Memorial ceremony to honor Patton's dead

A memorial ceremony wil be held from 1-2 p.m. Monday in the Patton State Hospital Auditorium honoring those who died and were buried in unmarked graves on Patton's grounds.

The event is hosted by the California Memorial Project, an organization dedicated to ensuring that the many people who died and were buried on state mental hospital grounds in years' past are not forgotten.

This year marks the sixth annual event at Patton.

More than 2,000 former patients remain buried on Patton's grounds and another 42,000 people are buried on hospital grounds statewide. Many of those who are buried on Patton's grounds were buried there between 1893 and the mid-1930s, a time when patients whose bodies went unclaimed by family were often buried on the grounds of state mental hospitals.