Thanks, Bob Montague, for that long and eloquent introduction. You can tell we’re coming to the end of this conference. That’s a gentle hint that I should be brief, but I’m not going to be brief; I’ve got too much to say.
I’d like to begin by thanking Bob Montague, John Chromy, Tom Songster, Frank Hayden, Monty Castevens, Dr. Bob Cooke, who’s the Chief Medical Officer of Special Olympics, and Herb Kramer, who isn’t even here but who has worked with us for many years and still does work for Special Olympics.
I’d like to start off by expressing my deep appreciation to them for organizing this conference, for the extraordinary work they’ve all contributed to Special Olympics throughout the ages, not just the years, but the ages, because they have been with us since Special Olympics was truly just a fledgling organization. It wasn’t so long ago that the Special Olympics Headquarters consisted of seven people. When was that? Well, it was less than ten years ago, and they have been with us every step of the way from then until today. And so I wanted to particularly mention their names and thank them for the tremendous contributions they have made to the growth and success of this program.
I am looking around the room but don’t see her, --- Oh there she is! I wanted to say that --- I guess it’s obvious but it needs to be repeated none of us would be here if it weren’t for my wife, Eunice Shriver, who’s sitting back there. I said this before I guess, but I’d like to repeat it. “She is one of the truly remarkable human beings that I’ve ever met.” And now that I’ve reached my advanced age and been kicked around from one continent to the other, I can say that you can take the higher members of the Polit Bureau of the Soviet Union or people like General De Gaulle in France or even her famous brother John F. Kennedy and you can take people who are not quite that prominent but who are extraordinary people in the sense that the devotion they give through their lives to work with poor people, like individual Peace Corps Volunteers working overseas, or missionaries from various churches. Were living overseas I’ve never seen one of them who has devoted themselves more fully and as more successfully to the plight of underprivileged, If you will, or underserved or disregarded, rejected human beings, as has Eunice in her life. There’s no award that she doesn’t deserve to have. She’s beginning to get a few of them, like the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but she deserves a lot more than she’s gotten.
And I just want publicly, to say that having I said kicked around and been kicked around in a lot of places in different circumstances, I think in nearly every country in the world, I’ve never met any human being to surpass her compassion or ability. So that’s my wife!
I’d like also to congratulate the two members here present who have been elected to the Development Committee of Special Olympics, John Braun and Dave Atkins. Did I say congratulate them? I guess I used the wrong word; I’ll commiserate with them, and say that I have grave doubts now about Dave Atkins intelligence. He’s been on that Committee for two or three or maybe even four years, I can’t remember exactly which, and anybody who’s been on it for that length of time who’s willing to take another term on it needs to be examined. John Braun he’s just getting started; he’ll find out what I mean. He didn’t know any better!
I thought it would be worthwhile just to talk for a few minutes about some of the higher points, at least in my judgment, of this gathering.
First, I’d like to talk just a minute or two about Outreach. You’ve heard so much about Outreach, I can guarantee you’ll not hear anything new from me about it, but I want to state that we are truly committed to the Outreach Program. Our headquarters is committed to it. You’ve heard speeches by my wife about it. There’ve been speeches by members of our Board of Directors, nationally and internationally, about Outreach. Bart Connor went to the Council for Exceptional Children convention this past year and gave a speech about Outreach. We’ve shown movies about Outreach. There is no question about the fact that our organization, as an organization, is committed to expanding the number of human beings whom we serve.
There is no reason for us to rest on our laurels; there’s no reason for us to feel we’ve done the full job when so many tens of millions of people with mental retardation have never participated in any Special Olympics program. Its always mind boggling, to me at least, when I consider the fact that there are between 250 million and 300 million human beings on the face of the earth who are mentally retarded. And let’s just say we reached a million or even say we reach two million of them. We can easily see that we have just skimmed the surface of the total number of human beings who could benefit from a Special Olympics program. Obviously we will never reach over 250 million people but maybe I should say that we will reach 250 million people. This has been a miraculous organization from the beginning, so maybe someday we will have 250 million people. But two million out of 250 million is not sufficient for all of us in this room to say we’ve done our job, we don’t have to expand. The fact is I believe we have done our job, don’t need to expand. The fact is I believe we have an institutional and a moral obligation to try to the best of our ability to bring the values of Special Olympics to as many millions of people as is humanly possible for us to do.
