By RAY REED The News & Advance

LYNCHBURG, Va. - Not all of the people who were sterilized during Virginia's eugenics program were feeble-minded.

Lewis Reynolds, a Lynchburg resident and 30-year veteran of the Marine Corps, is one of them.

Reynolds, who suffered from epilepsy as a child, was given a vasectomy at age 13 at what is now the Central Virginia Training Center in Madison Heights. A doctor wrote that the procedure "will take a big burden off him in the future."

Reynolds wasn't sure what was being done to him. But he knows the result.

"Sometimes I cry when I see a lady pregnant or something like that. I always wanted children and never could have them," he said recently. "Sometimes I get off by myself and cry."

An advocacy group called the Christian Law Institute hopes Reynolds can help it persuade Virginia to make symbolic payments to surviving victims of the misguided science of eugenics, which developed in the 1920s in the belief that people with mental disabilities shouldn't be allowed to reproduce.

A majority of the victims, male and female, were sterilized in the Madison Heights institution known in that time as the State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded.

Mark Bold, the Lynchburg-area spokesman for the advocacy organization and its executive director, said Reynolds "is somebody that has an incredible story to tell, with some photos as well. He's impressive and articulate."

Bold said the group is calling on Gov. Bob McDonnell to establish a task force to identify victims of sterilization and "determine the appropriate method of compensation."

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Vet talks of forced sterilization by Virginia