WEBVTT

1
00:00:31.500 --> 00:00:39.620
My name is Terry Sullivan, I'm 28. We just recently moved to Evanston and I'm an assistant dean at Loyola University.

2
00:00:40.120 --> 00:00:42.480
And I'm also a doctoral student there.

3
00:00:46.780 --> 00:00:55.440
My name is Monica Sullivan and I'm 28. And I went to Loyola University and I'm presently a Chicago public school teacher.

4
00:00:55.660 --> 00:00:58.500
I teach second grade on the west side of the city.

5
00:01:02.840 --> 00:01:15.380
Well he's a delightful, happy little guy. He likes to play. He's fascinated with wheels and toys that make music or noise.

6
00:01:15.880 --> 00:01:20.920
He loves the stereo speakers. He wraps himself around the speakers when Terry turns them on.

7
00:01:21.980 --> 00:01:26.360
He goes to school now and is doing quite well.

8
00:01:26.720 --> 00:01:27.040
Good.

9
00:01:27.040 --> 00:01:36.580
He is John Sullivan, son of Monica and Terry. One of John's favorite activities is eating.

10
00:01:37.840 --> 00:01:47.520
Don't lay out. Chew it. That's enough. You've had enough. Good. May I have the banana please? Good.

11
00:01:47.520 --> 00:01:57.060
Good boy. Oh you're thirsty. Didn't anybody give you a drink today?

12
00:02:00.300 --> 00:02:13.880
Put it down. Down. Down. That's a good boy. Good. Good. Look. Look.

13
00:02:13.880 --> 00:02:21.040
What's this? Pick up the spoon. Don't play. Come on.

14
00:02:24.440 --> 00:02:24.920
In.

15
00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:29.000
John Sullivan is a very special child.

16
00:02:30.360 --> 00:02:41.440
He is multiply handicapped and mentally retarded. He has a heart condition which I believe is called a tetralogy with a ductus.

17
00:02:41.440 --> 00:02:49.660
He has two web fingers on each hand. He has webbed toes. He's severely mentally retarded.

18
00:02:50.820 --> 00:02:59.880
He's had one eyelid that did not open and has been corrected after about what? Two? Three surgeries? Two. Two.

19
00:03:01.260 --> 00:03:05.380
He's had a hernia that's been repaired when he was quite small.

20
00:03:05.380 --> 00:03:15.380
He has, he's just generally a very small child.

21
00:03:16.740 --> 00:03:24.040
The curious thing is that he looks to be no more than a year, 15 months.

22
00:03:25.100 --> 00:03:34.860
And acts at about that age. We're very lucky at this point is that he's five but he doesn't look like he's five and therefore he doesn't have to act like he's five.

23
00:03:38.020 --> 00:03:39.380
You remember? Sure you do.

24
00:03:40.140 --> 00:03:47.260
He didn't have any tear ducts or his tear ducts were blocked so they had to make tear ducts before they could do the eye surgery.

25
00:03:47.260 --> 00:03:51.200
He had a hernia which was fixed when he was about a year old.

26
00:03:52.060 --> 00:03:58.020
And he has a very high palate which made it very difficult to feed him when he was first born.

27
00:03:58.940 --> 00:04:03.280
He's never had to have surgery on it but he has a very high roof in his mouth.

28
00:04:03.500 --> 00:04:07.180
In fact never did drink from a bottle really. Not well, ever.

29
00:04:08.300 --> 00:04:14.160
What's the procedure? Gavaged? You had to throw a tube? We had to learn how to do it. Until he was old enough to eat from a spoon.

30
00:04:14.160 --> 00:04:22.960
But once he got something off the spoon that was it. He loves to eat. He didn't like to suck but he loves to eat.

31
00:04:29.280 --> 00:04:36.400
I'm Jerry Schulman. I'm a doctor at Children's Memorial Hospital and it was there that I first met the Sullivan's.

32
00:04:36.580 --> 00:04:39.280
It is John Sullivan that we want to talk about today.

33
00:04:40.140 --> 00:04:46.080
The trouble surrounding his birth must have been a terrible shock and difficult thing. Can you reconstruct any of that?

