Mary Farrelly can’t take her eyes off her 8-year-old son, Owen. He is waiting in line to hit a volleyball. She’s never signed him up for an event like this. Does he know he’s supposed to go sit on the bench? Will he sit on the bench after he’s done?

It’s Owen’s turn. He’s never shown much interest in catching a ball or riding a bike at home, but Mary thought, just maybe, he’d like this. The coach hits the ball to Owen, and he hits it back. He hits it back! Tears that were already pooling in Mary’s eyes spill out.

She looks around, wiping away her tears. Making eye contact with the other parents, Mary realizes she’s not alone. All of the parents at the Special Olympics event at Independence Park in Chicago — this is back in 1990 — have those same worries. There are plenty of tears, plenty of yells of joy. Mary, who is never afraid to spark up a conversation, starts talking to other parents. For so long she has felt isolated by her son’s disability, but she realizes almost immediately that the people here had gone through the same things, traveling down a parallel path.

Special Olympics is celebrating its 50th Anniversary this summer with a five-day event in Chicago that ends tomorrow. By now the work of this organization is so ingrained in our culture that it’s hard to remember when it was a revolutionary idea, and almost impossible to fully comprehend how influential it has been.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver with medal winners at the first games at Soldier Field in Chicago. (Courtesy of Special Children’s Charities)

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. and Ted, started the Special Olympics in 1968 — built around an oath for athletes: “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt” — after she had campaigned for years for better treatment for people with intellectual disabilities. The first event was held at Chicago’s Soldier Field, bringing together a thousand athletes from the United States and Canada to play in more than 200 events. A representative from Tribune Charities told a volunteer in 1968 that “they should be ashamed of yourself for putting these kinds of kids on display.”

When that first event closed, Chicago’s mayor at the time, Richard J. Daley, told Shriver that the world will never be the same. He was right. Special Olympics programs have spread to 170 countries, allowing more than five million athletes a chance to play. In a recent Washington Post column, longtime Sports Illustrated writer Jack McCallum dubbed it “one of history’s most transformative human rights movements.”

Owen, now 36, participates in dozens of Special Olympics events a year. Sports have been a constant thread in his life since the moment he hit that volleyball, and his fellow athletes and their families have become the support group carrying the Farrelly family through decades of triumphs and frustrations.

When Owen was three months old, Frank and his wife, Mary, started to wonder if their son had hearing or vision problems. He had trouble nursing. Mary’s mother asked if there was something wrong. They took him to different hospitals in Chicago, and finally at Children’s Memorial, when Owen was about eight months old, they were given the diagnosis, using the language of the time: their son had moderate mental retardation because he was born with two extra X chromosomes.

Doctors at Children’s Memorial tried to find others with the same abnormality — known as XXXY syndrome — as Owen but couldn’t. It only affects one in every 50,000 male births. There’s no list of symptoms that encompasses what he struggles with, but his parents commented more than once that Owen, who now stands 6-foot-2 and 300 lbs., acts like a six-year-old.

“He’s a toucher. He’s a feeler, a kisser, he’s annoying,” Mary says. “He does all the things you don’t want somebody to do, and we struggle with it, because Owen doesn’t stop. He’s compulsive.”

A much younger Owen (Courtesy of the Farrelly family)

As Frank and Mary navigated their new reality, they got accustomed to using — and hearing — one word over and over: no. No, you can’t go to the same school as your brother and sisters. No, you can’t stay over at your friend’s house. Can my son play on that team? Go to that camp? Perform in that play?

The answer, for many different reasons, was always no.

When Mary first took Owen to the Chicago Park District’s Special Olympics programs at Independence Park, she heard something else — not yet. Potty training for the intellectually disabled is different, and usually happens much later. She was told by leaders when he was around seven that when he was potty trained, he could join a volleyball program.

A year later he started with Special Olympics, and the Farrellys’ lives changed. There was not a “no.” Instead, there was a place where Owen could be like other kids, and Frank and Mary could be like other parents. Frank eventually retired from a 33-year career with a utility company and became a coach for all of the Special Olympics programs at Shabbona Park, a small park not far from the family’s Northwest Chicago home that already had a program. Mary found career inspiration from her life with Owen as well, going back to school to become a social worker, intent on helping “families like ours.”

Owen’s integration into school never came easily. He started with the Chicago Public Schools when he was 3-years-old. Mary put him on a bus every day.

“He was so little getting on that bus. It was the scariest thing. I cried every day for two weeks. Every day, he’d throw his shoe out of the bus,” Mary says. “And how hard is it to put a three year old on a bus? I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. It was horrible! But he was happy. He was happy to go, and he had a terrific teacher.”

But as he advanced through the school system, some of his compulsive tendencies got him into trouble. Even though he stayed in programs meant to help children like him, teachers and administrators were often overwhelmed and struggled to give him the sort of attention he needed. He was suspended a few times. The bad language his parents admit came from them started to come out at school, and Frank and Mary got calls from the principal; they were confused, as they thought the school was supposed to be helping him work on his lack of inhibition, a symptom of his disability. Later, at the school where he was supposed to be trained for a job, Owen couldn’t quite find the right fit.

“Everything they tried with Owen, didn’t work. They even went down to making him a greeter at Olive Garden, because when ever he went in to carry in food, if you left a piece of bread, Owen would eat it,” Frank says. “They made him a greeter, and he would eat all those little mints that they have out front.”

(Courtesy of the Farrelly family)

He graduated from Chicago Public Schools at 22, singing a song at the graduation ceremony. Since traditional jobs for the intellectually disabled didn’t work out for him, he joined his father at the park.

