LEARN BY HEART
How a mother’s love — and a New York Post ad — started a revolution for kids with disabilities
WHEN Ann Greenberg’s 5-month-old, Jerry, started having seizures in 1944, she took him to the hospital — and the doctor’s words shocked her to the core.
“His brain has been injured,” said the physician. “He’s retarded. Go home and have another baby.”
“I am not interested in having a baby in the future. I’m interested in this one, right now!” the distraught mother from The Bronx replied.
But the doctor maintained that her son was beyond help. Greenberg — whose husband, Arthur, was serving in World War II — walked out in shock and disgust.
Her refusal to accept what physicians told her about her son inspired her to take action, ultimately changing things for generations of children with mental disabilities.
Over the next several years, Greenberg advocated fiercely for her son, who was developmentally delayed in standing, sitting, walking and talking, and often suffered seizures.
“He never smiled, and would look right past you,” she told The Post in 1974. His sister, Bonnie Greenberg Hahn, now 63, believes that Jerry may have been on the autism spectrum.
Beyond those medical challenges, Jerry faced another huge hurdle: the ignorance that surrounded developmental and intellectual disabilities in the 1940s. In those days, the word “retard,” now a slur, was considered the polite alternative to “idiot” or “imbecile.” A friend of Greenberg’s had been told by a doctor to place her son with Down syndrome facedown in his carriage. Even Greenberg, a fierce advocate for her child, kept her son’s diagnosis a secret from her husband during the two years he was at war.
As Jerry neared 5 years old, Greenberg began to look into schooling options. The outlook was bleak: The Department of Education refused to take children who couldn’t dress themselves or use the bathroom independently. Greenberg wrote letters to local officials, and even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, pleading her son’s case, but her efforts were to no avail.
But things turned around on July 9, 1948, when she placed a six-line classified ad in the New York Post: “To mothers of retarded children, ages 4 to 8. Are you interested in helping to start a day nursery for your children?”
Her request immediately attracted the attention of eight other moms with challenged young kids. Within weeks, they had set up a learning facility inside a public building in The
Bronx. There, they taught the children basic skills, such as playing and reading. School was still difficult for Jerry — he was difficult to settle and ran away sometimes — but his mom was grateful for the chance to bond with the other parents, who found comfort and cause in each other’s company.
Word spread fast. “We made a big splash by what we were doing and everybody started to hear about us,” Greenberg told The Post in her 1974 interview. By the following spring, Greenberg’s group had grown to include some 200 parents. Together, they formed the Association for the Help of Retarded Children, which went on to found the first schools, workshops, day-treatment programs and community residences for people with intellectual and developmental issues.
Tragically, Jerry died at the age of 8. His body was found drowned in the East River in 1951, after he’d gone missing from school (not one of his mother’s) three weeks earlier. He
could only be identified by his shoes.
Although she was heartbroken, Greenberg harnessed her grief and plowed it into AHRC. Under her guidance, the nonprofit drew the attention of the high-profile likes of Bobby Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Barbara Walters, all of whom attended fund-raising events.
Greenberg died in 2006, but her organization is still thriving as a chapter of the Arc, the country’s largest nonprofit for people with disabilities.
“My mother would be so excited to see just how big AHRC has become,” says Bonnie, who lives in Farmingville, LI, and is a lifelong member of AHRC. “She would be thrilled to see the progress that’s been made — and [motivated] by the progress which still needs to be made.”
Greenberg’s legacy still guides the organization, which will celebrate its 70th anniversary next spring.
“Ann’s spirit is still here,” says Marco Damiani, CEO of AHRC New York City. “Because of Ann’s vision, we’ve gone from the basics of bringing these issues out of the shadows to having a social revolution.”
Gilda Lindenblatt, 80, agrees. The disabled rights activist, who was in special classes before attending AHRC workshops, worked briefly with Greenberg in the mailroom of AHRC’s central office in the early 1970s. Today, she lives in an AHRC-affiliated community home in Manhattan, and makes frequent trips to Albany to discuss policies with lawmakers. In those conversations, she handles herself with confidence.
“I’ll speak up and say what I have to say,” she tells The Post.
Greenberg would be proud.