34
00:04:49.620 --> 00:04:57.580
Well, I had a perfectly normal pregnancy. It was a wonderful pregnancy. I never got sick until the day that I delivered my son.

35
00:04:58.040 --> 00:05:01.300
I didn't have any more any sickness, nothing. I was healthy and fit.

36
00:05:02.380 --> 00:05:06.880
And I went in to have what I thought would be a perfectly normal baby.

37
00:05:06.880 --> 00:05:10.960
And I went through labor and it wasn't so bad.

38
00:05:11.820 --> 00:05:16.740
And we delivered the baby, the doctor and I, and I was awake during the delivery.

39
00:05:17.320 --> 00:05:24.860
And as I was laying on the delivery table and the doctor was working around and John was in an incubator a few feet from the delivery table.

40
00:05:25.460 --> 00:05:31.560
And I didn't have, couldn't see real well. And I was looking and his little hand was up.

41
00:05:32.120 --> 00:05:35.720
And I said to the doctor, I said, how come his fingers are stuck together?

42
00:05:35.720 --> 00:05:39.980
And he said, well when I finish here I'll take a look at it.

43
00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:45.320
So he went over and looked at John and he came over to the delivery table with John in his hands and said,

44
00:05:46.100 --> 00:05:50.920
Well Monica, he said John has two webbed fingers on each of his hands.

45
00:05:51.340 --> 00:05:57.000
He said, but the bones are all there and it's something that can be easily fixed.

46
00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:01.800
But you know, that's wrong with him. But don't be disappointed. It happens.

47
00:06:01.800 --> 00:06:04.800
And he's, his toes are also webbed.

48
00:06:06.540 --> 00:06:11.220
And he reassured me that, you know, that that would be, it could be taken care of very easily.

49
00:06:11.260 --> 00:06:13.520
That was all, that's all he told me that day too.

50
00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:17.040
And I suspect that there were obviously other difficulties with Jan.

51
00:06:18.940 --> 00:06:21.420
And that may be the best way for him to have approached it.

52
00:06:21.440 --> 00:06:28.440
And that he told you that there was some difficulty but didn't leave you that day feeling as if, you know, there were 17,000 antibiotics.

53
00:06:28.440 --> 00:06:34.320
He told me later when I asked him about it, you know, I said, you must have known that there was something more wrong with him.

54
00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:40.540
And he said that, yes, he felt that there probably would have been more wrong with John.

55
00:06:40.960 --> 00:06:46.300
But that he was more concerned about me at that point. That he considered me his primary patient.

56
00:06:46.920 --> 00:06:50.000
And he wanted me to be comfortable.

57
00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:58.460
And he also didn't want to give any opinions that might cause me to be upset and later turn out not to be true.

58
00:06:59.880 --> 00:07:06.460
So it went from that initial discovery that I really made because I was the first one.

59
00:07:07.220 --> 00:07:10.960
Well, at least I brought it to his attention, it seemed to me, about his fingers.

60
00:07:11.840 --> 00:07:15.400
To, he was born very early in the morning.

61
00:07:15.760 --> 00:07:20.620
Later that, I got to see him once and hold him once.

62
00:07:21.200 --> 00:07:24.140
About six o'clock that morning because he was born about two.

63
00:07:24.560 --> 00:07:37.020
And then when the pediatrician came in at, later that morning, he told me that while John was not premature, his weight was five and a half pounds when he was born.

64
00:07:37.020 --> 00:07:42.960
And he had been carried what was considered a normal term, that they were going to put him in the preemie nursery.

65
00:07:43.440 --> 00:07:45.520
Because he was having some trouble feeding.

66
00:07:46.820 --> 00:07:50.440
And that they wanted him to be in this isolated nursery.

67
00:07:50.980 --> 00:07:57.000
Which meant that I never got to see him or hold him during the time that I was hospitalized.

68
00:07:57.560 --> 00:08:02.240
We could see him, what, for ten minutes a day through a glass window and he was six to six.

69
00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:05.440
Yeah, I never held him until he was three months.

70
00:08:05.440 --> 00:08:05.840
And then I had to take care of my children.