Now sometimes I know that sounds like a mere numbers game. Some people get the idea that we’re, so to speak, overcome by numbers; quantity rather than quality. Well, we’re not overcome by numbers as compared to quality. We do believe that we need to keep up the quality as well as the numbers, its exciting, at least it is for me, when I think about a city the size of Milwaukee committing perhaps the entire public school system in that city to Special Olympics. If Milwaukee does that successfully, with the help of our Board in Wisconsin, it will probably double the number of people in Special Olympics in Wisconsin. It will raise problems and opportunities that have never been confronted before by our Board of Directors in Wisconsin or perhaps by our International Board of Directors. There’s a possibility that the city of Chicago will do the same thing. One of the former President’s of the Board of Education out in Chicago, a man named Mr. Munoz has written to us and offered to move into the Chicago situation and attempt to do just that, namely put the entire Chicago public school system behind Special Olympics. You know that already in St. Louis there’s been movement in that direction. And up in Philadelphia, Connie Clayton, the Super intent of Public Education has been putting the people in her own administration behind the movement of Special Olympics in the schools of Philadelphia. If that beginning should turn into a general across-the-board movement in the United States, the total number of people touched and helped by Special Olympics might easily double within the U.S.A. between now and 1991. In other words, there is movement out there and the response on the part of people never before interested in Special Olympics indicates that we may be able to achieve huge steps forward within the U.S.A. in terms of the number of human beings we can serve through our programs. I’m del therefore, that so much time and energy and conversation have been devoted during this gathering to the Outreach program. It’s an integral part of our work today and I believe of our future.
I’d also like to speak for just a minute about finances. I’m very pleased that at the international level we were able to enlist in our work, Norman Bolz, our Director of Finance. Some of you know that Mr. Bolz was Vice Chairman of the Board of Coopers & Lybrand for many years. He was at one time, Assistant Director of the Internal Revenue Service of the United States. On behalf of Coopers & Lybrand he has been a man responsible for auditing and accounting of the entire Ford Automobile Company, of the Gulf Oil Company and other corporations of that magnitude worldwide. He was in charge, when he left, (he retired from Coopers & Lybrand) of all their work in the Far East, everything from Korea-right down to Singapore.
As such, he’s probably one of the ten or so most experienced people in accounting, auditing, and financial matters in our country. He’s retired, as you probably know, but we were lucky to sign him up to create a Department of Finance at a time when we desperately needed that because of the extraordinary growth in the financial aspects of Special Olympics. In 1983 the total budgets for all of the programs in the U.S.A. growth in the financial aspects of Special Olympics was $7.4 million. In fiscal 1989, that figure will be $67.4 million. That’s an increase in the budgets of the states in the U.S.A. of 811% in five years. Earlier today, talking to some of the Chapter Directors, I said that if we were a corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange, our stock would have gone right through the roof in the last five or six years. Rarely, in any kind of industrial enterprise, let alone a private philanthropy, has there been such growth in the finances of the operation. The budget of SOI, the International Headquarters, from 1983 - 1989 has gone from $1.2 million to $8.5 million. That’s a growth in the SOI budget of 650% . That’s a huge jump, but its actually less than the jump in the budgets of the states, which have gone up 811%. What this means to me is very simple, means to me is very simply , it means that as a result of your work, not just in the athletic aspects of Special Olympics, the programmatic aspects of Special Olympics, but also in the financial aspects you’ve been doing a fantastically good job. I’m not sure what I’m going to say now, but I’m going to risk it anyhow, I don’t believe that any philanthropy in the United States of America or anywhere else outside the United States has grown so fast as this organization, your organization. I think everyone of you sitting here should be extremely proud of what you’ve done and challenged and excited by what you can do in the future.
