Kings, kings and
more kings, minus one

BY VICTORIA SCHNEPS-YUNIS

Thursday, November 5, 2009 2:03 PM EST

What a morning it was as hundreds gathered at Terrace on the Park to celebrate the achievements of the extraordinary “Kings of Queens.”

For eight years I had acknowledged successful women at our “Women in Business” event, but many men said to me that it was time to recognize that there are great leaders in the male gender too. It was our second year doing the event and, with our great mayor honored as one of the kings last year, this year we invited the governor to be recognized, as well as the enormously-successful leader of our schools, Joel I. Klein, who topped the list of extraordinary men.

It was a perfect morning – all the rain clouds had vanished and the sun shone brightly on all of us. The one disappointment was that at the last moment the governor’s people called my people to say budget talks forced him to cancel. His loss. I’ll take bets that he’s not going to run again and so he felt he could ignore his commitment to us and the standing-room-only crowd that had gathered to celebrate him as governor.

But even without him it was a great event. When I heard that he wasn’t coming I called the mayor’s scheduling person, Shea, and asked if the mayor might surprise us and make a cameo appearance, but he had a breakfast event himself. She asked if I’d like Dennis M. Walcott, the Deputy Mayor for Education and Community Development, to attend. I immediately said that would be great! I have always admired him, and he’s one of those political people who is universally beloved and respected. The added bonus was that he is in charge of education for the mayor – what could be more fitting than for him to “crown” our king, Chancellor Joel I. Klein.

It was a funny moment when Walcott admitted to the attentive audience that he was “outing” himself and admitting that the first person he spoke to in the morning was Joel I. Klein (except for his wife some mornings) and the last person he spoke to every night was Joel I Klein. He got a universal roar from the crowd.

By a twist of fate, I had met the chancellor at an intimate breakfast hosted by the mayor in Gracie Mansion about two years ago. We were sitting opposite each other ,and he inquired how I got into the news business. I asked if he wanted the short story or the long one. Since we had an hour’s breakfast together, he said he’d like long story. So I shared with him that I had become an advocate for children with disabilities due to my daughter Lara’s brain damage at birth in l968.

I explained how my journey to find help for her led me to a place called the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island. It had just opened an infant rehabilitation center for children and was the only place offering therapies that would potentially help my Lara. I founded WORC, an organization to provide volunteers and fundraising for the people at Willowbrook. But only a year later budget cuts turned my friends and myself into picketers demanding restoration of the funds. It took a cub reporter, Geraldo Rivera, and his dramatic coverage of the desperate conditions at the institution to lead the parents to file a federal class action lawsuit, demanding better services for the 5,400 people living at Willowbrook.

Before I could say another word, Joel said with a smile on his face, “I was your attorney!” It turned out he had been one of the lead attorneys at the New York Civil Liberties Union, the group that successfully led our defense team in the early 1970s. How remarkable!

My honors to him last Thursday were for his remarkable work transforming the New York City school system. Less obvious, but nonetheless in my heart, was his success in winning the historic Willowbrook class action lawsuit that forever changed the way services, both residential and educational, are provided to people with disabilities. School programs and group homes all developed because of that lawsuit. So it was a powerful moment for me to have him on the podium and recognize his successes on many levels.