Denton State Supported Living Center
Denton State Supported Living Center, located in southeastern Denton 4 miles (6 km) south of Downtown Denton and 30 miles (50 km) north of Downtown Dallas, houses approximately 650 residents, many of whom are medically fragile and require constant medical care. Most have severe to profound mental retardation and over half navigate the campus with wheelchairs or power chairs. The Denton State School employs about 1,500 staff and has a budget in excess of $44 million annually.
The campus has a central kitchen, 30-bed infirmary, canteen, cemetery, dental clinic, beauty shop, swimming pool, sheltered workshops, and central laundry. It also features one guest house and one guest apartment for visiting family members.
The Denton Chamber of Commerce learned in the late 1950s that the state was planning to build a mental retardation facility in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Citizens donated money for the purchase of 200 acres (0.8 km2) of land, and the land was donated to the state with the stipulation that it be used to provide services to people with mental retardation.
The Denton State School was established in 1960 by the legislature, and opened in July of that year. By the end of the year it was housing 1,700 residents.
Read more about this topic: Texas State Supported Living Centers
Famous quotes containing the words state, supported, living and/or center:
“When we seek reconciliation with our enemies, it is commonly out of a desire to better our own condition, a being harassed and tired out with a state of war, and a fear of some ill accident which we are willing to prevent.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The great pagan world of which Egypt and Greece were the last living terms ... once had a vast and perhaps perfect science of its own, a science in terms of life. In our era this science crumbled into magic and charlatanry. But even wisdom crumbles.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.”
—Thomas Merton (1915–1968)