Learning to fly

Five babies roll around on a rainbow rubber floor as their mothers call out for their attention, making faces, waving, hoping for the perfect snapshot to capture the moment on a casual Thursday afternoon. 

Inside the Down Syndrome Association of Central Florida’s newly christened Success Center in Winter Park, the small successes come first. Sometimes it’s just a smile Megan Stewart is trying to tease out from little blue eyed K.J.

But they’re hoping for a lot more in this block building about the size of an average home off Wymore Road. One day these parents will meet the adults their children will become. That journey begins within these colorful walls.

“We’re here to help them reach their dreams,” DSACF Executive Director Janet Caramello said. “So we named it the Success Center. It just made sense. We’re helping them have their own success stories. It changes their mindset. It’s about succeeding.”

Sometimes that success story starts inside a hospital room that feels like the air’s just been sucked out of it. That’s where Caramello has met some parents for the first time, right after they’ve found out. The moment she comes in to shake their hand might be the scariest of their lives.

“The first thing I say is ‘congratulations,’” she said. “Sometimes they’ve only heard doom and gloom.”

She still remembers the hardest one. It was inside a room at Winnie Palmer Hospital in downtown Orlando.

“I walked in and the mother and grandmother asked if their daughter would be able to walk, if she’d be able to talk, if she’d be potty trained,” she said.

“That’s when I showed them Faith-Christina’s quilt.”

What they saw is what’s hanging on the left wall as parents walk their son or daughter through the Success Center’s cheerful yellow door for the first time. Faith-Christina Duncan, who has Down Syndrome, had designed, cut and sewn the quilt herself, an intricate patterns of blues, whites and yellows with an azure river winding its way around the border.

The welcome sign to the Success Center isn’t a decoration; it’s what the kids inside have accomplished. Duncan has since gone on to make a pile of quilts. She loves to dance. She’s also in the National Honor Society at school.

“When I showed that mother and grandmother what she could do, it went from fear, uncertainty and worry to peace,” Caramello said. “Knowing everything would be ok.”

That kind of change in perspective doesn’t just happen with parents. Out of necessity, Caramello needs to change a lot more minds than that. Last week she was in Washington, D.C. shaking hands with congressmen and women, showing them just what kids with Down Syndrome can do. Some of those kids came with her to prove it.

Abigail Adams was one of them.

Her father says her sharing a name with America’s second First Lady was just a coincidence.

“My wife just liked the name,” her dad, Steve Adams, said. “The name meant ‘my father’s joy.’”

Nonetheless, the outgoing 17-year-old carried the stateswoman’s role when she saw Arizona Sen. John McCain standing on a street corner headed to the Capitol. She walked right up to him and said hello. Then the senator got to know Abigail.

Abigail, the spunky blonde with perpetually changing hairstyles, wanted to be an actress. So she became one. You may have seen her. She’s in the new Disney World commercial “The Magic is Endless” where she gets to meet Olaf from “Frozen.”

She’s also an advocate for Down Syndrome, helping younger teens and kids along the path she took already.

“My friends want me to be an inspiration; they want me to be confident and help others,” she said.

So that’s what she did, along with other Down Syndrome successes saying hello to legislators for the first time. For Patricia Moody, with vibrant red hair and a no-fear attitude, that was no sweat. Already a sign language teacher and singer, she was the keynote speaker at this year’s Down Syndrome Association conference, spreading the message of just how successful adults like her can be.

There were quite a few handshakes that week, as Caramello and that small contingent from Central Florida looked to meet as many lawmakers as they could, the goal being to spark them to fund programs that help kids like Abigail. Or maybe to just not cut so much from the budget, Steve Adams said.

“Part of our goal was to put a face with the request,” he said. “A lot of people have never met someone with a disability, so to actually spend some time and have a conversation, it really made a difference.”

“It’s changed their whole view of the capabilities of people with Down Syndrome,” Caramello said.

They’ll need that kind of sway to help jumpstart the program that will help kids be trained to be better ready for careers as they become adults. A program at the DSACF launching in June will teach employability classes, social skills and more. They’re teaching the kind of social interaction skills that won’t just help them make friends, but start careers.

“[People with Down Syndrome] are more dependable, more reliable, more on time than the typical person,” Caramello said. “So for employers they’re amazing.”

They also tend to get paid below minimum wage, Caramello said.

On her desk, next to pictures of her family, there’s a plaque staring at visitors with the words “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

“Sometimes you have to stand up, do something uncomfortable and try to change the world,” she said.

So that’s what she’s doing in her modest office, just outside a conference room with new training bicycles piled off to the side. With those new programs coming this summer, she’s hoping to help a generation do some boundary breaking that some people might have thought wasn’t possible.

A few days earlier in Washington, DC, Moody, that fearless redhead, decided to end her keynote speech with a bang. She said a few last words, then launched into a lilting solo from the podium. “Over the Rainbow” spilled out over the crowd.

As the final words fell, “Why, oh why can’t I?” Caramello said, the room filled with cheers.

Thursday afternoon, inside that colorful room in the back of the Success Center, as a quintet of babies lined up in a row, a mirrored fivesome of mothers made faces back at them, looking for a tiny success. Then K.J. smiled.