Dr. Timothy Shriver on the Special Olympics–Starkey Cares Alliance

Dave invites Dr. Timothy Shriver, Chairman of The Special Olympics, to the podcast to discuss his organization’s alliance with Starkey Cares, never saying “I’m just…”, putting the power of connections over “things”, and creating a movement that’s a welcome place for people who want to make a difference.

Link to full transcript

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to a very special edition of Starkey's Town Bites. I'm your host, Dave Fabry, Starkey's Chief Innovation Officer. Our guest today is Dr. Tim Shriver, Chairman of Special Olympics and fierce advocate for people with disabilities. Special Olympics is close to our heart here at Starkey. Our corporate social responsibility initiative, Starkey Cares, recently created a partnership with this incredible organization. Tim, thank you for joining us on Starkey Soundbite. Thank you for having me. So at our recent launch event, which uh marked uh the 51st anniversary of when your uncle, uh John F. Kennedy, officially established the Peace Corps on March 1st, 1961. We talked a little bit about this uh partnership that uh is now been forged between Starkey Cares and uh with Special Olympics. Can you talk a little bit about why you're excited about this partnership?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Well, you mentioned the Peace Corps. I mean, the Peace Corps uh in 1961 was an idea. It was a name, it was a concept, it was a vision. Uh the vision captivated people before there was any program, before there was any plan, uh the vision that young people could live and work and meet each other eye to eye, heart to heart, in villages and communities, share a fundamental commitment to liberty, freedom, to hope, for the future, that they could work together with people from all different walks of life and all different cultures in pursuit of a more just and joyful future. That's all the Peace Corps was in March of 1961. And yet tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people wanted to join without knowing anything more. Uh today, in the Special Olympic Starkey Cares example, there's a similar feeling. We know what we want to be, and we know how we want to live differently in this post-pandemic world. We know we want a more just future. We know we don't want to be so dominated by name-calling and labels and walls that separate us from one another and classrooms where children are separated, and communities where people are separated, and religious separation, and political separation. We want something different, all of us. We came together, Starkey Cares and Special Olympics, because we said, let's build on the spirit of inclusion to change something specific. Let's make it possible for people with intellectual disabilities to hear. Like that's very concrete. But it can't be done unless we have the compassion, the value, the heart, the determination, if you will, to change the past and create something new, where the health care system and the treatment of people with intellectual disabilities is more just and results in more health.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah, at the event you talked about the inclusion revolution, which I love the way that you frame that. And when we look at hearing loss like intellectual disabilities, in many cases, uh individuals, children in the past have often been bullied and uh made fun of. Many of the terms, the pejorative terms that have been used in the past, um, really set a tone that uh wasn't very nice. I know in in your your wonderful book, uh Fully Alive, you talk about when you first began uh to become involved in Special Olympics, people said, Oh, that's nice. And and uh you referred to it uh uh when in in the book where you say, it's not nice. And in the background of these many of these individuals, have you seen progress in the in the decades that you've been involved?

SPEAKER_00 3:34

I mean the answer is yes. Uh and I I think it's okay to, you know, some people say, well, don't talk about progress, otherwise you'll help uh you'll help reinforce the myth that things are okay. I don't I think it's the opposite. I think when people see that in 1968 there were almost 200,000 Americans in institutions, and today there are almost none, I think that's an inspiration for people to know you can make a difference. Your efforts matter. Absolutely. Like you can change the course of history. You, one individual, in the case of people with intellectual disabilities, one audiologist, one manufacturing company, one training program, if we train a new generation of people in the hearing profession to be able to care for people with intellectual and developmental differences. It can change thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of lives. If we do better at making sure that the insurance systems support getting care, uh hearing aids and other devices for people with intellectual challenges, we can change hundreds of thousands of lives. So, yes, things have gotten better for people with intellectual and developmental differences. Are we where we want to be? Absolutely not. We've got a long way to go. Our kids are bullied in school. The unemployment rate for people with intellectual disabilities is somewhere between 70 and 90 percent. No one knows exactly the right number. We still struggle to find uh health care practitioners, dentists, doctors, physical therapists who will care for our population. So there's a lot of discrimination, there's a lot of ignorance, and there's still a lot of fear. I talked to a mom today whose 49-year-old daughter uh is uh Katie uh Timmers, just a delight, and uh tears came to her eyes when she was born. She said, you know, the doctors told me it to institutionalize my child. Um and she said, now my child has a life. That's because all of us have done our part. Those that came into Katie's life have all done our part, not just to help Katie, but to change us. The future of the Special Olympics movement, it will continue to be a movement for people with intellectual disabilities. But it is also a movement from them.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

