From Schoolhouse, To Symbol Of Servitude, To Dust

Dan Barry: ATALISSA, Iowa — The old schoolhouse on the hill had announced the farm town of Atalissa to the Iowa flatness for more than a century. But a couple of weeks ago, the prehistoric claw of a John Deere excavator took its first swipe, and soon the building existed only in the landscape of memory.

It was just bricks and mortar in the heartland, and yet also a rare landmark of conflicted emotions. In its final years, the schoolhouse had devolved into a squalid dormitory for dozens of Texas men with intellectual disabilities who spent decades here, eviscerating turkeys for exploitative wages at a nearby plant, enduring abuse, growing old.

The turquoise schoolhouse came to represent the men's plight and figured in various news accounts. It appeared in a front-page photograph in The New York Times on March 9, as well as in an online documentary, to illustrate a detailed "This Land" report about the case.

While many in this town of 300 simply thought that the schoolhouse had outlived its usefulness, a few did not want their horizon darkened by this reminder of unsettling things. It had to go.