One spring day in May 1992, Rosemary Kelly stood among a small cluster of people gathered for the opening of Rose Hill Center, a private, nonprofit mental-health facility in Holly, Mich. Founded by Rosemary and her husband, Dan, the center still smelled of fresh paint. Rosemary, 55, felt like a pioneer - nervous, apprehensive, on the brink of the unknown.

She turned to her 31-year-old son John. "If it weren't for you," she whispered, "all this would never have happened." John smiled, and they squeezed each other's hands.

"Here they come," someone called out. Everyone watched the approaching car. Haggard and wary, a woman emerged from the back seat, shooting a hard look around her.

Rosemary recognized that glare. She'd seen it on John's face in the past - and if Rose Hill didn't succeed, she knew she might see it again. We absolutely must not fail, she vowed. 

His hand outstretched, John walked toward the newcomer. Her name was Doris. "Welcome to my home," he said gently. "Now it's your home too."

Six years earlier, Dan Kelly, a 50-year-old business executive, walked in the door of his Bloomfield Hills, Mich., home and met his son John in the hall.

"Dad, look at this." John pointed to a box with a blinking light. "The FBI and CIA are bugging the house!"

At first, Dan thought his son was kidding. Then he noticed John's twitching face.

"You know it's a burglar alarm," Dan said. "No one's bugging us."

Moments later, John thought people on TV were talking to him. He answered back in an incoherent babble.

Ashen-faced, Dan rushed to his wife's bedside. Rosemary was recovering from a shattered pelvis suffered in a car accident four months earlier. "Rosie," Dan said in a hushed voice, "what's wrong with John?"

"I don't know," she answered. "I'm worried about him too."

When Dan returned to the living room, John's eyes blazed with fear. "You're not my father!" he screamed. John raced out the door and, with Dan in pursuit, ran to the front porch of a neighbor's home, where he huddled in a corner. That evening, November 25, 1986, John was admitted to the psychiatric unit of William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.

For weeks, he alternated between silence and incoherence. Anti-psychotic drugs didn't help. Rosemary, now up and walking on canes, visited every day.

A petite, energetic woman, she had devoted her life to raising her four children - Mary Jo, then 29, Patty, 27, John 25, and Theresa, 19. John had received special attention from the age of two when tests showed he was mildly retarded - the result, doctors thought, of an infection and a high fever in infancy.

Despite his limitations, John worked hard to succeed, attending an academically demanding high school. His mother, a former teacher, tutored him every day, and the two shared a favorite joke. When John finally graduated, they vowed, they would run down Woodward Avenue-Detroit's main thoroughfare-and wave John's diploma in triumph. After his graduation in June 1981, the entire Kelly family drove to Woodward Avenue, where John and his mother made their run, laughing all the way.

Soon after, John landed a job with a Detroit marketing firm. Then in the weeks before his 1986 breakdown, he grew agitated. He thought other drivers were staring at him and that painters at the Kelly home were spies.

Now, at the hospital, Dan, Rosemary and their daughters struggled to remember the joyful times as they watched John slip deeper into his private torment. Dan, a quietly forceful senior member of a large accounting firm, was accustomed to getting things done. Facing John's illness, however, he felt totally helpless.

Finally John's attending psychiatrist told the Kellys there was little hope their son would ever fully recover. "We suggest you place him in a long-term care facility," the doctor advised.

In March 1987, John was admitted to a long-term, private mental hospital in Hartford, Conn. For the first time, the Kellys had a diagnosis: paranoid schizophrenia, a devastating brain disorder that afflicts three million Americans.

After several months of drug therapy, John's inner voices went away, and he warmed to his parents again. But he was still wrestling with demons. By the summer of 1988, Dan had begun to wonder when John would be able to leave the hospital. With the right help, he believed, his son could lead a happier, more normal life. Earlier, after all, John had successfully dealt with his slight retardation. "In his own way," Dan told Rosemary, "John's always been an achiever."

John's parents transferred him to Gould Farm, a mental-health treatment community in Monterey, Mass. There, 40 "guests" did regular farm chores to help them regain control and a sense of purpose.

Not long after John arrived at Gould, his doctors cut back his drug dosage. Soon he found new energy, and the shattered pieces of his once-cheerful personality began coming back together.

Dan and Rosemary started looking for a mental-health group home closer to Bloomfield Hills. But even the most expensive ones offered care-taking only. "We rehabilitate people with broken legs in this country," Dan said in frustration. "Why don't we do the same for broken minds?"

In December 1988, Dan had an idea. "Rosemary, why don't we build a place like Gould Farm here in Michigan?"

"I'm with you," she said.

Less than a month later, Dan stood nervously before a group of friends and business leaders. "I don't pretend to be an expert in mental illness," he began. "But no one has to be a rocket scientist to understand what we need-a center to help rehabilitate the mentally ill. We want to teach them basic living skills and how to work again. I've seen this succeed-not only with my son but with other mentally ill people as well. They need a chance."

