Grinning, high-fiving and hugging, Special Olympics bowlers, volunteers and families filled the NRV Super Bowl in Christiansburg last week.
It’s the Intellectual Disabilities Agency’s Thursday Bowling Night and pins are already toppling. Bowling balls—pearly green, hot pink, one dotted with sunshine yellow happy faces—are thundering down the lanes. Interviews are interrupted by greetings and introductions and held at a yell over crashing pins and cheers.
The IDA of the NRV hosts baseball, basketball, dancing, walking clubs and a summertime fish rodeo serving about 200 people with intellectual and developmental disabilities—people who have trouble with reasoning, learning and problem solving and carrying on everyday activities like self-care, socializing, and communicating. More than 250,000 people in Virginia, three percent of all Virginians, have a developmental disability.
While the agency’s mission is to help disabled people “improve skills, develop friendships and understand each other’s capabilities,” simultaneously, its role is to train and encourage the larger community too – to value all people despite their differences—helping everyone understand each other’s capabilities.
And it’s an urgent lesson. As large state-run institutions, some with dark pasts of neglect and abuse, are being closed throughout the nation to the relief of advocacy agencies, people who had once been housed in them are being moved to more natural community and family settings.
It is efforts like IDA’s Thursday night Bowling Night that serve to increase inclusivity and empathy, encouraging the larger community to participate in the team sport of “community.”
“There is a learning curve,” Sheila Roop, executive director of IDA said, she’s has just arrived to bowl from an evening fund-raising event at the Christiansburg Wendy’s, “but with exposure comes awareness.”
She indicates some volunteers greeting and signing-in the teams, all young and smiling, many in Special Olympics T-shirts that say in large, red letters “You are your only limit.”
“Acceptance and tolerance on the part of the community. And respect. Our activities use volunteers from the university and the community. The more these inclusive groups are out there, the more people recognize, ‘Hey! They’re really not different!’ It’s these people without disabilities who participate in events like these who learn tolerance—to sit next to someone who has whatever disability,” Roop said. “Young people learn to connect from a younger age and appreciate the abilities of all people.”
This is the last night of the 16-week bowling season. Semester-long, the event is linked to these volunteers who are often associated with university fraternities and sororities, many of whom participate throughout their academic careers, staying on after they graduate.
IDA has worked with Virginia Tech’s Pi Kappa Phi fraternity for two decades. Dean Coffman, president of the Virginia Tech’s chapter, says of its 127 members, more than half volunteer with IDA’s bowling teams every week just for fun.
Coffman began Thursday night bowling as a freshman when he was “much less mature and personally less developed than I am now,” he said.
He attributes much of his own personal growth to his experience with Special Olympics and says Pi Kappa Phi is valuing contribution of time over money.
“We’re re-writing the narrative of philanthropy,” he said. “This community inspires you to be the best version of yourself while spending time with tremendous people. I’ve always said Special Olympics has done more for me than I could ever do for Special Olympics.”
As college student liaisons help the Special Olympics athletes, the students are themselves helped. That connection to Greek Life is critical to making the connection between communities work.
“Bowling night recruits college students who may not have any experience with people with disabilities. They may be shy at first, they may not know how to react, but then they develop a loving relationship. I plan on coming here til I graduate,” Radford University student and volunteer Rachael Kiser said.
Sir Prell Gross, tall with long, swinging braids, who is now the president of the IDA board of directors, began bowling with the agency as a volunteer with Pi Kappa Phi 14 years ago, staying on through a masters degree, continuing to work in social services. As he talks, he greets former teammates.
“That’s my man Benny!” Gross said. “Bowling from his wheelchair. Some of our individuals are fully functional. Some need a little hand. He doesn’t have enough strength, so he’ll get as close as he can and then we’ll help to push it. People build new relationships that way. It’s so much fun. Catching up with my old team. Hey Curtis!” he calls to a thin man in suspenders and a sheriff’s badge who waves. “This is what it looks like every week!”
He talks about IDA’s role in providing a place where people can simply express their own personalities.
