The Wichita Eagle
Published May 18, 2009

Mia McNary, a Chicago mom, has Wichita in her heart.

Her 9-year-old son, Colin, is a residential student at Heartspring. Enrolling him was one of the hardest – and easiest – things she’s done.

Hard because he’s hundreds of miles away. Easy because “he left here with probably 200 aggressive acts a day in school, and now he’s down to like 30,” she said.

“That’s crazy amazing.”

From its start 75 years ago, Heartspring has been doing crazy amazing things.

Perhaps best known to the public its holiday Lights on the Lake display, Heartspring has a long history of serving children with disabilities, often severe ones like Colin’s.

Now, as it marks its 75th anniversary, nearly all of its clients have autism as well as other disabilities. In its early days, the focus was children with cerebral palsy.

It has always tried to give a voice to children without one.

Early Days

Heartspring got its start at the University of Wichita when Martin Palmer, a professor of speech pathology, started the department of speech sciences in 1934.

By 1949, the clinical services had outgrown the university. They were moved to 21st and Jardine and became the Institute of Logopedics. Logopedics was a term being used in Europe, from “logos” meaning word, and “pedics” for orthopedia, to correct a deformity.

Mark Woodman, president of Printing Inc. is among its alumni. As a toddler in the days before widespread antibiotic use, Woodman had chronic sinus and ear infections that affected his hearing and speech.

“I spoke like I heard,” he said. “No one could understand me.”

Woodman’s physician referred the family to the Institute of Logopedics.

Woodman, now 54, said his parents spend $50 a week for a year and a half – “a pretty good hunk of change” – for sessions with the speech therapist, who helped him to learn how to shape his mouth to make sounds.

“It probably make a huge difference in my life,” Woodman said.

Going national

Charles Wurth joined the Institute of Logopedics as a graduate student in 1951. His parents took his borther there for help with stuttering.

“Don went home,” Wurth said. “I stayed.”

It was an exciting time. The institute was winning national acclaim for its work with severely disabled children, who typically were institutionalized, Wurth said. In Wichita, they lived with a housemother in apartments.

“The institute probably could not have done this anyplace else,” said Wurth, who was a therapist, business manger and administrative assistant before becoming acting director after Palmer’s death in 1965. “Other cities would be saying, ‘Well why are we doing this?’”

At the time, no one was. Gary Singleton, the current president and CEO said others came to Wichita for training, then went back to start their own programs. “We basically created our own competition,” Singleton said.

Rough Days

Marty Scott’s son, Randy Knox, was born with a central nervous system disorder. He enrolled at the Institute of Logopedics in the early 1970s as a 6-year-old outpatient. “They taught him how to speak, how to form words, how to understand the vibrations in his throat,” Scott said.

It worked; Knox is a heavy equipment operator for Butler County, is married and has two children. “He hates to think what his life would have been like had it not been for the Institute of Logopedics,” Scott said.

The 1970s was a time of transition, said Wurth and Singleton.

A new federal law required schools to educate disabled students, sending Knox and others back to their classrooms. That cut the institute’s enrollment by more than half and put he privately funded school in the red for the first time.

The institute responded with a strategic plan that called for meeting multiple needs of disabled children rather than focusing on communication disorders. It contracted with school districts to provide services the districts couldn’t, and the outpatient operation grew.

The institute was dealt another blow when one of its caretakers was convicted of sexually abusing a student. That led to group homes in which multiple staff members are present, and ongoing training, said Singleton.

Moving forward

In 1993, the institute’s name was changed to Heartspring. In 1998, it moved to the 37-acre campus near 29th North and Rock Road.

Today, it serves about 700 outpatients annually and has about 50 children who live on campus in its group homes.

Singleton said Heartspring gets children who are more severely disabled than those it served in the past.

“As one set of parents said, ‘This was our last hope for our daughter,’ and oftentimes that’s what it is,” he said. “That’s why we talk about the miracle of Heartspring.”

That’s why McNary, the Chicago mom, has Wichita in her heart.

“We went all over the country looking for places” for Colin, she said.

“We felt like our heart’s in Wichita…If it wasn’t the right place for Colin and the right timing, I wouldn’t leave him.

“But because they can do for him what I want for his future, I could.”