Jeremiah's grave was marked only by a cylinder of cement with a number stamped on top. The number purportedly was matched with his name in "school" files.
Jeremiah Cromwell’s life and death were similar to those of hundreds of thousands of children and adults with disabilities confined to institutions throughout the United States, some of which remained open until the late 1990s. The “inmates” in these institutions were often physically and emotionally abused, lived in squalor, and sterilized without consent all based solely on their disabilities.
The Center is dedicated to the purpose that no person with a disability will ever again experience Jeremiah’s profound isolation in life and anonymity at death. We all have a family member or close friend with a disability – learning (ADD, dyslexia), behavioral and emotional (ADHD, depression, bipolar illness, alcoholism), developmental (Down syndrome, autism), or physical (whether from birth, illness, accident, or age). But for the fate of birth, any one of them or us could be Jeremiah Cromwell.