Gladys Nonez’s face shines with love as she gazes down into the narrow bed at her “gift.” Richard is severely
mentally handicapped. His legs are thin, twisted and crippled. He was abandoned outside a hospital in Haiti. He has a chronic cough and can’t swallow. Workers feed him like a baby bird, stuffing food deep into his mouth.
But Gladys, director of the Little Children of Jesus home for handicapped and mentally disabled children,
waves all this aside. She wants to talk about the little miracle she saw for herself. “When he first came in here, you couldn’t fold his legs. Now we can. We’ve been doing exercises with him and trying different positions and all that attention has worked,” she says.