It is also a chance for the rest of the culture and society to learn something deep and profound about who we are, all different, all unique, everyone with dignity, everyone belonging. That's their lesson to us. We need a lot more than that. We would do well to listen.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

We need a lot more of that in the world today. Let's let's talk briefly about your journey. Um you were just a toddler when uh in the summer of 62, it's the 50th anniversary this year of when your mother, Eunice, Kennedy Shriver, had her first camp shriver. Um so you you were i i you're about a month older than me, but those darn Kennedy jeans, you look fifteen years younger. But uh but you were three years old. Three years old when your mom had that first camp shriver. Can you talk a little bit about her inspiration to you and what has led you then to look, I think if you're a kid and you have a big backyard, it was a farm we actually lived on, a working farm.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Many uh there were farmers there that took took care of cattle and uh planting uh crops and so on. Uh so it was a big expansive space, thank God. I was very privileged in that regard. But all of a sudden in the summer, our our backyard turned into an amusement park. We had uh games and pony rides and arts and crafts studios and climbing ropes and climbing walls. And um I think what I knew in the beginning was that I was given the chance to have a playful, fun, joyful backyard summer camp uh with hundreds of other people. Um I think what my mother understood was that if we try to beat people into change, shame them into change, uh force them into change, it's not likely to be successful. But if we invite people to play, have a good time, do something they enjoy, then we might meet on common ground. And her genius, and I'm I'm just the beneficiary of it, not the architect, her genius was for me as a little boy to first encounter people with intellectual differences, which I wouldn't have even known that's their situation, but to first encounter them as people I wanted to play with, people who brought me a lot of fun. And I think most Special Olympics volunteers today usually had a similar first experience. Maybe they were told they should, or maybe they were part of a group that said, you know, you ought to volunteer. But what they really typically have in common is they came to the movement, they came to a Special Olympics event and they had fun. And it's not often that someone can say having fun is really important. Usually, you know, if I say to you, hey, this is really important, you think it's not gonna be fun. If I say, I got something really fun for you to do, you think, well, that's gonna sound great, but it's not gonna be important. The Special Olympics movement has brought those two values together, fun and important. Enjoy another human being and change your life by doing so. That's a valuable and I think a very powerful value proposition. And it's why in little communities around the world, in Eastern Europe and in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and in Asia, all over China and all parts of uh uh the continent, North America and Europe, it's why in small schools and small villages and small towns and big cities, people are still coming to the Special Olympics movement and offering an hour or two on a Saturday, or an hour or two on a Thursday afternoon, or an hour or two on a weekend. And they're offering it because they're willing to give it a try. Give encounter, meeting, crossing a boundary a chance. Just suspend your fear, your worry, just long enough to shoot baskets and see what happens. And then often I'm I'm happy to say, still the magic of our movement takes over.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Yeah, and and and thinking back to those beginnings at Camp Shriver and then did you were you at the first the Chicago?

SPEAKER_00 9:53

I was not. I was not at the Chicago Games. That was um um, you know, it was a tough summer in my family. Yeah, we were we had just um my dad had just been appointed to uh ambassadorship in France, so we had moved over in April of that year, uh April of 68, uh shortly after Dr. King's death to France, and then of course uh we lost my uncle a few weeks later, and my parents came back for that, and uh so my folks were kind of on their own uh journey to try to manage an unmanageable or unimaginably uh challenging period of time. So uh most of us kids, none of us kids were in in uh in Chicago in 1968, but you know it's I've often thought that it's a um it's quite a uh a statement that in 1968 uh Chicago turned into a city in violence later that summer. Uh there was violence around our country uh in April, uh the war, uh the racial challenges that uh continue to this day. My mom was not gonna be deterred. Uh all that could be happening in her own family and in her country, and yet she was determined. Uh uh I can hear her saying, I I'm sure people said to her, Eunice, don't go, you don't have to go, cancel. And I can hear her saying, to hell with that, uh, we're going forward, our athletes need it.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

