Southbury Training School

Connecticut

In 1976, John Lennon gave away his Oscar to raise money for a state school in Southbury, and it brought in six hundred dollars.

historicalpeopleculture

John Lennon won an Academy Award in 1970. Six years later he handed the statuette over to be auctioned off for a state school in Southbury, Connecticut. The sale raised six hundred dollars. That was it. The same statuette came up for auction again in 1992, and this time it went for a hundred and ten thousand dollars, with part of the money again going to the school. The school is Southbury Training School, built in the nineteen thirties as a state-run home for adults with intellectual disabilities. It is a campus of a hundred and twenty-five buildings spread across sixteen hundred acres. And it was designed to need almost nothing from the town around it. It generates its own power and heat. It treats its own sewage, runs its own water, its own laundry, its own fire department and ambulance service.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
In 1976, John Lennon donated his 1970 Oscar statuette for auction to raise money for the school, which netted $600.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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