Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles profiling winners of the Celebration of Giving awards presented by Shawano Area Community Foundation Inc. for outstanding volunteerism. The winners will be honored at a gala April 8.
In her own way, Mary Jo Brunner was involved with Special Olympics before she even heard of the Special Olympics.
As a special education teacher more than 40 years ago, she and Mary Felts were already involving a group of students with disabilities in bowling and swim events.
Then one day, information about the Wisconsin Special Olympics crossed her desk.
“I thought, ‘This looks pretty easy,’” Brunner said.
At first, it was just a matter of forwarding the students’ bowling scores to the state organization and getting some ribbons for her students in return.
“That’s how it got started,” she said.
What followed was the creation of an official Special Olympics team, the Shawano All-Stars, and the addition of other events, including volleyball, track and field, and winter games.
The first team, 42 years ago, had 10 athletes. It now has 65, and Brunner is still leading it.
“I’ve stuck with it all these years, with the help of a lot of volunteers,” she said.
Though the first athletes were all students, and the newer participants are around 9 and 10 years old, the team now has an average age of 35 to 40, Brunner said.
The oldest local participant was an 80-year-old athlete from Maple Lane Health Care, who nearly won a bronze medal in a walking race at the state competition, she said. In the last few moments, amid the cheers of “go, go, go” from Brunner and other volunteers, he broke from a walk into a run and was disqualified.
“I think we overdid the cheering,” Brunner said.
In any event, she said, he was happy with his participatory ribbon.
Brunner recalled another story involving an athlete who was distraught and in tears over having won a medal instead of the ribbon she brought home in previous years because her mother was always so proud of her ribbons.
Brunner managed to get her a ribbon to take home as well.
This year, Brunner will take home an award of her own, but not from the Special Olympics. (She already has one of those; a plaque presented to her on her 40th year.)
Brunner will be honored by the Shawano Area Community Foundation with the Shawano Community Service Award at its Celebration of Giving ceremony. The award is sponsored by a fund holder within the foundation.
“I was very pleased and surprised,” Brunner said about learning of the award.
Brunner was nominated by her husband, Robert.
“As her husband, I know how much time she spends devoted to Special Olympics, on the field of play, as well as with financial management,” he wrote in his nominating letter.
Brunner said the time she and other volunteers put in has been well worth it.
“It’s like having an extended family,” she said.
It’s also a family she would be happy to see grow even more.
Because the young athletes can’t participate without a guardian, their parents have to be willing to be involved, Brunner said.
“We always need new blood, new volunteers,” she said.
The team is a totally volunteer program, which raises its own funds.
It holds an annual Bowl-a-thon to raise money, but has also gotten support from a number of community groups, including the Optimist Club, the American Legion and the Red River Riders.
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