I’d like to talk again for just a few minutes about Outreach and point out that some things are happening in that movement that are of historical importance. We’ve started this year, as you know, a smallish program called “Athletes for Outreach.” There are fifteen persons in it. These are persons who have been in the Special Olympics movement, who have been successful as athletes in Special Olympics, and who are now working for Special Olympics recruiting other persons with mental retardation to participate in Special Olympics. I don’t really know how to express to you how unbelievable that fact is to me. You have to understand that when Special Olympics was started twenty years ago, nobody thought that persons with mental retardation could swim 400 yards or run more than 300 yards. We were advised at the first Games that it was very risky for us, medically, to allow Special Olympians to run more than a 200 yard race. Anything more and the athletes might drop dead on the track. But at these first the Special Olympians ran as much as 400 yards, that was in 1968. Think of the distance we’ve come in those days to the time now when Special Olympians are out on the platforms of public occasions in the United States recruiting people to be in Special Olympics. I mean its unbelievable! Standing up there and giving speeches. In fact, giving more effective speeches than I can give. Its embarrassing. Have any of you been on a program where you’ve had to give a talk and then a Special Olympian talks? Anytime that’s happened to me, I said, I wish I’d never been up there. They sell, if you will, Special Olympics much better than I can. But the very fact that their doing it is a phenomenon!
This year, I’ve had a personal experience that has moved me very deeply, when I’ve noticed the places where Special Olympics state games are being held. I’ve been to the state games in Ohio where the games are held in the huge Ohio State Football Stadium, and I’ve been to other places like that where they were in impressive surroundings, out at UCLA for example. But you will understand how provincial I am and narrow-minded when I explain to you that nothing ever touched me more deeply than to attend the Connecticut State Games and see the Connecticut Special Olympics athletes parade into the Yale Bowl, the place where I went to college, and never in my life thought I could walk on the grass. To see these athlete parade into the Yale Bowl, with a huge band playing music for their arrival and skyrockets going off overhead, and along with the Governor of Connecticut, two United States Senators, two other guys trying to become United States Senators, the Mayor of the city, all of them out there standing up for two hours while these Opening Ceremonies went on, you can only imagine how I felt. The same thing happened this year at Princeton University. And as a graduate of Yale, I’m very happy to report that Harvard has not yet reached this apogee. In a provincial, narrow-minded, bigoted way, I am attributing those qualities to myself, I can’t help but think that we have progressed significantly, when-state games are being held at Ohio State University, at Yale and at Princeton, six or seven or eight years after our International Games managed, with great effort, to be held on the campus of Central Michigan University; or at the State University of New York campus at Brockport, NY. There are not many people in this room who know where Brockport is, and I don’t even say that 80 % of the people here have heard of Brockport, including New Yorkers, but just think for thirty seconds what it means to have gone from holding Special Olympics games at Brockport, NY to holding International Games on the campus of Notre Dame University or at the University of Minnesota, or you’ve heard it said here, maybe in 1995 holding International Games in Paris or Athens. I mean that is unbelievable! To me, that is progress!
At the same time that we’ve made that kind of progress, the quality of what’s being carried on is astronomically different. Its unbelievable to see volunteers managing those Connecticut Games.
There were 3,000 volunteers there from one company, United Technologies, and there were a dozen other companies with volunteers actually conducting nearly all of the events. Donald’s used to be one of our principal national sponsors and they left us when they started the Ronald McDonald Houses and Ronald McDonald Charity operation, was present at Yale University. The local McDonald’s gave away 6,000 hamburgers a day and all of the Coca Cola anyone could drink. That was the local guy in Connecticut. And the pizza fellow, Dominos Pizza, they handed out 4,000 pizzas a day for nothing. Again, I say to you, if you just think back ten years or twelve years, let alone twenty years ago, those companies never heard of Special Olympics or giving away quantities of products way they were doing it. So I think in terms of our Outreach program, in terms of our Games, in terms of the quality of the competition (although much leaves to be achieved in everyone of those areas), huge progress has been made, and everyone in this room should be proud of being a part of it.
