Gretchen Richard Reb papers

Born in Dubuque, Iowa, Gretchen Richard (1917-1975) moved to Chicago in 1937 at the age of 20. There she enjoyed the nightlife and worked her way up in the hospitality industry to be hostess at the elegant Camellia House of the Drake Hotel. In 1942 she married Everett Reb. Their daughter Roberta was born in 1943 and, after Everett returned from World War II, their son Richard in 1947. After the birth of each child, Gretchen Richard Reb experienced periods of anxiety and paranoia, brought on in part by her sensing that her husband no longer loved her. On July 17, 1950, Dr; Walter Freeman performed a transorbital lobotomy on her. Subsequent to the lobotomy, Gretchen Reb had periods of psychosis and was institutionalized at the Independence Mental Health Institute in Iowa where the superintendent Max Witte helped her to eventually lead a normal life outside the institution. Transorbital lobotomy as a treatment has been entirely discredited, but throughout his lifetime Dr. Water Freeman performed the procedure thousands of times and often with extremely negative outcomes for patients and their families. After Everett divorced her in 1954, gaining custody of the children, Gretchen lived in Iowa, visited by her children, until her death in 1975.