by NATALIE FITTS

She and her husband started crying when they heard the words.

After years of working to get her mute daughter Kailey into St. Peter’s School despite her mental disability, Ms. Mary Anne Hammond was hearing that the school could no longer handle the third grader.

‘Dan and I were literally in the principal’s office crying,’ Hammond said.

Six years earlier, Hammond started the Foundation for Inclusive Religious Education, or FIRE, with four other families. It provides Catholic schools with the means to educate children with special needs in the same classrooms as other students.

Despite the funding, the school could no longer provide Kailey with the tools she needed to reach her full potential. All the things Hammond had accomplished within the program were no longer useful to her and her family.

According to Hammond, as children with special needs get older, the gap between them and their peers widens. This makes it more difficult for schools to educate them alongside other students.

From then on, Kailey only spent part of her week at St. Peter’s. She spent the rest of her time at Katherine Carpenter Elementary School to focus on special education, while her two younger siblings, Daniel and Julia, continued to attend St. Peter’s.

Lighting the FIRE

It all started with one conversation after mass in 1996.

Ms. Maura Nulton and her family were sitting in the pew behind Hammond and her family. Nulton began asking Hammond questions about Kailey. According to Hammond, Nulton said that she could tell Kailey had some sort of mental disability.

When Hammond asked Nulton why she was asking so many questions, she pointed to her son, Charlie, who has Down syndrome. Nulton said that she wanted him to be educated alongside her other four children at St. Peter’s.

This conversation was the stepping stone that eventually lead to FIRE.

‘Part of our Catholic calling is to help educate and support families,’ Hammond said.

For the next 10 years, Hammond and Nulton ran FIRE together.

Passing off the torch

In 2008, Hammond and Nulton decided to hire an executive director to take over their positions, both planning to cut back to a volunteer position.

‘We had grown up enough that we could afford to hire someone to do what we were doing,’ Hammond said.

Hammond now works at Children’s Mercy Hospital as the Community Education Coordinator for Autism and Related Disorders. FIRE is no longer her main focus, but she still volunteers and supports the program.

‘Every chance I get, I try to spread the message of FIRE,’ Hammond said.

She said that she has remained involved because of the profound effect it has had on her children.

‘I just feel more and more that by having Kailey and doing this, I have nicer kids,’ Hammond said. ‘I think [Daniel and Julia] are more compassionate than the average kids.’

According to Hammond, people thank her about once a week for starting FIRE, but that the positive things it has done for her family make it seem like she is getting thanked daily.

‘It’s the gift that keeps on giving,” Hammond said.