Susan Senator

I was brimming over with thoughts on Special Olympics, and so I put together a couple of commentaries while sitting in my hotel bed in Wyoming one morning two days ago. Here is the commentary that was posted on wbur.org, a piece with excerpts from a Washington Post oped I did a few years ago; and here is the oped that appeared in today’s Boston Globe. Obviously I think the world of Eunice — and her family. I’m not a starry-eyed Kennedy fangirl. There is real meat to her achievements. How many of us have dreamed of starting a school for our kids, where they would be understood, at last? I know I have. But did I go ahead and do it? No, and not because reality intruded, but because Ned did! But — Eunice actually made Camp Shriver. Her son Tim told me what it was like that morning in 1962 to wake up and look out his window at what was going on in his backyard. Mostly he thought, “What will I do today?” Kind of sweet, and look what he ended up doing, as a grown man!

Granted, Eunice Shriver had a bit more access to key people, resources (and a bigger back yard!) than most of us, but still, to see it all through and then grow it to an international movement through your children — just beyond.

It all comes down to our kids, in the end. Special O makes Nat happy, helps him learn. Helps him connect with others, and be a hero to his family. What could be more important?