After graduating from USC in 1965, Bronston began his residency at the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Kansas, but was expelled from the institution after leading a sit-in for improvements in wages and working conditions for direct support professionals.

[7] At twenty, Bronston married his first wife Janet, a flight attendant for Trans World Airlines (TWA), whom he had met two years earlier.

[14] After graduating from USC in spring 1965, Bronston flew across the country to coordinate a national students movement in the health sciences, aided by his access to discounted flights from his wife's job at TWA.

[17] During his senior year of medical school, Bronston toured various post-doctoral programs in Sweden for intellectually disabled children but was unable to attend because the draft board prohibited him traveling abroad.

[22] In 1968, Bronston moved to New York City, where he worked as the primary physician in a Harlem poor people's medical center run by the Black Panther Party.

[27] Bronston reported being shocked by the institution's "general disregard of modern medical practice" and scheduled weekly meetings with Jack Hammond, the director of Willowbrook.

[30] Under his plan, the ward would report accurate assessments of residents and be reorganized to follow the Swedish theory of normalization by mimicking the environment of a typical home.

The nursing supervisor and other staff members were opposed to Bronston's plan, which required the ward's organization be de-centralized into individual household units.

[28] While Bronston was protected from termination because of his civil service tenure, Hammond disciplined him by transferring him to buildings 22 and 23, which housed 470 adult women whom the staff considered the most difficult to control.

[33] In November 1971, Bronston invited Richard Koch [Wikidata], his university professor, and Jane Kurtin, a reporter for the Staten Island Advance, to visit the facility.

[34] By the end of the month, a group of 100 parents led a demonstration around the institution, holding placards reading "stop the job freeze" and blocking traffic on Victory Boulevard.

[36] The Federation of Parents Organizations for the New York State Mental Institutions—the collective body coordinating all the Benevolent Societies—demanded that a grand jury be raised to investigate whether charges of criminal neglect could be brought against Willowbrook officials.

[37] Hammond's efforts to suppress protest further emboldened parents and staff; by the last weeks of December, pickets were frequently held in front of Willowbrook and the Advance published numerous investigative reports on the institute.

[39] In March 1972, a group of fifty parents, lawyers and professionals including Bronston convened at the Mount Augustine Retreat House to plan and strategize a campaign to reform the institution.

[46] Bronston's memo was successful in influencing director David Loberg to overturn a ruling mandating the North Los Angeles County Regional Center continue to fund the institute.