Live well, laugh often

Becky Dowling’s laugh is unmistakable.

It starts off as a flue-cured chuckle, roughed up by many cartons of Marlboro Menthols, then explodes into a full-blown Phyllis Diller cackle, as if she has taken to heart the signs all around her office that say things like “Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much.”

Dowling, 61, creator of a program that has enriched the lives of 275 mentally disabled adults, laughs often and heartily. But back in 2000 she had to laugh to keep from crying. She had a dream, and the world seemed intent on crushing it.

Dowling’s dream was to create a “normal” life for her clients, mentally disabled young adults isolated by Down syndrome, autism, learning disabilities, head injuries or mental illness.

Each Saturday Dowling drove a van from group home to group home, collecting adults whose disabilities prevented them from living independently but didn’t rob them of the joy of having fun, and she would take them to the mall or CNN Center or dancing or out bowling. The outings were a function of her fledgling nonprofit organization, Just People Inc.

She knew from her own bitter experience that the average day for these high-functioning adults was a terribly monotonous television coma. What they needed most of all was contact with others and something to do. As the group grew, and she added routes, buses and drivers, Dowling visualized a single apartment complex, where her clients might live together. It would sure cut down on the driving time.

Four times she thought she found the right property, four times she was denied, whether by zoning, licensing, financing or outright hostility.

But behind those green eyes and that nurturing spirit was an implacable will.

In 2004, Becky Dowling and her husband Kevin made an unusual bargain and put their nest egg on the line. They agreed to sell their house and move into a proposed 50-unit Just People Village in Roswell, investing $200,000 of their own money in the project, which they would build from the ground up. Their commitment, and that of eight other investors including developer Larry Doyal, helped guarantee financing.

Dowling knew that without day-to-day supervision, her clients would get into trouble. They could take care of themselves, but they sometimes skipped their medication, missed meals or sat out planned activities. They needed staff who lived on site, and she and Kevin, who had retired early, would be part of that staff.

The move made her husband nervous; it made her children furious. The Lilburn house they had grown up in had been their home for 23 years, and their parents were trading away their childhood memories.

"We hated it," said oldest child Kelli Salyer. "We thought, 'Where are we going to spend Christmas? Where are we going to bring our kids?' We were mad."

2
A scrapper
Becky Dowling has an offbeat personality and some of her decisions are unorthodox. Once when she was snowed-in with members of Just People on a vacation trip to Pigeon Forge, Tenn., she decided to get a tattoo, and several clients joined her at the parlor, getting ink of their own.

And she doesn’t mind breaking rules — or even bruising noses — when it comes to the welfare of her clients.

Last month, when members of Just People took up five rows at Gwinnett Arena, watching the live version of “American Idol,” Dowling almost mixed it up with another audience member when he objected to two of her clients dancing in the aisles.

“Ladies,” she said through gritted teeth to the two mentally disabled women, “I’m going to ask you to move so I don’t have to punch this man in the back of the head.”

Yet Dowling chokes up when she remembers her mother, Freida, patiently and steadily bearing a difficult burden for almost 40 years, and when she remembers her father, Al, whose watchword was “play the hand that you’re dealt.”

He was dealt a tough bunch of cards. It was the injustice that her father suffered, and the enormous poise of her mother's response, that motivates Dowling today, in her lifelong effort to even things up.

3
A childhood vow
Miami native Becky Reynolds was 4 years old when her parents divorced, and her mother remarried a man named Elmer Collins, whom everyone called "Al."

Al was a musician and a mail carrier, a man with a beautiful voice and a great head of hair. In 1959 he and Freida had been married less than a year when his mail delivery vehicle, about the size of a golf cart, was totaled by a cement truck.

Al suffered a massive head injury. Part of his skull was replaced with a metal plate, and though his cognitive skills remained good, the injury seemed to trigger the onset of mental illness, including depression and schizophrenia. He stayed in the hospital two years. When he came home he wasn’t the same man. He never worked again. He never drove a car. Every day he sat in the same chair, tuned in “The Price is Right,” read the Bible and wrote elaborate prayers.

His only outing was each afternoon at 3 p.m., when he'd ride his bicycle to the corner to meet the children coming home from school. For the next 33 years Becky's adoptive father was sentenced to a solitary life. Friends and family stopped calling. If neighbors were planning a barbecue they'd tell her mother, Bring the kids. Don't bring Al.

