b>First there was Family
By Carol Rowell July / August 2005
Volume 23, Number 4
Long ago, before laws were passed that guaranteed health care and education for individuals with disabilities, before “people first language” took the place of the “M” word and the “R” word, and years before there was the ARC or the National Down Syndrome Congress or Society or Aim High, there was family…and there was my Great Aunt Rosemond. Her portrait hangs on a wall in our home; the picture of the little girl with the big bow in her hair is beautiful, and so is her story…
Helene Rosemond Lyons was born in April 1905 in Willard, New York, the fourth of five children. Her oldest sister, Marion, twelve years Rosemond’s senior, would someday be my Grandma O’Brien. As far as I know, there was no genetic testing done in those days, but given my Mom’s memories and a few photographs of her aunt, in all likelihood Rosemond had Down syndrome.
In Rosemond’s early years the Lyons family moved to Syracuse where, along with her sisters, she was enrolled at the Franciscan Academy. I’m told it was overwhelming for the little girl – there was too much going on and she just couldn’t keep up – so the decision was made to pull her out of school and send her to Seneca Falls, where she would stay with two of her aunts and an uncle. Rosemond lived in that little village in the Finger Lakes until her death at age 45.
I imagine it was not an easy life for the little family – apparently Rosemond spoke with difficulty and had no skills that allowed her to work. In her later years, she developed dementia, but her aunts and uncle continued to care for her at home. Mom remembers Rosemond at family gatherings throughout the years, and a photograph from 1918 shows Rosemond, now the teenager, surrounded by her siblings at the beach. Her life may not have been what it would be had she been born 100 years later, but it certainly could have been far worse.
When Dr. Allen Crocker addressed the Grand Rounds at Albany Medical Center in May, he spoke of individuals like Dr. C. Everett Coop, Eunice Shriver, and Dr. Siegfried Peuschel, who, along with parent-driven organizations, both national and local, have made our lives relatively easy today when it comes to raising a child with Down syndrome. I am grateful to them all, Dr. Crocker, included.
And I am also grateful for the beautiful portrait of Great Aunt Rosemond Lyons, her family, and their story from long, long ago.
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