Hungry Hill native honored to help open Special Olympics Training CenterDate: 1/19/2010 Jan. 18, 2010.
By Debbie Gardner
Assistant Managing Editor
GREATER SPRINGFIELD -- In 1971, he worked alongside Eunice Shriver to found the Massachusetts chapter of Special Olympics. This past December, he stood alongside Sen. Edward Kennedy's son, Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy, at the dedication of the newly-completed Yawkey Special Olympics Training Center in Marlborough, Mass.
To say former Hungry Hill resident Donald Dowd had a hand in the creation of the Special Olympics chapter of Massachusetts would be an understatement. At Shriver's request he established the first Board of Directors for the state organization, served as its president for seven terms, and as a board member for another seven. He and his late daughter, Debbie, were both longtime volunteers and supporters of the annual state games.
For his years of dedication to the organization and the Kennedy family, Patrick presented Dowd with the Edward M. Kennedy Community Service Award at the Dec. 1 event.
"I was so proud to help [the Special Olympics] get going," said Dowd, who now lives in West Springfield.
Dowd, who served as an assistant director to the U.S. Postal Service for New England under President John F. Kennedy, said his personal connection to the Kennedy family stretches back nearly 48 years, to when a young Edward M. Kennedy came to the western part of the state as a candidate for office.
"I did a lot of his in-state campaigning [over the years]," said Dowd, who added he also worked on Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign, the 1978 opening of the Kennedy Library in Boston, Edward's 1980 presidential bid and
Patrick Kennedy's congressional campaign.
Shriver was already in the process of rolling out her Special Olympics concept -- an outgrowth of a summer camp for mentally disabled children that she'd been hosting at her suburban Virginia home for several summers in the 1960s -- when Dowd told Sen. Kennedy how impressed he'd been with some competetive games for patients he'd recently seen at a hospital for the mentally disabled in Taunton.
Dowd said Kennedy in turn told him about the work Shriver was doing with the fledgling Special Olympics program and asked him to help her with the Massachusetts program.
"She said, 'I'd like to move from Taunton to state-wide,'" Dowd recalled. "She asked me to put together a board of directors [and] we reached out to people from different backgrounds. Different people were willing to help our cause."
Over the years those volunteers and contribuitors have included such well-known Massachusetts residents as Boston Bruins great Ken Hodge, who served as director of the state organization for 12 years -- "he opened doors we could never have opened," Dowd said -- and Richard Donahue, president of Nike, whose own son is a Special Olympian.
And of course the Yawkey family, for whom the new Marlborough Training Center is named.
"I could never see them build [that training center] in our budget," Dowd said, recalling how a board member who had connections to the state got them their first building for very little money. "They did this because people cared."
And though he was honored to receive the Edward M. Kennedy Community Service Award at the opening ceremonies, Dowd said it's been the look on the faces of the countless Special Olympians he's watched compete over the years that have been his true reward.
"These [Special Olympians] are God's children. They get an unfair break being born this way, and these people [at Special Olympics] make them happy," Dowd said. "I was so proud to help. President Kennedy said one person can make a difference. I hope I did."
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