In the early days, most of the special-needs children in Sweet Home were in regular grade school classrooms.
As time went by, it became apparent that these children would need a space of their own. With the help of the school district, a plan was created to bring boys and girls who learned more slowly into Special Education classrooms. Teachers took special training to enable them to work with these special students. As a result the students learned to read and write just as the district hoped they would. The program grew, and all local schools in the Sweet Home area soon had a classroom filled with Special Ed students.
In addition, new curriculum was developed, which added more teachers and new faces. A director was put in place to oversee the program to ensure it moved forward and grew as students’ needs changed through each grade. Teaching Special Education students is challenging. It takes a great deal of patience and time and can be very exhausting.
I know this because my beloved granddaughter, Alecia Dalton, is special–needs. I see the time and effort her parents have provided her over the years – 24/7.
Alecia attended Foster Elementary School, Sweet Home Junior High and then Sweet Home High School. Her parents made sure she was mainstreamed into regular classrooms as an elementary student, on through high school. Their goal was to give Alecia the same opportunities as regular students, change how special-needs students were looked at and challenge the school system to accept these kids as they were.
High school teacher Bonnie Putnam was one of those who reached out and made a difference in Alecia’s education and was one of her favorite teachers. As a result of all of this time and energy provided by dedicated special-education teachers, Alecia grew, became Mayday Court Queen and graduated from SHHS in 2002.
But now came the difficult part: What happens to the Alecias of our community now that classes have ended? We needed something for special children. Sunshine Center proved to be the answer.
Sunshine began in 1973 in a dilapidated facility that had once been a farm house and later a church school. Mabel Evans, who became the first director of Sunshine Center was the aunt of my friend Gayle Evans Murray. Mabel was a very caring person, who was kind to all the clients who came, one of whom was Bobbie Miner, who is still there today.
In 1980s, Dorothy Smith of Lebanon headed Sunshine. Students were bused to Sweet Home from Lebanon for training. Then, in the 1990s, Karl Reers became director, followed by Craig Emmert. After them, Sharon Miner, Bobbie’s sister, stayed several years as director before she traveled overseas to serve as an evangelist.
John Strickler became the next director, later replaced by Roseanne Lupoli, who now leads Sunshine.
Rosanne has been an outstanding executive director; she has been able to bring the center out of debt, and has been one of those helping to raise funds for a new facility that is scheduled to be in operation by the end of 2013. She has been well received by the board of directors, and staff and is well loved by the clients of Sunshine Center.
Thank you, Bobbie Miner, for helping me with the former director’s names. Bobbie has spent many hours at the Sunshine Center, and he is happily married and he and his wife Maureen live on their own. We wish them well!
What made the Sunshine Center unique is that it provided an array of activities and services that many other facilities did not. One of those was the wood shop. Myra Winslow worked in the shop making bird houses and planter boxes that were sold to many locals. The wood shop was located behind the old building and provide work for many of the clients. In addition, helpers were always needed to jump-start the staff into making wooden projects and painting them. Myra was the daughter of Al and Virginia Schuster of Crawfordsville and was as hard a worker as her parents.
In 1993, the Sunshine Activity Center faced an uncertain future as the result of Ballot Measure 5. Gov. Barbara Roberts proposed budgets that could cause the Sunshine Center to lose all its funding. At the time, Clint Sturdevant, acting director of the Activity Center, believed that without regular funding Sunshine could not survive. It was a grim time for the volunteers, teachers, staff and the clients.
Sturdevant decided that a janitorial service should be developed to give the 24 clients at Sunshine honest, meaningful work and provide future funding. This change did not cause the woodworking projects to be dropped. A part of this plan included SHHS students partnering with Sunshine’s clients.
John Young, the work outreach coordinator at SHHS, said this partnership provided an opportunity to train slower students alongside the high school’s high-functioning students.
The janitorial service still operates today; I have had the janitors come to my home and wash my large windows that I just can’t reach anymore. They did an awesome job, were very courteous and the price was affordable for the work they performed. I plan to do this several times a year!
Today Sunshine Industries Unlimited continues to grow and provide educational and social opportunities for its clients, something that many facilities that support special needs adults do not do.
A good example of this again is my granddaughter Alecia, who came to Sunshine after she completed SHHS. For 10 years now she has had a safe place to go and grow socially and mentally, but most important be independent and happy. She always says she is going to work, even if it means they are going bowling.
The highlight of her life has been being part of Sunshine and sharing her life with others like herself. I am happy that today Alecia is learning to read and her life is changing because of this. She enjoys spending time with friends such as Bambi and Melissa, and she has made many more good friends who interact as they play games, watch movies, go bowling and even, on some special weekends, go to wonderful dances.
