- [Announcer] A bitter war is being fought against tuberculosis.

(suspenseful music) - TB was really an epidemic.

- [Announcer] Here we are in a large sanatorium.

- [Chuck] If you were diagnosed with TB, that was a death sentence.

- [Narrator] During the first half of the 20th century, tuberculosis ravaged America, killing millions.

- [Interviewer] Wonder how you caught it?

- Through touch, people breathing on you.

- If the patient was highly contagious, you wore masks around them.

- A lot of people were afraid of it.

- [Man] Everybody was hoping that they wouldn't catch it.

- [Narrator] While a frightened nation worked to find a cure, for many patients their only option was isolation at a TB sanatorium.

- Patients came there from all over Pennsylvania.

- [Narrator] Cresson was built on a western Pennsylvania mountain, considered one of the nation's finest sanatoriums, the staff and patients called it The San.

This man never forgot his time at Cresson, and wondered if others felt the same way.

So he started a website to find out and the response was overwhelming.

People from all over were finally opening up online.

- It was as if they said I had cancer, and he said that, "I want to send you to the sanatorium."

- When I think of my days at Cresson, I think it was isolation from my family, from my friends, from my hometown.

- As a little girl, Cresson meant to me, torture.

- I think it's very important that people remember this story.

- [Narrator] This is a story of a place that was fading into history, but is now found again, thanks to these people sharing their personal, sometimes painful, memories.

- We've had all this bottled up inside us and then writing it made it all come out.

- [Narrator] As they remember Cresson and life at The San.

(quiet music) - Okay, this should be the entrance to the sanatorium on the right hand side.

- [Narrator] Chuck Felton was just a teenage patient the last time he saw Cresson.

But in the years since then he's become the Sanatorium's unofficial historian.

And he's wanted to come back for a long time.

- And I always thought this was one of the most beautiful settings for a hospital you could ever have.

- [Narrator] But Cresson hasn't been a TB sanatorium for many years, and former patients aren't usually welcome because Cresson is now a prison.

- Welcome back.

- Thanks very much.

- [Narrator] For Chuck, getting inside required special permission.

(alarm blaring) - Do you have any prosthetic devices or anything like that?

- Hip and knee.

- Okay, hip and knee implant.

- [Narrator] And now the 73 year old man is stepping back in time to the most frightening year of his life.

(nostalgic music) - It was 1955, Chuck Felton was a gifted student at Towanda High School in northeast Pennsylvania.

He was Senior Class President.

- Really I had the next four years of my life all planned out, graduate from high school, go to Penn State, get a job.

- [Narrator] But a bad cold turned into something much worse, a concerned doctor ordered an x-ray.

- But overnight everything changed, he took one look at that x-ray and checked me in to the local hospital.

And sure enough, they found active TB germs.

- [Narrator] The prognosis at the time, a 25% chance of survival.

Chuck will never forget five hour drive with his parents from their hometown to Cresson.

- [Chuck] And because I had TB, all the way down I had to wear one of those surgical masks in case I coughed or sneezed.

I didn't want to put them in danger.

I'm glad I did because that gave me an excuse not to talk very much.

I'm sure on that first drive down, they probably thought they were taking me on a one way trip.

- [Narrator] And no wonder, his parents knew that a journey into the world of tuberculosis was often a fatal one.

(suspenseful music) - [Announcer] Of all infectious diseases, tuberculosis is still the greatest killer.

- [Narrator] In the first half of the 20th century, films like this were common, as the nation worked to educate the public.

- [Announcer] Mary's aunt comes to live with her, she seems run-down and needs a rest.

Actually, she has a well-advanced case of tuberculosis.

- [Narrator] TB is usually spread through the air when someone with an active infection sneezes or coughs.

It generally attacks the lungs, an early name for the disease, Consumption.

- [Chuck] Because TB was literally consuming your lungs, your lung tissue, and destroying it.

But the other name we're sort of familiar with is The White Plague.

And it was called The White Plague because it destroyed your body and your stamina, so much that people kind of had a white complexion.

- [Narrator] By the early 1900s there was still no cure, while researchers worked to find one, campaigns like the Christmas Seals program would help raise money.

