Disabled Children

Agnes Levine-Oliver had a nervous breakdown caring for her blind, mentally retarded son at home. Two years ago, the Towson woman reluctantly placed 8-year-old Quori in a Baltimore rehabilitation hospital.But this September, Quori returned home, his way smoothed by a little-known state program that lets the family use Medicaid money to pay for the boy's at-home nursing care.Though still in its pilot stage, the program already is helping dozens of children like Quori move out of the Mount Washington Pediatric Hospital, the state's largest rehabilitation and specialty hospital for youngsters with chronic medical conditions.

The scene at Hashawha Environmental Center in Westminster Friday evening was filled with the friendly chaos typical of the start of summer camp. Parents unloaded gear and gave last-minute instructions. Ubiquitous counselors welcomed visitors and ushered them to cabins. And chatty children seemed eager to be on their own. Well before the dinner bell, one girl was so enthralled with her bunk that she spread her sleeping bag across it and laid down to test the accommodations. She was so comfortable that only the promise of craft-making with her older sister could draw her away.

Anna Iacoboni, who came to Baltimore as an immigrant and became the matriarch of her family with four generations of descendants, died of congestive heart failure Sunday at St. Joseph Medical Center. She was 98. Born Anna DeNicolis in Brazil, where her parents were temporarily working, she grew up in the village of San Salvo in the Abruzzi region of Italy. "As a child, she carried water from the town square to her home," said her grandson, Thomas M. Culotta, who lives in Remington. "She could talk about World War I troops coming through her village and how her family hid food from them."

I was troubled that Casa de Maryland and the NAACP are against gifted and talented programs in Maryland public schools but I was not surprised ("Rules on gifted education criticized," Feb. 28). These groups that confuse equality with low educational expectations for minorities should step back and chill. When my children were in school, many PTA members whose children did not cut the mustard for gifted and talented programs went bustling up the school system's hierarchy to destroy those programs as too high brow, un-American and insufficiently egalitarian.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Disneyland has ended a 20-year-old event that allowed youngsters with disabilities to enjoy the park at discount prices, a move being loudly decried by some parents and activists.Disneyland decided to discontinue its "Happy Hearts" program, a six-day event that attracted thousands of disabled children and young adults to the Magic Kingdom twice a year.The action is the latest effort by Disneyland to reduce the number of discounted and free admissions to the park. Marching bands, employees' families and others have seen admission policies tightened as park attendance has swelled to an estimated 15 million annually.

WASHINGTON -- More than 200,000 children would lose their federal disability payments and health care under sweeping Republican welfare proposals that a House subcommittee is expected to approve next week, congressional aides say.The plan would also eliminate cash payments -- as much as $458 a month -- for most children added to the rolls in the future, though it would preserve the grants for 700,000 current beneficiaries who would remain on the rolls.Under...

Jamie L. Jean hated to put her 6-year-old son, Matthew, on the school bus every morning for the hourlong ride to Shipley's Choice Elementary School in Millersville. Her son, now 8, has Down syndrome. He was enrolled in the school's special education program for disabled children when she, her husband and three sons moved to Annapolis in 1997. Anne Arundel County school officials said Shipley's Choice was the closest school with such a program. "It wasn't fair. I couldn't let go of it," Jean said, recalling the commute her son endured -- and how she called Windsor Farm Elementary in Annapolis every day for six months until officials there agreed to set up a program for him and other disabled children.

Jamie L. Jean hated to put her 6-year-old son, Matthew, on the yellow school bus every morning for the hourlong ride to Shipley's Choice Elementary School in Millersville. Her son, now 8, has Down syndrome. He was enrolled in the school's special education program for disabled children when she, her husband and three sons moved to Annapolis in 1997. Anne Arundel County school officials said Shipley's Choice was the closest school with such a program. "It wasn't fair. I couldn't let go of it," Jean said, recalling the commute her son endured -- and how she called Windsor Farm Elementary in Annapolis every day for six months until officials there agreed to set up a program for him and other disabled children.

When Citibank transferred Bradley LaLonde to Vietnam, the general manager felt a twinge in his stomach: Where would his young son, who has cerebral palsy, get treatment? Within days of his arrival, LaLonde found himself at a rundown children's hospital in Hanoi, where braces were made of bamboo and equipment was broken.But a dynamic rehabilitation doctor with a vision to improve care for disabled children impressed LaLonde. It struck the American businessman that the hospital was a primitive version of Baltimore's Kennedy Krieger Institute, where his 6-year-old son Phillip is treated.

