Editor's Letter

E

very once in a while, someone comes along who can
sustain a dream, bring others over to the cause and
ultimately enrich the community around her.
Joyce Keller is such a person.
She just retired after 30 years as executive director of JARC,
a Farmington Hills-based agency that serves people touched
by a developmental disability but driv-
en to succeed despite the challenges.
More than most people, Keller has
diminished the stigma attached to
being a human being who happens to
also have a disability. She has worked
hard and without fanfare to remove
physical and emotional barriers for
hundreds of good people who, through
no fault of their own, require assistance
to enjoy life's gifts. She has dedicated
herself to making life echo for them
like it does for the rest of us — with
the same risks and rewards, the same joys and sorrows.
I was blessed to be among the 500 people at her Sept. 18
retirement celebration at the Jewish Community Center in
West Bloomfield. We were there to show our gratitude to her
and her deeply supportive husband, Michael Watch.
Jewish holidays and tradition are central to the JARC expe-
rience. JARC has a $10 million budget supported by public
funds and private donations but no Federation funding,
which allows it to remain independent. It does, however, work
closely with Federation constituent agencies like the JCC and
JVS.
JARC's fundraising prowess is a communitywide model.

The Keller Story
How Keller and JARC (which began as the Jewish Association
for Residential Care) found each other is a match made in
part by God's hand.
As a high school student, Keller and
her B'nai B'rith Girls chapter visited
Coldwater State Hospital, an institution
for people with disabilities. The horrors
that she witnessed changed her life for-
ever.
"The only way I can describe what hap-
pened to me that day is that a seed was
planted in my soul and a seedling took
root:' she said at her celebration as she
recounted her formative years.
Fresh from the University of Michigan
and later Harvard University with a
master's degree in education, Keller tried
teaching but quickly discovered it wasn't
her calling. The Detroit-based JVS steered
her toward combining her interest in people who have disabil-
ities with her aptitude for business. JVS sent her to the Adult
Service Centers in Detroit, where she served for three years as
a project director for formerly institutionalized people. There,
she met JARC board member Rhoda Reiterman, who asked
Keller to apply for the top professional post at JARC.
"She was just a kid in her 20s," Norman Wachler, a JARC
founding board member and principal fundraiser, told the IN
in 2003, two years before he died.
He had interviewed Keller.

M ichael A. Jonas Photog raphy

Overcoming Disability

FASHION IS NOT

FOR THE
TIMID

YOU CANNOT
HIDE BEHIND IT

.

YOU
EMBRACE It

JARC leadership: Rick Loewenstein, Joyce Keller and

Rob Nusbaum

"I was overwhelmed by her presence, enthusiasm and her
ability. She was so dynamic," Wachler said.
Wachler was a giant of Jewish Detroit. His spirit continues
to light Keller's path to this day. We're a better community
because of that.

Shock Reversal
When she joined JARC's team in 1978, Keller was excited to
share the news. But she was stunned by some of the reactions.
As she recalled, "One clear-cut jerk said, 'Why don't they just
march all those people down to the Detroit River and push
them in?' Another thought he was so clever when he said,
`Jewish retarded? What does that mean — they couldn't get
into Michigan?'"
It's no wonder that JARC families felt discounted and invis-
ible. "The world barely recognized that they and their children
existed," Keller said. "All this just watered my little tree!'
Nature's way sure resonated.
The communal service tree we fondly
know as JARC has grown from seven
people served to almost 500 individuals
and families, from one home to 60 homes
and independent living sites, from a staff
of three to 230 and from 500 boosters. to
10,000.
I love Keller's tree metaphor. "That tree
has grown and flourished far beyond me:'
she said. "And it has borne amazing fruit."
Indeed.
Says Keller: "We've offered thousands
of opportunities to pursue interests and
friends and jobs; to travel to Florida,
Israel and our beautiful cottage up north;
to learn everything from cooking to lead-
ership, from Jewish traditions to self protection!'

More than most
people, Joyce Keller
has diminished the
stigma attached to
being a human being
who happens to also
have a disability.

Inner Workings
Thanks to a loving staff under Keller's caring tutelage and
strong lay leadership under Rob Nusbaum, JARC has become
an engine of dignity, pride, inclusion and achievement. It
reinforces, time and again, that we are much more alike than
different, whatever our personal limitations.
Leave it to Keller to hit a homerun in critiquing JARC's

Overcoming on page A6

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October 2 • 2008

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