Back in 1990, the Monitor profiled some of the last people who still called the Laconia State School home. Once a sprawling institution spread over 2,000 acres with a population of more than 1,100 children and adults with disabilities, the school had dwindled to just 36 residents in a handful of small buildings. Soon, they would all be gone.

The school had been emptying out for a decade, prompted by a federal lawsuit demanding that the state care for people with disabilities in the least restrictive setting possible. Former residents were making their way in independent apartments and group homes across New Hampshire. The three dozen residents still at Laconia were those whom officials considered the most difficult to place - because of the extent of their disability, their advanced age or the institutionalization that had made social skills a challenge.

It was the beginning of a more enlightened era, but the remnants of the bad old days were easy to find - in the enormous, ghostly buildings falling into disrepair where residents had once spent their days mostly sitting around.

Through the 1970s, almost half the residents were not toilet trained; those who were used bathrooms with no doors. The institution was drastically under-staffed, and the death rate was significantly higher than at institutions in other states; many died from choking because feeding was not given proper attention.

In the 1978 lawsuit, parents testified about residents who became physically disabled through inactivity.

They described residents with bruises, scratches and cigarette burns and the use of straitjackets to control behavior.

Schooling was hit-or-miss.

It was only 18 years ago, but today that Monitor story reads like something from the musty pages of ancient history. There has been such a comprehensive revolution in the treatment, education and expectations of people with developmental disabilities that the details from Laconia are nearly impossible to believe. Like books about racial segregation or apartheid or the period before women could vote, it's easy to imagine those eras completely unconnected from our own.

They're not. And that's what makes a new effort to chronicle the experiences of the former Laconia residents so important.

As described by Monitor reporter Meg Heckman in a recent front-page story, several agencies that serve people with disabilities have such projects under way. People First of New Hampshire recently organized a reunion and plans to write a book based on the experiences of former state school residents.

The Community Support Network is sponsoring a lecture tour focused on the history of the state school and hopes to make a film about the lives of its residents.

The key to these projects is a desire to celebrate the remarkable progress of those former residents who have become thriving members of the community despite the severe obstacles put in their path early in life. Many of those residents are now growing old, so there is urgency to the undertaking. We must collect their stories now, while we still can.

More than a celebration, the history-making is also a warning - to bureaucrats and politicians and the rest of us: We must never go back.