I think of the same thing in the area of Public Relations. It was an incredible thing, to me, when the American Broadcasting Company set aside two hours of prime time for a television show about Special Olympics, and when “Sports Illustrated” covered those games with four, five or six pages of copy and photographs. Remember, you have to understand that we’ve been trying to get a line into “Sports Illustrated” for ten years, unsuccessfully. But it was just last year that that organization finally recognized that sports for the mentally retarded was worthy of a big spread in “Sports Illustrated”. In fact, the author of that script, after he’d been in Notre Dame for a day or two actually said to somebody, that these games were very impressive, but they weren’t really sports. He said that to Bill Hurt, the movie actor, and Bill Hurt who had only been there two days, himself, and who was an athlete, turned on this guy from “Sports Illustrated” and chewed him out royally, and told him what Special Olympics was doing was really sports. And this fellow, the author’s name was Swift, turned white, and swiftly wrote a totally different article, a sports article.
I think that album of Christmas music is a miracle. An absolute miracle! Here’s this fellow about thirty years old named Jimmy Iovine, who had a tremendous love and respect for his dad, wanted to do something to honor his father who had died the previous Christmas came up with this idea that it would be wonderful to have rock ‘n roll singers sing Christmas carols. Well, I met Jimmy Iovine at a cocktail party that my daughter had out in Los Angeles, and he came over and described this idea to me. Let me tell you something, I don’t know anything about rock ‘n roll music, but I did know enough to react when he told me that he was going to get rock ‘n roll singers to sing Christmas carols. I at least had enough brains to react, saying to my son, “That’s a unique idea!”. None of those rock ‘n roll singers had never sung a Christmas carol And he was going to put them all together on an album? Well, as I say, I don’t know anything about rock ‘n roll music now, and I didn’t know very much then, but I knew that if he could do that it was a fantastic idea. And so I said fine; that’s a great idea! We accept!
Jimmy Iovine wanted to do this in honor of his dad and to benefit Special Olympics. I didn’t realize that he had made that same proposal to a number of other charities, and they said they would take it under advisement and when he had the record finished they would decide whether they would approve of it and accept it. Well I wasn’t very smart, but I was smart enough not to say that. Fortunately, his wife was a volunteer for Special Olympics. On the way home, Jimmy Iovine said to his wife, “You know I can’t do that.” To which she responded, “You’re going to do it or I will shoot you!” And so he started out. “I want you to know just a little bit about what that means. It means that for over a year, that guy worked night and day to put that album together. On one occasion, he flew to Scotland for four days in order to record just one of those songs up there where one of those groups was singing. He went over there at his own expense. He spent four days over there at his own expense. He recorded the song at his own expense, and he came back to the United States with that song. That’s what was needed to get one of those groups to do it. He never would have gotten the likes of Bruce Springsteen, for example, if he hadn’t known Bruce Springsteen for ten years, and had a relationship with Bruce Springsteen which enabled him to get Bruce Springsteen. The same is true of Madonna. So he did all that work individually.
I didn’t know about a lot of the people necessary to produce even one song, let alone ten or fifteen. But all the people who are known as mixers, and synthesizers, and a whole lot of names like that, (I’m a real square. I know it!) all those people worked for nothing. When the time came around to put that record into the cover, the jacket, they got one of America’s designers, Keith Haring, to design the jacket. The company that makes those jackets has a color, Christmas red, and then they have the ability to apply it to the letters, “A Very Special Christmas” so that it comes out in gold. For one jacket, the additional cost for putting that gilt onto those letters is one commercially. They put it on all the albums for nothing. We didn’t even ask them; they volunteered that to Jimmy Iovine. The lawyers who worked on that project, worked for nothing. Let me give you an example what that means, the job of getting those fifteen different artists onto that record, for example. First they all sang under different labels so we had to create a label which was new, a special Christmas album label, our label. Secondly, none of them would do it for nothing, or even do it at all, unless all of them did it for nothing. Well, that was okay because you’ve got eight, ten, eleven, then the next few were pretty easy to get. But there was one real problem and it was this. On that record was a song called “Run Rudolph, Run.” And it turns out that the man who wrote that song, had died about twelve years ago and there was a fight between his family and some other group as to who owned the copyright. So when someone sang “Run Rudolph, Run” and put it on the album, there was a squabble between the two groups about the fee. Now these two groups had never spoken to each other for twelve years because they were locked in a federal court case about who owned the copyright, to that song. Out lawyer, Paul Marshall is his name, went to those two contesting groups and said, “Look, you’ve never agreed to do anything together. I’m here to ask you both of you to give up your copyright fee, so that “Run Rudolph Run” can be , used on this record.” I want you to know something. Paul Marshall sold them. They had never agreed to do anything together in twelve years of court litigation, but they both agreed they’d give it up. This meant that all of the artists were able to give up their copyright fee and that’s 3%. That was a huge monetary contribution these people made. Practically nobody knows about these little details, but they are financially very important so important, in fact that the record returned more net proceeds to a charity than any record ever published in the history of recorded music. Let me say it again, that record produced more net proceeds for a charity than other record ever issued! And all of it was done without any effort on your part or my part. These people did it all out of the goodness of their hearts.
