There are thousands of parents who have children with developmental disabilities and nowhere to turn for help. Now, Dreams Die Hard: Family Histories of Adults with Developmental Disabilities as Told by Family and Caregivers is here. In Dreams, parents, family members, teachers and program managers share their experiences with children from birth to middle age. The children have crippling speech problems, Down’s syndrome, epilepsy, strokes, palsy, encephalitis, meningitis or other developmental problems. Dreams is an unvarnished look at how parents and siblings coped with sibling rivalry, doctors, schools, sex, dating, religion, divorce, insensitive people, death, fears, and their impact on the entire family. Talking anonymously, parents related their pains, frustrations and fears; they spoke honestly about their marriages and friends. Some of the parents made things happen by starting schools, and creating various programs. Dreams is about hope. Many children whose doctors predicted they would be in an institution now live independently or semi-independently. Many work in the community or in a sheltered workshop, have a social life, go to camp, and travel. Some have married and have children of their own.

Susan Kessler Barnard, an Atlanta native, is a mother of three sons, a grandmother and a great-grandmother. She has been a longtime community activist particularly in the field of developmentally disabled children. Because of her son, Christopher, she and other parents established Arbor Academy, Inc., the Havanah Sunday school program and The Atlanta Group Home, Inc. In 1983 she received the Atlanta Association for Retarded Citizen’s Mary Lee Brookshire Award for her work. Dreams is Ms. Barnard’s fourth book: This is the Church Being the Church, a History of Atlanta’s First Presbyterian Church, was written with Dr. Harry A. Fifield. Buckhead: A Place for All Time and Arcadia’s Images of America: Buckhead are histories of Atlanta’s Buckhead community. She has also been a columnist for several local newspapers. She and Grace M. Schwartzman have articles on the Creek (Muscogee) Indians in the University of Georgia’s The Georgia Historical Quarterly. Ms. Barnard was a surgical assistant and then a library assistant at the Atlanta History Center. She is on the board of the Buckhead Library, is a member of the Greater Atlanta Archaeological Society and The Atlanta History Center. She attends and teaches courses at Emory University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) and she is a docent at The Breman Jewish Heritage Museum’s Holocaust exhibit.