FAMILY COMES FIRST
THE AMORUSO FAMILY –
LIVING & WORKING WITH A DISABILITY
INTRODUCTION IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:
VINCENT J. RUSSO KIM BERK
CAROLYN GIAMBALVO GRETE ELDE MICHAEL DEVLIN EILEEN GUARASCIO WELLS JONES MICHAEL AMORUSO SEAN MANAHAN
ALL STAR REPORTERS, INC. 15 Verbena Avenue Floral Park, New York 11001 (800) 329-9222

1 MR. RUSSO: Welcome everyone to Family Comes
2 First. I’m Vincent J. Russo.
3 MS. BERK: I’m Kim Berk. Thanks for
4 joining us today.
5 650 million people, roughly ten percent of
6 the worldfs population, live with a disability.
7 As a group they are actually the world1s
8 largest minority.
9 MR. RUSSO: That’s a true statistic that many
10 people are just simply not aware of. It!s sad
11 to say that unemployment among the disabled is
12 as high as 80 percent in some countries. In
13 contrast, other minority groups have experienced
14 discrimination. Individuals with disabilities
15 often have no legal recourse to redress unfair
16 treatment.
17 Fortunately in the United States the Americans
18 with Disabilities Act, the ADA, was enacted in 1990.
19 The ADA is a civil rights act for people
20 with disabilities in this country.
21 MS. BERK: That’s great too. I didn’t
22 realize it was inactive that late too, 1990.
23 MR. RUSSO: Yes.
24 MS. BERK: That’s amazing. The Americans with
25 Disabilities Act has made just a huge difference

Page 2

1 in the lives of people with disabilities and
2 our society is just so much better for it.
3 Now, later on we are going to meet Michael
4 Amoruso, who was an advocate for the ADA back in
5 the late 1980s. Being disabled he knows all
6 about how people with special needs are treated.
7 MR. RUSSO: Michael has Usher Syndrome
8 Type II. He is hearing impaired and he has a
9 degenerative vision impairment. Hefs legally
10 blind even though you would never know it.
11 MS. BERK: No, you would not.
12 MR. RUSSO: As we will see, but he will
13 eventually lose all of his sight. However, the
14 cards that have been given to Michael will not
15 derail him.
16 MS. BERK: No.
17 MR. RUSSO: Choosing to view himself as
18 differently abled as opposed to disabled, Michael
19 is sort of above the expectations and predictions
20 of many doctors and teachers. Today he is a
21 successful lawyer practicing elder law,
22 special needs and estate planning, and he has a
23 beautiful family.
24 MS. BERK: And it’s amazing when you meet him
25 hefs so incredibly positive, that only positive,

Page 4
1 positive energy. He’s an extraordinary
2 individual, but before we sit down with
3 Michael, first we are going to present a
4 wonderful resource that does amazing work for
5 the visually impaired. Itfs called the Guide
6 Dog Foundation for the Blind. It’s a privately
7 funded, not for profit national entity headquartered
8 right here in Smithtown on Long Island.
9 Now, we are fortunate enough to have
10 Wells Jones, the CEO of the Guide Dog Foundation,
11 here with us today to talk about the great work
12 that the foundation does, but before we talk
13 to Wells, let’s learn a little bit about the
14 Guide Dog Foundation and the good work that
15 they do.
16 CAROLYN GIAMBALVO: (Foundation Graduate)
17 This is Fran, and she is a yellow lab. She
18 will be four years old in May. I was a
19 stay-at-home mom for a while, for many years,
20 and Fran is my second guide dog. Fran has
21 given me a lot of independence.
22 My training with Fran was three and a half
23 weeks long, and I did live here the whole time.
24 We have our own bedroom, private bedroom and
25 private bath when we stay here.

1 Our dog is with us the whole time. They
2 stay with us in our room, that’s to help begin
3 the bonding process and get as much experience
4 while we’re here with the instructors as possible.
5 GRETE ELDE: (Director of Canine Care)
6 As Director of Canine Care, the staff that
7 I work with we are responsible for providing the
8 healthiest, most well-socialized puppy that we
9 can so from the time those pups are born until they
10 are about 12 to 14 months of age, we take care of
11 their health, we take care of their early
12 training and their socialization and then we
13 hand them over to our training department
14 for their final formal training.
15 There are several breeds that make good
16 guide dogs. The dogs that we use here at the
17 foundation are primarily Labradors and
18 Labrador Golden Retriever crosses.
19 There are several factors that we look for
20 in a really good guide dog. The first and most
21 important is that they have to have the personality
22 and the willingness to work that you see in
23 guide dogs out on the street.
24 MICHAEL DEVLIN: (Sr. Instructor)
25 Primarily I’m an instructor. I teach the

