The Original Denver Post Article about Daryl
Thanks to Nancy Lambert for providing the text of the article!
Article Originally Published: Sunday, April 04, 2004
Daryl made big impression in his 12 years
Boy worked hard to fight his cerebral palsy
By Claire Martin
Denver Post Staff Writer
By age 8, Daryl Lee Garner had been diagnosed with profound cerebral palsy, relinquished by his biological mother, ignored by teachers and rejected by one foster family.
With the help of therapists and a new set of foster parents, he managed to disprove the doctors who said he would never walk. He was 12 when he died March 19 of head injuries sustained during a fall as he walked unaided to class.
Daryl was born with cerebral palsy, a disorder that mostly confined him to a wheelchair for the first half of his life. He was in the second grade when he and his elder siblings were taken from their mother, under unhappy circumstances veiled by state social services records, and placed in foster care and other programs.
Daryl's first foster parents found themselves unequal to the challenge of caring for him. He was placed again, this time to Mary and John Kresnik, a Thornton couple who run a foster home that specializes in caring for special-needs children.
"We fell in love with Daryl immediately," Mary Kresnik said.
When he arrived in January 2000, he was in a wheelchair. Kresnik said she sized up the walker he'd brought along as "worthless" and replaced it with one left by a previous foster child.
With encouragement from the Kresniks and physical therapist Jason Frye, Daryl managed to build enough strength in his leg muscles to rely on a walker instead of the wheelchair.
Eventually, his balance improved. After months of effort, he was able to carefully step down from the curb in front of the Kresniks' house, shuffle across the cul-de-sac street in his singular drag-and-step gait, and negotiate the opposite curb.
Someone walked alongside him as he traversed the street, ready to grab Daryl's arm if he lost his balance. Once he regained his stability, Daryl would say, "I do it myself," yank away his sleeve and set off again.
"He always worked so hard," Mary Kresnik said. "We always needed to stay within inches of him, but he learned to go up and down curbs and all the way around the cul-de-sac by himself."
Tasks that are second nature for most - zipping a coat, pulling a backpack on and off, fixing a snack - took Daryl months to learn.
Under the tutelage of occupational therapist Molly Patenaude, he learned to button, zip and snap the fastenings on his clothes so he could dress himself.
"Making small meals, sequencing the steps he needed to make a sandwich, using a knife to spread the bread - all those things were difficult because one side of his body wasn't very cooperative," Patenaude said.
"Everything he did was a huge accomplishment. He wasn't expected to come as far as he did. It was his determination to do things, his intrinsic motivation, that kept him going. You don't see that in a lot of kids. A lot of kids give up easily. It was great to work with Daryl as a therapist because he tried so hard."
After completing a task, Daryl liked to collapse in the Kresniks' porch swing, sitting as wearily as a miner fresh from the coal pit.
"Whoo," he would say, and then - quite plainly for someone whose disability caused most of his speech to be unintelligible - he would demand, "Cookie!"
"He would say 'cookie' plain as day," said his foster mother, who learned to fill in the gaps of Daryl's half-spoken words.
She knew that when he announced, "Mom, 'Osh 'Obin! 'Ose!" that he wanted to hear one of his Josh Groban CDs again. Daryl adored Josh Groban, the melodic young pop star whose stately style and surprisingly classical repertoire caused The New York Times to dub him the "Bachstreet Boy." Despite his speech problems, Daryl always sang along.
"I swear Daryl could sing in Italian better when he could barely speak in English," Kresnik said.
"Oh, it was so good for him. It helped his speech, and he would dance. We would get in what I call our two-butt kitchen - you'd think if the Lord wanted me to be a foster parent, he could have arranged a house with a bigger kitchen - and Daryl learned to do a mean jitterbug and a mean two- step, and he had such a giggle."
Two years ago, after Mary Kresnik was diagnosed with leukemia, something in her foster son seemed to shift, "as if he were adopting us," she said. When she rested in her bedroom, obeying her oncologist's advice to boost her white blood cell count, Daryl usually made his way up the stairs and snuggled alongside her. Sometimes, he just hugged her. Other times, he said reassuringly, "You be OK, Mom."
