How did Highland Friendship Club start?
In June 2002, Pat Leseman and Rosemary Fagrelius, sat at the Leseman’s kitchen table, pondering a long summer of unstructured, empty hours ahead for their teenage sons, Michael and John. The young men had been best friends since they first met in a preschool program for children with disabilities. Frustrated at the lack of age-appropriate, interesting and accessible social opportunities for teens and young adults with disabilities, Pat and Rosemary decided it was up to them to create fun, interesting opportunities for their sons and their friends. Armed with creativity, knowledge of their community, a blank calendar and a list of their sons’ friends and classmates, the two mothers began filling the calendar with interesting, age-appropriate activities and events like adaptive recreation teams, trips to the zoo, movie nights, ball games and service projects. Assuming that other parents were equally frustrated, the two began calling other parents of adolescents with disabilities to see i