1 blind people in the use of their dogs and also train
2 the dogs and various other things along that line.
3 A fully trained guide dog by the time a
4 blind person gets it is petty much we will spend
5 over $55,000 to get the dog to the person. And
6 that includes a lot of things; from the
7 veterinary care for the dogs when they are
8 growing up to the training, to getting people to
9 and from the school, to get people in the field
10 out to where they are to work with them in
11 their home areas. There’s so much involved
12 with it.
13 The people who get our guide dogs don’t
14 pay anything for the dogs or for the training or
15 for that matter for their transportation back
16 and forth from the foundation.
17 EILEEN GUARASCIO: (Coord., K-9 Environmental
18 Enrichment)
19 Right now the dogs are having their free time.
20 They have already gone out to train this morning
21 so it’s very important that they get just
22 some dog-playing time. They work very hard,
23 and they are in the kennels for X amount of hours
24 a day. We have 22 0 kennel volunteers that
25 come seven days a week up to two and a half

Page 6

1 hours per day to get the dogs out because
2 with a total of two buildings we are speaking
3 about 130, 14 0 dogs to exercise.
4 MR. RUSSO: Thank you so much Wells Jones for
5 joining us today. As we just saw the Guide Dog
6 Foundation has been in existence since World
7 War II. That’s a long time. We all love
8 dogs, man’s best friend, but many of us do
9 not realize that dogs literally open doors for
10 those who are visually impaired.
11 How does one go about getting a guide dog?
12 WELLS JONES: They would call our office,
13 the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind,
14 1-800-548-4337 and tell us their interest in
15 receiving a guide dog and we would work with them
16 to complete the application process. We are
17 looking to determine that they are, in fact,
18 legally blind, that they have a beneficial use
19 for the dog that can make a difference in their
20 life and we work through getting references and
21 medical information so that we can provide the
22 best service for them we possibly can.
23 MS. BERK: Now, not everybody is sight
24 impaired from being a child. A lot of people
25 that you work with as you said, legally blind, they

Page 7

1 become blind some time during their life so at what
2 point should they start to contact you; when
3 they start to go blind, when they are legally
4 blind? When is the best time to contact you?
5 MR. RUSSO: Good question.
6 WELLS JONES: Well, when they feel they have
7 the need. Somebody who is losing their sight has
8 that time when they start to feel unsafe in
9 getting around on their own and that’s when they
10 should contact us to work with us.
11 As you point out, fewer people are blind
12 from birth these days. Far more are losing their
13 sight later in life.
14 In fact, over the next 2 0 years, the number
15 of people who are blind or visually impaired
16 is expected to double in this country and
17 that’s largely due to age-related causes of
18 blindness. People who are losing their vision
19 later in life.
20 MR. RUSSO: In the video we learned that it
21 can be expensive to train a guide dog. I heard
22 the figure roughly $55,000 but I also heard
23 there was no cost to the consumer receiving the
24 dog so how do you do that?
25 WELLS JONES: Ninety-nine percent of our

Page 8

1 funds are from the general public donors in a
2 variety of ways, from the $5 contribution to
3 people who leave their estate to the Guide Dog
4 Foundation.
5 MR. RUSSO: Tell us what the dogs do. What do
6 guide dogs do for the consumer?
7 WELLS JONES: Well, a guide dog first and
8 foremost it’s about safety and mobility and so
9 a guide dog is trained to work the straight line,
10 to walk down a sidewalk and to look for obstacles.
11 Sometimes it will see an obstacle and stop
12 because it’s trying to figure out its way around
13 it. Imagine running into an obstacle on a
14 crowded sidewalk or a hole that’s in the sidewalk
15 or something like that.
16 A guide dog will help to find a seat on a
17 train or a bus. It will help to locate places
18 where it’s been before. It will look for
19 height obstacles. As I think about a tall
20 person like I am, walking down the sidewalk and
21 not wanting to hit my head on a limb, the dog
22 will watch for those things and stop beforehand
23 and give me an opportunity to reach out and
24 confirm it.
25 MS. BERK: Wow, I didn’t even think about up

