Dr. Frank Hayden, the man whose work changed the idea of what is possible for people with disabilities, has died at the age of 96 in Oakville, Ontario. His name is being remembered as a movement he helped create prepares for its latest celebration.
In two weeks, some 3,000 athletes will gather in Minneapolis-St. Paul to compete in the Special Olympics USA Games. Those games come nearly 60 years after the very first Special Olympics, held on July 20th, 1968 at Chicago's Soldier Field, an event that Hayden organised.
The roots of that day reached back several years earlier. Hayden was a professor of physical education at the University of Toronto when, in 1964, he published groundbreaking research. Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the time, which held that people with disabilities were weak and could not play sports, his work showed that they actually benefited greatly from physical activity.
That 48-page academic study went on to have an outsized impact. It became a touchstone for families looking for answers, selling some 50,000 copies, and eventually landed in front of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of President John F. Kennedy.
In Dr. Hayden, Shriver saw an ally in the fight for the compassionate treatment of people with disabilities, like her sister Rosemary. She recruited him to work with her, and he became the executive director of the Special Olympics when the first games were held in 1968.
From there the movement spread quickly. Just two years after those first games in Chicago, regional Special Olympics had been set up in all 50 states. In 1981, Dr. Hayden began the international expansion of the organisation, carrying the idea well beyond the United States.
The scale of what followed is striking. Today, more than four million athletes with intellectual disabilities around the world compete in the Special Olympics. Dr. Frank Hayden, who reshaped what was thought possible for them, died last month at the age of 96.