“The park district, with Frank there, or even when Frank’s not there, they were more accepting, it felt like to me,” Mary says. “He would like a job, but he can be a bully, and we don’t want him hurting anyone. It’s not because we think he’s a bad person, he’s just compulsive and you don’t know. We’re comfortable like this. It’s working out OK.”

Owen has two sisters — one older, one younger — and an older brother. His needs often took center stage as the four were growing up. Yet he would also get lost from time to time. When Mary took Molly, their youngest daughter, to a Cubs game to celebrate perfect attendance at school, Owen walked a mile to the nearest L station, and boarded the train that he thought would take him to Wrigley Field. Frank and Mary frantically searched for him and enlisted the help of a police officer who lived next door. Owen was found in downtown Chicago by two construction workers. He was sitting on a curb, crying.

“I had four kids, but with him, I had to be here. My other kids were like, you’re always going with Owen. Everything’s Owen,” Mary says.

“The other kids had stuff, too. Frankie played football, the girls were in track and singing and all kinds of activities, but Owen … the beauty and the detriment of Special Olympics is you’re constantly going. If you have three siblings, that’s you constantly off to Owen Land. It probably pisses them off,” Frank says.

“It does. It’s come up. And yet, every single kid has written a paper about their special brother. They’re crazy about him,” Mary says.

Owen’s brother and sisters are often there when he’s competing, volunteering and cheering him on. Though he’s been a part of Special Olympics long enough that his parents remember the 25th Anniversary, the gatherings still move Mary to tears. Owen participates in track and field events — “I’m speedy! And cute!” he says — and there is something particularly special about crossing the finish line.

“It was like, ‘Oh my God. He did it!’ I went crazy. I still cry every time he achieves,” she says, fighting through tears and to find the right words, “and does the effort. Nobody gets how much that means to a mom and to him.”

(Courtesy of the Farrelly family)

Owen participates in nearly every sport the Chicago Park District and Special Olympics offer. Balance issues keep him from skiing and skating. His favorite is powerlifting.

“Weightlifting is OK. I just practice hard enough, and I get the gold. I get the gold medal. I have three gold medals in powerlifting and Barbara,” Owen says, nodding toward a friend nearby, “is in soccer, but I don’t like soccer so much.”

Weightlifting works particularly well for many Special Olympians, Frank said, because the athletes feel as though they are challenging themselves rather than each other. There’s no “loser” apparent. They all just get to cheer for each other.

In a traditional deadlift, the athlete will have an underhand grip. Owen’s wrist issues prevent him from that, but the adaptive nature of Special Olympics means he can enter a different category, where he competes with people who are like him. If he wants to play a sport but can’t quite master the rules or the moves, he can participate in the skills competition for each sport.

“There’s always an adaptive version for Owen. He’s never been turned down for any sport,” Mary says.

Owen’s understanding of competition has also improved, and gives his parents a way to track his mental state. He can’t quite follow all the intricacies of different qualifying competitions and at one point tries to claim he won three golds at a particular event when it was in fact a gold and a bronze.

He’s clearly frustrated as he crosses his arms and looks down, repeating, “I have three gold medals,” but this is actually an important step forward.

“I think he’s maturing because stuff that didn’t bother him before bothers him now. That face he made with the bronze. Before, he’d say, ‘I won!’ no matter what. A ribbon!” Frank says. “I think it means something to him when it didn’t before.
 He knows if he does poorly.”

There’s no upper age limit to Special Olympics. One athlete at tennis proudly told me he just turned 50. Staying involved works for the Farrellys, and as Owen likes competing and is in excellent health, he will keep competing.

(Courtesy of the Farrelly family)

At a Special Olympics tennis event on a sunny July morning at the Waveland Tennis Center on Chicago’s lakefront, Owen found his spot on a bench. Teams from across the city had come. He sat down and fiddled with his racquet. Owen is much bigger than that 8-year-old boy, and his hair is now flecked with spots of salt and pepper. He’s wearing a black and white uniform with “Shabbona Sharks” written across the front and the number 46 on the back.

Some of his Sharks teammates were competing in actual matches on nearby courts. Owen is in the skills competition, where he can hit the tennis ball, try serving and show off a backhand without the back and forth of a full match.

When his name is called, he runs to the court and gets into position. He holds out his tennis racquet, preparing for the ball to come his way.

“C’mon Owen! Keep your eye on the ball!” says Frank.

The ball is launched, and Owen swings — about six inches too high. The ball rolls back to the volunteer. Owen gets back into the ready position, and another ball flies his way. This time, he makes contact, but the ball sails off court and hits a woman holding a clipboard nearby. His wrist problems make it difficult for him to hit the ball squarely, even after years of trying.

“One more time, Owen!” Frank shouts.

Owen again gets back into position after giggling a bit at his mishit ball. This time, he gets it. His teammates cheer, his dad pumps his fist, and Owen runs off the court with a wide smile.

“I was doing fine! Yep, I had fun. Tennis is my favorite. So is golf,” Owen says.

Music blares over a loudspeaker. The athletes, who have a wide array of disabilities, recognize each other from the dozens of events they compete in each year. They exchange hugs, high fives and gentle teasing.

Parents sit and talk, always mindful of when their children lope onto the court. Some look anxious, others as if they’d been doing this for years. It is difficult to know if any of these athletes are here for the first time, if today is another day that will change a life and give a family lasting comfort. The athletes just take their turns — brave, always, in the attempt.

Because they have the chance to be.