Becky saw Al ignored by the world around him, and that wounded her. The wound still hasn’t healed.

“I saw a sadness in there that I wanted to fix,” she said. “I told him ‘I’m going to make it better.’”

Her mother never wavered in her steadfast devotion to her father, and it is her example of dedication that Dowling tries to emulate. She thought at the time that she might become a nun, but her plans for the convent changed when she met Kevin Dowling. She was 18 when they got married. Eleven years later they moved to Atlanta to pursue his career with the phone company.

Soon they had three children, Kelli, Krista and Kevin, who goes by "Bubba." For a while, Becky's urge to fix the world was focused closer to home.

4
A village becomes a world
On a Monday afternoon at the administrative offices of Just People, clients gradually fill the sprawling facility, which houses a day program, providing recreational activities for clients. Many of them are arriving from work; about 80 percent of the clients have jobs, bagging groceries at Kroger or rolling silverware at Chili's.

The office is a 29,000-square-foot, flat-roofed, one-story brick building in a bland Norcross office park of identical buildings. Formerly a call center for a telephone soliciting company, the interior has been transformed into a Just People wonderland.

The walls are papered with photographs of the clients playing softball, taking cooking lessons, practicing water aerobics or on cruise vacations, which they take as a group once a year. Their artwork adorns every surface.

On this afternoon some clients work with case managers, while others watch a movie on a big screen TV, or chat in small groups. Becky’s nephew, Sean Kent, shows off the new garden behind the building, with plants donated by Farmer D Organics Garden Center. “Some of our individuals are overweight,” says Kent. “It’s our initiative to start providing them affordable organic food.”

Later on this day, as part of an Independent Living Program, they will split up by gender and listen to presentations on hygiene and appropriate social behavior between men and women.

The Just People world has grown over the years. In addition to the day program in Norcross and the residential village in Roswell, the group bought and renovated an aging collection of townhomes in Lilburn to create the Burns Walk Village. Some clients also live independently in apartments around the city.

“This is the answer to dreams,” said Larry Doyal’s widow, Mari Doyal. Their 45-year-old daughter Julie was one of the first residents of the Roswell village. “All it takes is money,” said Mari Doyal. “The cost is not cheap.”

Residents pay $700 in monthly rent, and an additional fee ranging from $925 to $5,000 a month for care, depending on their level of need. Some clients receive Medicare waivers and others have been working long enough to earn disability payments.

5
Segregated or safe?
Just People's residential properties represent a different approach to the care of the mentally disabled, an approach that has been criticized as "segregating" the disabled population.

In fact, the state of Georgia was sued by the U.S. Justice Department for unlawfully segregating the mentally ill in the state’s mental hospitals. In a 2010 settlement of that suit, the state Department of Justice agreed to increase community treatment, foster integrated settings and disperse 9,000 patients who were in state facilities.

This ruling is understood as endorsing “scattered” rather than “congregate” housing.

“It is difficult, if not impossible to give people a community experience in congregate settings, because everybody’s the same,” said Cynthia Wainscott, former director of Mental Health America’s Georgia affiliate. “If everybody’s disabled, that’s the only experience you have.”

Moving the mentally disabled out of group settings is not only the state’s policy, it is the goal of many mental health organizations, Wainscott said. “It is very common for them to become part of the rich fabric of the community.”

Dowling doesn’t buy that.

The “mainstreaming” philosophy assumes that “normal” people will seek out the disabled for fellowship, she said, but they don’t. No one, said Dowling, is knocking down Just People’s doors to invite them out. Instead, they get odd looks.

Kathryn Conrad, a tiny 37-year-old who is learning disabled, lived on her own for several years, participating in Just People’s social programs, while staying at an apartment complex with two roommates. But her neighbors didn’t turn into a magical support system, said her father, Loren Conrad.

“The neighbors don’t necessarily even want them there,” he said. “Normal people would complain about our folks,” and eventually Kathryn felt self-conscious just walking to the mailbox.

Just People goes the opposite direction, creating a concentrated community of people who, for one reason or another, can’t get along in the “outside” world.