Alecia loves to dance and she sees that every one of her friends gets out onto the floor. Some of the clients are blind. Some are in wheelchairs, and others are deaf. But it doesn’t matter to my granddaughter. She sees that everyone has a squealing good time.
The clients go on excursions, including swimming and to the Friends of the Library, borrowing books and movies they enjoy.
You may have also seen the Sunshine group on the float they decorate and ride on in local parades, happily waving to the people on the sidewalks.
They also enjoy going to lunch and eating healthy foods. No more eating too many calories. One of their rewards is trips to the bowling alley – after our bowling building burned down, they travel to Lebanon. Their times are never wasted, but always enjoyed.
You are never bored with this group from Sunshine; they just make my day a better one, watching them all enjoying themselves and being so happy.
Plans are under way for cooking and sewing lessons, and practicing the new reading and math skills. I cleaned out some of my kitchen, finding skillets, Pyrex baking dishes, pots and pans, and some old silverware I no longer used. Look through your kitchen and probably you can find a few to donate to these hardworking friends. Remember, donations to Sunshine can be tax write-offs.
Sunshine is unique in that they have their own buses pick up clients and return them home in the afternoon. It is not a long day; the clients are on their bus about 8 a.m. and return home about 2 p.m.
Sunshine provides many jobs for its clients: paper shredding, groundskeeping for several local businesses, cooking and educational classes, sewing and woodworking. They also take care of colorful flower boxes located in front of businesses throughout town. Chuck Thompson drives the clients around Sweet Home, as they keep the plants watered and growing. They just finished up labeling 20,000 garden spades for White’s Electronics, and also have built beehives and interesting bird houses.
It is important for these clients to work and receive a small salary which give them a sense of purpose in life.
Chuck Thompson, a good-natured man who gets things done, is the board president at Sunshine. Chuck is a retired SHHS business teacher who also taught classes for me when I headed the Sweet Home branch of Linn-Benton Community College. I respected everything he stood for. Bob Dalton, the vice president, recently retired from Weyerhaeuser as a safety manager and is currently overseeing the building of this new facility. He is an outstanding leader and worker. Kathy Dadey serves as treasurer. Other current board members are Ann Black, Gary Horn, Janice Crotts (who comes to the board with years of experience working with special needs adults from the SHHS and is very respected in this community) and Roseanne Lupoli.
The old Sunshine building is in poor repair and overcrowded. If Sunshine is to grow and provide all the much-needed services in our community, a new building is needed. After years of meetings and planning, the board decided that 2011 was the time to make that commitment.
Property has been purchased on Clark Mill Road and a new building soon will be built there. At a time when the country’s economy is in question, the board, community leaders and others have stepped up to the challenge by donating money, equipment and volunteer labor towards the cost of the new building.
At the groundbreaking last fall for the Sunshine Industries Incorporated’s new building at the Clark Mill site, Sunshine staff, clients, neighbors and other community members came to celebrate this new beginning. Cookies and punch were served by clients.
It was an exciting time for an exciting organization!
The community has stepped up to help. Mike Melcher and my brother Tom Hyer, loggers with numerous years of experience, were the first to step forward. They brought out their logging equipment and went to work, smoothing the ground for the new building with a bulldozer, excavator, dump trucks and a large roller to move dirt and compact rock. Being the creative bunch they are, they traded dirt for rock and then later sold it to provide more money to the project.
Others have helped in many ways. In the beginning the Seabees came several days and helped clear the land, all without any cost to our building fund.
Lumber has been pledged from the Weyerhaeuser Santiam Mill for the building, and many other businesses are looking forward to helping any way they can. Of course, we welcome them.
The building project is moving slowly, now that winter is here, but spring will be around the corner and the pace will pick back up. As always with any major project, there still will be a need for more money as the cost of building permits and finish work are huge. If you want to help out, send what you can afford, and you will receive paperwork for your tax deductibles.
But as with many other projects before, our community is one of integrity, pulling together to get things done. That is why I love our town, people seeing a need with an attitude that we will get it done one way or another! And I promise you, this will be completed soon. Sweet Home has always taken care of their own.
I am looking forward to the building’s completion as it is a severely needed service in our community. By the way, we have a large piece from an oak tree that fell from a nasty storm over a year ago and I think it would make a good bench for the clients to sit on while waiting for their buses. Would someone like to do the bench? The wood is cured and waiting. There are many gifted carpenters in our community.
Feel free to stop by and take a look. This building will be perfect for our town and our Sunshine clients, to whom we are devoted.
For more information, contact Roseanne Lupoli at (541) 367-2765 or Mona Waibel at (541) 367-3803, or mail any contributions to me at 940 Oak Terrace, Sweet Home OR 97386. If you want to know more about the project, contact Bob Dalton at (541) 367-5371.
I am honored to be a small part of this project!
I hope you had a merry Christmas and I wish you a very happy new year!