I was born in Carroll County. My dad was born in Allegany County and my mother in Carroll County. It’s great for me to be back in Carroll County at the University of Maryland, especially when so many distinguished members of the Maryland State Government, members of the American Legion in Maryland, corporate sponsors of the Special Olympics in Maryland, members of the Board of Directors for Special Olympics Maryland, and happily, Stan Herr, are all with us here tonight.
Many of you probably know Stan Herr as counsel of record, played a major role in getting the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the death penalty for persons with mental retardation. To quote many experts, this was the first meaningful reversal in the law on capital punishment since the death penalty was reintroduced 25 years ago.
Until last Tuesday, Stan’s greatest victory was a 1972 class action law suit which established the constitutional right to public education for all school-age children regardless of disability! But now his name will also go down in history as the man who first successfully inspired the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the death penalty for persons with mental retardation.
Please let all of us here tonight rise up in our seats and give huge congratulations to Stan Herr on his monumental Supreme Court victory! Let’s all stand up and clap now!
It also warms my heart to see so many of the Special Olympic athletes themselves, as well as their families, coaches and friends all present tonight. Congratulations to them all! And many cheers for the athletes, especially!
I am lucky to have had the opportunity to join all of you this evening, not simply to celebrate these wonderful athletes themselves, but also to recognize the American Legion and all our military veterans who have been such important volunteers for Special Olympics Maryland. As a veteran of WWII myself, I am grateful that all of you would take the time to highlight the service our great nations received during WWII and the wars against Korea and Vietnam. Thank you all for congratulating our veteran military leaders, our sailors and soldiers and Marines.
Here in our state of Maryland, is the place where Special Olympics was born, developed and brought to worldwide attention. How? By the volunteer spirit and intellectual vision of my wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver!
Sure, Eunice was born up there in Massachusetts with all the famous Kennedys, but she invented Special Olympics right here in Maryland, in our very own state. Special Olympics now operates in 161 nations with 1,109,735 athletes participating. But the worldwide headquarters are here in the capital of our country, Washington D.C., which itself exists on land given to the USA as a gift from the State of Maryland!
Leaders of both Communist and Democratic countries participate in the Special Olympics. People from every imaginable ethnicity, age, background, financial status and time zone participate. And so it is true that “the sun never sets of the Special Olympics”.
No other piece of land on earth can claim greater birthplace for a greater new movement in the 20th Century!
Maryland is the place where my wife, Eunice, first brought together athletic coaches, experts on mental retardation, and perfectly “normal” high school and college students as “aides” or “helpers” to assist in all athletic events for persons with mental retardation.
Why did Eunice Shriver do this?
Simply because she had reached the conviction that persons with mental retardation could do many things athletically that no one, practically speaking, had ever given them credit for. So she experimented, like a scientist! And she succeeded!
Soon she had persons with mental retardation swimming in deep water, climbing trees, running races, riding on ponies and more. She did this every summer here in Maryland beginning in 1962! A Special Olympics Maryland coach, Jeanne Ackerman, was a swimming instructor at those summer camps, and she is still coaching Special Olympic athletes!
The rest is history, but the history still grows and grows worldwide, every year, everywhere! But no matter where it grows, no matter how large in numbers it may become, the basic facts remain: We, IN Maryland, live in the place where Special Olympics was inaugurated. We live in the birthplace of the Special Olympics Movement. And happily enough, the woman who started Special Olympics continues to live in Montgomery County, Maryland. And she is still, thank God, the Honorary Chairman of Special Olympics worldwide. Hurrah for Eunice Kennedy Shriver!
Her Special Olympics continues its original nature, its rules and its philosophy. And, Special Olympics is the only sports program ever to be approved by the International Olympic Committee in Switzerland, and given the right to use the Olympics in our title! So, let us all rejoice!
Let us conduct the best Special Olympic games ever! And let us thank God and all the Maryland leaders and athletes, for making Special Olympics successful almost everywhere on Earth, but especially here in Maryland!
