Special Olympics is a movement that transforms lives by inspiring inclusion, understanding and respect for people of all abilities, both on the playing field and in communities across the state and around the world. Beau Doherty will talk about Special Olympics Connecticut, which provides year-round sports training and competitions for over 12,000 athletes (individuals with intellectual disabilities) and Unified Sports® partners (individuals without intellectual disabilities who are the athletes’ teammates).
Beau has been with Special Olympics for more than 39 years beginning when, at the former Paul A. Dever State School in Taunton, Mass., he witnessed the isolation and separation that the intellectual disability community experienced. He is Godfather of Special Olympics Unified Sports.
The program also brings athletes with and without intellectual disabilities together to play sports, gain physical fitness and develop friendships
Special Olympics Unified Sports® is also offered in 95% of public high schools across the state, as well as middle and elementary schools.
Connecticut athletes also have opportunities to compete globally – at Special Olympics’ USA and World Games.
The group also promotes a healthy lifestyle by offering free health screenings at events, and providing participants with the education and resources to improve their sports performance and enhance their overall health and fitness.
Mark Albertson, who is well known to DMA members as an entertaining and informative speaker and historian, will talk about George Washington’s Farewell Address, delivered in 1796. It’s one of the best by any departing president. Washington offers an array of prognostications along with his concerns, a number of which, unfortunately, have arisen over the course of our history. Washington himself, of course, is fascinating. He was a large landowner. He was a slaveowner. But here is a man who had the opportunity to take control of the country as General of the Army and refused to do so. Here is a man who served his two terms as president and then willingly vacated the highest political office in the land, setting the precedent of the two-term presidency. Into the 20th century all second term presidents willingly leave office. That is American Exceptionalism. America was blessed from the historical perspective that George Washington was not another Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, or Napoleon Bonaparte, which is something that comes around once every Haley’s Comet.
Basil Hero is an award-winning former investigative reporter with NBC News television stations. For his book, “The Mission of aLifetime: The Men Who Went to the Moon,” he interviewed the twelve remaining lunar explorers. They talk at length about the real right stuff, the true source of courage, leadership, and the quiet patriotism that it took to risk their lives going to the moon. Their voyages led them to the most incredible discovery of all: our home planet and its precious place in the universe. They fear for earth’s future and offer sensible solutions to its mounting crises and the path to future space exploration.