71
00:08:07.040 --> 00:08:09.000
That was the first time we held him.

72
00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:10.380
He didn't come home for?

73
00:08:10.380 --> 00:08:10.900
A month.

74
00:08:11.480 --> 00:08:14.380
That was even longer than that. Just before Christmas. Two months I guess.

75
00:08:14.840 --> 00:08:17.400
Do you have any idea what the cause of John's troubles is?

76
00:08:19.580 --> 00:08:22.140
No. He's had chromosome testing twice.

77
00:08:23.480 --> 00:08:24.520
Which results were normal?

78
00:08:25.740 --> 00:08:33.420
Which was startling because at one point Dr. Nadler thought that he even could make a picture of the kind of defect he was going to find.

79
00:08:33.420 --> 00:08:38.420
But it just hasn't shown up.

80
00:08:38.440 --> 00:08:39.280
So it remains a mystery.

81
00:08:39.560 --> 00:08:45.300
Yeah, I know. They talked about chromosomal accident a couple of times up there.

82
00:08:45.980 --> 00:08:48.060
Not in the sense of physical trauma because there was nothing like that.

83
00:08:48.060 --> 00:08:50.860
But it was just wholly inexplicable.

84
00:08:51.340 --> 00:08:55.820
I wonder if either of you went through a period of thinking maybe something you had done and someone had done this.

85
00:08:57.100 --> 00:08:59.420
Yeah, I was very much so.

86
00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:06.940
Simply because, I don't know, as a woman he came out of my body.

87
00:09:07.480 --> 00:09:11.460
I wanted him to be perfect. He wasn't perfect.

88
00:09:13.320 --> 00:09:17.420
That was a great disappointment.

89
00:09:18.020 --> 00:09:23.000
And as the days went on that first month, every day brought more bad news.

90
00:09:23.320 --> 00:09:27.760
There was something else wrong. They found something here. This eye didn't open.

91
00:09:27.760 --> 00:09:30.880
That foot wasn't properly shaped.

92
00:09:31.320 --> 00:09:35.220
At one point every conceivable thing you'd mention they'd tell you was abnormal.

93
00:09:35.340 --> 00:09:38.060
Even those things which would present no difficulty.

94
00:09:38.460 --> 00:09:41.440
He had dimples in his knees and they'd say, yeah, we noticed that. The joints.

95
00:09:41.760 --> 00:09:42.400
Are weak.

96
00:09:42.900 --> 00:09:45.180
You know, and you'd be like, please.

97
00:09:45.180 --> 00:09:54.700
To the point where the first pediatrician we saw said that there were so many abnormalities that he didn't think he'd live and probably it would be best that he didn't.

98
00:09:54.700 --> 00:09:57.940
That was the first, that was our first visit with him.

99
00:09:58.140 --> 00:10:01.760
He said don't expect him ever to do anything and he probably won't that well.

100
00:10:03.660 --> 00:10:09.660
I know if somebody had told me when he was a month old his IQ was only going to be 10, I would have been shattered.

101
00:10:09.820 --> 00:10:12.560
I would have thought, my God, he'll never do anything.

102
00:10:12.560 --> 00:10:29.940
We were told about the seriousness of John's condition when he was 12 days old by a pediatrician who called, not a pediatrician from Children's, but a pediatrician at the hospital that he was born at.

103
00:10:30.400 --> 00:10:35.220
And I had met him once the first day that John was in the hospital born.

104
00:10:36.880 --> 00:10:40.600
And then he told me that I couldn't take John home when I left the hospital.

105
00:10:40.600 --> 00:10:41.600
So I said, all right.

106
00:10:42.720 --> 00:10:46.700
And I went home early because I couldn't stand being in the hospital and not having my baby.

107
00:10:48.280 --> 00:10:51.000
And he told me I could call him and he would let me know.

108
00:10:51.040 --> 00:10:53.700
And he started running GI series and things like that on him.

109
00:10:54.240 --> 00:11:01.960
And then he called one day and he said, his nurse called and said that the doctor would like to see you in his office tonight at six o'clock.