And and out of that year, 68, I was also, you know, nine, and remembered really, not not from the perspective of an adult, but from a child and just all of the things. And and thinking about as I was preparing for this podcast, your family and and really what w it would have been easier to not continue, and and that her determination to pull that off and to begin and continue that movement to this day, um testimony to something good came out of that year, and and this movement continues even now as your chair of Special Olympics. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Well, the movement continues because people of Goodwill, as they did in Chicago and as they did at Camp Shriver and years before. Uh my mom trusted uh this movement to volunteers. By that I mean she trusted it to average people. Yeah. She didn't trust it to PhDs, she didn't trust it to political figures, she didn't trust it to business CEOs. All those kinds of people have helped. But she really gave uh uh the keys to this particular kingdom to average people, saying if you a member of the Lions Club, if you a member of the church group, if you a member of the sports club, if you a member of the special education, if you will help us, uh we can create Special Olympics in your neighborhood. And um uh you didn't need a PhD, you didn't need a fancy uh credential for her. Uh she was actually more interested in a 17-year-old of goodwill whose heart and mind were open than she was necessarily in uh the more prestigious or more uh mature people. So this movement has continued to uh be uh a welcome place for people who want to make a difference. Uh and there's no other criteria than that. You just you're well if you want to make a difference, you're welcome here. If you want to make life better for someone else and find out that it's also going to be better for you, the Special Olympics movement welcomes you. Uh no training needed, uh just uh an open heart, an open mind, and a willingness to give.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Well, and this partnership, I mean, I've I've devoted almost 40 years of my career to hearing. And uh one of the things about hearing is that it's often an overlooked sense. It's taken for granted until it's lost. And yet it is for most of us, with all respect to those with profound hearing loss who use manual communication, it is the means by which most of us communicate with each other, listen and hear. And I think it's no coincidence that ear is in the center of the heart. And uh I mean we we really uh honor and respect and are determined uh in this partnership to ensure you know hearing is our concern, but then with the partnership with Special Olympics to really continue. I mean, in 2015 I did have the the privilege of going to LA for the World Games and and volunteering there. Um and I I think as as you've said in the past and I've read in your book, you know, I was the beneficiary of far more than I gave uh those days that I was there.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

And well, look, every you know, uh in this movement you can see that every gift in isolation seems small. You you in a way are sort of saying, well, all we care, all we all we do is hearing, you know. And the soccer coach says, Well, all I do is teach children to dribble. You know, and the the volunteer who's helping with food and and refreshments says, Well, all I'm doing is bringing the water and the snacks. And uh someone else says, Well, all I'm doing is uh helping to unlock the gym. Um and it's always the small that is big. Every little piece is actually an enormously powerful gift when it's coming from the heart, when it's coming from uh uh the the the space in which we find ourselves as human beings united. Um so I I I think what what you found at the 2015 World Games, what I found as a four-year-old at Camp Shriver, what people at Chicago Soldier Field found in 1968 on that playing field in an empty stadium, what what we found as we announced this partnership is uh Special Olympics athletes, uh, as uh Katie said, turn to someone and say, I can't do it without you. And they don't mean I can't do it without a thousand people. They mean I can't do it without you. So for everyone in in the Starkey family and the in the hearing world, uh no gift is small. No gift is small. Don't uh my sister always says this, don't say I am just. Don't put just in front of your word, your title. Don't say I'm just a mom, or I'm just an audiologist, or I'm just a coach, or I'm just a fundraiser, and I don't matter. You know, that's not what our athletes want to hear. No. They want us to hear them saying, I can't do it without you. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

It was very powerful when you said that in your speech. I can't and you you had the athletes stand up and uh Yeah, that's not something I've done before, but it just remarkable.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

They they they they helped me out. They they bailed me out.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Well, and it personalized it, like you said. It's not I can't do it without the the team. Right. I can't do it. It was personalized. I can't do it without you. Right. And it's that responsibility, yeah. Um the accountability to each other. Yeah. Uh and to your best self.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

And to your best self. You know, that's the thing. People like, well, wait a minute, like I don't know. But what about you? What about what's best in you? Don't you don't you don't you want, don't you want someone to look at you and see what's best in you? This is what our athletes are doing. They'll look beyond all the you know the bold the the BS labels. Uh and um and and it's uh it's an enormous gift they have, uh, many of them. There's no universals in in any organization. We have plenty of athletes who have lots of differing gifts. But many of our athletes have this one quality, which is to put the power of relationship and connection above all things. And um when you find and encounter someone who does that, who who practices that way of living, uh all I say is follow them, and you'll be surprised you'll be following people you don't you don't expect to be following, but you might they might be a person wearing a Special Olympics outfit and you might be thinking you came to help them, but you'll find yourself trying to model your life on their vision and wisdom. Indeed.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

And and with that, uh we'll wrap this uh very special edition of Starky Soundbites. I thank you for taking the time to talk with us today for your vision and leadership and partnership, and we look forward to seeing you at the U.S. Games in Orlando uh and then the world games coming up after that.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

We very much look forward to it. We have millions of athletes who want the chance to hear. And uh we got work to do, let's get after it. Let's go. Let's go. Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

To our listeners, thank you for listening to this episode of Starky Soundbites. If you enjoyed this conversation, please rate and review SoundBites on your preferred podcast platform. You can also hit subscribe so that you're sure not to miss a single episode. See and hear you next time.