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The first Special Olympics games were held at Soldier Field in Chicago in 1968. Athletes from the United States, Canada and France participated in the games. In 1969, a group of volunteers organized the first Special Olympics Indiana games in…

"The biggest thing is the values that started with the Deinstitutionalization Project and went on through all of our projects about consumer advocacy, self-determination, empowerment to people with disabilities, language use... just totally different…

In 2016, Betty Williams received the Champions of Equal Opportunity Award from the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities. Betty received the award for her leadership in promoting voting rights, serving on committees…

When Byron Smith was in sixth grade, his mother got a call from his teacher. She said, "Byron is out there on the monkey bars and he's sitting on the top bar and he's not hanging on with his hands." “My mom said, ‘Let him alone. Yes, he may fall.…

"Now disability politics, you know, is not Republican or Democrats, it's really nonpartisan but you still have to be recognized as someone who's reliable and trustworthy," observes Jim Hammond in this 2013 interview. Working with legislators was part…

In 1964, Paul decided to interview at the Fort Wayne State School as a recreation aide. They had football and baseball games, dances, and a summer camp. Although these activities were fun, the experience was different in retrospect. The daily living…

"That's only for regular people, not for us kind of people." That’s what Darcus Nims says she was told when she wanted to take a typing class in school. Darcus founded Self-Advocates of Indiana, the statewide group of advocates with…

"Dickerson, I finally get it," a fiscally conservative State Senator from Hendricks County remarked. "He said, 'I'm on the board of directors of the bank and we hired this fellow with a disability. I don't even know what his disability is, but he's…

When he arrived in South Bend in 1980, the field of rehabilitation in Indiana "was in desperate need of some rapid growth," recalls George Soper. George had moved from Iowa, where he completed a doctoral work in the area of rehabilitation. Having…

“To be part of that and to watch the leadership and those agencies catch fire…" Connie Ferrell recalls the excitement of introducing supported employment to Indiana in the early 1990s. "At the time they were doing it, it was like heresy. And they had…