Ask these Baltimore schoolchildren how their garden is growing by the Inner Harbor Pier 5 waterfront, and some struggle to answer. Others flash a smile in reply as they point to the part of the garden that they struggled to plant. All 17 children are in wheelchairs and needed special gardening tools to accomplish their task. Wade Simmons, 8, dug into the dirt. Michael Davis, 6, spread some mulch. Ashley Ford, 10, got her fingers into the ground, to see that everything was firmly pressed and planted.

During last week's Cal Ripken Major/70 World Series at the Ripken Academy in Aberdeen, a few dozen disabled children were afforded the opportunity to play ball, a chance that might not have been there were it not for the League of Dreams program. Convening on the turf practice field on Saturday afternoon, the local children were treated to a baseball clinic, during which they were instructed on the hitting, fielding and throwing aspects of the game, and were supposed to take part in a scrimmage game, but that was canceled when a heavy rainstorm cut short the proceedings.

I received an open letter from Krys Renzi, the former marketing director of the Norbel School, and she asked that I share the news that will so adversely affect the learning disabled students that will not return to these halls of hope, and also with a heavy heart for those who will never know what could have been. As some of you may have heard, Norbel School has shuttered their doors after nearly 30 years of existence, 11 of those years in Elkridge at the former home of the old Elkridge Elementary School on Old Washington Road.

Sarah E. Beaty, a homemaker who had worked with special-needs students, died Monday of pneumonia at York Hospital in York, Pa. She was 89. The 50-year Savage resident had lived in new Freedom, Pa., since 2005. Sarah Elizabeth Parks was born in Sykesville, where she spent her early years before moving with her family to Baltimore. She was a graduate of city public schools, and in 1941 married John Wesley Beaty, a businessman. He died in 1994. In 1955, the couple moved to Savage, where Mrs. Beaty worked for eight years as a cafeteria worker for Howard County public schools.

Dressed in her riding togs, Abby Mahoney-Cloutier, 10, took one brief look around the familiar barn, with the horses peering out of their stalls, and burst into sobs. Overwhelmed by fear, the autistic child flailed at the walls. Joan Marie Twining, Abby's riding instructor for the past year, put her arm around the wiry young girl and spoke in soft, assuring tones. With Abby now subdued, Twining walked her to a tethered horse named Izzy and handed the child a brush. Talking to Izzy in the same gentle tones she had just heard, Abby groomed the horse she considers her own. "I know you are liking that," she whispered in Izzy's ear. Watching from the side, Abby's mother says she has often seen her daughter's mood transformed at Twining's Rose of Sharon Equestrian School from inconsolable to confident.

Loretta J. Wentzel, an artist who worked in beach glass, died Thursday of lung cancer at Sinai Hospital. The Timonium resident was 57. Loretta Junghans was born in Baltimore and raised in Timonium. She attended Maryvale Preparatory School and graduated in 1970 from Dulaney High School. During the 1970s, she briefly worked for the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. before becoming a teacher's aide at Loch Raven Middle School in the 1980s, working with disabled children. Mrs. Wentzel did faux paintings during the 1990s and contributed her artistic work to several Baltimore Symphony designer showcase homes.

Advocates for people with severe disabilities have launched a campaign to reverse $29 million in recent state budget cuts that they contend are hurting an already underfunded, vulnerable community. Supporters are organizing a series of nine public meetings around Maryland and are taking their case to top officials. Gov. Martin O'Malley, who met with advocates for the developmentally disabled this week, has repeatedly pared spending for state agencies and services to keep the budget balanced, and he must close another $2 billion shortfall next year.

Bernard Marcus, chairman of the Home Depot, announced yesterday that he will give Baltimore's Kennedy Krieger Institute $45 million, seed money that may eventually launch a national network of similar centers for the developmentally disabled.Motivated by concern for this long-neglected group, Marcus sees Kennedy Krieger as a model to replicate around the country, where help is often fragmented and inadequate. His donation is among the largest of individual gifts ever for people with such disabilities as cerebral palsy, autism and mental retardation.