Ottawa’s City Council last week passed a proclamation honoring Jane McCormick for her 100th birthday, which is Sunday. December 11th. Her efforts to help her developmentally disabled son live on in Friendship House, formerly known as Friendship Village. For this occasion, WCMY News is republishing a story we ran on January 12 and 13, 2016 when the Friendship House organization was about to mark its 50th anniversary:
From January 12, 2016: Ottawa Friendship House is about to name a west side semi-independent living home for the developmentally disabled after Jane McCormick, who helped found the organization in 1966. That was 14 years after a doctor told her that her severely delayed son would probably live just 12 years and never be able to get out of bed. Bob McCormick learned to talk, walk, shoot baskets, and dance. And he lived 58 years.
In 1952, the McCormicks didn’t even get a pamphlet about their son’s problem. A doctor read to them about it from a book. The prevailing wisdom was to put children like Bob away in institutions and forget them. The McCormicks heard the same bad prognosis about their son ten more times as they met with ten more doctors.
Then the couple moved from New Jersey to Ottawa where Jane met other moms whose children had developmental challenges. The women scraped together all the resources they could to help their children and each other. They read together what few newspaper and magazine articles they could find about teaching such children. And they hired a teacher.
As Bob outlived his first doctor’s prediction, Jane’s commitment to him transformed. She’d worked for years to make Bob’s childhood better than anyone thought it could be. She began preparing for the adulthood she’d been told not to expect at all. In a partnership with the since defunct Ottawa Jaycees, Jane and the other moms founded Ottawa Friendship House. The best change Jane has seen since those days is how parents of developmentally delayed children have hope now.
Jane McCormick recalls a time when most people thought of the developmentally disabled as useless. Today, many Friendship House clients earn pay on local assembly lines. She alone didn’t change all society’s attitude. But her commitment to change in Ottawa will be honored when the Jane McCormick House is dedicated in March.