1 there as well as down here. You don’t think
2 about that.
3 WELLS JONES: Absolutely.
4 MR. RUSSO: Tell us about your sister
5 organization, America’s Vet Dogs.
6 WELLS JONES: America’s Vet Dogs is actually
7 a continuation of an early mission from the
8 Guide Dog Foundation. There was an earlier
9 mention that we started in 1946 partially to
10 serve blinded veterans from World War II.
11 Well, with America’s Vet Dogs we are in
12 addition to guide dogs providing service dogs
13 to veterans of the current conflict. We’ve
14 served about 8 0 veterans in the last couple of
15 years related to America’s Vet Dogs.
16 We’ve also provided two dogs to the army
17 that are working with combat stress teams in
18 Iraq, and we have two dogs that assist in
19 physical therapy at Walter Reed Army Medical
20 Center.
21 MS. BERK: It’s amazing how much of a
22 difference that makes to someone who’s
23 recovering.
24 WELLS JONES: Absolutely. It’s huge. And
25 these dogs provide balance to amputees. They

1 just make a tremendous difference.
2 MR. RUSSO: Unfortunately a growing need.
3 MS. BERK: Yeah
4 WELLS JONES: Unfortunately.
5 MR. RUSSO: Well, we are just thrilled that
6 you had the time to join us today.
7 Guide Dog Foundation, www.guidedog.org
8 and America!s Vet Dogs, www.vetdogs.org.
9 Thank you so much.
10 WELLS JONES: Absolutely. Vincent, thank you.
11 MR. RUSSO: When we come back we will sit down
12 with Michael Amoruso, his new best friend, Warren,
13 and Warren’s trainer, Sean Manahan of the
14 Seeing Eye.
15 Stay with us.
16 MICHAEL AMORUSO: My first diagnosis
17 with hearing impairment that happened when I was
18 age 6 years old, pretty much in kindergarten.
19 Prior to that, I heard one third of the alphabet.
20 That!s all I heard and so I had a teacher his name
21 was Mr. Bowls. I thought his name was Mitabol.
22 So I came home, and I said to my mother — she
23 said, how was your day, fine. Mitabol was okay.
24 They understood what I was saying. I
25 found there was some way I could convey my

Page 12
1 thoughts to them without the language.
2 It turns out having heard a third of the
3 alphabet at that age, my vocabulary at age 13
4 was only that of a 6 year old.
5 We were diagnosed then with cystic bilateral
6 hearing loss. It!s moderate to mild hearing
7 loss.
8 There was a wonderful Catholic school
9 called Iona Grammar School in New Rochelie run
10 by the Irish Christian Brothers, and I went there,
11 and I felt an affinity for some reason just being
12 in that environment. I asked my parents if I .
13 could go to school there. They found out that
14 there was an entrance exam they were giving, and I
15 went there that day for the entrance test. There
16 was one slot out of 7 0 open. They only had
17 one space available, and low and behold my
18 parents got a phone call the next day that I was
19 in the school. We looked at the exam. The
2 0 headmaster called me because he was concerned.
21 He never met me but in looking at the results
22 of my exam — Here are the 7th grade students
23 at this level of learning and here is Michael
24 way down here. They had to find a way to
25 bridge that gap, and lo and behold they did and

1 you know what the secret was, yeah, they gave me all
2 the love in the world, but they also said if
3 you want to read better, we are going to make
4 you read two books a week. If you want to
5 spell better, you are going to do 50 spelling
6 words a night. If you want to learn more
7 vocabulary, you are going to do 50 vocabulary
8 words every night. And thatf s what it was. It
9 was grueling work.
10 But I only was able to get there because
11 I had the family support behind me, mother and
12 father, and I111 tell you later on as we discuss
13 what happened here how their influence and
14 our family motto got me to think positively
15 through those stages of my life.
16 Ifve always been an athlete. Not only did
17 I play golf, I played varsity baseball,
18 basketball, soccer. I had trophies in every sport.
19 Competition in myself, I loved it.
20 After playing high school golf, I went
21 to Boston College and played varsity golf for
22 Boston College. But when I wasn’t playing
23 golf, I would play with my roommates and
24 friends and we’d pickup basketball.
25 Interestingly pickup basketball is where I

