My youngest daughter was born in 1971, with Down’s Syndrome and the congenital fatal heart malformaton common to Down’s children. My pediatrcian told me there was no cure for it, and over the first few years she would grow steadily weaker until she ultimately died.  We were living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time and I felt the need for a small, protective living environment for myself and my total of 4 children.  I had heard of Celo, a small planned Quaker community in the mountains of North Carolina,  and called ahead to check out the possible availability of a rental

I called and described my situation and it turns out the landlord was a physician who inquired about the

nature of my daughter’s heart defect.  He told me that surgery was now available for the defect, and as it turned out she subsequently underwent  and survived reparative heart surgery at Eggleston Children’s Hospital at Emory University, about three blocks from our home in Atlanta.