110
00:11:02.500 --> 00:11:03.760
And I was all excited.

111
00:11:03.800 --> 00:11:05.780
I said, well, does this mean John's going home?

112
00:11:05.800 --> 00:11:07.560
And she said, well, I don't know, Mrs. Sullivan.

113
00:11:07.580 --> 00:11:09.200
The doctor just asked me to make this appointment.

114
00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:09.880
Can you come?

115
00:11:09.880 --> 00:11:11.200
And I said, yes.

116
00:11:11.200 --> 00:11:16.700
So we went to the doctor's office that night and his waiting room was full of people.

117
00:11:16.920 --> 00:11:26.880
And he asked us to step into his office and he closed the door and proceeded to tell us that John was probably not going to live.

118
00:11:27.920 --> 00:11:35.940
In fact, he should probably be baptized immediately because they didn't know how long he was going to make it, that they had just discovered that he had a heart murmur.

119
00:11:35.940 --> 00:11:42.540
And any kind of heart involvement at the age of 10 days or 12 days was a very ominous sign.

120
00:11:44.220 --> 00:11:53.800
And told us that there were many, many things wrong with him and wanted to know if I had taken anything during my pregnancy and so on and so forth.

121
00:11:53.820 --> 00:12:05.360
And then pulled out some pictures of children with webbed necks and all kinds of facial deformities and strange looking bodies.

122
00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:08.620
And said, well, he's got this and he's got that.

123
00:12:10.160 --> 00:12:10.800
And I couldn't even look at the pictures.

124
00:12:10.840 --> 00:12:13.340
Conceivably the worst possible approach in retrospect.

125
00:12:13.660 --> 00:12:20.120
And then he started accepting phone calls while we were sitting there, numbed from what he had just said to us.

126
00:12:20.520 --> 00:12:23.220
We had never really seen John close up.

127
00:12:23.700 --> 00:12:29.800
So he could have had four ears for really all that I had seen of him.

128
00:12:30.880 --> 00:12:32.080
And it was just frightening.

129
00:12:32.360 --> 00:12:34.260
And we said to him, what should we do?

130
00:12:34.260 --> 00:12:38.800
And he said, well, I'm going to send you down to Children's Memorial Hospital.

131
00:12:38.860 --> 00:12:40.420
I think you should be moved immediately.

132
00:12:40.900 --> 00:12:43.180
And we said, what, tonight? Tomorrow? When?

133
00:12:43.300 --> 00:12:45.840
He said, well, I think we can wait till tomorrow morning.

134
00:12:46.420 --> 00:12:50.120
And then he told us that it would be all right if we took him down to Children's Memorial.

135
00:12:53.080 --> 00:12:58.780
And then he started answering the telephone and said goodbye and left us.

136
00:12:58.780 --> 00:13:07.240
And we walked out of his office and to the car and got in the car and we just cried.

137
00:13:08.140 --> 00:13:14.460
And then we decided that we'd better go to the church and ask the priest to come over and baptize him.

138
00:13:16.700 --> 00:13:20.340
And then we decided that we had to do probably the hardest thing.

139
00:13:20.660 --> 00:13:27.000
And that is go and tell his grandparents what the situation was.

140
00:13:27.000 --> 00:13:38.480
And we went to Terry's folks and explained to them as best that we could, which was very difficult.

141
00:13:40.300 --> 00:13:44.580
You know, it was, John is named after his grandfather, Sullivan.

142
00:13:45.520 --> 00:13:48.680
And everybody was most excited about him.

143
00:13:49.520 --> 00:13:51.500
And then we had to go to my mother.

144
00:13:51.900 --> 00:13:55.360
And I'm an only child and this is her first grandchild.

145
00:13:55.360 --> 00:14:00.640
And to make matters worse, my grandmother was at my mother's house at the time, dying.

146
00:14:01.900 --> 00:14:06.500
And we had to tell her that she had never seen him.

147
00:14:07.040 --> 00:14:10.600
In fact, the day that she came to see him, they had already put him in the isolated nursery.

148
00:14:11.060 --> 00:14:17.080
And she wasn't allowed to get in there and tell her that, you know, the bad news.

