Abilities United Celebrates its Golden Anniversary

It's a golden birthday for Abilities United.

The Palo Alto non-profit organization, who turned 50 on April 25, had a huge party to celebrate. Abilities United invited and recognized all of the community members and leaders who've made their mission to provide services people with developmental and physical disabilities possible.

The two-hour celebration at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View included entertainment from the Los Altos High School Jazz Quintet during the social hour and after the award ceremony the Stanford Marching Band, Dollies and Tree made a grande finale.

Lynda Steele, the executive director for 20 years, highlighted the organization's accomplishments to the capacity audience of 300 supporters and participants. She also encouraged everyone to think about the future.

"In our past 50 years, we, and the people we serve have demonstrated the significant contribution that people with disabilities can make in their community," she said adding that over the years the opportunities for people with disabilities have improved. "We now want to build on this solid foundation. Help us work side by side with other organizations and individuals to ensure a future of full inclusion, where people with and without disabilities live, learn, work and play together."

Testimonies from the organization's participants demonstrated the achievements of the program over the span of 50 years. For example, Joseph Omolayole of San Mateo, mother and daughter Gina and Charlotte Rayfield of Portola Valley, and Jana Weaver of Santa Clara each spoke about how the services they and their families had received from Abilities United impacted their lives in the past, present, and future.

Another highlight of the evening occurred when Steele presented an Abilities United Award, in ten categories, to various individuals and organizations that have had a significant impact or history with the organization

The award recipients and categories included:

• City of Palo Alto received the “Government Partner” award for its 50-year partnership with Abilities United, which was accepted by Vice Mayor, Nancy Shepherd.

• Golden Gate Regional Center (GGRC) and San Andreas Regional Center (SARC) received the "Regional Center Partner" award for referring participants to Abilities United. GGRC Executive Director Jim Shorter and SARC Executive Director Santi Rogers received their organization’s award.

• Kiwanis Club of Palo Alto received the "Service Organization" Award for their volunteer service and donations to Abilities United over the past 50 years and was accepted by Kiwanis member Tommy Fehrenbach.

• Palo Alto Weekly received the "Media" award for their news coverage of Abilities United since 1979 and was accepted by Editor, Jocelyn Dong.5. Sobrato Family Foundation received the “Foundation and Corporation Partner” award and Mara Williams Low, Program Manager, accepted the award.

• Safeway received the "Employer" award for having over 10,0000 people on staff at their stories and Stan Lau, manager of the new Mountain View store, accepted the award.

• The James Jarrett Family of Palo Alto received the "Individual Donor" award for their continuous donations since the early 1970’s. Laurie and Tracie Jarrett accepted the award.

• Jane Mangold of Palo Alto and Linda Vargas of San Jose each received the "Volunteer" award. Each of these women has volunteered at Abilities United for more than 30 years.

• Abilities United employees Karen Denny, John Fort, Carol Gleason, Peter Leung and Pamela Newman each received an award for their 20-plus year careers with Abilities United.

• Closing out the award ceremony, Eriks Ramans of Sunnyvale, received the "Participant" award. Ramans has received services with Abilities United for more than 40 years and is an advocate for people with disabilities.

As part of this celebration, art created by artists from Abilities United decorated the party. Also story boards told each artist’s story and that of other long-time supporters of Abilities United. These stories are a part of the Abilities United yearlong  "50 Successes/50 Stories/50 years" campaign to share the 50-year history of Abilities United and the accomplishments of people with disabilities and the community that surrounds them. A new story is posted each Thursday through December 2013.

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