Doug: Thanx so much for the compliment, which I accept, as well, on behalf of my wife . I think the biggest burden fell on her.

I was “hands-on” with the kids ,to the limited extent a busy attorney can be. But in our arrangement, my job was to fund the operations, deal with the State and Federal bureaucracy on benefits issues, bully the School Boards into giving my daughter the benefits ( expensive for them) to which to which she was entitled by law. Straighten out some officious doctors, nurses , hospital administrators on how to serve handicapped surgical and treating patients [ It sometimes is of great value to have the reputation of being a bulldog, locked-jaw attorney, who had no hesitation to go into court for an injunction or go to the press to publicize handicap discrimination.]. And finally to bring together the multiple Local, State , & private charitable actors necessary to get a Group Home approved, financed, built and staffed. It took 7 years. Today ,I think I could do it faster, but that was the first time I tried to do it and I fell on my face a couple of times along the way. Those kind of mistakes teach you quickly, so you don’t make them twice, since they are so painful, embarrassing and frustrating.

My wife had the real hands-on , day-too-day interactions,education, & worries. Her day began about 5 am and continued , more or less unabated, until about 8-9pm. And more if someone was sick.

She had to be attuned and inventive. For example, when we learned that our daughter could hear perfectly, but lacked the fine motor control to speak., my wife, drawing on her working experience , taught my daughter and the rest of us to “speak” in ASL ( American Sign Language ) , simultaneously with speaking in English. Thus, for the first time and for many years, ASL gave my daughter communicative language and interaction with her family, peers, & teachers which she otherwise would have lacked. It even helped to learn to read basic words in English. Then , years later, when my daughter’s speech therapy started to yield positive result, my wife banned ASL and forced us all to use only English, initially to my daughter’s consternation, so my daughter would regard spoken language as primary. It worked. She also kept track of and paid the household bills, insurances, etc.

Also, I gave you the final results ,which thank heaven ,are terrific. Along the way there was anger at many unfair things, sometimes intolerance with each other, frustration, rough spots caused in our marriage, etc. In other words, all the same crap couples with kids go thru, but WRIT LARGE, on account of having a Special Needs child and ,at times, elderly parents and step- parents who had only us to turn too.

At one time, for about 1.5 years, we had 3 handicapped or challenged kids and adults living in our home, in addition to my son who tho unchallenged , was young at the time.. My wife managed it all, alone , virtually without any outside help, except we did have a cleaning person ,one day a week. My wife looks back fondly on that time ,if u can believe it.

But we’re together after 2 years of living with each other and going on 37 years married. We are still happy with each other. So, I guess we can smile and say we’ve done OK so far. But I still think that I had the easier burden to carry.