Page 14
1 learned that something must be going on with
2 my eyesight. I started getting hit in the
3 face with the ball. I didn’t see it coming from
4 the side, and I called my father up, and I said, I
5 think something is going on here. That next
6 morning we headed up to the specialist. He
7 came into the room and he did a thorough
8 examination on me, and about an hour later he
9 comes back in, you have retinitis pigmentosa of
10 the eyes, but it’s also affiliated with your
11 hearing so you have something called Usher
12 Syndrome which is a combination of a bilateral
13 hearing loss and retinitis pigmentosa of the
14 eyes.
15 So we got to the point where I graduated
16 from law school and did very well. I was
17 considered one of the better students at
18 Boston College.
19 Unfortunately I had a trying experience
20 with the interview process to find a job as an
21 attorney.
22 I felt I knew my diagnosis with my eyesight.
23 I knew that I had to start using a blind man’s cane
24 because otherwise I would walk into fire hydrants.
25 So it’s not something I felt comfortable hiding

1 but then I would get the questions; how could a
2 blind person be a lawyer. And that actually
3 stunned me to hear from an attorney because
4 the Americans with Disabilities Act was drafted
5 by politicians and attorneys and yet the
6 attorneys were violating that in asking me
7 simple job questions. It started to cause me to
8 question my career path for a moment so I
9 would never get the second interview.
10 So here I am ready to graduate law school,
11 having put myself through law school so I’ve got a
12 mountain of debt on my shoulders, just like many
13 of the graduates do.
14 The Lighthouse International in White
15 Plains who did mobility training for me introduced
16 me to a wonderful attorney here in Westchester
17 and that attorney took me under his wings and
18 taught me everything I needed to know initially
19 about running a business of a law practice.
20 He introduced me to an area of law today
21 called special needs planning. It was a
22 wonderful introduction he gave me, and I owe
23 him a lot for that.
24 MR. RUSSO: We are now joined by my good
25 friend, Michael Amoruso, and his new friend, Warren,

Page 15

1 and Warren!s trainer, Sean Manahan of Seeing Eye,
2 Morristown, New Jersey.
3 Welcome all.
4 MR. RUSS0: Michael, I’m just going to start
5 right off; when did you decide you needed a seeing
6 eye dog?
7 MICHAEL AM0RUS0: Itfs interesting, Vincent.
8 I’ve been using a blind man’s cane for 16 years,
9 and eventually it got to the point in time after
10 I had my family, that my eldest daughter,
11 seven years old, would guide me through the
12 stores, guide me through the dark theaters, and
13 I felt it was just a lot of pressure on her
14 to guide her father around.
15 It’s also been very tough on my wife to get
16 me around safely so I needed to relieve some of
17 the stress off of her so I made the decision.
18 I approached her one day. I said, I think it’s
19 time to get a guide dog. She was shocked, as any
20 family member would be, but it’s the right
21 decision.
22 MR. RUSSO: How has life changed for you and
23 your family now that Warren is part of the
24 family?
25 MICHAEL AM0RUS0: I got my independence back.

l I’m now traveling places that I haven’t been able
2 to go to on my own since college and for me
3 personally that’s such a rewarding feeling and
4 that sense of independence. My dignity is back
5 as an individual.
6 For my family, my girls can be little girls
7 now. They don’t have to worry about daddy.
8 My wife can be a wife. She doesn’t have to
9 worry about getting me to and from. She can have
10 her life now as well as our family life.
11 MS. BERK: Do you realize you were missing
12 all of that until you got Warren?
13 MICHAEL AMORUSO: Absolutely, no question.
14 You feel the stress in the family household, and
15 it’s always important to look out there for
16 services that can help relieve some of the
17 stress. That’s why we have services like the
18 Seeing Eye in other schools. It’s very
19 important as someone with special needs to
20 take advantage of those sort of services.
21 MS. BERK: We were talking about the
22 training. I know you had to be gone, Michael,
23 for a month from your family. You mentioned that
24 briefly earlier. That must have been difficult.
25 You were away from your family, your law

Page 17

1 practice.
2 What was that like?
3 MICHAEL AMORUSO: Well, I’ll tell you, Kim,
4 when I got to the Seeing Eye what touched my heart
5 immediately was when I was saying good-bye to my
6 kids. My oldest child, who was basically my
7 guide dog before I got to Seeing Eye, understood
8 what I was doing. Her sister, Leana, was
9 more emotional. She didn’t want to see daddy leave
10 for a month.
11 MS. BERK: That’s a long time for a child.
12 MICHAEL AMORUSO: That’s when it hit me
13 I was leaving my family for a month.
14 It was an interesting experience, the Seeing
15 Eye. Here I am. I’m a family person. I don’t go
16 out with friends on Friday or Saturday evenings.
17 I spend it with my family.
18 MR. RUSSO: You better not.
19 MICHAEL AMORUSO: That’s what I enjoy doing so
20 to take me out of that environment was stressful
21 for myself.
22 Thanks to modern technology every single day
23 we used a program called Skype so they got to see me
24 on my computer.
25 MS. BERK: Oh, that’s nice.

