Still soaring after celebrating daughter Simone’s lovely outdoor wedding overlooking Buzzard’s Bay and Cape Cod in July and then spending more quality time with friends and family in the Hamptons. We are back home in Cleveland now, and last night had dinner on Lake Erie’s Gold Coast at a restaurant called Summer Place. It offers a panoramic view of the city skyline and its Great Lake.
As we were leaving after a fine dinner of steak and seafood, I took a closer look at a photo-lined hallway. The pictures featured a youngster with Down syndrome happily interacting with typical kids and adults. In one photo, the happy teenager featured in the gallery is wearing a smart suit and school tie.
As Erica and our friends were leaving the restaurant, Tony George the owner of Summer Place introduced himself. Why the photo gallery, I asked? That’s my 16-year-old son Michael, he told me.
In the more than 50 years since the Willowbrook exposés, I have had an unbreakable bond with the families of kids with special needs. The parents see me seeing their children and know that we are on the same team, that I sympathize with the enormous challenge and sacrifice they experience to give their kids the best, longest life possible, and on that front, there is good news.
In the bad old days of institutions like Willowbrook, life expectancy for a child with Down syndrome was about 10 years. As recently as 1983, according to the National Institutes of Health, the average lifespan was up to 25 years.
Now with the closing of institutions and opening of group homes and other services, people with Down syndrome can expect to live on average to 60 years old, and there is no reason that the good news on life expectancy can’t keep coming.
According to the NIH, there are approximately 200,000 individuals living with Down syndrome in the U.S., one in 700 newborns, and advocates say, “they wear their diagnosis on their faces, and are often subjected to bullying, prejudice and cruelty.”
Back to Mikey’s wall at the Summer Place restaurant in Cleveland. Erica and I were in tears as owner Tony George shared the tragic story of his son’s death at age 16, not from anything related to his Down syndrome but to his long struggle with leukemia.
Tony told us how the community loved Mikey, who, like many Down syndrome kids, was joyful and enthusiastic. He was the only Down kid at St. Edward’s High School. Now there are 20 in a special program that prepares them for life in the community and even provides free rides to college. The program is known as Mikey’s Miracle.
The owner of dozens of restaurants from Florida to Ohio, Tony and his wife Kristine donate 100% of the profits from Summer Place to the cause, while the Michael T. George Student Success Center at Saint Edwards High School is among the reminders of Mikey’s life.
The photos in the restaurant lobby celebrate a beloved young man and champion the cause of giving every kid a chance to live their best lives.
Photos provided by Geraldo Rivera.
