Overview:
Torch Run through 200 communities covered 1,500 miles while raising funds for the year-round programs of Special Olympics
My sister, Therese, grew up the same way as most children.
She blossomed in the Great Outdoors.
She began exploring our neighborhood on Santa Barbara’s Mesa not too long after her first step.
Therese would run around the block until spotting a home of interest. Then she’d knock on its door.
Our mom, Rita, had trouble keeping track of her, but some of the neighbors proved capable lookouts.
Gloria Hultman lived at the bottom of our street and she was especially adept at corralling my little sister.
She’d offer her cookies and milk, sit her down with a children’s book, and then give us a call.
My older brother, Greg, and I were often entrusted with watching Therese, but she got her greatest pleasure from giving us the slip.
We’d get the call and then trudge in defeat to retrieve her. She’d greet us with a triumphant smile framed in cookie crumbs.
Above all, Therese loved to run.
She’d take off with head held high and eyes shut tight just to feel the wind against her face.
Getting her to stop for dinner or bedtime turned into the most Olympian of tasks … unless a dog was around.
She loved animals as much as running and would giggle approvingly when they licked her face.
We’d worry that she’d come across an unfriendly dog, but it never happened. Even the roughest ones accepted her embrace as if from a long-lost friend.
They somehow knew this innocent child ran with angels.
Therese was special.
“Intellectually challenged” became the more official term after the R-word went the way of the dodo bird.
I bristled whenever a dodo used such slang to describe my little sister.
It took my brother and me some time to realize that she was different.
I was just 20 months older than Therese, but even my parents were caught unaware.
She was a beautiful child. Shocks of blond hair complemented clear blue eyes that seemed to dance when she laughed.
She looked normal physically, but she never could be more than just a child mentally.
Greg and I took notice as we grew older.
It was hard to tell in our playground games. She ran and jumped and threw the ball like the rest of us — with perhaps even a little more spirit.
But off the field, we saw that she didn’t talk or think like us.
And, finally, so did Therese.
Olympic Heights
We’d revel in our official Little League games and school programs, but that only seemed to light her fuse of anger when she was denied inclusion.
It was like a starting gun that would send her off on another run — and her brothers into more hot pursuit.
I’d marvel at her speed and perseverance and mutter, “She ought to be in the Olympics.”
And then, one day, she was.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver, sister of the late President John F. Kennedy, brainstormed an athletic event in the late 1960s for those like Therese.
Shriver had grown up with a special needs sister of her own named Rosemary.
The meet she founded was a competition, for sure, complete with medals and ribbons and a victory podium.
But it felt more like a celebration of competition.
Therese learned that thrill as one of the original special athletes.
I was a dubious young teen when my parents ordered their brood of children into the family station wagon to watch her first meet.
“Special Olympics? C’mon, this isn’t a real Olympics,” I protested. “Do I have to go?”
The meet’s originators probably wondered if something so pure could survive an athletic world that was already compromised by big business.
The energy of that first meet, however, convinced me otherwise. It went viral through the whole stadium.
Therese’s smile grew with the rising crescendo of cheers during her run in the 50-yard dash.
She had enough energy and breath at the finish line to laugh out loud while leaping into the arms of the late Anita Dominocielo-Ho, her coach and the organizer of Santa Barbara’s meet.
I remember Mom thanking Anita for, “bringing so much joy into my daughter’s life.”
“I get just as much from this,” Anita replied.
Passing the Torch
My sister competed in many Special Olympics before she died at age 54.
She was in a wheelchair the last time I saw her. She had invited me to a Christmas party at her residence at the Porterville Developmental Center.
Therese, like always, couldn’t sit still.
She pulled me onto the dance floor and then wheeled circles around me — just like the old days — to the tune of Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”
She laughed throughout the whole song — a hearty howl just like the one from that first Special Olympics.
I covered several of those meets during my career as a sportswriter, including the one just after my sister’s death.
That’s when I spotted Ben Watts, the son of my second cousin, Mary.
He told me that competing in the Special Olympics had given him the courage to try out for the Carpinteria High School football team.
His father, Tom, had played the game, as did his brothers, Ivan and Martin. He wanted to follow in their footsteps.
Ben told me proudly that he had seen regular duty on the line that fall, blocking for the Warriors’ varsity.
A few years later, he won the 2016 Mayor’s Trophy as the Special Olympian of the Year as a floor hockey player.
He also swam, played basketball and even rolled a bocce ball in Special Olympic competition.
The pause caused by the COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t diminish Ben’s spirit.
He spent the hiatus of 2020 by painting a picture (see above) that won the Special Olympics Southern California Design Competition. The illustration was even used for a postcard.
Ben now works as a professional artist for SlingShot, a gallery connected to the Alpha Resource Center.
He won a gold medal with his Santa Barbara basketball team at last year’s Summer Games.
“The final game went into triple overtime, which I heard had never happened before,” Mary told me.
“It was a pretty big deal to win over all those other players throughout Southern California.”
Ben’s latest endeavor came Wednesday in the annual relay known as the Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics Southern California.
“What took you guys so long?” he said as he took the silver torch holding the “Flame of Hope” at his starting point on Calle Real.
Ben was part of the local leg of the relay that went from Winchester Canyon to the Ventura County line.
That portion included other Special Olympians as well as Santa Barbara County sheriff’s and Santa Barbara police personnel.
The entire Southern California relay went through more than 200 communities while covering 1,500 miles. It raises funds for the Special Olympics’ year-round programs.
The Torch Run reached its finish line at Long Beach State on Friday for the start of this weekend’s 2025 Southern California Summer Games.
It Takes a Village
My sister’s coach, Anita, would’ve relished it as much as anyone. She died in December at age 81.
She came to Santa Barbara in 1968 just after her husband, Army Lt. Louis McFarland, was killed in action during the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War.
McFarland had made Anita promise that if anything happened to him, she was to finish college for the both of them and make her life in his hometown of Santa Barbara.
“There are good people there, and they will take care of you,” he told her.
Anita took her late husband’s advice. And then she helped take care of my little sister.
This past week’s events were evidence that her torch had been passed on to others.
My father, former Santa Barbara News-Press sports editor Phil Patton, saw Therese compete only once before succumbing to cancer in 1971 at age 45.
He’d once cautioned me about following him into sports journalism. He said I could find better pay and hours in a different line of work.
But he admitted that covering athletic events did give him a measure of joy.
“There’s a winner to go with every loser, so the news you report is good for half the players,” he said with a laugh.
He said that when there was no Special Olympics.
Back then, the only chance he got to see his young Therese run was when she was headed down the street, with her brothers giving chase.
Things have changed mightily since then.
The news can now be good for us all.
