My earliest memory of Joan took place in our 3 bedroom 1 bath house on Grenoble Dr in Rockville in the early 1960’s. There were 7 of us living in the 1200 square foot house. I was about 4 years old at the time. I woke up in the middle of the night and hearing noise in the living room went in to look to see what was going on. Joan had woken up before me and turned on the TV and was watching TV. The family shared the one Black and White TV and we had a schedule as to who got to watch what they wanted on a given day. Joan probably didn’t have a turn because she could not speak until she was much older. She was finally able to watch what she wanted, but since it was the middle of the night all that was on was the test pattern. We watched together for a while and then I turned off the TV and made her go back to bed.

Shortly thereafter, my parents decided that she would be best cared for by be being institutionalized. That may sound bad by today’s standards, but at the time was typically done for children with Downs. There were no local programs for dealing with Downs children at the time and my parents realized they were not equipped to teach her such things like eating on her own and speaking. . My parents researched available programs and decided the best one for her was in Massachusetts. I remember our parents telling us kids that Joan was going to go away to school in Massachusetts. I remember asking when she was going to come back home. When my parents told us she would not be coming back, it was really hard for me to conceptualize what that meant and I couldn’t accept that she wasn’t going to come back.