Colette Cusack News Today

Michael Cusack, who helped spark the Special Olympics, dies at 64 Harrison Smith When Michael Cusack was born in 1956, doctors at Chicago Lying-in Hospital said he had no chance at a normal life. “They told my mom not to even bother looking at him, just to put him in an institution,” his sister Carole Cusack recalled. Mr. Cusack had Down syndrome, at a time when people with disabilities were routinely ostracized, isolated and neglected, largely barred from opportunities...

Provided When Michael Cusack jumped into the pool, he was all business — confident, unflappable and certainly not troubled by a pair of swim trunks that wouldn’t stay on. So when he started to fall behind in a race in California in 1971, he didn’t hesitate. “He just kicked them off and finished the race naked — and won,” said Connie Cusack McIntosh, one of his four sisters. Mr. Cusack amassed hundreds of medals — many of them gold — during a Special Olympics career that spanned ...