But a major advancement was the tuberculosis sanatorium.

- You know, they realized that if they wanted to actually stop this epidemic of tb, they would have to take people that were infected and some how keep them away from the general public until they were cured.

- [Narrator] The Adirondack Cottage Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York, is considered the first of it's kind in North America.

It was founded in 1884 by Dr Edward Livingston Trudeau, who himself struggled with tuberculosis.

The first patients, two sisters from New York City.

- There were no drugs to combat tuberculosis, so the care consisted of good food, fresh air, and lots of rest, and that was basically it.

- [Narrator] The dry southwest air was also considered healing.

So tb camps were formed in the desert by pitching tents.

In the segregated South, black patients were sent to the Piedmont Sanatorium in Virginia, which was the first rest home for tubercular African-Americans.

It was during this era that Cresson would rise in the mountains of Cambria County, Pennsylvania, which at the time were an attractive getaway for wealthy families from larger cities.

- Rich people would come here and enjoy the healthy environment and of course the beautiful scenery.

- [Narrator] On a hill just outside Cresson, industrialist Andrew Carnegie was planning to build a summer home for his mother.

- [Chuck] And before he could build it, his mother died.

- [Narrator] So Carnegie deeded nearly 500 acres to Pennsylvania for one dollar and with one stipulation, the land would be used to build a tuberculosis sanatorium.

Construction of Cresson was completed in 1913.

It would be one of three state run facilities with free care to all patients, the Hamburg Sanatorium in eastern PA, Mont Alto in south central, Cresson was the farthest west.

- [Chuck] About 35% of all the people at Cresson came from the Pittsburgh area.

- [Narrator] And Cresson was a city in itself, with a post office, a community store, a movie theater.

Cresson had its own school for young patients, a powerhouse for electricity and a massive laundry facility.

The staff ran a poultry farm for eggs, cafeteria workers served more than 3000 meals everyday.

More important than good food, mountain air and plenty of it as patients lounged in fresh air pavilions.

- With the air just blowing through in the middle of winter, bundled up in two or three coats, boots, and they would sit there in that freezing environment because they thought that frigid cold air was beneficial for them to breathe.

- [Edda] A lot of trees, a lot of grass, a lot of beauty.

- [Narrator] Edda Albright is with the Cresson area historical association.

She's collected rare sanatorium artifacts, including this photo album put together by a patient who documented her own stay beginning in 1916.

- [Edda] She radiates a very nice disposition despite the fact that she was ill. - [Narrator] The album is filled with images of life at Cresson.

People making the best of a bad time.

- It's a story about people facing things that they didn't choose and getting the courage and trusting in the people around them to help them get through it.

- [Narrator] A true example of that spirit came nearly a century ago when Helen Keller visited Cresson along with her teacher, Annie Sullivan, better known as The Miracle Worker.

- [Chuck] She was there to give an inspirational talk to uplift them.

- [Narrator] This is the actual speech from Helen Keller read to the Cresson patients through an interpreter back in 1920.

- [Interpreter] "I am glad to be here this afternoon "because you are all so bright and full of courage.

"The warmth of the sun and the strength "of the hills are in your hearts.

"I cannot see your smile, but I have my own way "of telling when others are happy."

- I think for most of us, even though we didn't wanna be there, we still managed to have a lot of laughs, we made a lot of friends and we look back on that time now, not with anger or maybe even regret, but with fondness.

- I remember this building very well, it was called The Children's Home.

- [Narrator] It's been 55 years since Chuck Felton walked the grounds at Cresson.

Because it's now a prison, most buildings are off limits during his visit.

But even after all this time, Chuck's memories of this place have not faded.

- They had a bed waiting for me.

I took all of my street clothes, I put them in a paper bag and I went to hand it to my Mom to take home.

But the nurse reached over, grabbed it and she says, "Oh no, your mom can't have these right now, "we have to have them fumigated first."

That was probably the first moment that it really hit me that I'm in a TB hospital.

- [Narrator] For an entire year, Chuck never left the ward he shared with 15 other men.

- I was told at the time that I was the youngest patient there.

