I sometimes wonder what was going through Eunice Kennedy Shriver\u2019s head when she came up with the idea of Special Olympics and turned her backyard in 1962 into a summer camp for disabled kids.<\/p>\n
They say it was for Rosemary, her older, learning disabled sister. That Eunice saw how difficult things were for her and was inspired by her struggle, and that she also saw that including Rosie with the right support worked out well.<\/p>\n
It is certainly true that having a disabled person in your life can really alter your perspective. You become very familiar with the dark underside of the world, the realm of \u201ccan\u2019t do\u201d and \u201cwill never be.\u201d<\/p>\n
My son is autistic, and I have been jamming my foot into closing doors all his life. From the renowned doctor who shrugged and pronounced him \u201cretarded,\u201d to the synagogue that would not let him have a Sabbath bar mitzvah, to the local principal who was afraid to have him attend her school.<\/p>\n
One day, however, a door swung open wide where we least expected it: sports. Nat, at age elevn, tried a gymnastics class run by Special Olympics. The coach was inexperienced with autism but full of energy and patience. She worked him hard and got him to the State Games that summer. We experienced the odd sensation of feeling both proud of our son and of being able to trust others with him. Then at fourteen, Nat learned how to swim, on the local Special Olympics swim team, and it was the first time he ever seemed to look forward to something. \u201cSwim races, swim races,\u201d he would say over and over, with a huge grin. Now, at eighteen, Special Olympics taught him how to be a part of a basketball team.<\/p>\n
Our life with Nat is often very hard, but at his sporting events it is not. There, he\u2019s just another team member playing his hardest. Nat is just one of the guys, and we are like everyone else. There is no \u201ccan\u2019t\u201d in Special Olympics. Whether she knew it or not back then, I think this is what Eunice Kennedy had in mind when she set up that daycamp. Even though the Special Olympics athlete\u2019s pledge is \u201clet me be brave,\u201d the stunning thing about Special Olympics is, we parents don’t have to be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tonight in Boston there is an event for Special Olympics, honoring its founder, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, at the JFK Library. Maria Shriver, and her brothers Mark, Anthony, and Robert. will be part of a forum on the Special Olympics movement. Their brother Tim could not attend, which is too bad because he’s the actual CEO […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-bT","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}