ARC Celebrates Progress on Its Anniversary

It has been 38 years since Dorothy Smead confronted the superintendent of the Santa Paula Elementary School District, demanding special classes for her autistic son, John.

The superintendent resisted, but Smead stood her ground. “I said, ‘No, we’re not waiting for next year,’ ” she said.

By the beginning of the school year, the superintendent had hired a new teacher and surrendered his own office as a special education classroom.

What began as a lonely struggle for Smead and a few other parents of developmentally disabled children has since mushroomed into one of the county’s largest social service organizations.

The Assn. for Retarded Citizens--Ventura County, which had a total of three “clients” in its early days, now serves more than 700 “consumers.” It has a staff of more than 200 and an annual budget of $7.3 million derived from state grants, commercial contracts, thrift store profits and fund raising.

The association celebrates its 40th anniversary today with an 11 a.m. picnic and concert at 1732 S. Lewis Road in Camarillo.

The agency has not simply grown over time; it has changed, keeping pace with developments on the national scene, Executive Director Fred W. Robinson said.

In the 1950s, parents had to “keep these children at school and do the best they could,” Robinson said. In the 1960s, federal funding for activity programs and work centers gave retarded citizens new choices.

The latest drive, according to Robinson, is getting people out of publicly supported jobs and into private ones. One new program, for example, employs “job coaches” who help about 65 people with disabilities keep jobs in the community.

The association operates group homes, provides training for independent living and runs the Magic Muffin Bakery in Oxnard. It also runs packing and assembly plants, where disabled people work for tiny stipends under the supervision of agency employees.

In a Camarillo plant Friday, Marie Gibson, 37, was cutting magnetic strips. “I like it here,” she said. “I don’t want to leave.”

Along other assembly lines, developmentally disabled people were collating instructions and warranties for computer modems and for BMW automobile owner’s manuals. They were packing plastic friendship doves and neon-colored fingernail files into boxes and pouring cereal into containers.

The association faces many more changes, including one in its name, Robinson predicted.

The state and national organizations have already stopped using the word retarded, with its painful connotations, and have become known simply by the acronym--ARC.