There is a broad variation in ability among the members. Many cannot read, drive or do simple math. Others are college graduates. What they find at Burns Walk Village in Lilburn and the Just People Village in Roswell is an environment where they are not judged, belittled or patronized. And there is always somebody around who wants to play bocce. At least four couples have gotten married. Another wedding will take place this fall, when Kathryn Conrad marries fellow village resident Robert Walls, who has distinguished himself with unbroken attendance at more than 1,000 Braves games.

Dowling is working on buying a third residential facility for aging clients who need the kind of attention one receives at an assisted living center. Several older clients had to leave the Village when they could no longer care for themselves, and she hated to see them go.

She worries about her own future as well. At the weekly Dowling family meal, in Kelli’s Hoschton home, “we talk about how many people it would take to replace me,” said Becky. “We’re up to five.”

Kelli, who serves as vice president, is second in command. While she and her siblings resisted the move to the Village, they all admire their mother extravagantly, and all ended up working for Just People at one time or another. “People say they want to make a difference,” said Bubba, “but she makes a difference every day.”

Kelli’s fiancee, Kyle Ivey, manages the Burns Walk Village, and Becky’s husband Kevin works for a separate corporation that owns the Just People properties and leases them to the nonprofit.

"My friends call us the Mafia," said Bubba, who managed the day program until he left to pursue a career in photography. "We love each other a lot. We're kind of psychotic about each other."

6
One hundred tuxedos
It takes an unusual person to work at Just People, and Dowling is good at spotting potential recruits. Some of the 62 staff members are also clients, such as Bobbie Jo Williams, 30, who helps run the Just Stuff thrift store in a strip mall off Jimmy Carter Boulevard.

Williams also organized a Just People Kiwanis Club, which recently helped radio personality Clark Howard build his 50th Habitat for Humanity house. She is part of Just People because of mental health issues and easily handles stocking shelves, answering phones and helping customers.

“When I first got here I was a mess,” said the diminutive blonde, who credits the program with helping her control food cravings and end her habit of self-harm. Working for the store is a big part of that, she said. “Being here, having them trust me, having a key to this store: That’s huge.”

Outside the store, tall, sunburned Jimmy McCormick, 58, who has a seizure disorder and a learning disability, is holding a sign, directing drivers into the parking lot.  He stops in the store to check on his ride back to the office, and interrupts Williams to talk about his job.

“I like it,” says McCormick, “because I’m going on the cruise!”

“Jimmy,” says Williams patiently.

“Sorry,” says Jimmy with a smile, but interrupts again to talk about bowling.

“Jimmy.”

"Sorry!"
The interplay between the two, which is good-natured, shows how two members of the group with different problems and abilities still find a common ground in Just People.

It shows, as well, how much the members look forward to the yearly cruise, which takes place this month when they will travel to the Virgin Islands. They save for it all year long.

Like the big deal she makes out out of holidays and birthdays, Dowling was determined to make the most of her clients’ annual cruise vacation. She wanted to make sure that, on formal night, they looked sharp so she arranged to buy 100 tuxedos from a small formal wear store at a vastly reduced price, shoes included. She also kept her eyes open for gowns.

So it was, one evening some years ago, somewhere in the Caribbean, that Dowling sat in the towering atrium of an ocean-going cruise ship and saw four clients standing on a balcony above, casually waiting for their dates, bow ties crisp, patent leather shoes shiny, and she burst into tears.

They didn’t look like the unfashionable boys from the short bus. They looked elegant.

“I was so proud of how well they looked and how happy they were,” she said. “They were gorgeous.”

HOW WE GOT THE STORY
Bo Emerson first met Becky Dowling when she was selected as an AJC Holiday Hero in December 2012. Sent to write a story about her, he visited the Just People offices and found a crowd of about 80 people having a blast, cooking, singing and making Christmas cards. "I was struck by the happiness in that moment," Emerson said. As he interviewed Dowling, her family and her clients for this story, Emerson learned that despite the losses in her life, Becky has managed to maintain a happy outlook and found a  way to make that happiness grow.

Suzanne Van Atten
Features Enterprise Editor
personaljourneys@ajc.com

About the reporter

Bo Emerson is an Atlanta native who joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1983. He has been a feature writer for most of his AJC career. Emerson is a member of the Columbia Presbyterian Church in Decatur and is married to Maureen Downey, who covers education for the AJC.

About the photographer

Jason Getz joined the AJC as a staff photographer in October 2005. He is the lead photographer at the state Capitol during the legislature session and also covers education, transportation, immigration, sports and features.