- [Narrator] The sickest patients were confined to a ward, all meals were delivered bedside, the only entertainment was radio, with headphones for every patient.

Volunteers brought books from the sanatorium's library.

On the front lines, a capable and caring staff of nurses.

- I enjoyed the work, I enjoyed the people.

- [Narrator] At the age of 18, Peggy Klapperton Shoff enrolled in a Cresson program, training her to be a Licensed Practical Nurse.

She was in the graduating class of 1951.

- At that time it was an incurable disease, and my mother and father were hesitant about me going.

- [Narrator] But like most of the staff at Cresson, Peggy didn't worry about being infected.

- Patients were taught how to be cautious toward other people.

They were given what was called a cough book.

- [Narrator] Patients covered their mouths when they coughed and spit, Chuck says that noise was the hospital's soundtrack.

- All during the meals, guys were hacking and coughing and spitting and you just could not get away from it.

- [Narrator] At every bedside, patients had a metal sputum cup, even cardboard travel cups for when they walked around.

- It all contained contagious germs.

So the question was, what were you going to do with it?

The answer was, they collected it and burned it.

- [Narrator] One thing that frightened many patients was the possibility of a lung hemorrhage, Chuck saw it happen one night in his ward.

- And I'm fast asleep, and all of a sudden, I start to wake up, the lights are all on, there's people running around and I looked down the ward and there's a guy and he's coughing and choking.

- And they coughed and blood would come out.

- And all I can see is just blood spewing out of his mouth all on the white bedspread.

- And they would die, the majority.

- Woke up in the morning and I looked down there, and there's an empty bed, all made up fresh because Joe didn't make it.

- [Narrator] As the 20th century progressed, treatment would advance from fresh air and rest to surgery.

Peggy worked in the surgery unit.

- The surgeons from Altuna came up and they removed lungs and portions of lungs that were really destroyed.

- [Narrator] Another treatment was pneumothorax, during which doctors pumped air into the body, collapsed the lung to let it rest and heal.

The patients called it getting air.

- They stuck the needle right down through the stomach into that cavity, pumped air in there, and it really wasn't that painful, even without anesthetic.

- [Narrator] By the 1950s, new drugs meant new treatments.

Selman Waksman was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1952 for his discovery of the antibiotic streptomycin, changing the TB prognosis from dismal to hopeful.

- Then you didn't see hemorrhages any more, you saw more people coming in and, "Hey you're negative this month, "and you'll be going home soon."

Such a happy time that was.

- [Narrator] Still, there were false beliefs about TB, some believed only unclean or promiscuous people caught it.

Back in his hometown, Chuck's mother had asked friends to cheer him up by sending cards and she was shocked at one neighbor's reaction.

- And this woman said, "How dare you ask decent people "to send a card to your son who's in a TB sanatorium.

"Everyone knows how you get TB."

- [Narrator] When Chuck's tests for the TB bacteria started coming back negative, he could soon leave the ward and venture out into the rest of The San.

That privilege was known as making meals.

(big band music) - [Chuck] That was important, so for the first time in 12 months, you could sit next to a girl and have your lunch.

- [Narrator] Chuck would soon meet younger patients, he and his new friend, Jim Hammond, roamed the grounds around The San and got jobs spinning records at the hospital's radio station, WSAN.

- [Chuck] Running your own little rinkey-dink radio station, man that was something, that was fun.

- [Narrator] During occupational therapy, patients spent time drawing, or sewing.

They made everything from jewelry and dolls to leatherwork.

Chuck made a leather holster for his little brother, Tom.

It was fumigated, sent home, and became a treasured gift.

The brothers hadn't seen each other in nearly a year, until one day when Chuck was getting better, their parents snuck in Tom into The San, where he met Chuck in a back stairwell.

- I didn't dare touch him, I told him what was going on here and that I would soon be out and we could be together.

Until saw him, I hadn't realized how much I had missed seeing him.

- [Narrator] At graduation time, Chuck was still at the sanatorium.

His hometown newspaper wrote that the Senior Class President would be with his class mates in spirit only.

His little brother, Tom, would pick up Chuck's diploma for him.

