Today is World Down Syndrome Day (3-21, for trisomy 21), a day we celebrate our Eva, who will turn 21 herself in a couple of months. She is a junior at George Mason University in the Mason Life Program. She lives on campus in an apartment with two other students in her program and an RA. She gets herself to classes across the large GMU campus. She has an internship working off campus. She is an athlete on the George Mason Special Olympics soccer, basketball, and swim teams. She works in the summers at the YMCA as a day camp counselor. She is a talented writer and dancer. She is, in sum, absolutely amazing, and has exceeded all our wildest dreams for her.

But this amazing individual had a lot of help, and a lot of people who believed in her along the way. She had therapists who started working with her from infancy on her development. She had teachers who helped develop and implement individualized education plans (IEP) to address her learning needs. She had dance instructors, girl scout leaders, Sunday School teachers, youth leaders, and counselors who believed in her, included her, and encouraged her. And of course, a family who loves her deeply. We have been so blessed!!

Eva is not the only person with Down Syndrome who has exceeded expectations. The Mason Life Program is full of students with DS who are also amazing, as are so many young people we’ve known here in Fredericksburg and I am sure that many of you know in your lives. They all had the benefit of growing up under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975, which requires that students with disabilities have an appropriate and accessible education. It has not always been this way.

My second tribute on World Down Syndrome Day is to my late cousin Patty. Ten years older than me and born twenty years before the implementation of IDEA, Patty was not born into the same world my Eva was. Patty had no specialized therapies, no right to go to the same school with her siblings. She never learned to read. She was also dearly loved, and her family did the best they could for her, but her life was not all it could have been.

Now, on this World Down Syndrome Day, Washington is preparing to shut down the Department of Education, the federal agency that ensures that IDEA is funded and implemented throughout the country for all children. I worry that we may be going back to those days when a new parent of a child with Down Syndrome, or any other disability, is told that there is no support for their child and that they are on their own, as my aunt and uncle were once told, and that future generations of people with Down Syndrome will not have the opportunities that my Eva and her peers have had.

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