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'Tenacious' Heart
(The following article is credited to the Daytona Beach News Journal and can be viewed on their website here: http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Local/newEAST05081209.htm)
 Jerry Schwartz (clipping from Daytona Beach News-Journal) |
By DEBORAH CIRCELLI Staff writer
DAYTONA BEACH -- Jerry Schwartz knew something was wrong when her first child wasn't sitting up or doing things like other children his age.
While Dennis had been born premature, she wasn't prepared when he was a toddler in the late 1940s for a doctor to tell her and her husband that "he's retarded. You should put him in an institution."
"Those days were very, very cruel," the 93-year-old said recently. "It was all I could do to keep my husband from hitting the doctor. This was our baby. We're not putting him in an institution."
Schwartz, who admits she has a stubborn streak, wouldn't have it. Instead, she and her now late husband, Vance, who founded and owned the Jai Alai Fronton in Daytona Beach, gave him "tender loving care" and "enjoyed him the way he was." She took the news and began a lifelong passion of improving the lives of people with developmental disabilities.
Schwartz's blue eyes sparkle while remembering the thousands of lives she's touched for more than 40 years. In 1962, she helped organize the local Association for Retarded Children, now The Arc of Volusia. She founded and was the first president of Work Oriented Rehabilitation Center (WORC) in Daytona Beach in 1969.
The rehabilitation center, now United Cerebral Palsy of East Central Florida, provides work training and jobs for people with disabilities. Schwartz's mind holds years of memories, including helping to start the first area public school for people with special needs in the late 1950s.
United Cerebral Palsy celebrates its 40th year and will honor Schwartz formally in October. Until recently, Schwartz was active on the board. She still talks to clients who consider her a second mother or grandmother.
"In my mind, she was like the Rosa Parks for developmentally disabled persons in Daytona Beach," said Daniel Remmert, 52, a vocational evaluator for the agency's day training program.
Jim Hall, 58, who is blind and developmentally delayed, was one of the first clients. He still works at the agency's day training program, which contracts with more than 50 companies in the area. About 130 clients do various jobs and receive paychecks at the agency's offices in Daytona Beach and Bunnell. Hall also lives in one of the agency's two group homes.
"She is the kind of lady who has a big heart," Hall said of Schwartz. "She opened an area to us where we could look for a job and we could do something with our life."
His brother, Dennis Hall, 56, president of Hall Construction, said the agency and Schwartz have helped his brother live a "good, independent life."
"It's given him a place to be and work and allowed him to participate in society at a level which would not have been possible," Dennis Hall said. "It's just meant everything."
Schwartz and her husband were determined to act when they moved to Daytona Beach in 1958 and found no services for their son.
They had already started a school in Cincinnati where they previously lived. This was before Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of President John F. Kennedy, who died Tuesday, started Special Olympics in 1968, which brought about national change.
D. Schwartz
Dennis Schwartz, who died in 2002 at age 55 and lived at the Duvall Home near DeLand, would sneak out of the house when he was 11 and walk a block to his sister's elementary school because he wanted to attend classes.
His mom, who is used to breaking barriers after getting a pilot's license when she was young, said she went to the School Board three times asking for a class for people with developmental disabilities, but was turned down.
"It was very hurtful that one of my children would be discriminated against. I was just not going to tolerate it," she said.
She went to the principal at the former Riverview Elementary, the late Mary Christian, and she agreed to convert a storage-type facility and provide a teacher for the special school.
"Parents were anxious for their children to socialize and learn something," Schwartz said.
Schwartz, with her husband, continued making improvements, including helping form an association; having a summer program; and eventually she wrote a business plan that became the Work Oriented Rehabilitation Center.
"She knew how to get people excited about a need in the community," said Barry Pollack, current president/CEO of United Cerebral Palsy.
David Bozeman, the agency's first director, said Schwartz "always had her heart set on people with disabilities. That was her aim in life."
Schwartz said the work program in the early days "took our children and got them out of the farms and out of the back rooms and places where parents were trying to protect them."
"It gives the children satisfaction and pride knowing they've done something," she said.
Despite her small 5-foot-1-inch tall frame, Schwartz was "tenacious" in getting help from the city and others, said Dick Kane, who was mayor of Daytona Beach from 1969 to 1974.
"Nobody turns Jerry down. I wouldn't dare," said Kane, who has volunteered for years with the agency.
Parker Mynchenberg, 53, a Holly Hill civil engineer, has been on the agency's board for 28 years and Schwartz has become like an adopted mom.
"She has strong convictions and follows through and makes them happen," he said."She still has a passion for the mission."
Denise Logan, Schwartz's 61-year-old daughter, said she and her two brothers learned a sense of "compassion" from their brother and their parents. She said her mother was "very forward-thinking" and "determined."
Schwartz's advice to other parents of developmentally disabled children is to "give their child love like any other child" and support.
"You need to have faith in your child," she said.
As they grow and go through various stages, she said, "they need to be challenged. Children are children, no matter what their capabilities are."
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