WINAHEAD

From Camp Shriver to the Special Olympics World Games

“Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”

Special Olympics motto

Mention Camp Shriver and it is likely you will get a puzzled look. Mention Special Olympics and chances are people will be familiar with the term, and even they may not know exactly what Special Olympics is all about. The forerunner of Special Olympics, Camp Shriver was started by Eunice Kennedy Shriver in 1962 at her Maryland farm, Timberlawn. It all began when a woman from Bethesda, Md. called up Eunice and told her that she was having trouble finding a summer camp for her child with intellectual disability. The child wouldn’t be accepted into a mainstream camp, and, at that time, the public education system couldn’t figure out what to do with special-needs children never mind supply them with summer activities. Then another woman told her almost the same thing.

Begun as a day camp, the first camp hosted 34 children whom Eunice had invited by asking special schools and clinics in her area to provide names of special-needs children who might be interested. Eunice also recruited high school and college students to act as counselors. The camp gave participants the opportunity to explore their capabilities in a variety of sports and physical activities. The Camp Shriver concept – that through sports people with intellectual disabilities can realize their potential for growth – began to spread, and in July 1968, the first International Special Olympics Games were held in Chicago, Illinois, USA. One woman’s vision is now a global movement that today serves 3 million people with intellectual disabilities in nearly 200 nations around the world

This year, the International Special Olympics games are being held in Athens, Greece, June 25-July 4, 2011. The Athens event is being called “The Olympics before the Olympics.” (The 2012 Summer Games are scheduled in London, UK.) In Athens, the 13th Special Olympics World Summer Games will host seven thousand athletes from 180 nations. Thirty sports will be represented over twenty-two venues. Despite the political and economic strife taking place in Greece, the games are expected to take place with minimal disruption. The organizers call the Games the “biggest sporting event in the world this year.” The Games began with a glittering opening ceremony, featuring probably the most famous disabled recording artist in the world, Stevie Wonder.

Every two years, thousands of Special Olympics athletes worldwide come together to showcase their athletic skills and celebrate the spirit of Special Olympics. The Games alternate between Summer Games and Winter Games and bring public attention to the talents and capabilities of people with intellectual disabilities. The Special Olympics World Games help to change attitudes and break down barriers that excluded individuals with disabilities from the mainstream of the community.

Team USA which will represent the United States consists of 317 athletes and 126 coaches including management team members. A training camp was held March 27-31, 2011 at San Diego State University. The camp offered a variety of coaches meetings and sport-specific training for athletes in athletics, aquatics, basketball, bocce, bowling, bicycling, equestrian, golf, gymnastics, kayaking, powerlifting, sailing, soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball. The camp at SDSU was the first time many of the athletes united with their Special Olympics World Summer Games coach and other athletes from all over the nation who will be joining them on their trip to Athens.

On Wednesday, June 22, President Barack Obama announced the designation of a Presidential Delegation to Athens, Greece to attend the Special Olympics World Summer Games. The Honorable Dr. Jill Biden will lead the delegation. The delegation includes: The Honorable Daniel B. Smith, U.S. Ambassador to the Hellenic Republic, Department of State; The Honorable Ann Stock, Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs, Department of State; The Honorable Kareem Dale, Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy; The Honorable Micki Edelsohn, Member, President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities; Mr. Bart Conner, Olympic Champion in Gymnastics, Special Olympics Executive Board Member; and Mr. Kenneth Melvin, Special Olympics Global Manager.

In Athens, the birthplace of modern sport, where the true values of competition were born, the talents and skills of Special Olympics athletes will remind us what the World Games are really about, all who participate are winners in their struggle for respect, inclusion and unity. To follow the Games, visit, http://www.specialolympics.org/special-olympics-world-games.aspx

Nebraska Memories Project

One of the more fascinating projects sponsored by the Nebraska Library Commission, is Nebraska Memories, a cooperative project to digitize Nebraska-related historical and cultural heritage materials and make them available to researchers of all ages via the Internet. The Nebraska Memories database houses digital collections created by Nebraska libraries and cultural heritage institutions such as museums and historical societies. Primary source materials such as manuscripts, diaries, photographs, sheet music, maps and oral histories are being targeted for inclusion.

Periodically, the Commission’s NCompass Blog, will feature a piece about photos or other entries that have been added to the Nebraska Memories database. A recent blog entry commented on the flooding along the Missouri River and featured photos documenting flooding of the Platte and Elkhorn rivers in 1912. A total of 33 photos documenting flooding in Nebraska are in the database. The earliest photos date to 1881.

What do photos about floods have to do with disabilities and disability services you ask? Nothing, except that as I was looking at the pictures, the unbidden question popped in to my mind, “What kind of pictures would I find in the database if I used the search terms disability and/or disabled? Would I find anything?” In due course, I ran a search and found five photos that used the term disabled in the historical notes accompanying the photo, thus providing implied commentary about how individuals who were ill, elderly, infirm, or who had disabilities were perceived at the time the photo was taken. The photos which span the period from 1916 through the 1950’s may be found at this link http://bit.ly/iq2FYd.

