The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland

Willie Levi complained one day about a pain in his leg, in his knee, complained to his supervisor at the packing plant where Willie shackled live turkeys, upside down, into hangers that would carry them to the kill floor. Willie Levi told his super that his leg hurt, hurt bad, but the super told him to keep working because he wouldn’t have Willie slacking off, so he followed orders, kept working, kept on and kept on, just as he had for years, for decades.Willie Levi is a looming presence in Dan Barry’s Boys in the Bunkhouse; he's a man gifted to talk to turkeys, a “turkey whisperer,” Barry calls him, because something in his voice calmed those birds as he delivered them to their deaths.But Willie hurt his knee, he said, so when the whole story broke—how several dozen developmentally disabled adult men from Texas were working for scratch in an Iowa turkey plant, living in unimaginable filth, the social workers who freed Willie and his friends from the grievous exploitation they’d suffered asked him if he had any medical problems. Willie pointed at his leg, said it hurt. Immediately, someone took him to an urgent care facility in nearby Muscatine, where the diagnosis was simple but painful—Willie Levi had a broken kneecap he’d lived and worked with for far too long.That Willie Levi story is one of hundreds New York Times reporter Dan Barry relates in a heart-rending compendium of stories, all of them concerning the “boys,” a bus full of men sent up north to Iowa from Texas to work packing plant jobs no one reading these words would do, men intellectually disabled, who lived in squalor unimaginable in rural Iowa.Countless characters people these stories, not simply “the boys from the bunkhouse” either, although most of them, like Willie, are here. There are heroes, men and women—reporters and social workers—who went out of their way to free the men from their 21st century slavery. Some you'll meet are heroes, some are certainly not. Some didn’t care, didn’t act, kept their mouth shut when they should have spoken.But there are no snarling villains. Dan Barry’s marvelous reporting doesn’t indict the plant or Louis Rich, doesn’t even damn T. H. Johnson, the Texas entrepreneur once universally applauded for creating jobs for men thought otherwise unemployable. For some time, what Johnson was up to created sterling benefits for the boys—jobs, spending money, a place in life.Neither does Barry lay a glove on Atalissa, the tiny dying Iowa town where people brought the boys into their love and care, danced with them and gave them a place in town celebrations, took them to church.The story is surprising in many ways. You’ll be amazed at what Atalissa gave, but saddened to realize that all that giving was never enough. The Boys in the Bunkhouse is not simply an indictment of the horrors of life on a kill floor or some broadside against rural provincialism; its primary concern is examining our own longstanding instinct to look past people we’d rather not see.The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland is a marvelous read. When you close the cover and put it down, it won't simply stay on the shelf; it's a sad reminder of Jesus's words that “the poor you have with you always.”Nations and cultures can be judged, a friend of mine used to say, not by their GNP, but by how compassionately they care for their own less fortunate. Dan Barry’s wonderful book is a moving reminder of something so sadly easy to forget—what it really should mean to be human.

We read to understand what others have experienced. But sometimes we forget that there are lives in our midst that we could have acknowledged with this same reading-like focus and attention. In your hometown, think about it. What do you know about the people around you? Are there homeless, oppressed, hungry, mentally ill, mentally challenged individuals in your midst? Are their needs being addressed by governmental and non governmental agencies? What attention does the local press give to these issues of need? How do you respond to these community issues when you become aware of them?The Boys in the Bunkhouse by Dan Berry perfectly captures the essence of community awareness or more exactly its lack of awareness in the abandonment, discrimination and abuse of some of its members, in this case adult members who lack the mental and/or physical capacity to care for themselves, who need help and at the same time, want to maintain their individual freedom and dignity.The 32 men in this story come alive through their self described experiences of working and living under the shadow of Henry’s Turkey Service, a modern day slave camp, within small town America. Thirty-five years lost, lives interrupted, communities and agencies shamed in what only can be described as unbelievable in this day and age…except, maybe not today, where a President of the United States so willingly can separate immigrant families seeking asylum, leaving children alone without mothers or fathers. The shame of today is ours for doing little to protect these vulnerable populations, an assault on the values of America. Do you think we are better than this! I do.

Absolutely outstanding! This is a beautifully written, "draw you in" story about a modern day tragedy based in the vortex of workplace discrimination, human slavery and abuse of the disabled. I kept marveling at the descriptive words used by Barry to paint everything with deft detail, from the opening portrait of Willie Levi to the closing poignant portrayal of the demolition of the bunkhouse. I confess to having an advance bias: Robert Canino, one of the book's heroes, is a friend and I especially enjoyed reading Barry describe the dedication and focus of this great public servant. Canino is everything Barry describes and more! But notwithstanding my bias, I am absolutely objective when I give this a rave review. Whether you care about the cognitively impaired, have an interest in public interest law, are socially and civically minded, or simply love to be pulled in by the powerful undertow of great writing, this book is for you! At the end I was asking myself not just "How could this have happened?", I was also asking myself "Where is something like this happening right now with no one speaking up?" This is a book that should motivate us all to pay attention to the least among us and make sure we are speaking up on their behalf.

I’d recommend this book if you’re the type who is a disability advocate. I loved the way the author told the story, and in the best way anyone could, of the men in the bunkhouse. I first learned about the boys when I stumbled upon a NY Times documentary, the Men of Atalissa, and then my fascination flew from there. Later, it was discovered that a book was recorded and written about the boys and I had to have this book. I am a blind person who’s seen my share of blind and physically and mentally disabled people abused or exploited. The guys in Atalissa have earned their pay, but having spent over 30 years in a so called “bunkhouse”, and suffering what they should never have suffered, these guys now have the opportunities they long for. Some have died, but as this book shows, the ones remaining sing for the things money can’t buy. Freedom in the heartland, that is something money will never buy back.