09/15/2026
Did you know that on July 20, 1968, the first Special Olympics opened in Chicago — one year before I was born.
About 1,000 athletes from 26 U.S. states and Canada gathered to compete in track, swimming, and floor hockey. Before the competition began, they recited a pledge that would define the entire movement for generations to come:
"Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt."
It started with one woman, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who began by inviting athletes with intellectual disabilities into her own backyard. That backyard became a movement that's still changing lives almost 60 years later.
This past Friday, my son competed in his first Special Olympics event — bowling. It was our family's first experience with Special Olympics, and it was genuinely inspiring: athletes of every ability, caregivers cheering, pure joy and sparkle in that bowling 🎳 alley!!
I felt that pledge in a whole new way watching it.
It reminded me of Theodore Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena" speech — the idea that credit belongs to the person actually in the arena, "who errs, who comes short again and again," not to the critics watching safely from the sidelines.
It's about daring greatly and taking risks in your life!
So many people judge those who are out there failing, while they themselves never take the risk of trying at all — because fear is running their lives.
That's the real message, I think: being brave with your life.
Not winning. Not being the best.
Just being willing to show up in the arena at all — and daring greatly!! This is the best kind of winning!!
