A Lifelong Journey of Community Service | Badeau P.O.V. | Comcast.net News

Guest Blog Written by Susan Badeau

It was a chilly, rainy Friday night in October and the World Series hadn’t started yet.  A perfect night for a cup of hot cocoa and a good TV show – for me, that would be Numbers. The story line, about a kidnapped child who just happened to be the world’s first human clone, was a little bit out there, but it was a fun diversion nonetheless, and I was particularly excited to hear Charlie and Amita talk about volunteering with Big Brothers and Big Sisters.  And then, in a commercial break, "Charlie" (Actor David Krumholtz) was pitching volunteerism and sending viewers to the website www.iparticipate.org. On my computer, I quickly learned that the stars of several of my favorite shows had made PSAs for iparticipate.org and that the story lines of many shows would feature a volunteerism or community service theme.  (see this article)  Excellent!  I can indulge my guilty pleasure and feel good about it. Volunteerism and community service were hot stuff last week, it seems, making appearances in over 100 popular TV shows, and serving as the centerpiece of a Texas event featuring both President Obama and the elder President Bush.

Volunteerism has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.  I went door-to-door in my neighborhood helping my mom collect for the March of Dimes when I was in elementary school.  Both of my parents were active in the community where I grew up, my dad was once honored with the city’s highest community service award.  They were involved in everything from leading Girl Scout troops, to coaching Little League, raising funds to restore the local Opera House and organizing cultural heritage festivals. Of the many gifts I received from my parents, it is this legacy of community service that I value the most.  It has shaped and enriched my life and taken me in directions I may never have imagined.  

Along with my parents, there were a handful of other people who fueled my dedication to service, stoked my imagination with visions of a better world and motivated me to marry my love for service with my passion for civil rights and social justice.  While some were private individuals, like my great aunt Ruth, others were famous, larger-than-life folks – Martin Luther King, Jr, and Dorothy Day, for example.  Two of these heroes of mine both passed away this year – Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sen. Ted Kennedy.  

This dynamic brother-sister combo did more to inspire me and many others to lives of service than anyone else I can think of.  What an amazing legacy to leave in your wake when your time on earth is done.  I had the great privilege of serving as a Kennedy Fellow in Congress in 1999 and then working for a couple of years at their family foundation after that. (www.jpkf.org/)

Many of us who worked with Eunice believed she was the smartest one in the family.  She was raised in an era when little girls were not groomed to be president even in a family that truly believed their children could one day be president.  But she had the intelligence, drive, passion and vision and most probably would have been president if she had been a boy. Instead, as a girl, she had to throw her passion and energy elsewhere, and fortunately for all the children with disabilities in the world, she threw that energy into creating Special Olympics.  Special Olympics not only provided a way for her to give children with disabilities opportunities to excel in sports, but it also gave her a venue for her powerful voice as an advocate and she used that voice tirelessly over the years to help drive legislation and policy changes that made enormous differences in the lives and treatment of people with disabilities not only in the United States, but throughout the world.  Through her efforts there are children in many countries including some in Central America and Eastern Europe for example, with mental retardation and other disabilities who were never before allowed to or given the opportunity to go to school and now they have schools and teachers trained in special education to serve them.  It is really amazing how far her influence went.
 
Yet, she wasn't just interested in "people with disabilities" as a category of people or a group - she was always interested in individuals.  She took an interest in our family and in particular, she had an interest in people who had communication challenges, so when she learned that I had a child that used a communication device, she asked me lots of questions about how it worked, and took a special interest in her progress and challenges.  This interest impacted her work on policy issues related to persons with communication-related disabilities.

I also remember while I worked for her she once visited a man with disabilities who lived in a very low-income apartment.  The summer was brutally hot and he had no air conditioning.  So she wanted to buy him one, but he said no and she was surprised.  But then she got to talking with him and learned that although he would love to have it, it would double his electric bill every month and so he could not afford it.  This really made her stop and think about the day-to-day realities he faced and it impacted some of her work that year related to housing and income support opportunities for persons with disabilities.

Her brother had many of the same qualities – that ability to focus in and genuinely care about individual people while also quickly grasping the broader policy implications of their situations. How fitting that one of his final accomplishments as a Senator was shepherding through the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act.  

So, last Friday as I sipped my cocoa and enjoyed a new episode of Numbers, I also took a quiet moment to say a word of thanks for the legacies of my mom, dad and Aunt Ruth, and my spiritual mentors, Eunice Shriver Kennedy and Ted Kennedy.  Now, it’s a new week, and it's time to start again, continuing the lifelong journey of community service--a life of service that has taken me to such diverse places as orphanages in El Salvador and the White House, a life that has been enriched as much by a terminally-ill, mentally-retarded child as by politicians and celebrities. 

As Senator Kennedy said the day the Serve America Act was signed into law:

"In his inaugural address, President Kennedy emphasized service to others, and touched a deeply responsive chord when he called upon Americans of all ages to ask what they could do for their country . . . . the spirit of America soared again, as it had so often in the past. We need to rekindle that attitude again for our own day and generation… "

Each of us can make a difference – what will you do this week?



Message Edited by Chelsea-Badeau on 10-26-2009 04:15 PM