When Bonnie Peruttzi came to lead Norman’s Transition House more than 40 years ago, she never intended to stay very long. She had interned in a mental hospital while in college in upstate New York and didn’t think that work was for her. She was wrong.
“It’s one of those things. Every day you get up and you love it,” she said this past week. “I didn’t expect to stay here. I didn’t think it was really me. It was the clients that changed me. One day I was sitting talking to a client and realized that at any given point, any of us can be in those opposite chairs.”