Athlete helped spark Special Olympics
MICHAEL CUSACK 1956-2020
When Michael John Cusack was born in 1956, doctors in Chicago said he could not have a normal life.
Cusack had Down's syndrome, at a time when people with disabilities were routinely ostracized, largely barred from opportunities to learn or play. But his parents brought him home, where he acquired a nickname, Mickey, and became known as Mickey Mouse, Mickey Moose and just plain Moose, because he was far stronger than a mouse.
When his parents learned that the city was launching a program for children with intellectual disabilities, they brought their athletic nineyear- old to West Pullman Park.
He thrived — in track and field, shooting hoops, learning to swim and developing a left-handed curveball — and the program blossomed, spurring leader Anne Mcglone, who became Anne M. Burke, now Illinois Supreme Court chief justice, to think of ways to reach even more children with disabilities.
With support from Eunice Kennedy Shriver, she helped organize the first International Special Olympics Summer Games, held in 1968. Cusack, then 12, won a gold medal in the 25-yard freestyle swim. “He was the impetus” for the entire event, said Burke.
“It was his abilities, and his ability to learn and improve, that caused me to think that we could have a competition, a real competition,” said Burke in a phone interview. The West Pullman Park program grew from a single student in 1965 to about 100 in two years, when Burke planned a city-wide track meet.
That idea evolved into the 1968 Games, which drew 1,000 competitors from 26 states and Canada and sparked a worldwide Special Olympics movement, with more than five million athletes from 200 countries. Cusack won hundreds of medals and was an honorary chairman of the 50th anniversary celebrations.
He died Dec. 17 at a residential facility in Momence, Ill. He had Alzheimer's disease and had had a stroke about a decade ago, which limited his ability to play sports.
Special Olympics “opened the world to him,” a sister said. “It made his life richer, fuller.”
His three sisters — all survive him — and his parents volunteered with the Special Olympics.