- March 28, 2024
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OCOEE — Oliver Edwards and his former wife, Leigh Edwards, had concerns for their children’s future. What would happen to their son and daughter, both of whom have profound autism, as the children aged?
So the pair created a non-profit organization in Ocoee called Bigger Dreams, which is dedicated to providing a safe residential and work environment for young adults with special needs.
Tragedy befell the organization earlier this month when Leigh died in Israel of pulmonary failure. She was 61. It was up to Oliver to break the news to his children and try to make them understand death and its finality.
Briana and Brendan, who both attended West Orange High School, were diagnosed as profoundly autistic at around age 5. Briana is also hearing-impaired, though she can see a cat in a field a quarter-mile away, says her father.
They are coping with their mother’s death as well as can be expected, he said.
“Briana did a very classical denial-anger-acceptance cycle; Brendan was fairly taciturn,” Oliver Edwards said. “Briana breaks into tears when she is alone with her computer in the next room. Brendan has wept only once that I have seen. Both are incredibly sad but working to understand that she is really gone — that the future holds her only in memory. From time to time, each (is) still suggesting ways to reverse her death but accepting that resurrection soon is unlikely.”
He took them to view their mother in her casket “to help them get the loss clear in their minds,” he said.
Bob and Lisa Wilkinson, friends of the Edwardses, and their daughter, Claire Wilkinson, have been helpful. Claire first met Briana when the two were students at West Orange High. Bob Wilkinson is a teacher there.
The three spent a recent weekend at the grieving family’s home in Ocoee, creating a butterfly garden to help Brendan and Briana, both in their 20s, to remember their mother.
To help them understand their mother’s death, they were told that a person’s body is a cocoon and the spirit is like a butterfly and now her spirit is in heaven.
Briana and Brendan cast their handprints in cement, as did their dad and the Wilkinsons. Leigh Edwards liked to make crafts with Scrabble tiles, so Brendan suggested adding some — so 11 little squares in the cement spell out “Mother Leigh.” A trellis holds a butterfly wind chime, and butterfly-attracting flowers are planted beneath.
“Briana waters the plants every day, and they are blooming wonderfully,” Oliver Edwards said.
THE DREAM
The Edwardses were actively seeking land to support their vision for Bigger Dreams and had just bid on property in Vero Beach when Leigh Edwards died. The site, it turns out, is too close to a landfill, so Oliver Edwards must start over in the search.
The plan for the organization is outlined on the website, BiggerDreams.org.
“Our children, and thousands like them, will never live independently, nor be able to hold down jobs in the competitive job market,” it reads. “It is our intention to build a compound where they can live safely and as independently as possible. To work at meaningful jobs, overseen by skilled job coaches, with the intention that they can be trained in skills that might help transition them into the competitive job market.”
Employment opportunities for residents will include farming, gardening, soap making, rubber-stamp making and crafting.
“We hope to incorporate a farmer’s market and a craft market to supply the surrounding communities with things the residents produce,” according to the website.
The vision for Bigger Dreams includes a community in a ranch setting, where residents can live, obtain job training so they can earn a living, participate in ranch activities and attend classes in subjects such as social awareness and dance.
Residents with competent living skills can live in small cottages, with a roommate, and be able to prepare simple snacks and drinks in their own kitchens. Those who need more assistance will live in homes with a resident caregiver to supervise.
“We encourage as much independence as each individual is capable of achieving,” Edwards said.
He is now assessing the next steps for Bigger Dreams. He wants to find someone who can help run the organization, write grants and arrange financing, market the program and recruit the first group of residents.
But first, he must locate a piece of property.
“Possessing the land makes Bigger Dreams not just a hazy, maybe someday; not a statement of longing, but an imperative to get off our/your/his tushy and raise the money, get the housing built, recruit the residents and plant the crops,” Edwards said.
LEIGH’S LEGACY
Oliver Edwards is even more determined now to get Bigger Dreams up and running. Although he and Leigh were divorced and she had recently remarried and moved to Israel, they were able to maintain a partnership to care for their children.
“Leigh should be remembered as a giant of a woman, able to take any pain and rebound; tireless and forever optimistic,” Oliver Edwards said. “She was first and forever a mother, and everything else had meaning only as it affected her children’s future.”
She was scheduled to return to the United States on April 7, and the children were counting the days, he said.
“And, indeed, Mother did keep her promise and flew to America on April 7,” he said. “But this time, she was not in first class.”
To make a contribution to the program, go to biggerdreams.org and use the donate button; or send a check to Bigger Dreams Inc., 2114 New Victor Road, Ocoee, Florida 34761.
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Contact Amy Quesinberry Rhode at [email protected].