‘The longest-serving athlete’: Pioneering Special Olympian dies By Paige Fry, Chicago Tribune
Published: December 28, 2020, 6:05am
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4 Photos About 300 young athletes showed off their skills in such sports as swimming, gymnastics and volleyball during the opening of the first 1974 Northern Area Special Olympics on April 19, 1974. (James O Leary / Chicago Tribune/TNS) Photo Gallery
CHICAGO – When Michael “Moose” Cusack was born in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital in 1956, doctors told his parents that something was wrong he had Down syndrome. They advised: don’t bring him home. It was better to institutionalize him early, his parents were told.
John and Esther Cusack’s first step toward challenging the status quo was bringing their son home. They raised him, loved him and nurtured him the same as his four sisters.
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Michael Cusack, who helped spark the Special Olympics, dies at 64 Harrison Smith When Michael Cusack was born in 1956, doctors at Chicago Lying-in Hospital said he had no chance at a normal life. “They told my mom not to even bother looking at him, just to put him in an institution,” his sister Carole Cusack recalled. Mr. Cusack had Down syndrome, at a time when people with disabilities were routinely ostracized, isolated and neglected, largely barred from opportunities to learn or play. But his parents ignored their doctors’ advice and brought him home, where he acquired a nickname, Mickey, and became known as Mickey Mouse, Mickey Moose and just plain Moose, because he was far stronger than a mouse.