This is one of the great moments of my life. What could be more exciting for a substitute second baseman at Yale than a chance to address the people who control college sports in America?
Yes...I saw Babe Ruth hit homers, Walter Johnson pitch, Otto Graham throw passes, and Mohammad Ali, Joe Louis, and Sugar Ray Robinson. I even saw Gene Tunney fight Jack Dempsey in Chicago. But nothing can surpass this chance to talk to the men and women, who, more than any others in our country, are in actual control of the future of sports in America.
We all like to reminisce about past heroes and heroines and their heroic accomplishment. But the future of sports is in your hands and the future is now.
I’m not talking about politics or economics or foreign affairs or military security. I’m talking about athletics and sports. For I believe that the way we look upon sports, the philosophy we have about sports, the objectives we hope to achieve through sports, and the ways we use sports, can elevate our national life as much or more than any activity in which Americans take part -- More than business, more than the learned professions, more than politics, sports can inspire the highest values because sports touches everyone and can transform everyone. I’ve seen such transformations take place in sports and because of sports.
Let me explain what I mean.
At seven p.m., July 31st, 1987, in the stadium and on the playing fields of Notre Dame University made famous by thousands of athletes, coaches and athletic directors, there will take place the largest athletic event ever staged on an NCAA campus in the history of America! Let me say that again, but in a different way: -The International Summer Special Olympics Games at Notre Dame next year will bring together the largest number of athletic competitors, coaches, and sports officials ever assembled on an NCAA campus. More than 5,000 participants, in twenty official and demonstration sports, coming from 65 nations, will begin their march into Notre Dame’s stadium at 7:00 p.m. sharp, with every seat filled, with ABC-TV broadcasting the event, live, on prime time, with the President of the United States probably in attendance, and with the eyes of TV viewers on all continents watching. Every one of those athletes will be fully equipped, fully coached, fully prepared, and everyone of them will be mentally retarded. Only sports could achieve that incredible reality.
Forty years ago -- even twenty years ago -- not one of those athletes would have been playing any sport. No one, not even their parents, would have seen them competing in any contest. Most of them were locked up in institutions, or hidden away in private homes, an embarrassment to their parents, an economic drain on society, another inexplicable burden visited on suffering humanity by an inscrutable God.
Who was at fault?
Why did these people exist?
What good could they possibly be?
“Why was my son, my daughter, so afflicted?” asked millions of parents. “Was it I, or my wife, or our parents, who did something wrong?
Why, Oh God! Why, Oh God! have you cursed me?”
At Notre Dame and at St. Mary’s next year, instead of cursing, parents will be cheering! Instead of hiding, they will be bragging. 10,000 of them will be wearing T-shirts with their identities emblazoned on their chests. They will be sitting in special reserved seats, attending special parties, appearing on TV themselves. They, and thousands and thousands of all races, nationalities, ages, creeds, and political parties will be filled with joy. This time it will not be “a shot heard ‘round the world” from Lexington and Concord, but “a smile sent ‘round the world” from every face of every person in that huge throng.
Nor will those smiles be shallow, momentary, pasted-on smiles flashed for public consumption by professionals. For, not one of the coaches, athletic directors, politicians, foreign dignitaries, athletes, officials, ticket takers, hot dog and hamburger people, not the Coca-Cola dispensers, or musicians or composers or policemen or medical doctors or nurses will have been given an extra dime for their services. They, and the athletes, will be all amateurs, pure amateurs, brought together by love of sports, love of competition, love of life, and love for one another. They will be there, in substantial part, because of you, the men and women of NACDA, and because of sports. Only sports could bring together at Notre Dame, Communists and Capitalists, Jews and Arabs, Whites and Blacks and Orientals, Old and Young, Rich and Poor, the Learned and the Retarded. That’s what sports can do for our country and for the world.
That’s why I’m here....to thank you and applaud you and tell you that you and we at Special Olympics are pulling off one of the great miracles of modern times.
Faced with terrorism and violence everywhere -- confronted by boycotts and barriers of every kind -- “defenses” under the sea, “defenses” on land, in the air, in outer space, we shall be opening up new avenues of communications and new friendships -transcending all the politics, races, economics and antipathies of our times. We will be uniting the world by uniting men and women everywhere in the service of the weakest and most helpless of all human beings, the mentally retarded.
Without you, without NACDA, and without the NCAA, little or none of this would be possible. Gene Corrigan, of course, has been helping from the beginning. Without him, without Father Hesburgh, Notre Dame’s president and Father Joyce, without all their coaches and splendid athletic facilities,- Special Olympics would not be able to offer hospitality to all the nations. But it’s also true that in every State and on scores of college campuses NACDA members have taken the lead in Special Olympic activities.
Women and men, St. Mary’s College in South Bend, as well as Notre Dame, businessmen, lawyers, accountants, computer experts, groundskeepers, media specialists are all joining Special Olympics to make these 1987 Games a spectacular success.
