The Cromwell Center

The Cromwell Center was founded by Jamie Kaplan and Irv Shapell and named in honor of Jeremiah Cromwell, a young resident of The Maine School for the Feeble Minded (later called Pineland) who died of appendicitis in 2003 at age 14. No family member claimed his body, and his grave at Pineland was marked only by a small cement cylinder stamped with h... is patient ID number. In the late 1950s, the cement was replaced with a modest tombstone bearing Jeremiah's name and the years of his brief life. Although there are no existing records of what type of disability Jeremiah Cromwell had, we know that his life and death were similar to hundreds of thousands of children and adults with physical and developmental disabilities who lived and died in institutions throughout the United States over a 100-year period.Read More