Developmental Disability Festival shines a light on community's resources

Blue balloons dotted the air of the Athens Community Center gymnasium Tuesday night as the town came together during the annual Developmental Disability Festival.

More than 300 people attended the festival, hosted by Athens County Board of Developmental Disabilities, and nearly 50 different agencies from the state, county or city were also present.

"My favorite part of the event is that people with developmental disabilities get out and about," said Kevin Davis, ACBDD superintendent.

In previous years, the festival had a formal program but this year the event was changed to allow people the chance to connect with one another.

"What we've found over the past couple of years is that people don't really enjoy that because people want to talk and people want to mingle," Davis said. "The theme this year is community ? we're underscoring the unity and we really wanted this year to be more of a celebration of our community providers and not try to make everybody be quiet and listen to some formal presentation."

The Athens County Community Singers, led by Director Stephanie Morris, performed various songs during the festival. Founded in 2013, the group is an integrated choir full of community members both with and without disabilities.

The choir took a few songs and played around with the lyrics to make them more relatable to Athens. For example, when they sang John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads," they replaced West Virginia with Athens County.

They also sang other hits like Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror," Secret Garden's "You Raise Me Up" (made popular by Josh Groban) and Dionne Warwick's "What the World Needs Now."

"Athens is a place of love," Morris said.

Her son is on the autism spectrum and he plays bass guitar for the choir.

"Athens being a small community, you would think it wouldn't have a lot of resources but I have been amazed at the number of resources that this community has as a result," Morris said. "Part of me creating this group was for him to have a music outlet, but also for individuals in the community."

She said her favorite part of the festival is having all the resources available to those with disabilities in one place.

Throughout the evening, a remote-controlled school bus named "Buster" zoomed around the gymnasium with its siren wailing, lights flashing and eyes blinking.

Tracy Gillum, a bus driver for ACBDD, was the one operating Buster and children would come up to the bus throughout the festival.

"They notice the lights and stop to check him out," Gillum said.

Also in attendance Tuesday night was Rocco, a six-year-old Shih Tzu dog. His owner Mallory Valentour rescued him about three years ago.

"Everybody just loves him so much, so he comes wherever we go. I can't go anywhere without him," said Valentour, who works with Creative Foundations within Passion Works.

She likes how the festival brings people together.

"I really enjoy seeing all the familiar faces that maybe I haven't seen in a couple years or so or even a couple months," Valentour said.

Ohio University Sparkles, an organization that connects students with and without disabilities through cheering, was also present at the community center. In addition to being a spirit squad, the group strives to increase awareness of people with disabilities on OU's campus.

Kelsey Tetmeyer, a junior at OU studying special education who is a member of OU Sparkles, said she enjoyed the interaction at Tuesday's event.

"We like to have that community interaction, which I feel like a lot of college students don't really get," she said, "but being able to really see a different side of Athens besides just the college aspect is a really neat thing."