Page 18

1 MICHAEL AMORUSO: And I got to see them, as
2 well.
3 MR. RUSSO: Sean, talk to us about the training
4 process.
5 SEAN MANAHAN: Well, it’s a four-month
6 schedule, a rotation. The dogs are trained
7 the basics in the beginning. We train on leash
8 at first and introduce the harness a few days later.
9 Basic training or the basics of it would be
10 stopping for curbs, clearing people like
11 Michael of obstacles that are in his way along
12 the sidewalk whether it!s pedestrians,
13 parking meters, garbage cans, all sorts of
14 everyday things, and also keeping Michael safe
15 as he crosses the streets.
16 MR. RUSSO: What’s the difference between a
17 seeing eye dog and a guide dog?
18 SEAN MANAHAN: That’s a good question.
19 MR. RUSSO: If there is one.
20 SEAN MANAHAN: Well, there is. The
21 seeing eye is our registered trademark from the
22 beginning, 1929. The generic term, guide dog,
23 is what every other school used generically,
24 but they are called other names, and we’ll use
25 their names accordingly with their dogs, but

1 guide dog is the generic or common term for all
2 dogs.
3 MR. RUSSO: Michael, let me ask you this; we
4 both went to Boston College, and I know you were
5 on your way to be hopefully a professional
6 golfer.
7 MICHAEL AMORUSO: That was the dream.
8 MR. RUSSO: And you played in my Swinging
9 for Theresa Golf Outing.
10 MICHAEL AMORUSO: Which is a lot of fun.
11 MR. RUSSO: And usually wins. How do you do
12 that? You1re sight impaired. You are a .
13 wonderful golfer. You love sports.
14 Just talk a little about how you do it.
15 MICHAEL AMORUSO: I played so much golf
16 passionately in my life and competitively that
17 I could do it with my eyes closed because you
18 start to sense other things in the environment.
19 Golf is all about slopes and terrains and
20 rhythm. My feet feel the ground.
21 MR. RUSSO: Wow.
22 MS. BERK: And of course, Warren will be a
23 part of your golf games soon.
24 MICHAEL AMORUSO: He’s already been trained.
25 He!s with me on the driving range now. He doesn!t

Page 21
1 budge.
2 MS. BERK: Really.
3 MICHAEL AMORUSO: He’s fantastic. We are going
4 to hit our first course next week.
5 MS. BERK: I bet hefs looking forward to it.
6 MICHAEL AMORUSO: I’ve got to get ready for
7 your tournament.
8 MS. BERK: What about the family? I know you
9 have daughters, Leana and Malika. How have
10 they reacted to your disabilities, we’ll call
11 them, because they’re kids and then how have
12 they reacted to their dad with his new companion?
13 MICHAEL AMORUSO: I’ll take the first
14 question first, how they reacted to my
15 disabilities, if you will.
16 These kids are well beyond their years.
17 They look at their dad as somebody special.
18 Special because there’s no one else in their
19 class that’s blind. There’s no one else in
20 their class that has a seeing eye dog. I was
21 raised to look at the glass half full, and I
22 was trying to pass that on to my kids but they
23 have it instinctively. They’re thrilled that
24 their dad is not like everyone else and that
25 makes me proud to see.

1 Our family motto, avanti sempre avanti.
2 Vincent, you probably know what that means
3 because it’s Italian. Forward, always move
4 forward. That’s a critical component of how
5 I’ve raised my daughters, how my parents have
6 raised me.
7 How has their life changed with Warren now
8 in the picture, they have a pet. The stress of
9 my daughter having to guide me through a
10 store is now gone, but when they get home
11 from school, they can go run in the backyard
12 with him, tire him out and they love that.
13 MS. BERK: He’s not just working all of
14 the time. He gets to be a dog too.
15 MICHAEL AMORUSO: We take this harness off,
16 he’s just like every other dog you see in a
17 household.
18 MS. BERK: That’s the difference, Sean, is
19 that when the harness is off, he’s no longer
20 working? And that’s how he knows it’s time to
21 just be a dog?
22 SEAN MANAHAN: Correct. It’s so important
23 that they have that time that Michael gives
24 to him everyday. That’s crucial to the working
25 phase of it.

