Opal Petty, 86, Patient Held 51 Years Involuntarily in Texas, Dies

Opal Petty, 86, Patient Held 51 Years Involuntarily in Texas, Dies
March 17, 2005
New York Times
Obits.
By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT
Opal Petty, whose lawsuit over her 51-year involuntary commitment in Texas mental institutions led to changes in state policy, died on March 10 in San Angelo, Tex. She was 86 and lived in Christoval, Tex.
The cause was pneumonia, said Linda Kauffman, the wife of Ms. Petty's nephew, Clint Denson.
Ms. Kauffman learned by chance at a 1986 reunion of her husband's family that Ms. Petty had been committed by her family to a state hospital in 1934, when she was 16. No one at the reunion knew exactly where she was at the time, Ms. Kauffman said in an interview, only that she was in some facility near where Ms. Kauffman lived. . .

Full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/national/17petty.html?