- [Chuck] They had a picture of him getting my diploma from the principal, he was only 11 years old.

- [Chuck] Yeah this was one of my favorite spots up here.

- [Narrator] As a fog settles on the mountain, Chuck's visit to the prison at Cresson is coming to an end.

His last stop, the place he's wanted to see most.

- [Chuck] This was a place that really meant something to me.

- [Narrator] Grace Chapel is still used by the inmates just as it was by TB patients, praying for good health, many years before.

- [Chuck] Religion had always been a part of my life, Christianity, and so being able to come here, was a real comfort to me.

- [Narrator] Chuck takes a long look around.

- [Chuck] This looks pretty much the way it was 55 years ago.

- [Narrator] He has a photo taken outside the sanatorium chapel after he got the good news he could leave the ward.

- And that picture that was taken, with my mother and brother and myself with the Grace Chapel steeple in the background, that was taken on that morning, the first time I attended church services with my family.

And for Sunday morning, we all got dressed up, me for the first time in a year, the four of us came to Grace Chapel, and we came here because we were all celebrating that it was just a matter of a few months before I would be discharged and back home.

- [Narrator] The young man who loved model airplanes would go on to become an aerospace engineer in Southern California, where he had a long career.

Chuck raised two children, and eventually retired with his wife, Peggy to Lake Hills, Texas.

That's when his thoughts returned to Cresson and it's impact on his life.

He expressed those thoughts by creating a website about The San, posting his story asking if others had been there, too.

- [Chuck] I thought if I heard from two or three people, that I would be fortunate.

But I was just amazed at the response.

And so far I've heard from over 200 people.

- If it weren't for Chuck's website, it would still be all bottled up inside me.

And this erupted like a volcano.

- [Narrator] Every now and then, former patient Loretta Obusek would do an internet search for information on the Cresson Sanatorium.

She never got any hits.

- And then last April, I just typed in Cresson TB San and lo and behold, this website came up.

It just brought back a flood of memories.

- [Narrator] When Loretta was 22, living in McKeesport, PA, she was diagnosed with TB.

- [Loretta] It would be like somebody saying, you have cancer, now.

- [Narrator] She never forgot her first night at Cresson.

- It was 9 o'clock at night when we were in bed, there were about 12 women in a ward, the lights were turned off, and they all started to say the Lord's Prayer together, at one time.

When I heard that, I started to cry.

- [Narrator] Loretta spent five months at Cresson, before she was cured and sent home.

- My dress was from Cox's.

- [Narrator] Among her photos, Loretta doesn't have a single image of her time at Cresson.

But after all this time, some of the little moments are still burned in her memory.

- Mother and Dad and Doris would come up every Sunday afternoon, and they would bring me a roast beef sandwich, well done.

When I think back, of the roast beef sandwich, I think of love, my mother, dad and sister and how they gave their every Sunday to come to see me all those months.

- [Narrator] In New Brighton, PA, the Dockieos, have a beautiful home and a good life.

But there was a time when life wasn't so kind for Harvey and his brothers.

- [Harvey] It was in December of 1941, my brothers and I went there.

- [Narrator] The four young Dockieo brothers found themselves at Cresson when their mother contracted TB.

- We didn't have much of anything, and it was hard for her.

- [Narrator] Because their father worked 16 hour days to support the family, the boys were sent to the Children's Home at Cresson.

It was a preventorium, keeping healthy kids isolated from their tubercular parents.

- It was kind of mysterious.

- [Narrator] It was also no nonsense, children went to school, and worked mopping hallways and dusting the wards.

- [Harvey] That was not everyday.

- [Narrator] There was time for outdoor activities, but for the children no radio, no comics, no talking at dinner.

- And if you wanted the butter, you held up your butter knife and somebody seen it and they passed the butter down.

Everything had a code, if you didn't obey, they would punish you, they'd either take you and isolate you in a closet or they'd put you on your knees.

- [Narrator] Like many children at Cresson, Harvey would have his first Holy Communion at the sanatorium's chapel.

But the most memorable picture is this one.

Harvey, standing outside a smaller TB facility in Monaka, PA where his mother was transferred.

