My Advocacy Legacy
By Bill Ryerson
VOR Board Member
Joyce’s brother
My sister, Joyce, who will be 57 this month, has the mind of a 2 to 2 1/2 year old child. She can’t speak but does make numerous sounds that sometimes express her mood. She is currently in a community home run by Search Development in the metropolitan Chicago area. She was previously in the state operated Anne M. Kiley Developmental Center in Waukegan, Illinois.
My brother, Wayne, and I became legal guardians of Joyce in the summer of 2002 when our father, Warren, died (Violet, our mother, had passed away two summers earlier). I am the “baby” of the family and grew up realizing, of course, that Joyce was mentally retarded but, to me, she was just my sister albeit different. When we became the legal guardians, that perspective completely changed. All of a sudden, Wayne and I became the responsible ones – we had to now make all the decisions on Joyce’s placement, care, etc. Watching out for Joyce was no longer our parents’ “job” but ours.