In 1916, what Nebraskan’s know today as the Beatrice State Development Center (BSDC), was then called The Nebraska Institute for Feeble-Minded Youth. The photo appeared in a report prepared for the Nebraska legislature by the Nebraska Board of Commissioners of State Institutions. According to the historical note, “[T]he Institute housed tuberculosis patients as well as mentally disabled patients.” A photo taken at BSDC in the 1950’s, notes that “Building C is used today (2009) as housing for individuals with developmental disabilities.”

Two items, a postcard and a photo, are part of the history of Omaha’s Alegent Health Immanuel Medical Center. A postcard labeled Immanuel Hospital and Nazareth Home, Omaha, Nebraska, shows the original hospital built in 1890. Later, the building outgrew its usefulness as a hospital and a second hospital was opened in January of 1910. The 1890 hospital building was then converted into the Nazareth Home to care for invalids and aged. The photo of the Immanuel Invalid Home has this historical note: “This is the third building used as Immanuel’s care facility for the disabled. It supported up to 60 patients.”

The 1918 photo of the Bethpage Mission at Axtell, Nebraska was featured in a 1918 Nebraska State Board of Charities and Correction report. The Mission was owned and operated by the Swedish Lutheran Church. It was designed to care for epileptics, insane, aged and incurables. Today it is run by the Desert Ministries and focuses on helping the developmentally disabled.

Today, we take offense at terminology once used to describe individuals with disabilities or the elderly: feeble-minded, mentally deficient, infirm, crippled, etc. We are offended and appalled (and rightly so) about the history of mistreatment of individuals with disabilities, the elderly, and other marginalized groups of people. Today, the medical model of disability is discredited; in its place, the social model is emerging. For each of society’s wrongs throughout history, social justice movements have fought back, painstakingly working for change. Success has often come at a high price.

I don’t know the source of this observation, but it goes like this: “Hindsight is always 20-20.” The point being made of course is that when we look backwards at history, we often judge it very harshly because know things people then did not know thus we have a much different perspective. We also have more advanced technology and other resources that weren’t available then. In my lifetime alone, we have so much more technology, so many advances in medicine that individuals who would not have lived or who once would have been excluded from society or institutionalized, or not been afforded an education, are active participants in society.

The Nebraska Memories Project captures and preserves bits of our visual and oral history. The descriptive content accompanying it gives us a window into our mindset, and values of the time. We can learn a great deal about ourselves, our communities and our history from the resources being digitized and preserved for the future. In one sense, each generation is critical of the last. It would be interesting and perhaps surprising, to know what future generations come to think of our own times.

Weightless, Technology and Disabilities

When I think about the way technology has changed the world and our lives, in my own lifetime, I marvel at what has happened. In my lifetime, technology has change how we cook, clean, learn and more. For example, cameras have become more sophisticated and have become even easier to use; typewriters went from manual to electronic models; a phone is no longer “just” a phone; computers have become smaller and smaller and ever more powerful– many tools and appliances we use in daily life are heavily influenced by computer-based technology. The mind boggles to think how much every aspect of life has been altered in some way by technological innovation.

So it is with adaptive technology. Many technologies initially marketed to the disabled community have now gone mainstream or are appreciated by society at large. Three such technologies that come to mind are dictation software e.g., Dragon Dictate, automatic door openers and the lowly “curb-cut.” The former is often used by executives and attorneys, the latter two are appreciated (perhaps unconsciously) by anyone with an arm full of packages or who is attempting to manage a stroller or a rolling suitcase.

I recently happened to see a demonstration on CNN of a “zero gravity” industrial arm that attaches to heavy tools like riveters and grinders, making them effectively weightless for their human operators. The idea came from Steadicam, a stabilization arm that eliminates jolts and shocks from television camera movement. Called “zeroG” the industrial arm uses the same fundamentals that drive Steadicam technology. Both technologies were invented by Garrett Brown. Although Brown developed the zeroG device, the idea originally came from an industrial engineer at Honda, who approached him in 2006 to ask whether Steadicam arms could be used to hold tools. Brown teamed with a start-up company, Equipois, to bring the product to market.

The zeroG devices are roughly the size of human arm and are made of aerospace-grade aluminum and steel. The “arms” come in two sizes, and require no outside power to operate. Instead, they simulate weightlessness by creating a counterbalance: each arm uses a large spring that pulls upward with constant force on a tool. According to Gordon, “the actions cancel each other out, when the arm holding the tool moves, the position of the end of the spring changes to compensate for the movement.”

The zeroG arm uses a gimbal, a structure to hold the tool in place while allowing it to rotate freely, so factory workers can manipulate familiar tools the way they always have. And the arms can be mounted almost anywhere: on walls, tables, floors or mobile carts. In the CNN video, Brown and Gordon talked about how as industries become more familiar with the zeroG device, more and more applications are being suggested and tried.

The zeroG has proven itself in in the world of industry; this unique technology reduces injuries, increases productivity, and decreases costs in the workplace by enabling workers to maneuver heavy objects as if weightless, but with total freedom of motion. According to Brown, he sees great potential for the arm to aid the disabled and I would agree. Initially I can see the technology being of benefit for those with disabilities who have limited range of motion or strength. With time, experience, user input and innovation, I expect this “weightless” technology to be developed for other applications for those with disabilities.

Pictures of the arm in use may be viewed at the Equipois Facebook site, http://www.facebook.com/equipois?sk=photos. More information and two videos are available at the Equipois site, http://www.equipoisinc.com/.