Living well with Down syndrome

Post columnist George Will shares the story of his son Jon, who turns 41 on May 4.

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Jonathan Frederick Will in the first inning. When Jon was born in May 1972, life expectancy for people with Down syndrome was about 20 years. A doctor told Jon's parents that the first question for them was whether they intended to take Jon home from the hospital.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

Pictured here: Jon in Rome in 1989. Whether warehoused or just allowed to languish from lack of stimulation and attention, people with Down syndrome, not given early and continuing interventions, were generally thought to be incapable of living well, and hence usually did not live as long as they could have.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

A portrait of Jon, his sister Victoria, his father George and his brother Geoff. Down syndrome is a congenital condition resulting from a chromosomal defect -- an extra 21st chromosome. It causes varying degrees of mental retardation and some physical abnormalities. In 1972, people with Down syndrome were still commonly called Mongoloids.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

Here, Jon poses with then-Vice President Al Gore. Today, people with Down syndrome are called American citizens, about 400,000 of them, and their life expectancy is now 60. Much has improved. There has, however, been moral regression as well.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

Pictured here: Jon and Tommy Lasorda talk baseball at Spring Training in Vero Beach, Fla. The full garish flowering of the baby boomers' vast sense of entitlement encompasses an entitlement to exemption from nature's mishaps, and to a perfect baby. So today science enables what the ethos ratifies, the choice of killing children with Down syndrome before birth. This is what happens to 90 percent of those whose parents have prenatal testing...

/ Courtesy of the Will family

... Which is unfortunate, and not just for them. Judging by Jon, the world would be improved by more people with Down syndrome, who are quite nice, as far as humans go.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

Pictured here: Jon with his friend Jon Miller in the Orioles broadcast booth at Memorial Stadium.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

Among the things that have enhanced Jon's life is the Washington Nationals baseball team. Pictured here: Jon hands the Nationals' lineup card to the umpires on Opening Day 2010.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

He enters the clubhouse at Nationals Park a few hours before game time and does a chore or two.

The players, who have climbed to the pinnacle of a steep athletic pyramid, know that although hard work got them there, they have extraordinary aptitudes because they are winners of life's lottery. Major leaguers, all of whom understand what it is to be gifted, have been uniformly and extraordinarily welcoming of Jon, who is not. Except he is, in a way.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

The eldest of four siblings, Jon has seen two brothers and a sister surpass him in size, and acquire cars and college educations. Here, he attends his sister Victoria's 1999 National Cathedral School graduation.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

He, however, with an underdeveloped entitlement mentality, has been equable about life's sometimes careless allocation of equity. Perhaps this is partly because, given the nature of Down syndrome, neither he nor his parents have any tormenting sense of what might have been. Down syndrome did not alter the trajectory of his life; Jon was Jon from conception on.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

This year, Jon will spend his birthday where every year he spends 81 spring, summer and autumn days, at Nationals Park, in his seat behind the home team's dugout. Pictured here: Jon, in the Nationals clubhouse, with a former baseball owner.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

In this image, Jon sits with his stepmother Mari, his brother David and his father George at the 2006 All-Star game in Pittsburgh. This year, Jon will attend the Capitals’ afternoon playoff game, where he will mix and mingle with many of the vendors he sees at Nationals Park. Whatever birthday revels occur Saturday evening will be mere background to his close attention to the telecast of the Nats game from Pittsburgh. For Jon -- an apple that did not fall far from the tree -- baseball is not just a part-time preoccupation.

/ Courtesy of the Will family

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