The couple took their message to civic and church groups and the mental-health community. They explained how existing facilities to rehabilitate the mentally ill could accommodate only three percent of those in need. In the country's revolving-door mental-health system, patients go in and out of hospitals, receiving little if any follow-up care. As a site, the Kellys settled on 372 acres of rolling hills, forests and farmlands in Holly, a rural community 60 miles north of Detroit.

Gradually, support grew-and with it, needed funds. John's former employer donated a quarter of a million dollars from a charitable trust. Scores of other companies and private citizens made donations, big and small.

After 19 months at Gould Farm, John Kelly moved into a small cottage at Rose Hill in the spring of 1991. For the first time since his illness, John was living independently and holding down a job, as a Rose Hill staff member. This marked a second stage in his rehabilitation. Along with solidifying his gains, he would now try to help others.

John worked hard, cutting down trees, building fences, splitting wood. Sometimes his sisters joined him, wielding paintbrushes and hammers.

Finally, on May 11, 1992, Rose Hill was ready to open. Doris was the first of 26 residents to arrive.

Like John, Doris came from a stable, happy home. As a teen-ager, she'd won a state beauty contest; she'd also designed many of her own clothes. Ambitious and hard-working, she aspired to a TV career.

Then, suddenly, she became withdrawn and frightened, hearing voices and seeing terrible images that weren't there. At 18, she received a diagnosis; like John, she was a paranoid schizophrenic. Hospitalized frequently, Doris lost the ability to care for herself, to work or to relate to others.

Now 34, she sat quietly in Rose Hill's community room. Many of the Kellys' friends and supporters had joined the center's first patients for the opening dinner.

John Kelly carried a steaming bowl of spaghetti. He kidded with two other staff members who lived in the cottage next to him. They were sitting next to Doris. "I want you to know," John said, turning to her, "that if you have any problems here, just come and tell me."

Rose Hill's executive director, Virgil Stucker, stood to welcome everyone. "This will be a place to fellowship," he said. "A place to heal and grow."

At Rose Hill, Doris found, there were no locks on the doors and no people in white coats. Staff and residents ate and worked together. Slowly, residents would learn to take more responsibility for their lives.

At first, Doris resisted change. "Get away from me!" she yelled in the morning as staff members tried to coax her from her room. When she finally did get up, she was reminded to tidy her room. "I'm not doing it!" she screamed. And she didn't.

She fought against farm chores too, "Farming is man's work," she told John, refusing to help. But John and the rest of the Rose Hill staff persisted. "Want to come see the animals?" he asked Doris one morning over breakfast.

"Okay," she said. They walked to the barn. Gently, he explained how he got up early every morning to feed and care for the livestock. He showed Doris his favorite cow. "She's real nice," John said encouragingly.

He led the way to a pastured where wire fencing was being put up. Although she said she hated the work, Doris began to help. She liked and trusted John. And she enjoyed being out in the warm sun amid the rolling fields and wildflowers.

"You know, John," she said one day as they worked, "I haven' cooked in a long time." Before her illness, cooking had been a special joy.

"Cook something at my place," he suggested.

Using apples from a nearby orchard, Doris made applesauce. "I love it," John said, savoring a spoonful.

Soon Doris was making salsa in John's kitchen from peppers she had grown in Rose Hill's vegetable garden. She baked banana bread, happily offering slices to other residents and staff and to her family when they visited on weekends. Gradually, living skills and friendships that had been lost to her illness began to return.

John continued to encourage her, letting her use his kitchen whenever she asked. He trusts me, Doris thought proudly.

After dinner some evenings, Doris walked the half-mile to John's house. There she relaxed with him and his two housemates. "You're gonna do better and better," John promised. "You'll see." With John and the others, Doris felt at peace.

Step by step, Doris was also improving in other ways. She began managing her own medication, her personal hygiene was better, and she was keeping her room neat.

In the spring of 1993, Doris took a job at a nearby fast-food restaurant. It was the first time she'd worked in over 15 years. "I think I'm ready to be on my own," she told Rose Hill's clinical director, Paula Wollin.

Rosemary Kelly came to Rose Hill almost daily, and she saw the many changes in Doris. "Do I look okay?" Doris asked one morning.

"You look wonderful!" Rosemary was delighted to see that Doris now cared about her appearance. To Rosemary, every passing day seemed to make Doris less afraid.

On July 2, 1993, on the circular drive in front of Rose Hill's main building, residents and staff gathered to mark Doris's graduation day. Together, they sang "So Long, Farewell" from The Sound of Music.

"You are somebody!" they cheered.

Eyes misting, John hugged Doris. "I'm happy for you," he said.

"Thanks for being my friend," Doris whispered.

Doris continues to live on her own, taking computer courses that she hopes will lead to a rewarding career.

John Kelly still rises early every morning to take care of the animals. He keeps reaching out to patients whose suffering he knows so well. "Rose Hill," he says, "is where I want to be."

Serious mental illness remains an incurable problem, and Rose Hill does not claim to have all the answers. Nevertheless, says Dan Kelly, "Rose Hill offers a hopeful example of how much the mentally ill can accomplish-if we just give them the chance."