I think it was only a week ago, we got a letter in Washington, from “ABC Wide World of Sports” saying that they wanted to be sure we knew at the Headquarters of Special Olympics that the “ABC Wide World of Sports” wants once again to do with the 1991 Games what they did with the 1987 Games, or maybe even more. Once again, that’s an hour and a half of television time on the ABC network for the International Games. Well, Eunice remembers better than I how difficult it was to get “ABC Wide World of Sports” to give us ten minutes on that network just a few years ago. In fact, in 1975 they careless option to televise the Games. Now their writing to us four years in advance to be sure that they get an hour and a half minimum for the next games. ABC Television, right now, is trying to develop with us a Christmas show about Special Olympics for this Christmas. They’ve never had a Christmas show about Special Olympics. They’re trying to get that show together on their own initiative. These things are just a few in the public relations area that are going on nationally.
I think in the area of personnel of the extraordinary development within the Special Olympics movement. I’m talking about it at the level of your own State Boards of Directors, where the quality of the people, in most instances, has been greatly increased with more experienced people to begin with, and as a result of the Board Mentor program, which we’ve been running in cooperation with all of you. And think of it this way, also, that there are four, five or six people so interested in the Special Olympics movement that they are giving their time as mentors to go out and train members of the Boards of Directors in states other than their own. They’re doing this at their own expense. Sure we give them a couple hundred dollars as a fee for doing it, but in every instance, they’ve given the money back. These are people just like you or me or anybody else; they need money. They are doing this Board Mentor program for nothing. Its people like Billy Ray Stokes, some of you may know him, or Stu Mendleson who have gone and done a lot of these programs for us. And that means that the qualities of our administrative personnel at the state level, as well as at the international level is much better, I think, than in the past. I’m personally very happy that at our International Headquarters we’ve been able to enlist the services of people like Norman Bolz, Deborah Willis, John Mosher, and Maureen Cannon. Most of you have had the chance to meet them, during this convention, if you hadn’t before I don’t think there’s any question about the fact that by getting them to go to work for us, we have raised our level of competence at the national level to be of service to you as well as to the mentally retarded.
With your own Boards of Directors, I’ve noticed an increase in the quality of persons serving. I’ve been very interested to observe the growth and quality of the Sports and Training Directors that you all have in your state programs.
I’m interested to see that nearly ever one of the states now has a Family Director, a person dedicated to developing family participation in Special Olympics. Most of them, I believe, are still volunteers, that’s wonderful. To have a family program with somebody responsible for it is a big step forward. I was impressed, and hope it works out all right that Massachusetts is now paying $10,000 a year to Area Directors. They’ve got fourteen Area Directors who are on salary, so to speak, or at least part-time salary in Massachusetts alone, and two of them are High School Directors of Athletics. Ten years ago, a High School Director of Athletics wouldn’t have touched Special Olympics with a long pole, but now they’re working for it. I see this as an indication of tremendous progress.
Overseas, similar things are taking place. In September of this year, 150 people from 20 countries in Latin America will be meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina as a result of the work of Maria Elise Tassara who is right here. She’s the hostess to these 150 people who are coming down thane to Buenos Aires. She’s got the President of Argentina coming she may have the Cardinal and Archbishop for all I know. She’s got the head of Coca Cola, I mean the head of Coca Cola, going down there in his private plane. Can you imagine how important that is for Special Olympics in Latin America? This will be the most significant gathering of people dedicated to Special Olympics ever in the history of that continent.