“They’re going to want to go out and do recreational things in their own communities just like anyone else,” Gross said. “For a lot of them it’s the only social outlet they get in the week. For others they do a lot of things not just with IDA, but for some of them, this might be their only opportunities they have to get out just to enjoy a social atmosphere.”
Everyone is bowling or talking or scoring or ordering grilled cheese sandwiches and cokes.
While this noisy, joyful crashing together of these two communities is not typical, its presence tonight strengthens the likelihood of it becoming a norm.
IDA was started by parents who were seeking services and programs for their children.
Earl Brown, past president of IDA’s board of directors, got involved with IDA almost 30 years ago.
He recalls his older brother in a wheelchair, well loved, but languishing without services to interest or engage him, or to relieve the 24/7 work of caregiving for his exhausted family.
“Years ago, the only thing that parents could do for them, they stayed home. I remember my brother watching a lot of television. IDA programs offers a respite for caregivers and a way to improve everyone’s quality of life,” he said.
As Brown speaks, his brother, now 71, is in the crowd bowling.
“Events like this…Imagine being the kid who was never picked to play,” Brown said. “You could only watch. Imagine that all your life. Come back now and you’re participating in the world with people and you’re just like everybody else.”
Other IDA board members have similar stories of worried caregivers and the need to connect a fragmented community.
“I have two cousins, twins both with autism,” Gross said. “They’re 34 now, but until they were about 20, whenever I’d visit they were just watching tv or reading comic books or playing video games.
“That was the only three things their mom was comfortable with them doing. Her own anxiety and fears got in the way. But there are so many things they’re willing to do and have some fun.”
People are still parked in front of television sets, caregivers still grapple with anxiety and stigma.
“There are people that we haven’t connected with that don’t even know that this is an option,” Gross said, indicating the festive room, “They say, ‘Well I didn’t even know this was going on,” But we have 200 people here every single week.”
But some parents are special. Carmelita Bishop, her son Buddy, at 47, has participated in IDA program since he was 10 reflects on the value of the experience.
“I’ve watched many of these people grow up,” she said, sitting at a tall table crowded with family.
At one time, kids with disabilities were separated from the mainstream, but her family has always included him, Bishop said.
“We’re a family that Buddy has always been a part of what everybody’s doing, and this is so important to him because he’s with his peers,” she said. “He doesn’t have to worry about saying the right thing, or being understood, or being proper. He’s so comfortable here.”
She recognizes that many people would not have limited interaction with the larger community if it weren’t for efforts like the IDA’s that help people learn daily skills of community interactions.
“I have met kids over the years that have never been to McDonald’s and don’t know how to go up to a line and order. In assisted living. They’ve never been out. This means a lot to them.”
Her son Buddy Bishop, is small, swallowed by a VT sweatshirt with the hood up. He tells me where to stand to take his picture while he bowls. He’s talkative telling about his family and having dinner with his aunt’s house. His mother Carmelita says he’s sociable.
“This is a place where he gets to shine,” she said, “and be with his peers.”
“I come here and I’m good at it,” Buddy said. Many of the athletes said that too. “I like coming here,” and “I have so many friends here.”
The evening is ending, and ribbons are being handed out. Bowling will begin again in the fall. People are saying goodbye.
IDA Board President Gross uses the word ‘joy’ many times talking about people with disabilities, his friends, the people bowling here tonight who face significant struggles every day.
“I don’t think we, with all our stresses and trials, understand and appreciate the same way that people with disabilities appreciate life,” he said. “The adversity these people have been able to overcome and the resiliency they show is impressive in so many ways.
“If you take the time to get to know them, Special Olympics is a great way to see those things. These people are swimming and they’re bowling and they’re doing track and field. That’s the power and the spirit that they have. It’s motivational in itself.”
At the garish and festive bowling alley, the Jurassic Park pinball machines are beeping and flashing, the pumpkin orange and lime indoor-outdoor bowling alley carpeting is swirling, grilled cheese sandwiches are sizzling on the snack-bar griddle. Someone yells, “It’s your turn!” Everyone cheers.
To find out more about NRV IDA and its programs, call 381-0310 or visit www.idaofthenrv.org