"That was the best medicine in the world," she said.
She thinks of moments like those when people shake their heads and ask how she and her husband can cope with caring for special-needs children, some who need medicine every 30 minutes and often require diapers.
"People don't give these kids credit. They think that they're of no value - that they can't think or hear or feel. And they're so wrong.
"We all have a purpose for being here. I think Daryl's purpose here on Earth was to teach us all to accept one another as we are inside and to work together to make the world a better place."
The Kresniks are struggling to come up with the money for Daryl's headstone. With meager finances - they use a 1977 recreational vehicle to transport their foster children to church and to rare family picnics - they were grateful to Olinger Mortuary for paying for most of the funeral expenses.
Besides his foster parents, survivors include a biological sister, Margarita H. of Denver; a biological brother, David H. of Denver; five foster sisters, Susan Z. of Littleton and Tiffany Kresnik, Meagan Kresnik, Angela Kresnik and Stephanie E., all of Thornton; and seven foster brothers, Brad K., Michael Kresnik, Kenny S., Michael C., Christopher H., Derryck B. and Lorenzo O., all of Thornton.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36
Follow Up Article:
When Nancy Lambert read Daryl's obituary at the Denver Post's website, she forwarded the link to me and expressed that she wished that we could help somehow to raise funds to help the Kresnik's pay for a proper grave marker for Daryl. She asked if I thought that she should take the article to other fans via the Josh Groban online forums; my response without hesitation was yes, do it!
Nancy posted the link that she'd found at the Friends of Josh Groban site, I posted it at the forums at joshgroban.com. In no time at all, the response and outpouring of support, emotional, and finantial, blew us all away.
...And we hadn't even thought yet of how the story would effect Josh and his management team.
Here is the article as it appeared in the August 19th edition of the Denver Post, the day of Josh's concert at Red Rocks in Colorado.
Daryl's monument...
Article Originally Published: Sunday, April 04, 2004
Daryl made big impression in his 12 years
Boy worked hard to fight his cerebral palsy
By Claire Martin
Denver Post Staff Writer
By age 8, Daryl Lee Garner had been diagnosed with profound cerebral palsy, relinquished by his biological mother, ignored by teachers and rejected by one foster family.
With the help of therapists and a new set of foster parents, he managed to disprove the doctors who said he would never walk. He was 12 when he died March 19 of head injuries sustained during a fall as he walked unaided to class.
Daryl was born with cerebral palsy, a disorder that mostly confined him to a wheelchair for the first half of his life. He was in the second grade when he and his elder siblings were taken from their mother, under unhappy circumstances veiled by state social services records, and placed in foster care and other programs.
Daryl's first foster parents found themselves unequal to the challenge of caring for him. He was placed again, this time to Mary and John Kresnik, a Thornton couple who run a foster home that specializes in caring for special-needs children.
"We fell in love with Daryl immediately," Mary Kresnik said.
When he arrived in January 2000, he was in a wheelchair. Kresnik said she sized up the walker he'd brought along as "worthless" and replaced it with one left by a previous foster child.
With encouragement from the Kresniks and physical therapist Jason Frye, Daryl managed to build enough strength in his leg muscles to rely on a walker instead of the wheelchair.
Eventually, his balance improved. After months of effort, he was able to carefully step down from the curb in front of the Kresniks' house, shuffle across the cul-de-sac street in his singular drag-and-step gait, and negotiate the opposite curb.
Someone walked alongside him as he traversed the street, ready to grab Daryl's arm if he lost his balance. Once he regained his stability, Daryl would say, "I do it myself," yank away his sleeve and set off again.
"He always worked so hard," Mary Kresnik said. "We always needed to stay within inches of him, but he learned to go up and down curbs and all the way around the cul-de-sac by himself."
Tasks that are second nature for most - zipping a coat, pulling a backpack on and off, fixing a snack - took Daryl months to learn.
