Jack Donahue -- our M.C., Father Richard Riccioli, John Scott, Chairman of the Games Committee, Michael Latimer, our new and respected Chief Executive Officer, Michelle Wright (The famous singer). May I say, I have been deeply impressed by a number of your recent statements -- especially when you said: -- “Life is a gift...I’m learning that our spirit and intuition hold the answers to all questions”....
That’s why our highest award in Special Olympics is called “The Spirit of Special Olympics”...Our spirit emphasizes exactly what you emphasize, in your latest album “One Good Man, ""honest love with a seamless mix of power and sensitivity”.
Honest love with a seamless mix of power and sensitivity"-- that’s Special Olympics. Michelle, Welcome to the Special Olympics Family World-Wide!!!
Ladies & Gentlemen: I have come to Canada today for many reasons, but first of all I want to thank and congratulate you. Canadians were participants in our very first Special Olympics Games, way back in 1968, in Chicago, Illinois, USA You also invented Floor Hockey. In those first Games, your famous leader, “Red” Foster was present with your Floor Hockey team. Less than 100 athletes was then involved in our Special Olympics Floor Hockey Championship Games. But, next year we will have 866 floor hockey players’ and coaches representing 56 countries in your 1997 Games, Congratulations to Canada, and to “Red Foster” for creating Floor Hockey, now so exemplary of the originality of the Special Olympics Movement World-Wide.
Congratulations, secondly, for your courage in staging, next year, the largest Winter Olympic Games in history! YES, Games larger in numbers, than the Winter Olympics Games held in 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway! In our Winter Special Olympics, our athletes will not be as powerful as those in the traditional Olympic Games, but our athletes will be just as inspiring!! They will demonstrate the best spirit, the truest spirit, of amateur athletics, because they compete truly for love of the Game, for the love of sports, for the opportunity to demonstrate their basic humanity. Never before in Canadian history will so many handicapped athletes be busy showing all the rest of us, supposedly “normal people.” whatever that means, that God created all of us in His Image and Likeness, that we are all equal in His sight, and all of us are destined to live happily forever in Heaven, if all of us like the Special Olympics athletes, perform to the best of our abilities, physically, yes, but also fairly, and without rancor, anger, or cheating. No Special Olympics athlete has ever been accused of cheating or of speaking negatively about an opponent before, during, or after our Games!
Third, your Games will include athletes from all parts of your large country. And, fourth, those athletes will represent all levels of physical ability and the highest levels of sportsmanship. So-o-o-, Canada will never look better to all the world! You will be demonstrating the values and success of your country in bringing together people, of many races, of many Nations, of different political and religious beliefs, in one, truly civilized society!
Yesterday, all across this vast and beautiful land and was a day of celebration, --- a day of Thanksgiving.
Today, we can continue that “Thanksgiving spirit” because in a few short months from now we shall be participating in a celebration in which I hope every Canadian will participate.
It will be a “celebration of victories.”
Not victories in war, but victories in peace, victories over ignorance and fear, victories led by women as well as men, victories not bought by tax money, but victories of the human imagination and spirit, victories won by private initiatives, victories unprecedented in human history. Looking back 10,000 years there have never been victories like the ones I can tell your about...victories where no one loses!!!
Special Olympics has now become one of the largest sports programs in the world. Although the Movement is only 28 years old, it already enlists 1,100,000 athletes in 143 countries. Our operations continue night and day, almost everywhere! Remember the slogan “The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire? Communists and Capitalists; white people, yellow people, black people; people of all religions, races, all continents participants in Special Olympics.
No one gets, financially rich! No one gets elected to high political office. No one points with pride. No one views with alarm. Everyone thanks God, or Allah, or Buddha, or the free enterprise system. And then everyone goes back to work!
Special Olympics is open to all competitors, eight years old and much older. Every Special Olympics athlete has the chance to win. They compete in divisions only with athletes of the same, or approximately, the same, ability. Special Olympics is not nationalistic. We play no national anthem. We wave no flags. We permit no computation of medals won by specific countries. It is individual effort and achievement that counts.
In the Special Olympics World Games in July of 1995, 99 athletes from South Africa, blacks and whites, first competed together on one team! It was in Special Olympics that athletes from the new State of Palestine first competed in a world event. And in last August, Special Olympics, athletes from Jordan traveled across the river to Israel to participate in Special Olympics Games in that country! Jews, and Muslim Arabs, together for the first time!!!!
Special Olympics is also free of performance-enhancing drugs. Instead, we are interested in enhancing the ability of every participant, increasing their self-esteem and self-confidence, and improving them physically, psychologically, and spiritually, -- without the use of drugs!!! Special Olympics does not believe that sports are an end in themselves. We do not permit sports to dominate us, or our athletes! We use sports to help people develop in all areas of life.
Special Olympics thus involves the parents and siblings of our athletes. Families help to coach and train their own Special Olympics athletes. They provide transportation. They sit on Boards of Directors. They raise money. More than 10,000 parents and siblings attended our last World Games. They were housed, fed, and transported, free-of-charge, by Volunteer hosts and families in Connecticut. They wore T-shirts proudly announcing that they were the parents of a Special Olympics athlete. They sit in specially reserved seats!