149
00:14:17.720 --> 00:14:18.980
And then we went home.

150
00:14:19.880 --> 00:14:21.120
And I cried all night.

151
00:14:22.840 --> 00:14:27.980
You're at that stage where everybody has told you that he probably won't love and it's better that he doesn't.

152
00:14:28.100 --> 00:14:29.680
And at that point you hope he doesn't.

153
00:14:29.960 --> 00:14:31.320
You know, you keep hoping the hospital will call.

154
00:14:32.140 --> 00:14:38.840
You do because you are so afraid of what the next day is going to bring.

155
00:14:39.340 --> 00:14:41.820
You don't know whether he's suffering or not.

156
00:14:42.080 --> 00:14:43.820
And God knows you don't want him to suffer.

157
00:14:43.820 --> 00:14:53.960
And then quite quickly it begins to dawn on you exactly the enormity of maybe what tomorrow is going to bring.

158
00:14:54.020 --> 00:14:55.760
And it just scares you to death.

159
00:14:56.400 --> 00:14:57.660
And you want it to be over.

160
00:14:58.040 --> 00:14:59.480
You just want it to be over.

161
00:14:59.620 --> 00:15:01.920
You want your life to be normal.

162
00:15:02.220 --> 00:15:06.160
And you want it to be what you had expected it to be for the last ten months.

163
00:15:07.440 --> 00:15:08.540
And it's not.

164
00:15:09.240 --> 00:15:12.880
I'd be very interested to know of all the things that have gone on,

165
00:15:12.880 --> 00:15:14.800
what seemed to help the most.

166
00:15:14.900 --> 00:15:17.240
The major one is Jan, the fact that he's happy.

167
00:15:17.660 --> 00:15:22.000
He obviously is not, well, not capable of a lot of things.

168
00:15:23.200 --> 00:15:25.360
Not made miserable by the fact that he's not capable of them.

169
00:15:26.460 --> 00:15:30.020
He's very much capable of loving and being loved and being happy.

170
00:15:30.840 --> 00:15:32.720
He has likes and dislikes.

171
00:15:33.720 --> 00:15:35.480
And things make him happy and make him laugh.

172
00:15:35.520 --> 00:15:37.320
And he can make other people happy.

173
00:15:39.580 --> 00:15:44.320
What it does for you is it gives you something of a lesson.

174
00:15:45.040 --> 00:15:49.280
It's a bad idea to make ten-year plans and five-year plans.

175
00:15:51.160 --> 00:15:56.320
To expect your life to go the way it should, which is a healthy thing to get out of, I think.

176
00:15:58.240 --> 00:16:03.480
You have difficulty coping, but I think in the end, after you've made the adjustment,

177
00:16:03.480 --> 00:16:09.360
that you end up with a healthier outlook, with a more realistic outlook of what to expect

178
00:16:09.360 --> 00:16:11.600
and what you really want your life to be like.

179
00:16:11.700 --> 00:16:15.500
You realize that you can't always control it,

180
00:16:15.540 --> 00:16:19.820
but that you can always make it work one way or another.

181
00:16:20.100 --> 00:16:21.900
But that's after five years.

182
00:16:23.800 --> 00:16:26.700
The first few months were most difficult.

183
00:16:27.740 --> 00:16:33.000
Probably we got the most help from the people that we talked to at the hospital.

184
00:16:33.000 --> 00:16:37.380
And people and our families who were very supportive.

185
00:16:49.180 --> 00:16:51.180
You have to learn to rely on other people.

186
00:16:51.540 --> 00:16:53.900
You have to be willing to accept other people's help.

187
00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:57.500
You have to be willing to not see doing this in the position of other people.

188
00:16:57.500 --> 00:17:02.080
You have to assume that you can lead them with them.

189
00:17:02.160 --> 00:17:09.100
You can't expect them to have to be willing to cope with a child that has physical and mental handicaps.

190
00:17:09.220 --> 00:17:11.920
That really is as much part of their life as it is yours.

191
00:17:12.660 --> 00:17:18.660
Come on back, John. Come on back. Come on back, John. Come on back.

