In remembrance John Henderson Beard: June 12, 1923—December 9, 1982.

Abstract

From the very beginning of his professional life, John Beard chose men and women suffering from mental illness as his people, the people he sought to understand, and for whom he endeavored to devise a model of rehabilitation that would enable them to take their rightful place in our society.John Beard came to Fountain House as Executive Director in 1955 and found an ideal environment to develop a culture in which his people could feel that they were wanted, that they were needed, that they were welcomed, and within which they could make a contribution that would allow them to gain or regain their sense of vocational competence and social independence.Central to this culture was his unique design of transitional employment that he had originally conceived in the early 1950s while a young social worker at a mental hospital in Detroit. He brought this concept with him to Fountain House and built it into a rehabilitation partnership with commerce and industry that has proved an outstanding success in facilitating the vocational rehabilitation of clubhouse members at Fountain House and in facilities nationwide.The unique model that John created at Fountain House attained national recognition. In 1976, under John's leadership, a National Training Program was initiated at Fountain House that has resulted, thus far, in the establishment of over 131 clubhouse programs across our country, based on the Fountain House model.