Page 22

1 MR. RUSSO: You have tremendous spirituality
2 in your life, your faith. Share with us how
3 that has helped you.
4 MICHAEL AMORUSO: My best friend, other than
5 my wife now, has always been Jesus. There’s no
6 question about it. I learned at private school
7 when I was younger that prayer does not necessarily
8 mean you have to only recite every single prayer
9 that you’ve learned in CCD class. Prayer is
10 personal. It’s a personal friendship conversation
11 between you and God and that has gotten me through
12 such pain and challenges in my life.
13 The day I found out I was going to go blind,
14 for example. I was on a putting green. To me
15 that was a chapel. I went to a putting green
16 just to put. I was talking to God. And you
17 know something, when I left that putting green
18 after the sun went down, and I saw how beautiful
19 it was, I said that’s a sunset I’m never ever going
20 to forget. I walked back to my home. My parents
21 were still very sad, but I walked in with a smile
22 on my face.
23 MS. BERK: Very positive.
24 MICHAEL AMORUSO: Because of the
25 conversation that I had.

Page 23

1 MR. RUSSO: Such strength. Just incredible.
2 Well, itfs been so helpful for you to share
3 your story because there are so many people with
4 disabilities who feel alone, who feel like
5 they donft have a chance to live their dreams, and
6 you are living your dream.
7 And Sean, look at the life, the hope, that
8 youfve given Michael and your organization,
9 Seeing Eye, so we really appreciate all the
10 good work that you are doing.
11 For more information on your organization,
12 www.seeingeye.org. Did I get that right?
13 SEAN MANAHAN: Yes, you got it.
14 MR. RUSSO: Thank you so much for joining us.
15 MICHAEL AMORUSO: Thank you.
16 SEAN MANAHAN: Thank you.
17 MS. BERK: Thank you, gentlemen, for inspiring
18 both of us.
19 Now, let!s check in with Monsignor McNamara
20 for a spiritual reflection.
21 MONSIGNOR McNAMARA: In the Parable of the
22 Talents, Jesus commends the two persons who
23 use their talents and reprimands the one who
24 buried the treasure of talent out of fear.
25 In the story we are hearing on Family Comes

Page 25

1 First Michael is a very good example of a man
2 who used his talents even though he had some
3 big obstacles to overcome. His difficulties
4 with hearing loss in his early years could
5 easily have led him to settle for less in life.
6 Instead he spoke to his parents about how he
7 wasnft being challenged in school, and he used
8 his potential to the fullest. That!s the first
9 lesson that Michael has to teach us.
10 The second lesson is that he wanted to
11 become a pro golfer and then a lawyer.
12 When problems with his eyesight prevented
13 him from fulfilling his first dream, he simply
14 moved on to his second dream. How realistic and
15 courageous.
16 The third lesson really comes from the
17 circumstances he faced in getting a job. Imagine
18 someone telling him that a blind man couldn’t
19 become a lawyer.
20 Do you limit people by their disability, or
21 do you help people to reach their dreams?
22 The first stance is negative and has no
23 place in the Christian life.
24 The second stance is positive and is
25 what Christian living is all about.

Page 26

1 MR. RUSSO: Isnft Michael amazing?
2 MS. BERK: He truly is very inspirational.
3 MR. RUSSO: Just incredible.
4 MS. BERK: Living with a disability is a
5 challenge that millions, millions of people
6 worldwide deal with everyday. Although it
7 sometimes may seem daunting, with the love
8 and support of family, the determination to make
9 the most of life and the aid of useful resources,
10 individuals with different abilities are able to
11 thrive.
12 MR. RUSSO: Both the Guide Dog Foundation and
13 the Seeing Eye provide canine companions for
14 the visually impaired and brave veterans of
15 war giving them a better chance of living life
16 to the fullest.
17 MS. BERK: I was hoping they were going to
18 make you do that motto in Italian myself.
19 For more information on resources for
20 special needs please visit www.vjrussolaw.com.
21 Today has certainly been an educational
22 and really a very touching day so have a
23 fantastic day, Vincent.
24 MR. RUSSO: Have a great day, Kim.
25 Thanks to all our viewers for joining us today

Page 27

1 and remember family truly does come first.