FEATURED ARTICLE FOR February 2010
 
 
The rest of this article can be found in the Scott Hamilton Issue (past issues) of ABILITY Magazine www.ABILITYMagazine.com
Reprint of this article was provided by Chet Cooper, Publisher of ABILITY Magazine

 

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  Four years ago, one of my sons lay in a medically induced coma. Samuel was four years old and had developed pneumonia from complications following a tonsillectomy. As I waited by his bedside, one of his doctors, Dr. James Filiano, encouraged me to photograph the experience, perhaps as a way of managing my fear. That was the moment I began to move towards documentary filmmaking, which was a new direction for me professionally and personally.

Soon after, I began working on Including Samuel, a 58-minute documentary that was released last year. As a father and as a director, my experience with the project helped to calm my fears, while pushing me to examine my biases. The film became my outlet for processing a new reality in our lives: We had a child with a disability.

When Samuel was about one, we found out that he had cerebral palsy, which means his brain has trouble controlling his muscles. He uses a wheelchair, and it’s difficult for him to talk.

My wife Betsy and I would stay up nights, comparing notes: What did Samuel do better that day? What did he do worse? We weren’t new parents; we had an older son, Isaiah, who was then four. But our youngest child’s disability tested us in new ways.

“How can he get a full education and go to college when he can’t hold a pencil?” Betsy wondered aloud.

Maybe Samuel’s inability to hold a pencil wouldn’t be such a big deal. What if his condition were simply considered another version of “normal”? What if he participated in everything that everybody else did?

I made Including Samuel to chronicle our family’s efforts to mainstream our son into our neighborhood school, into social activities intrinsic to our community and into the daily routines of our family—every aspect of life. This central thread runs through the film.

I wanted audiences to get to know Samuel, who wrestles with his brother, loves t-ball and wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. Yet he is only eight, and relies on others to continue to include him. This will likely become more and more challenging as he gets older.

I also made the film to learn from the choices other people with disabilities and their parents have made. I wanted to see how these choices have shaped their lives. So Including Samuel also documents the experiences of Keith Jones, Alana Malfy, Nathaniel Orellana and Emily Huff, along with their families, educators and their communities as a whole.