She could only talk to Harvey through the window, still separated from her children after two years.

- [Harvey] When I look at that picture of my mom looking out the window, I know she was suffering and she wanted to be with her children, she wanted to be part of the family, she wanted to make sure they were taken care of.

- [Narrator] Mary Dockieo died in this building, she was only 36.

- [Joan] He is the best thing that's come into my life, that's for sure.

- [Narrator] Joan and Pete Stelarsky have a Cresson story too, one with a happy ending.

Joan was a nurse at The San.

Pete was just out of the Navy, and single, when he was sent to The San from his home in Canonsburg.

- I had my two upper lobes removed.

- He was very sick.

When I first saw Pete, he had such pretty blue eyes and he says, "All the girls tell me that," you know, so.

- [Narrator] Romance often bloomed at The San.

Patients falling for patients, or for somebody on staff.

- She gave good shots.

- [Narrator] But after Pete's release, he couldn't forget the nurse who had been so kind.

- I got a phone call, and it was from him, and we've been together ever since.

- Still love you, dear.

- Still love you, dear.

(laughing) - [Chuck] So this reunion is long overdue.

- [Narrator] In August of 2011, former patients and staff of The San gathered at the Cresson American Legion for their first ever reunion.

They browsed through memorabilia that hadn't been seen in decades.

- This is unit two.

- [Narrator] They marveled at Fred Connacher's model of the sanatorium.

- Good years.

- Good years.

- [Narrator] They came from all over the country.

Helen Jones is 92 from Rialto, California, she was a nurse at The San from 1950 until 62.

- I made a lot of friends and I wanted to see if I could reunite with some of them.

- [Narrator] And she did, even though a few coworkers didn't know her at first.

- Are you on this one?

- Yes, right here.

- Okay, I know, now we know who she is.

- We were just saying you were a good nurse.

- Yes!

(laughing) - Thank you, thank you.

- You were supervisor.

- Right.

- Yes you were.

- It was a happy place in most cases, even though a lot of the people knew they would never be cured, but they always had a happy attitude, hoping to be cured.

- Scary, very scary.

- [Narrator] Audrey Sweeney of York, Pennsylvania, doesn't have such fond memories.

- Because I was tortured.

- [Narrator] As a 12 year old TB patient, she remembers mean staff members and being forced to do laundry when she was sick.

- And I would have to do the towels.

Here I am in a sanatorium with TB and I'm sick, and they're making me do all this.

Nobody would do anything, I even told my parents and they wouldn't do anything.

- [Narrator] For years Audrey harbored bad feelings about her time at Cresson, and then she learned of Chuck's website.

- The tears just came like, gangbusters.

- [Narrator] For Audrey Sweeney, this gathering meant something very different than it did for the others.

- I ran away three times.

Oh, they were so mean to me.

- Yes, some of the stuff, you had some very bad experiences.

- And I says, "You actually remember that?"

He says, "Yes I do."

- Oh my god, I'm glad some, see I told you!

- [Narrator] It was a validation of her angry memories.

- See, that's something though.

- You're not alone.

- It was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

- [Narrator] In a small cemetery near the former sanatorium are the graves of tuberculous patients whose families could not or would not claim their bodies.

Those who attended the Cresson San reunion thought it was appropriate to end their weekend here.

(bagpipe music) - [Chuck] We laid a wreath in memory of all the patients that were buried up there because they really were forgotten.

- [Narrator] The last tuberculosis patients left the Cresson Sanatorium in 1964.

It became a home for the mentally challenged and then a correctional institution.

- [Chuck] There is a certain irony to the fact that now it is a prison.

- [Narrator] With memories both tragic and triumphant, the people who walked these halls, who shared their stories on Chuck's website, who gathered for the reunion, are thanking Chuck Felton.

They say he preserved history and revived the spirit of The San.

But from the solitude of the chapel on Cresson Mountain, Chuck says it's the staff and volunteers from decades ago who deserve all the credit.

- It wasn't until I started putting this website together that I realized the enormity of the effort that it took to take care of us.

Since I can't thank them personally, then this website, that's gonna have to be my thank you to them.

(slow, calm music)