Puzzling questions, however, remain.
Why is Special Olympics the fastest growing sports program in the world? Why is it welcomed in Cuba, China, Poland, Ethiopia, Jugoslavia, Taiwan, Korea, in Africa, in Latin-America, in the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong-Kong, Jordan, Israel, Bolivia, and by the northern and southern Irish together!
It’s not easy to answer these questions in a sentence. But the questions and answers are worth pondering. They tell us as much about ourselves as about Special Olympians, the mentally retarded who compete in these fabulous games. Let me start to answer the questions by starting at home.
We were told by the experts in the 1960’s, 1950’s, and earlier that the mentally retarded couldn’t swim, they couldn’t play team games, they couldn’t play contact sports. They’ll get hurt, we were told, playing hockey, or basketball, or soccer, or skiing. They’re not coordinated enough to figure-skate or do gymnastics. They can’t run 400 yards let alone a mile.
I heard all those statements myself. More important, my wife heard them. But she didn’t believe them. So she decided to test out those theories for herself. On a farm in Maryland where we lived, she brought high school volunteers and mentally retarded youngsters together in a day camp. For 30 days each spring for three years, she tested and experimented. The retarded tried swimming and running, horseback riding, softball, touch football, archery, tree and rope climbing, everything. Finally, in 1968, she decided the experts were all wrong, and with the help of Chicago Park District officials she staged the very first Special Olympic Games in Soldier’s Field. It was something to behold.
We had 2500 spectators in those 103,000 seats! We only had 1,250 athletes from 13 states, about 40 from Canada and 10 from France. But we had Mayor Daley and Frank Gifford; and we had our own eyes. We could see the Canadians playing floor hockey -- six to a side -- successfully performing team sports.
We could see the retarded run 400 yard races and not get exhausted. We could see them swimming, jumping, laughing and smiling. We could hear Mayor Daley exclaim as he sat in the stands, -- ..."Eunice, the world will never be the same after these games”... Then we went truly national and international. My wife gave it all she had. She was everywhere and into everything. Together we began to learn -- as you have learned -- from the mentally retarded, not from the experts.
We learned that the mentally retarded
- Could not only run 400 yards but even the mile and 2 mile races;
- Could not only swim 50 meters they could swim 400 and 800 meters and participate in relay races;
- Could not only play floor hockey six to a side, but soccer with full teams, basketball, and softball;
- Could not only run, swim, and jump, but they could perform gymnastic routines, ski downhill, figure skate, jump dance, give speeches and take on full-time jobs in parks and recreation facilities where they now teach sports to normal children;
- And we found out that old age was no barrier for them... Women and men in their 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s showed us they, too, could run 400 yard races, swim, and enjoy themselves in sports.
Most of all we found out that they are pure amateurs. There’s no money under the table in Special Olympics. There’s no proselytizing, no Alumni interference, and no drugs. In fact, Special Olympics may be the only international, drug-free, non-political, and non-violent,, sports program in the world.
All this is only a little bit of what we have learned from the mentally retarded and from Special Olympics. I haven’t even mentioned “Our Marvelous Moments”, as we call them at Special Olympics headquarters: -
- The day the phone rang and Loretta Claiborne’s coach told us the unbelievable news that Loretta, a Special Olympic runner from York, Pennsylvania, had just finished the Boston Marathon ahead of 350 other women;
- or
- The evening in Dublin, Ireland when the Irish athletes from northern Ireland marched past the reviewing stand in front of the President of Ireland to receive a standing ovation from all the southern Irish in attendance at our European Games. Special Olympics is the only public activity the northern and southern Irish do together these days. They march together under our flag, not their own;
- or
- The letter from the Crown Prince of Jordan received last week telling us that his country is going to send a young, single, woman sports expert to our country this summer to study athletics for the retarded. As he said, she will be one of the few single female teachers to have ventured abroad from Jordan for specialized training, at government expense!
Are the mentally retarded helping to unite the world and free us all from superstition, fear, envy? I’ll guarantee you they are.
I could go on and on telling you about Special Olympics in Korea and Japan, in The People’s Republic of China, in Kenya, in The Seychelles Island of the Indian Ocean, in Poland, France, Belgium, Portugal, Chile, Panama, yes, even in El Salvador ... but you’ve heard enough.
You share our dream. You believe, as we do, that sports, especially pure amateur sports, can unite the world. In sports we can all play, compete, and earn respect.
Our Special Olympics oath expresses that philosophy in the best possible way because it expresses faultlessly the spirit of true sportsmanship...
..."Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt...”
Athletes who compete with that philosophy will achieve fully our dream for all the millions of our participants: -Our dream that they will display genuine skill in their sport, that they will demonstrate courage in the competition, that they will share their good fortune with their competitors as well as their friends, and as a result, that they will experience the full joy given by God to all those who do the best they can with the gifts He has given them.