192
00:17:20.220 --> 00:17:23.000
That's a big boy. That's a big boy.

193
00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:25.340
Okay, do it again.

194
00:17:28.800 --> 00:17:31.660
Stand up straight, John. Stand up straight.

195
00:17:32.120 --> 00:17:34.600
My heart is laughing. It's so much fun.

196
00:17:34.600 --> 00:17:34.600


197
00:17:47.300 --> 00:17:56.100
Hey, John. Hey, John. Hey, John. Come on back. Come on back.

198
00:17:56.120 --> 00:17:56.940
Good boy.

199
00:17:57.420 --> 00:18:01.220
Stand up like a big boy. That's right. That's right.

200
00:18:01.960 --> 00:18:05.220
Oh, good boy. Good boy.

201
00:18:10.140 --> 00:18:10.860
What's that?

202
00:18:14.840 --> 00:18:18.780
Oh, you're being so cute. You're being so cute.

203
00:18:19.140 --> 00:18:20.540
Take my legs in every direction.

204
00:18:22.280 --> 00:18:25.260
It's part of the guilt thing, too. It's very easy.

205
00:18:26.060 --> 00:18:28.460
You know, you felt bad that he was like that.

206
00:18:28.460 --> 00:18:32.040
You questioned yourself because people were questioning you.

207
00:18:32.180 --> 00:18:33.980
You know, is this in your family background?

208
00:18:34.760 --> 00:18:37.440
Did you do anything while you were pregnant? Did you take anything?

209
00:18:37.540 --> 00:18:38.880
You know, this, that, and the other thing.

210
00:18:39.100 --> 00:18:42.280
Because you had to go through medical histories every time you went in.

211
00:18:42.980 --> 00:18:49.860
I got so I wanted to tape the quarter just to play for the doctors and the interns and the externs and the students that we had to tell it to.

212
00:18:50.500 --> 00:18:58.360
That leaves me realize that there is nothing in the history of the pregnancy that is any different from what anybody else does.

213
00:18:58.360 --> 00:19:03.220
And eventually, you know, you realize that there is no causal factor.

214
00:19:04.200 --> 00:19:07.100
But that took me a very long time.

215
00:19:08.120 --> 00:19:14.760
I don't think that I, it was, you know, several years before I could really say to myself,

216
00:19:15.700 --> 00:19:20.660
I just, there was nothing that I could have done differently to make him normal.

217
00:19:20.980 --> 00:19:24.000
And this is the way he is and this is the way it is.

218
00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:28.420
And who cares why it happened? It's not going to change anything.

219
00:19:28.540 --> 00:19:32.720
What I have to do is deal with now and not what happened before.

220
00:19:33.340 --> 00:19:41.820
I'd like to read you a quote from a Dr. Joseph Fletcher who is a professor of medical ethics at the University of Virginia.

221
00:19:42.380 --> 00:19:46.480
I must say I read this in an article and I was so surprised, shocked,

222
00:19:47.020 --> 00:19:51.760
that I wrote to him to find out if the quote was an accurate statement of what he has stated.

223
00:19:51.760 --> 00:19:53.700
And the quote is as follows.

224
00:19:54.780 --> 00:20:02.360
Any individual of the species Homo sapiens who falls below the IQ 40 mark in a standard Stanford-Binet test,

225
00:20:03.060 --> 00:20:06.680
amplified, if you like, by other tests, is questionably a person.

226
00:20:07.400 --> 00:20:09.840
Below the 20 mark, not a person.

227
00:20:10.580 --> 00:20:12.540
I'm interested in your reactions to that statement.

228
00:20:13.860 --> 00:20:17.820
He's just never met John Sullivan because John Sullivan is a person.

229
00:20:17.820 --> 00:20:23.120
He's a living, functioning, loving human being.

230
00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:25.760
And I don't know.

231
00:20:26.840 --> 00:20:29.220
I understand a lot of other kids.

232
00:20:29.620 --> 00:20:32.580
I don't want to give the impression that John is abhorrent, retarded.

233
00:20:34.820 --> 00:20:43.000
An awful lot of kids in that IQ range are happy and make other people happy, which is enough.

