. A ghost story was not the way to approach it. That would have been doing all those people a disservice.”
The people whose lives were touched by Dixmont have responded to her work.
“I couldn’t even begin to put a number on how many people have come up to me and shared their stories about Dixmont,” says Guerriero, who is currently working on a documentary about the local country/rock band, Ruff Creek, and will be producing a video for their new CD. “I’m really hard-pressed to fi nd someone who doesn’t have a connection to it, whether they worked there or were related to someone who worked there, or a friend or family member was a patient there. It’s really been awesome.”
The Dixmont State Hospital: A Historical Documentary is available on DVD for $15 plus shipping and handling. It can be ordered through Guerriero’s company Web site, www.stargazervideoproductions.com, or by phone, 724.259.2142, or E-mail kate@stargazervideoproductions.com.
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