Had a wonderful evening at our Special Education PTO meeting. Had the honor of presenting an award to an amazing young lady....Tori Carlson! It was a pleasure to celebrate with your parents, grandparents and your instructors. Heres the speech.......hope youll read to the end! Tonight we are here to celebrate our children and their families! Douglas and I provide this dinner each May to not only celebrate our children with special needs but to give thanks for the families who have supported our organization over the past year. It is to gather and share ideas, to hear what you would like to get from us for the next school year and to celebrate the person we have chosen to receive the Kevin & Kathie Daily Advocacy award! Before I announce this year’s award recipient I would like to tell you about the two people it is named after. Id like to start by telling you that Kevin and Kathie are very dear and close friends of mine. Kevin is a special education consultant. He is the Chairman of an organization that he, himself started, SEPTO Alliance for which I am a very honored to be a board member. Through this organization Kevin has arranged a Special Education Day at the Capital every year where our representatives and Governor can hear stories about our children’s struggles and successes. Kevin can be found traveling from one end of CT to another on any given day of the week; advocating for families whose child or children have special needs; starting up new Special Education PTO’s or attending numerous meetings for organizations that he volunteers for. And, most of all Kevin never refuses a call from me when we have a family in need; whether they can pay or not. He has never turned his back to a family in need! Kevin has been married to Kathie for more than 34 years and together they have 29 year old twins! The reason the award is named after the both of them is because I always have said that Kevin could never do what he does for the families across CT without the love and continued support of his wife Kathie! So, it is an honor to present the Kevin and Kathie Daly advocacy award to Tori Carlson! Now, I can’t tell you as much about Tori as I have been able to tell you about Kevin and Kathie because this is only the second time I’ve seen Tori. It was, however, what I saw the first time I saw Tori that we are presenting her with this award. I was attending a jousting competition for the little boy I babysit for. Tori is a student at the Assembly of the Martial Arts Academy and she was also participating in the jousting competition. Her first opponent was a boy with Down Syndrome. To be honest, I was a bit curious about how this was going to go. But, with the character and kindness of someone much older, Tori was gentle and unassuming when she jousted with this young man. She allowed him to joust competitively! As soon as I saw what Tori did I knew I wanted her to receive this award and this is the first time we have given this award to a student. I along, with your parents and grandparents, your teacher, Miss Bridget and Adam, the owner of the martial arts school you attend are very, very proud of you. It is the compassion that Kevin and Kathie show to children with special needs and their families that I believe you showed to the boy your were jousting. It is so good to know there are young people like you who understand the needs of our children and show them the compassion and caring that you did. Congratulations, Tori!
Posted on: Thu, 29 May 2014 02:06:41 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015