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 Sara Elizabeth Rowland Fund
Tim uses his TechSpeak communication device to make
requests and comments. He reminds everyone to be careful when
cutting with a knife and always lets others know when they spill
something at lunch.
Dustin really enjoys it when his Power Link 3 machine is
connected to his radio. He loves music, and a beautiful smile comes on
his face when he touches the “Big Mac” and the music plays. The messages
his teachers record on this machine help Dustin get their attention.
Zach’s Benik vest helps him keep his body straight
without working so hard. It’s especially helpful when he walks in his
gait trainer.
Tim, Dustin and Zach are students at John G. Leach
School, a special school for children with physical disabilities,
moderate to severe mental retardation and serious health impairments.
Their lives have been made a bit easier because Carey and H. Hickman
Rowland Jr. decided to honor the memory of their daughter, Sara
Elizabeth (Sally) Rowland, with a fund at the DCF to benefit Leach
students.
Sally was 14 months old when she was diagnosed with
mucopolysaccharidoses, a genetic disease. She was not expected to live
past her fifth birthday, but she lived a “super life” until her death at
age 15 on December 20, 1990, her mother says. Although Sally was often
in pain – she had 13 operations during her short life – she was a very
happy child with an ever-present smile, who touched a lot of people.
“It’s not easy having a handicapped child, but she was
just a wonderful child,” relates Carey Rowland. “She was very smart,
very independent and very proud.” Carey and Hickman had always called
their daughter, “Sally,” but when Sally was ten years old, she told her
mother, “I big girl now. I be Sara.”
Hickman Rowland recalls that his daughter was “a delight
to us.” She loved people. Family was “number one” with Sally (her
brother Christopher is now 24 and her sister Lindsay is 22) and Leach
School and the kids and teachers there were “number two.” Sally began
attending Leach at age three and was a student there until her death.
She also was “mainstreamed” into regular classes and belonged to a Girl
Scout Troop at Wilmington Manor School.
When Sally died, Carey and Hickman asked family and
friends to send donations so they could set up a fund to help the
children at Leach School, but they weren’t certain where to start the
fund. Hickman then recalled hearing about the Greater Memphis Community
Foundation from a fellow trustee at St. Andrew’s School, and he realized
that Delaware also had a community foundation.
“The Delaware Community Foundation knew just how to set
up the kind of fund we wanted, and they made it easy for us,” states
Hickman. “You need a community foundation to make this happen without
using all the fund’s income just to administer it. It’s worked very well
for us.”
The Sara Elizabeth Rowland Fund is a designated fund
established to provide services, equipment, devices, and materials to
disadvantaged students with special needs at Leach School. Each fall,
the Leach faculty gets together to select the recipients students like
Tim, Dustin and Zach and match their needs with the money available. The
fund has provided the Rowlands with an ongoing connection to the school
that was such an important part of their daughter Sally’s life.
The fund has grown over the past ten years, most
recently because of donations made in memory of Sally’s grandfather,
Captain Harry Rowland. “Sally was very close with her grandpa and spent
a lot of time with him,” remembers Hickman Rowland. “He would have been
very pleased to know that so many people made donations in his memory
and hers to her fund.” |