Additional countries are joining Special Olympics. The Gambia, in Africa, for example many of you may not have heard too much about the Gambia but if you either saw the movie “Roots” or read the book, you recall that the black people described in that movie and book were from the Gambia. The Gambia has joined Special Olympics. Iceland wants to get into Special Olympics. It’s not a very big country; it is a very attractive country, however. Malaysia also is trying to come into Special Olympics. So Special Olympics is growing country by country around the world, not just within the U.S.A.
Sometimes I feel we don’t appreciate, fully, how significant it was when the International Olympic Committee gave official recognition to Special Olympics. The International Olympic Committee has been in existence since 1896. It has never given any organization the authority to use the word “Olympic”. In fact, they brought a lawsuit to try to stop Olympic Airlines, which is the Greek Airliner, from using the word Olympic, even though, after all, it started in Greece. They have brought suits all around the world to protect the word Olympic. We are, you are, the first organization in the history of the Olympics ever to have permission to use that name.
That means a great deal outside the United States. We’ve been lucky that the United States Olympic Committee gave us permission to use the word Olympic a long time ago, but internationally, the IOC is the leader, and to have that approval from them is unprecedented.
I’m pleased also that it is likely it isn’t certain, but it is likely, that there will be European Games in 1990 in Glasgow, Scotland. This is something they came to us with; we didn’t go out hustling to get Glasgow, Scotland. There’s nobody at our place smart enough to be doing that. But Glasgow, itself, is celebrating its 450th Anniversary. The local governmental body has already appropriated $4.5 million of tax payers money to underwrite any loss if it occurs with respect to the financing of 1990 European Special Olympics Games. There will be 19 or 20 countries sending athletes to those Games 4,000 of them, four times as many as we had at the first. It is interesting that a city like Glasgow, Scotland, without any instigation on our part would come forward to become the host of the European Games in 1990. We might get this to the point where Bill Bankhead will be groggy, because its possible that we will have European Games, then International Winter Games, then Asian Games, then African Games, then International summer Games, then European Games, and so on and so on, and this fellow will be jerked around right and left.
Well, obiviously I’m a bit wound up. I could go on for quite awhile.
How would you characterize the bottom line of this organization? I like to think, and say to myself over and over again, that we are all part of the fastest growing voluntary sports program in the world (pause)
I’d just like you to think about that. We’re all part of the fastest growing sports program in the world. And we’re probably already a part of the largest amateur sports program in the world. Dick Wilson, who is the Executive Director of the National Association of Fund Raising Executives, came into my office about 4 or 5 months ago, and suddenly he said to me, “Sarge, you know you’ve got an unusual situation here.” I said, “What do you mean?” “Well,” he said “we’ve been studying your situation, and I want you to know that the only organization in American philanthropy in America that has five specific qualities going for you.” I said “What are you talking about?” He said, “Look, first of all you are a sports program; and today that’s a very popular activity to be associated with. Secondly, you’re a program for the disabled, and the disabled movement is a very emotional and progressive new element in American philanthropy. Third, your program involves young people as well as adults. By picking people as young as eight years of age, and including people as old as eighty, you cover the entire spectrum. Practically, no other philanthropy does that. Fourth, you’ve got the magic word, “Olympic"; nobody has that but you. Next, you’ve got a string of some of the most important corporate enterprises in the world supporting you. Nobody has IBM and AT&T and Proctor & Gamble and Coca Cola and Visa and Kellogg’s, etc. And none of them have all of the private service organizations like Kiwanis and Civitan and the Knights of Columbus, like you have. Finally, no philanthropy in the United States operates on all continents of the world except you.” There isn’t one philanthropy in America that has all of those characteristics.
