The alumni!
We have spent a portion of our time among the less fortunate of this world in our geographic area for a large number of years now but we recently discovered a facet of some of their lives that we had never considered before. We were sitting among some of them this past week and they brought up the fact that several of them had participated in the Special Olympics during an earlier portion of their lives. In effect, they were Special Olympics alumni of a sort.
Many who read this piece probably consider themselves to be alumni of some organization or another. We are alumni of the Vienna school system here in Illinois as well as being a traditional alumni of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois where we went to college for several years. Despite all of that association we had simply never thought of anyone considering themselves to being products of something like the Special Olympics but the organization which was founded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver back in 1962 during her brothers presidential administration--the Kennedy years--has apparently had a very profound and positive legacy on those with intellectual disabilities who have, by the millions, participated in it around the world for the last fifty years or so.
We can remember when the Special Olympics started with a push from president Kennedy around the time that another organization that he began--the Peace Corps--was getting under way with positive results around the world. It was a time during the sixties before Kennedy died that there was a positive upswing in peoples feelings about other human beings despite the always ever present encroachments of the Cold War and the competition that existed between the two spheres of influence in the world. The competition that was fostered by the Special Olympics was different from the efforts of the sparing partners that were the United States and the Soviet Union. Special Olympics fostered the idea that by simply competing, everybody won. The “athletes” who trained for the games got some much needed exercise and despite the promise that there were no losers in these competitions, there were some keen rivalries that formed up among those who participated that sometimes, like the real Olympics, lasted for years at a time.
There was criticism of the Special Olympics because of the idea that there were really no losers at the time that the organization first sprang into existence and many of those criticisms still rage on in some circles and in some minds today. However, few can argue that the organization has done far more good than it has ever done harm because, among other things, it has highlighted the idea that even the least gifted and talented among us has something to offer if they are simply given a chance. We were relaying this story to a friend of ours the other day and he, a member of the medical community who deals in intellectual disabilities, happily remembered a time when he was at one of their events and this large imposing child man greeted everyone at the door as they came in with a hearty Hi! Which prompted others to smile and realize that even if he was large, he was no threat to them at all and was, in reality, their friend.
Many of those who participated in the Special Olympics have since departed this earth because, all too often, they do not live traditionally normal lives and do not have normal life expectancies either. But there are many people now in their fifties and sixties who have fond memories of their times participating in the Special Olympics and it has been a ray of sunshine in sometimes otherwise dull lives. It has been proven that participation in any kind of athletics helps to build a better adult human being simply for the effort that they put in at the time that they did it. Competition of practically any kind brings those who compete closer together and they bond to form a fraternity that often lasts for a lifetime. Those who participated in Special Olympics are no different in that regard and they are better people for the effort that was put out for them and the efforts that they put out themselves. There was a time when people like these were discarded from regular society and kept locked in closets or rooms or institutionalized but we are reasonably sure that what organizations like the Special Olympics have done for them has made this world a far better place. And we are also reasonably sure that those who have volunteered to help in these competitions are far better people for having done so.
A child is a very precious commodity and the alumni of the Special Olympics have, so often, kept a child’s view of life while their supposedly better off contemporaries have disintegrated into a pile of lost dreams and disillusionments and the bitterness that so often accompanies that. It says, in the book of Matthew in the Christian Bible, that as you treat the least of these, you treat your maker. If that be true then those who help those in Special Olympics have a very bright and everlasting future ahead.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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