learn and also that her presence could enrich and add to the life of our
family and not simply burden and diminish it, as the experts professed.

Knowing no one facing similar circumstances, they acted alone on
these modest but firm convictions. Yet in doing so, Bea and Irving Fink
turned out to be part of a whole generation of parents whose choices
regarding their offspring with disabilities had a profound impact on the
reshaping of our country's laws and attitudes. In the 1970s, the voices
of family members of children with disabilities combined with those of
adults with physical disabilities, including many returning Vietnam vet-
erans, set in motion waves of change that would wash over our country
for more than a generation.

Laurel's development and achievements over the next several dec-
ades would more than gratify the hopes my parents held. In 1983, she
won a prize in a regional high school art contest for a silk screen of a
unicorn she had created in art class. In 1984, she put on a cap and gown
and walked with her classmates to the strains of "Pomp and Circum-
stance." One of the local television news channels covered the event,
spotlighting Laurel's achievement as the first person with Down Syn-
drome in the state's history to receive a high school diploma. They also
showed a videotape of her participating in an aerobics class. The mes-
sage: The conventional wisdom of 1965 had been irrevocably shred-
ded. Laurel and my parents had been part of the shredding.

Laurel's attendance at a regular overnight camp run by the Indian-
apolis YMCA when she was 13 years old took place at a time when such
an organization was under no legal obligation to enroll a child with a
disability (unless it received federal funds). In retrospect, it was the kind
of experience that was both contributor to and an effect of the social
evolution underway in those pivotal years. New laws had been passed in
the 1970s, and the rigid separation of youth with mental disabilities
from their peers was slowly breaking down. Children with Down Syn-
drome and other forms of mental retardation were becoming visible in
public schools, yet the vast majority were continuing to be assigned to
completely separate classrooms, often in completely separate schools.
Still, the climate of change made it possible for my mother to call up the
camp director and convince him to enroll Laurel, even though his staff
had no experience with children with special needs. Laurel was the
camp's first enrollee with a substantial disability of any kind.

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