Grandma Henke

I ran across this photo today and it brought tears to my eyes as I thought of the trips we used to make to Disneyland with busses full of adults with cognitive disabilities.    You can’t see who these three men riding side by side on the Merry-Go-Round are but the middle one is Lynn, my super compassionate husband.   He and I had the personal responsibility of two older men on the trip we made in 1993 and as we were walking around Disneyland one of them kept saying, “That there is fun, I guess, but what I like to do is ride them big white horses.”       It took us a while, but finally Lynn figured out what bit white horses he was talking about.  I couldn’t go on it with them … heck I get nauseous just watching it … but Lynn volunteered to ride it with them.    They ended up riding it six or seven times that day and they reminded me of the Three Amigo’s every time they came around and waved at me.   That act of kindness on Lynn’s part almost made my heart burst with love.

I was the Executive Director … you know … where the buck stops … so I  was responsible for the two tour busses of people who went with us every year.     I worried about it so much I couldn’t sleep the entire time we were gone and prayed constantly that everyone would make it home in one piece.    One year two of the men got separated from their trainers for over six hours inside Disneyland.    We had someone posted at the Exit so we knew they were in the park but they blended into the crowd so well it was impossible to track them down.    We finally found them when the park closed and everyone had to leave.  They came waltzing out of he gates proud as peacocks.   They’d been having a blast going from ride to ride while the six of us who were looking for them all day probably walked over twenty-five miles.    It was harrowing, to say the least!    

Employees volunteered to go as chaperones and the service they rendered was beyond description.   It was constant, hard work for them for about 72 hours straight and they did it happily and we all felt like one gigantic family having fun.    It was amazing to see the unselfish service they rendered and also the excellent service we received all along the way as we stopped to eat, at the motels, on the busses.   One staff person took a man who was totally wheelchair bound and carried him off and on the bus, into the bathrooms, into his shower and bed,off and on many rides, clear down to the beach … and was as cheerful and kind as you could ever imagine.    The trips were hard work but the joy on the faces of the people we took was so exhilarating.

As I look over these pictures (I wish I could share them with you but I can’t because of privacy rules) there are many of my pals who have now passed away.  I’m grateful for the pictures and the memories of the good times we’ve had together.  I can’t begin to describe the fun we had… the things we laughed about and how close we felt to the people we worked with every day.    It has been about ten years since our last trip.   We were informed that Utah Employment Laws didn’t allow us to use staff as volunteers.   We would have to pay them time for 24 hours a day and a half for anything over 8 hours.   I grant you that they deserved that much pay and more but a non profit agency could never come up with that kind of money plus the expenses of the trip on top of that … so we had to quit going.   They’ve never forgotten it, though.     They still ask me when we’re going again and tell me how much fun it was.