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to the city of San Francisco sixteen times, in conditions even fish find uncomfortable. She twice swam eight miles across Lake Champlain in Vermont. She has won two gold medals at the Oregon Special Olympics. She has been inducted into the Catholic Youth Organization Hall of Fame. She is the subject of two documentary films, so far, about her athletic feats. She was a finalist for the World Open Water Swimmer of the Year award last year. She was nominated for the Bill Hayward Award as the finest amateur athlete in the state of Oregon. But all this does not account Karen Gaffney. It is why she is famous but not what she is about. She is intent on something else altogether, and swimming is only a means to it, a road, a path, a tool, an instrument, a flag to wave to draw attention to something else much bigger. Karen Gaffney did homework two hours a day to be able to graduate from Saint Pius grade school. She worked more than four hours a day to be able to graduate from Saint Mary’s Aca-
demy. It is safe to say that she worked harder than any other student in her graduating class. She graduated with a 3.0 grade-point average. She was in the Science Club. She worked two afternoons a week as a teacher’s aide at Cathedral School. She earned two varsity letters in swimming. She started the Karen Gaffney Foundation to advocate and work for the full inclusion of men and women and children with Down syndrome in every aspect of life from education to sports to the arts to politics. Let us parse that last sentence; she started a national foundation while she was in high school. She went on to college. It is not every day that Down syndrome and college student are in the same sentence. She graduated from Portland Community College with a 3.4 grade-point average, and an Associate of Science degree, and a Teacher’s Aide Certificate permitting her, essentially, to be a professional educator anywhere in the State of Oregon. Let us parse this last sentence; a young woman with Down syndrome, a Portland 16
young woman not at all unlike many people who are placed in institutions from which they never escape, a young woman who much of the uninformed world would expect to be nonverbal, inarticulate, uneducable, unemployable, and in a way a waste of space on this bruised and blessed earth, graduated from community college with a B+ and a certificate allowing her to be a professional educator. “She broke all the stereotypes,” says her dad, in his brusque efficient friendly way, although he veers closer to tears than he would admit when he gets going about how much he admires his daughter’s grace and endurance and defiance. “She broke them all. She proved the usual expectations and assumptions with Down syndrome to be cruel and ridiculous. She’s supposed to be slow and obese, but she’s a world-famous swimmer. She’s supposed to be stupid and simpleminded and uneducable and she earned a college degree. She’s supposed to be a drain on society and she started a foundation when she was in high school. She’s supposed to thrash and