When most people look at Shannon, they see a girl with Down syndrome.
But for Megan Thomas, sophomore in special education, Shannon became more than an assigned buddy in high school as part the Best Buddies Program.
Though she spends most of her time away from her home in Brentwood, Tennessee, Thomas considers Shannon her best friend, sleepover companion and source of inspiration.
“Twenty-one was when she had her first sleepover because no one’s ever asked her,” Thomas said. “She comes over to my house when I’m not there, so she’s part of family. She actually inspired me to want to adopt a baby with Down Syndrome eventually.”
Now the founding president and secretary of the Best Buddies organization at UT, Thomas’s involvement with special needs communities started early. From a young age, Thomas volunteered in a special needs classroom, Special Olympics and Young Life Capernaum, a special needs branch from the nationwide ministry.
But it was at the insistence of the mother of a disabled child whom she babysat for that channeled Thomas’s growing passion to the Best Buddies program.
“She just explained it as a place where people with and without disabilities can be friends and she wanted me to be the president of it,” Thomas said. “A lot of people with disabilities might have friends in school, but a lot of the times they go home and they don’t get to do anything or they don’t get to see their friends from school outside of school.”
When the time came to apply for college, Thomas said a Best Buddies presence on a school’s campus was a non-negotiable item during her college search, emphasizing that her chosen university needed a Best Buddies program in place or a willingness to let Thomas start one.
When UT expressed interest in starting a club, Thomas became the cause’s de facto recruiter.
“I would just literally tell everyone I knew about—people in my classes, in my dorm,” she said.
Erin McConnell, sophomore in English, who volunteers as a peer buddy, attributes her involvement with Best Buddies to Thomas and relatives with intellectual disabilities.
“I mostly just do it seeing [my buddy] Daniel and I go to meetings when I can, but people like Megan devote so much of their time to it and she has a lot going on besides that, so she really cares about the program,” McConnell said. “It’s just really great to see that dedication in somebody.”
In addition to attracting a more diverse membership in Best Buddies, Thomas said one of her aspirations for the special needs community is erasing the word ‘retard’ from campus and global vocabulary.
While she admits she used the phrase in middle school, Thomas explained she did not understand its full, dehumanizing meaning until a peer explained the word was “not synonymous with stupid.”
“A lot of people think ‘don’t say it around people with disabilities,’ but also you don’t know if you’re around somebody with disabilities because it’s not always visible,” Thomas observed.
Such sensitivity to pain is not lost on Shannon, who Thomas admires for her simple, optimistic view of life even in spite of her father’s death last December.
“She still cries about her dad, but she’s really strong,” Thomas said. “She’s there for me when I’m upset and I’m there for her she’s upset. And I think it’s just her friendship that has made me a better friend.”
