Love is always in bloom on Tulip Drive. This blog was written for the Mercy Medical Angels website and features people with disabilities who excel in bulk mailing and smiles.

1. The Gift of Special Persons
By Suzanne Rhodes
February 9, 2011
This week I got to call on my favorite business partner, Special Persons, on Tulip Drive. This is a
mailing service located a couple of miles from our office that handles our bulk mail—
newsletters, Christmas cards, important notices. I walk in and greet Heidi, Jennifer, Larry,
Wanda, Richard and the others, and they greet me. Sometimes I get hugs too. Mary Kay, the
office manager, keeps the staff—her “kids”—on task as they skillfully stuff envelopes, apply
labels, stamp permit numbers on flyers.
The founder and president of this cheerful group of mentally disabled employees is Art Roy. He
and his wife, Floy, established the nonprofit company in 1991 so their daughter, Jennifer, who
has Down Syndrome, and others like her, would be able to find a meaningful niche in the world.
What started out with Jennifer and four friends handling a couple of mailing jobs as volunteers at
the Roys’ kitchen table is now a staff of 33 paid employees. They come to work in a 3,650-
square-foot and fully-paid-for building to provide service to some 200 clients of Special Persons
Mailing Service, Inc. Their parents volunteer a couple of days a week to assist with more
complex tasks such as sorting zip codes.
You can’t help but feel the family spirit. There are times I’ve walked in when the front work
space was largely deserted, but I could hear music and laughter coming from somewhere else
and was told a birthday party was in progress. Celebrating birthdays is a monthly event.
The fun extends beyond the office walls. In the summer, Art and Floy hold pool parties for the
gang at their home in Virginia Beach. There are bowling parties and Christmas parties and visits
with Santa. Art showed me a photo album with picture after picture of the kids taking turns to sit
on Santa’s lap.

2. People magazine featured Special Persons in the May 15, 1995 issue, illuminating the Roys’
tender concern for their daughter and others with her condition: The Roys have been fighting for
their daughter since she was born. At the time, recalls Art…“everybody said, ‘Don’t take her
home. She’s not going to have a normal life.’” But the Roys, convinced that putting people with
Down syndrome in institutions tends to shorten their lives, did take Jennifer home…”She
has always been a joy and the focus of our lives—it’s been a happy time,” says Art. “Down
syndrome children are real loving; they teach you a lot about patience, love and understanding.”
That’s the reason I always look forward to my trips to Tulip Drive. A kind of childhood
innocence is always in bloom at Special Persons, and I know I’ve been given a gift—a song for
my day.
(Suzanne Rhodes’ blog was published on Feb. 9, 2011 at MercyMedical.org. She is the director
of public affairs at Mercy Medical Airlift, is a national charitable transportation nonprofit
organization.)