SPRINGFIELD COLLEGE AND THE PARALYMPICS continued from page 11 Mary Donahue G’83
Mary Donahue volunteered on the medical staff for Paralympic swimming teams in the 1988 Seoul, 1992 Barcelona, 1996 Atlanta, and 2000 Sydney games, and attended practices, events, and training camps in Colorado Springs. She also worked at the World Games. Donahue tells Triangle that getting involved in the Paralympics was a fluke: “I was teaching physical education and needed a second job. I was a Red Cross certi- fied water-safety instructor and took a part time job with the United Cerebral Palsy Association teaching swimming. I realized it was a big deal and that a lot of disabled people wanted to participate in sports, so I jumped in and stayed involved.”
Grant Peacock ’75, G’78 Grant A. Peacock III with 1988 Paralympic Medalist Al Mead
While in the military he worked with severe burn victims, helping them maintain their flexibility, work that significantly impacted his future with adaptive sports and physical activity. He went on to teach and work in special education at schools and colleges throughout the country. In 1976, Beaver coached the U.S. blind wrestling team at the Toronto Olympiad for the Physically Disabled and, from 1980-84, he served on the USOC’s Committee on Sports for the Disabled. In 1984, he was in charge of the U.S. delegation at the International Games for the Disabled held in Long Island, N.Y. In 1988, he covered the Seoul games for PALAESTRA, a quarterly journal that is a forum of sport, physical education, and recreation for those with disabilities that he founded, edited, and published for 25 years. “I give credit to Dr. Cecil Morgan at Springfield College, who instituted one of the first graduate-level adaptive physical education courses in the U.S., which I took as part of my rehabilitation studies. That course and my military experi- ence spurred my interest and put me on my career path.”
38 Beth Evans, Ph.D., ’62, G’70
Now retired from the Springfield College faculty, Beth Evans has a longstanding commitment to serving people with disabilities through sports and recreation. She taught undergraduate and graduate adaptive classes for many years and was involved in getting the College’s Sports and Wellness Center for the Disabled (SWCD) on campus. Evans attended the Atlanta Paralympic Games in 1996 as a videographer for WWLP TV22 in Springfield. She and her classes held the first track and field meets for the disabled on the campus. At the SWCD, she ran sports and recreation programs for blind children, as well as swim/gym programs for Easter Seals, and fitness programs for asthmatic children for the Lung Association. Evans has served as an ambas- sador for adaptive sport, presenting programs in Brazil and Costa Rica. She is a contributor to PALAESTRA and, most recently, was involved in running a training camp on the campus for the U.S. Paralympics Wheelchair Basketball Team.
Bob Bergquist motivated Grant Peacock to work in disabled sports. Early on, he assisted in Bergquist’s development of classifications for athletes with cerebral palsy. “He was my advisor in grad school, we wanted to start a national program for athletes with cerebral palsy, that was the beginning point and I later became involved on a national and international basis. I’ve always done it as a volunteer,” he explains. He volunteered in the 1984 International Games for the Disabled. He was in Seoul in 1988 working with teams, trials, and national events leading up to the games, at that time as president of the United States Cerebral Palsy Athletic Association (now the National Disability Sports Alliance). He was also at the Barcelona Games in 1992. Peacock has been a board member on national and interna- tional committees and took a full-time job as deputy chief of games operations for the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta. “I have a big place in my heart for SC—involvement in the Paralympics is the quintessential Humanics experience,” he says.
Jeff Jones G’84
After college, Jeff Jones worked at a camp run by United Cerebral Palsy of Connecticut. He met Bob Bergquist and Grant Peacock at Springfield College when they were hosting cerebral palsy sport events on campus. Jones was a team leader at the 1988, 1992, and 1996 Paralympic games and for 15 years worked at the Rehabilitation Institute of
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