The wonders of Special Olympics are not restricted only to activities by parents and siblings, or by leaders of Government, or by the absence of drugs, or the help given by volunteers or academic institutions, or by the International Olympics Committee leaders. Help often comes from unexpected places. At the 1995 World Games, Connecticut Labor Unions, and their members, gave $714,000 worth of their time and talent free! Laborers from just one of the 50 American States did that!!!!
Those were the biggest athletic event in the world in 1996.
But your Games, the 1997 World Winter Games will be even more historic: As I said at the beginning of this talk, these Games, staged right here in Toronto and Collingwood, will be not only the largest, international, multi-sport event in the world next year. They will be the largest World Winter Games in history -- including Lillehammer in 1994 which hosted 1,844 athletes from 67 Nations, -- a record for the regular Winter Olympics. These upcoming Special Olympics World Games, -- your Games -- will host more than 2,000 athletes from 80 Nations! The largest Winter Sports event in history will belong to Toronto/Collingwood!
Clearly, Games of this magnitude require assistance, commitment, support, and help from various sources, and help often comes from unexpected places. For example, -- all of you have ridden in Otis elevators. But did you ever think that an elevator company would sponsor an athletic program? I never did. But 4,000 Otis Elevator Company employees in 40 countries have given countless hours volunteering for Special Olympics! And “Team Otis Canada” through bake sales, raffles, exhibition softball games, etc., has already raised $22,000 for your Games. Otis President and CEO, J.P. van Rooy sums up the success of “Team Otis” in these words: --
“Corporate efforts to blend financial support of social causes, sporting events or cultural activities with advertising and promotion are accomplished today with great success...For companies, for the shareholders of companies, workplace giving has become almost a requirement, but it misses the most important aspect: the personal, individual commitment, and involvement by employees! It bypasses the company’s people as an untapped resource...But What does Otis Elevator get out of Special Olympics? It gains an enormously improved company morale because of the altruism and the not-for-profit, or promotion philosophy of the whole operation...This effort breaks barriers; hierarchy disappears and unknown leaders come to the surface.” One of the United State’s largest Insurance/Investment companies, Connecticut-based Phoenix Home Life, was a partner and sponsor for the 1995 World Games. Now they have become Corporate Sponsors of Special Olympics International for the next seven years! The President and CEO of Phoenix Home Life, Robert Fioredella, looked toward this partnership with three objectives.
To become involved with something positive outside of our company and good for all people wherever we work and sell our services;
To significantly increase our company’s name recognition;
To cause employees in all four of our company’s locations to set to know each other better.
Not only does Mr. Fiondella proudly assert that all three objectives are being met! success went well beyond even his expectations. He later stated that company morale increased dramatically. "...We really became one company.”
At the ’95 Games, employees of Phoenix Home Life took over the softball venue. They did everything from raking the field, to late night clean-up after each day’s competitions. They also hosted the Families Tent, -- a place for the athletes’ family members to relax, get something to eat or drink. One Phoenix Home Life employee brought 19 of his family members to volunteer! And they all said they will do it again!
All of this is volunteer time and money new for the world...new for private businesses, for law firms, for medical doctors and nurses, new for families, new for sports!! Coca-Cola, with extraordinary foresight, and sensitivity, was one of the first corporations to help Special Olympics in its mission to enlighten the world about the abilities, not the disabilities, of persons with mental retardation.
Coca cola blazed a new path with Special Olympics. Coca-Cola believes and invests in the quality of its products. Special Olympics believes and invests in the quality of life for people with mental retardation. Both organizations are united in their belief that everyone benefits when no one is left out! Coke put its beliefs into action through the support of Special Olympics, and by its willingness to hire people with mental retardation.
We now have 1,100,000 athletes enrolled in Special Olympics. By the year 2003, we expect to have two million. By 2010 we expect to have three million. By 2020, we expect to have four million. Special Olympics may well become the largest unified sports program in world history, and the largest activity in history for the least respected members of our human family!!!
All of us may well be the creators of, the motivators of, the financiers of, the leaders of the greatest “revolution from below” in human history. Canada was there at the beginning of this Movement.
Frank Hayden, “Red” Foster, Special Olympics athletes from Canada were at those first games!
And in 1969 when Canada held its own first Special Olympics Games, my mother-in- law, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, your Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the Founder of Special Olympics, were there!
Almost 30 years later, I am here to invite you, your political leaders, your business leaders, your religious leaders, your women, men, and children, your toughest and strongest athletes, and all the tired, old skeptics, to honor those who had the vision and courage to participate so long ago, and lead in the development of Special Olympics World-Wide.
How can you all do this?
Make the 1997 World Winter Special Olympics Games not only the largest, but the most successful and the best Special Olympics Games ever held. We owe “Red” Foster, Pierre Trudeau, Frank Hayden, Rose Kennedy and Eunice Kennedy Shriver nothing less than the best. You can do exactly that. May God Bless your work!!