Under the tutelage of occupational therapist Molly Patenaude, he learned to button, zip and snap the fastenings on his clothes so he could dress himself.
"Making small meals, sequencing the steps he needed to make a sandwich, using a knife to spread the bread - all those things were difficult because one side of his body wasn't very cooperative," Patenaude said.
"Everything he did was a huge accomplishment. He wasn't expected to come as far as he did. It was his determination to do things, his intrinsic motivation, that kept him going. You don't see that in a lot of kids. A lot of kids give up easily. It was great to work with Daryl as a therapist because he tried so hard."
After completing a task, Daryl liked to collapse in the Kresniks' porch swing, sitting as wearily as a miner fresh from the coal pit.
"Whoo," he would say, and then - quite plainly for someone whose disability caused most of his speech to be unintelligible - he would demand, "Cookie!"
"He would say 'cookie' plain as day," said his foster mother, who learned to fill in the gaps of Daryl's half-spoken words.
She knew that when he announced, "Mom, 'Osh 'Obin! 'Ose!" that he wanted to hear one of his Josh Groban CDs again. Daryl adored Josh Groban, the melodic young pop star whose stately style and surprisingly classical repertoire caused The New York Times to dub him the "Bachstreet Boy." Despite his speech problems, Daryl always sang along.
"I swear Daryl could sing in Italian better when he could barely speak in English," Kresnik said.
"Oh, it was so good for him. It helped his speech, and he would dance. We would get in what I call our two-butt kitchen - you'd think if the Lord wanted me to be a foster parent, he could have arranged a house with a bigger kitchen - and Daryl learned to do a mean jitterbug and a mean two- step, and he had such a giggle."
Two years ago, after Mary Kresnik was diagnosed with leukemia, something in her foster son seemed to shift, "as if he were adopting us," she said. When she rested in her bedroom, obeying her oncologist's advice to boost her white blood cell count, Daryl usually made his way up the stairs and snuggled alongside her. Sometimes, he just hugged her. Other times, he said reassuringly, "You be OK, Mom."
"That was the best medicine in the world," she said.
She thinks of moments like those when people shake their heads and ask how she and her husband can cope with caring for special-needs children, some who need medicine every 30 minutes and often require diapers.
"People don't give these kids credit. They think that they're of no value - that they can't think or hear or feel. And they're so wrong.
"We all have a purpose for being here. I think Daryl's purpose here on Earth was to teach us all to accept one another as we are inside and to work together to make the world a better place."
The Kresniks are struggling to come up with the money for Daryl's headstone. With meager finances - they use a 1977 recreational vehicle to transport their foster children to church and to rare family picnics - they were grateful to Olinger Mortuary for paying for most of the funeral expenses.
Besides his foster parents, survivors include a biological sister, Margarita H. of Denver; a biological brother, David H. of Denver; five foster sisters, Susan Z. of Littleton and Tiffany Kresnik, Meagan Kresnik, Angela Kresnik and Stephanie E., all of Thornton; and seven foster brothers, Brad K., Michael Kresnik, Kenny S., Michael C., Christopher H., Derryck B. and Lorenzo O., all of Thornton.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36
Follow Up Article:
When Nancy Lambert read Daryl's obituary at the Denver Post's website, she forwarded the link to me and expressed that she wished that we could help somehow to raise funds to help the Kresnik's pay for a proper grave marker for Daryl. She asked if I thought that she should take the article to other fans via the Josh Groban online forums; my response without hesitation was yes, do it!
Nancy posted the link that she'd found at the Friends of Josh Groban site, I posted it at the forums at joshgroban.com. In no time at all, the response and outpouring of support, emotional, and finantial, blew us all away.
...And we hadn't even thought yet of how the story would effect Josh and his management team.
Here is the article as it appeared in the August 19th edition of the Denver Post, the day of Josh's concert at Red Rocks in Colorado.
Daryl's monument...
posted by Ro | 6/16/2006
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