A Very Special Christmas

“This work was inspired by Camp Shriver, the predecessor to the Special Olympics. My mother invited 100 young people with intellectual disabilities and 100 ‘camp counselors’ to participate with them in various sporting activities at our large house in Maryland. They swam, ran races, had trampoline contests, archery, horseback riding, and any other things Mom could dream up. Being eight years old, I was, of course, expected to work every day in this camp doing whatever chores the director assigned me: cleaning up trash, making lunches, giving swimming lessons.

“The most essential fact was that we all became friends! All the counselors were under eighteen, and we spent the summer with an amazing group of ‘campers.’

“Twenty years later, I was working in New York in the venture capital field when my friend Vicki Iovine called. She and her husband Jimmy wanted to put together a Christmas album for Special Olympics. They said it might make $1 million. Wow! I wanted to help the people I had grown up with, so I went right to work.”

Empowering intellectually disabled people

The First International Special Olympics Games were held at Soldier Field, Chicago, in 1968. Special Olympics now involves more than 2.5 million athletes in 180 countries.

In 1987 Bobby Shriver produced for ABC the first prime time television program on the Special Olympics World Games. That same year he worked with Jimmy and Vicki Iovine to produce a Christmas album to benefit Special Olympics. Artists such as Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crowe, U2, Run-DMC, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and the Pointer Sisters contributed original songs. The album, A Very Special Christmas, and the eight more that followed over ten years, have so far generated $100 million, which Eunice and Tim Shriver are investing in Special Olympics worldwide.