It is factors like the ones I’ve just described and others that I’ve mentioned that make me repeatedly say to myself and publicly that I think your program, Special Olympics International, is a modern miracle! No one, I mean no one, could have predicted its growth, its influence or its impact. This program has had more influence and impact in mainstreaming persons with mental retardation than any movement in the history of the world. It has changed public attitudes about mentally retarded persons more than any other movement. I’m so damned old now, I’ve been in places mentally retarded peopled in the middle of the day, sitting on the floor in their own excrement because there was nobody to take care of them and they didn’t have anything else to do. No athletics, nothing. They were almost incarcerated or in prison. We have on our own Board of Directors, the national Board of Directors, at least one persons with a mentally retarded child who won’t admit that today because the feelings of guilt or shame, or whatever the right words are, still are with that person. And those feelings of guilt and shame still exist to a great extent all over the world. Special Olympics has done more to bring mentally retarded persons out of that kind of incarceration, or that status of guilt or shame, than any other movement in history. The Chairman of our upcoming games in Minneapolis, the man who entered into a contractual negotiation with Special Olympics that he would personally put out $8 million to defray any shortfall in funds for those Olympic Games, that man is the parent of a mentally retarded child. Up until two years ago, he would never admit that. He never did anything with respect to mental retardation. He didn’t give a nickel or a dime and I’m not criticizing him, he’s a terrific guy, I’m only using him to illustrate that Special Olympics has brought him out.
Your organization is the first private international organization in the history of the world ever to have its Board of Directors a card-carrying Marxist/ Communist Cabinet Minister of a Communist government. Now that may not make too much difference to most people, but its interesting to me. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union and some time in other Marxist countries, and its a phenomenon to me that the Minister of Sports, a Cabinet Member in the government of the People’s Republic of China was permitted to accept a position on the Board of Directors of a private philanthropy. If you don’t think that’s unusual, let me tell you something, its never happened before. It shows the capacity of this enterprise of which you are an integral part to penetrate right through iron curtains or other kinds of inhibitions that people have had. Incidentally, that fellow is an extraordinary man. He was president of a university; he’s one of the greatest living authoritarians in China on the poetry of the T’ang Dynasty; and a man of that caliber, under the authority of the former leader, Mao Tse Tsung, was put into a labor camp for eight years digging ditches. Its only under the new leader, that he’s been brought back into the good graces and is now a member of the government of China.
Do you think that Special Olympics is able to overcome barriers or penetrate iron curtains or change human attitudes -- again I tell you, it’s a miracle. Think of this, we human beings are supposed to have been, according to anthropologists, walking around on this earth for 10,000 years. For 9,980 years, there was no program for the mentally retarded. That’s how long there was nothing going on. Now among all of those great civilizations, you read about in school the ancient Chinese, the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Indians, the great civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, all none of them ever thought of having a program for people with mental retardation.
Mentally retarded people were discarded, killed, put out to die on the side of a mountain or put away behind high walls. In this century, one of the greatest authorities on mental retardation in this country was a man by the name of Dr. Fernald up in Massachusetts, who gave his life to work with the mentally retarded. In Massachusetts, one of the state schools for the mentally retarded is called the Fernald School, that’s how important he was. Now here is a direct quotation from him, in this century, from the greatest authority on mental retardation in his time: “All that the mentally retarded need is a park bench to sit on and a lollipop to suck.” That was the status of the mentally retarded in the minds of the most advanced experts the world, particularly in our own country, in this century.
Now all of us are here. Look at us. From different countries, from all the states, different nationalities, colors, races, religions -- all gathered here to try to further a program dedicated to the most neglected of all in the human family. Let me repeat, your presence here is a miracle. If you believe in God, as I happen to, I believe its a program called into existence and sustained by God, himself. I don’t know anybody alive, and that includes everybody. I don’t know anybody alive who had the vision or courage, or intelligence, or intuition or whatever you want to call it to start something like the program that your are associated with. I personally think we’re all damn lucky to be involved in it. I think we’re all lucky to be alive at a period in human history when such a program could come into existence. We’re all lucky that no matter how much we’ve done, there’s so much left to be done around the world for this much neglected element in human society. I congratulate you for being here. I think your very lucky to be here. In a serious sense, I think you’ve been chosen, not necessarily by yourself, but chosen by a power bigger than any of us to be here.
And so together with that attitude, I think that our work has just begun. I’m just as I’m standing here, that whoever brought us together to begin with is going to keep us together and add to our numbers. There’s no question that the program of which you are such an integral part is destined to grow and grow and to help people of every race, religion and culture all over the world. So let us all thank God that we’re here, and thank God for the chance that He’s given us to change the face of the world.
Thank you.
