Last week I was telling my strategic communications campaigns class how hard it is to change people’s attitudes — and especially their behaviors — on any given topic. Therefore, I intoned, the safest and surest bet in PR work is to promise a client you will pursue an awareness objective. (I believe I actually saw two students taking notes.)
At the end of class, a wonderful student named Jen approached to tell me that she had, after an earlier invitation to the group, visited this blog — The SRC. She thought it was pretty good; she might have even used the word interesting. But then, she said:
“You know, you have all this commentary on your blog about Ted Kennedy and all the work he’s done. And that’s important, too. But I was kind of shocked to see you hadn’t written one single thing about Eunice Shriver.”
Busted.
Shame-faced, I told her that I had thought about commenting on Shriver’s passing in early August..but, you know, had become so busy getting ready for the new school year and, you know how that goes. I just never got around to it.
Shame.
You all probably know the Kennedy family’s eldest daughter, Rosemary, was born with a slight case of what was then called mental retardation. Nonetheless, she was raised at home where she and her younger sister Eunice spent a great amount of time together, swimming, hiking and even sailing. But when Rosemary turned 23, her moods became erratic, sometimes even violent. And so old man Kennedy took Rosemary to the premier brain surgeon of the time, a doctor who was supposed to be able to “calm” Rosemary by preforming a prefontal lobotomy on her. Instead, the operation left Rosemary hopelessly disabled. (She ended up dying in a Wisconsin institution some five years ago.)
Perhaps it was witnessing this experience more than any other that made Eunice particularly sensitive to the needs of the disabled. And so in 1962 at her home she created a summer camp she simply called Camp Shriver. Here children with mental disabilities could come for free and spend a week or two engaging in the outside athletics the Kennedy family was known for. This camp was, of course, the forerunner of the Special Olympics that Shriver founded in 1968.
At the Special Olympics website, I learned that during those first games, 1,000 athletes from the U. S. and Canada competed. Today nearly 3,000,000 athletes from 200 countries participate.
Think of that: because of this one woman’s empathy, vision and determination, three-million children and adults now know the joy of becoming physically fit, of experiencing how it feels to run full out in the sunshine and the thrill of reaching a personal best.
So why didn’t I comment on Shriver’s passing? Is it because she’s a woman and we in society (including other women) still marginalize a woman’s contribution? Or is it because Shriver dedicated much of her life to people the rest of us just really don’t want to think about and certainly not discuss in public. After all, what do we call “them”? Handicapped? Disabled? Othered?
Jen: You’re right. I need to change my awareness, yes; and I’m hopeful my attitudes can be challenged based upon a new understanding of people. But I suspect the real difference between the Good and Also Rans here on earth is found in our behaviors.
The Same Rowdy Crowd 