‘The longest-serving athlete’: Pioneering Special Olympian dies By Paige Fry, Chicago Tribune
Published: December 28, 2020, 6:05am
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4 Photos About 300 young athletes showed off their skills in such sports as swimming, gymnastics and volleyball during the opening of the first 1974 Northern Area Special Olympics on April 19, 1974. (James O Leary / Chicago Tribune/TNS) Photo Gallery
CHICAGO – When Michael “Moose” Cusack was born in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital in 1956, doctors told his parents that something was wrong he had Down syndrome. They advised: don’t bring him home. It was better to institutionalize him early, his parents were told.
John and Esther Cusack’s first step toward challenging the status quo was bringing their son home. They raised him, loved him and nurtured him the same as his four sisters.
The longest-serving athlete : Pioneering Special Olympian dies | Lifestyle
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Michael Moose Cusack, who inspired Special Olympics dies at 64
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Michael Moose Cusack, inspiration for Special Olympics, dead at 64
Since the first Special Olympics in 1968 in Chicago, it has branched out to more than 170 countries and millions of athletes. Author: Associated Press Updated: 6:50 PM EST December 21, 2020
CHICAGO Michael “Moose” Cusack, a Chicago-area man who helped inspire the Special Olympics movement and who won multiple medals at the athletic event over years, has died. He was 64.
The Chicago Tribune reported Monday that Cusack, who had Down syndrome, died at Good Shepherd Manor in Momence, just south of Chicago, on Dec. 17 of natural causes associated with Alzheimer’s.
When he was 10, Cusack joined a Chicago Park District program for children with disabilities, where he met a young physical education teacher, Anne Burke, who is now the chief justice on the Illinois Supreme Court.