234
00:20:44.660 --> 00:20:45.300
Really?

235
00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:50.120
Yeah, they, you just, I don't know.

236
00:20:50.260 --> 00:20:51.980
You know, John Sullivan is not a tragedy.

237
00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:55.480
His life certainly does serve a purpose.

238
00:20:56.140 --> 00:20:59.260
He enriches mankind in his own way.

239
00:21:00.540 --> 00:21:05.040
He, we meet people, fewer lately, but we've, you know,

240
00:21:05.140 --> 00:21:10.480
had encounters with people who look upon us as bearing some great tragedy all the time,

241
00:21:10.480 --> 00:21:12.840
and they sympathize with us for that reason.

242
00:21:13.420 --> 00:21:18.220
And it's very hard to try and convince them that we don't consider John's life a tragedy,

243
00:21:19.100 --> 00:21:24.640
that we don't want to be sympathized with for those reasons, and we don't want to be pitied.

244
00:21:25.660 --> 00:21:28.560
John brings a lot to us and has given a lot to us

245
00:21:28.560 --> 00:21:31.160
and has given a lot to people that he's come in contact with.

246
00:21:31.600 --> 00:21:38.680
Oh, I see John over there, down by the riverside,

247
00:21:38.680 --> 00:21:42.020
down by the riverside,

248
00:21:42.020 --> 00:21:45.360
Oh I see him,ong by the riverside,

249
00:21:45.520 --> 00:21:49.500
Oh I, oh, I,傻, sirenny,

250
00:21:49.500 --> 00:21:52.920
Up and down and down and down and down and down,

251
00:21:53.120 --> 00:21:55.040
keep watching home together,

252
00:21:56.340 --> 00:22:02.680
watch it, watch, watch it, watch, watch it

253
00:22:04.500 --> 00:22:09.660
Oh, drum my boy, when you come by me, I like your grace.

254
00:22:13.620 --> 00:22:14.860
Let's throw it on the floor.

255
00:22:15.980 --> 00:22:17.240
You must throw it on the floor.

256
00:22:18.380 --> 00:22:18.380


257
00:22:19.900 --> 00:22:22.340
Ooh! Ooh!

258
00:22:24.540 --> 00:22:25.760
The belly laugh.

259
00:22:26.320 --> 00:22:28.960
Go ahead, John. Go ahead. That's a boy.

260
00:22:28.960 --> 00:22:33.040
Good try. That was good.

261
00:22:33.900 --> 00:22:38.400
That was a nice try. Try it again.

262
00:22:43.120 --> 00:22:44.720
Hey John, can you take these off?

263
00:22:45.480 --> 00:22:48.040
Apple. Apple.

264
00:22:48.880 --> 00:22:50.940
John, take off the rings.

265
00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:01.960
Open the milk. Put it in, John.

266
00:23:02.880 --> 00:23:03.640
Where does it go?

267
00:23:07.240 --> 00:23:08.920
That's right. That's right.

268
00:23:09.560 --> 00:23:10.600
You can open now.

269
00:23:12.460 --> 00:23:13.300
Can you put it in, John?

270
00:23:14.940 --> 00:23:15.700
Can you put it in?

271
00:23:18.040 --> 00:23:18.440
No.

272
00:23:18.440 --> 00:23:20.020
Down by the riverside.

273
00:23:23.820 --> 00:23:27.780
Oh, I swat the time away.

274
00:23:28.660 --> 00:23:31.800
Down by the riverside.

275
00:23:32.480 --> 00:23:33.780
Down by the riverside.

276
00:23:33.780 --> 00:23:40.340
In the days of the ancient Greek philosophers, children who were defective were left on the mountainside to die.

277
00:23:41.300 --> 00:23:43.000
We live in a more enlightened age.

278
00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:50.380
A good criteria for judging the quality of a society is what it does to care for those who are unfortunate.

279
00:23:51.960 --> 00:23:58.720
What we've been seeing are three remarkable people, Monica and Terry Sullivan and their son John.

280
00:23:59.660 --> 00:24:03.340
They consider themselves lucky, and I believe they are.