"My disability doesn't hold me back. I have a great life!"

Disability is a strange word. It’s a necessary word that can be cruel, descriptive, neutral, or evoke pity. It is what it is. There’s no way around it, no sugarcoating it.

There are disabilities in the world today, but if you have one, why does it have to hold you back?

Take Jon, for instance. He has a job, goes to college, volunteers at a food bank and at a hospital, goes on dates, and drives his car to all these places and more (his brand-new car he bought with his own money).

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot to mention that he also has Down syndrome.

Wouldn’t it be cool for someone to casually look over on the road and see a person with Down syndrome driving next to them? Wouldn’t it be even cooler if that was a regular thing to see and it didn’t surprise people any more?

That everyone could understand that having a disability doesn't have to hold you back?

Jon's Story, part 1

(As told by his mom Sally)

Our son Jonathan was born in March of 1982. He was the 3rd of our children and a textbook case as I was 40 years old. I could have found out he had Down syndrome before he was born but I never thought anything like having a child with a disability would happen to me. Even though you have a greater chance of having a child with Down syndrome later in life, I had never taken any kind of drugs, didn’t smoke and didn’t drink so therefore I rejected any test that might have told us before hand of his condition. Shortly after he was born the nurses brought him to my room so we could bond. That had not happened with my other two babies, but I kept thinking times have changed. My husband and I were not told till the next morning that we had a boy with Down syndrome and the ob-gyn doctor was trying to be very positive telling us quote “if you had to have a down’s child you had a good one” due to his muscle tone not being floppy and no medical problems. The pediatrician, however, was a different story. He advised us to take him home, sit him in the corner and give him a paper sack to play with, as he wouldn’t want toys to play with. My husband and I often laugh these days, as the doctor was right. Our son does play with paper sacks...and plastic. You see he is a courtesy clerk for Safeway and bags groceries. But I am getting ahead of my story.

Jon started programs to help him at the age of 8 weeks, and has been in school ever since. We had to teach him everything other babies take for granted. But he learned and my husband and I never thought of him as having a disability and expected him to do everything our other children had done. He grew and started a regular kindergarten class when he was 6 years of age. As he continued he would have P.E., art, homeroom in a regular classroom and all his math, reading, writing he was pulled out and went to a special class with a special ed teacher. By the time he got to high school he was so well known in the school system that he was given the freedom to go from class to class by himself, even with having a disability, without a buddy to escort him. By the 11th grade he was taught to take the city bus by himself and that opened up a whole new world of freedom to him. He now attends college on his own taking such classes such as college skills, swimming, karate (he is a brown belt), cooking class, computer class, golf, tennis, and this fall he is going to take archery. He is still learning every year and his skills continue to grow.

Jon started out helping his older brother in a lawn business being a gofer for his brother and getting paid for it. He quickly learned that he could save his money and then go to the movies, or buy a soda. When his brother went on to college and gave up the lawn business, Jon too was out of a job. His dad and him went to Safeway and filled out an application and Jon got hired, yes, even with his disability! His father acted as his job coach for about 3 weeks after which Safeway said he is doing just fine and we won’t need you to aid him anymore. That was 7 years ago. He is in the union making union wages with insurance, three weeks vacation and all of the benefits of the union. In the 7 years he has been there he has only been late 1 time and absent due to illness 2 days. He takes his job seriously and makes sure he knows his schedule for the coming week and that he gets up on time and is clean and neat when he leaves for work. Working in the public has given him a world of experiences...some good and some not so good but he has handled each one. This summer he wanted to give back to the community so he decided to volunteer at the Food Bank two days a week.

The rest of Jon's story with pictures, and how he learned to drive...

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