When Maria Curtis was born on Jan. 29, 1963, at Naperville’s Edward Hospital, there were two reactions to her birth.
There was the reaction from her mother, Gertrude Curtis, who saw a little girl and the newest member of her family. And there was the one from her doctors, who saw a person they thought did not belong in society.
Doctors believed her baby had Down syndrome, a condition with which her family had no personal experience. They did not want to let Maria go home; they thought she should be institutionalized. But Maria’s mother refused. She took her baby home to meet her brother David and three sisters, Mary Ann, Melissa and Mitzi.
At the time of her birth, it was common for people with Down syndrome to be placed in a facility and isolated from society, often at the advice of medical experts.
“I remember it was like, ‘She will never know her mother’s name,’ and they had the attitude that she would be disruptive to the family and this huge burden,” Mary Ann Curtis said, recalling the words of one doctor.
But Maria would never be institutionalized. She would go on to live a long life filled with activities she enjoyed, like bowling with friends and family and singing along to Elvis Presley. She also would become the first person with Down syndrome to graduate from a Naperville public high school — Naperville North — with an Individualized Education Plan.
Journalists would document her life, from her 1983 graduation to the many jobs she held over the years. Little Friends, an organization that provided support to Maria throughout her life, gave her an award in 2000 for her accomplishments.
On Dec. 13, Maria quietly died at the Park Ridge Healthcare Center in Park Ridge. She was 62 years old.
“What we all grew to learn was what is valuable in a person,” Maria’s sister Melissa Curtis said. “And what Maria did was she bolstered up other people and made them feel good. And that was her calling and her art … she gave people a sense of value in themselves.”
From the beginning, raising Maria involved the whole family, with her siblings taking turns feeding her with a bottle to help teach her how to suck. Those early years with Maria were filled with ups and downs. Her sisters loved to play with her. Her mother wrote in a diary entry on March 23, 1964, that happiness is a baby girl called Maria.
But societal pressure to treat Maria a certain way was hard for the family to ignore. She was put on a waiting list for Dixon State School, an institution in Illinois that took people with disabilities who were deemed unable to care for themselves.
Four months after visiting the institution, her family took Maria to see a specialist in Chicago. The doctor officially confirmed Maria had Down syndrome and declared that if she wasn’t put in an institution, she would ruin her family’s life. But when Maria eventually received a place at Dixon, the family decided she was not going.
“It was ridiculous,” Melissa said, reflecting on the pressure to institutionalize Maria. “We just dug our heels in. It just made us more determined.”
In 1965, Maria attended a preschool for children with mild cognitive disabilities run by Little Friends. She learned to identify colors and how to copy and trace. She participated in school plays and could be with children her age.
It was such a transformative experience that in 1968, Maria was able to test into the Naperville public school system’s “Trainable Mentally Handicapped” (TMH) program through which students were taught daily living skills, like how to make a bed and how to eat, as well as basic math and writing. Such students were believed to be incapable of being educated, only trainable.
She was on the TMH path until about 1975. Students in special education were tested on their cognitive abilities every three years and Maria showed significant academic gains. Her mother also believed Maria was capable of more, pushing hard for her daughter to be on the “Educable Mentally Handicapped” (EMH) path.
Those efforts paid off. In October 1975, she was transferred to Mill Street School and later moved on to Jefferson Junior High School and eventually Naperville North High School.
While Maria attended a special education program at Naperville North, her life was just like that of any other high school student, filled with football games, school dances and boyfriends. She also attended vocational job training her last year of school through Little Friends to help prepare her for life after high school.
“I know she just loved school because of the social part of it,” Mitzi said.
On June 5, 1983, Maria received her high school degree from Naperville North, graduating at age 20 alongside 474 other seniors.
Teachers who had taught Maria since she was 2½ years old came to her graduation party. Naperville Sun reporter Genevieve Towsley wrote a story with a headline that read, “Maria wins her battle with Down syndrome.”
Her family never doubted her ability.
“Maria has this inner intelligence about her that is on a level that you wouldn’t necessarily perceive right away, and she would always surprise us with the way she would all of a sudden get something,” Melissa said.
All she needed was a little bit more time than others, she said.
Maria also grew more into herself as a person. She had a level of confidence in herself and always spoke truthfully. Her sisters remembered once, when she was small, she told her dad’s tennis partner that he had a big nose.
“Well, he did, but Maria was just out there with her honesty and saw things as they were,” Melissa said. “You had to laugh at yourself, you just don’t take yourself so seriously. Here’s this little person that’s got the nerve to call things as they are.”
She also had a level of “unconditional love” that was unmatched, she said.
“She would always tell people, ‘You’re the best, you’re the best. You’re my best sister,’” Melissa said.
Thanks to help from Little Friends, Maria held many different jobs after graduation, doing everything from washing dishes at a now-gone cafe called Continental Cupboard to bagging groceries at a Jewel-Osco in Lisle.
She worked in positions that most would consider mundane, but they were everything to her, her sisters said.
“The other morning Maria Curtis, 23, walked about five blocks to a restaurant in downtown Naperville, where she spent six hours scrubbing pots and pans and dishes,” a 1986 article published in the Chicago Tribune read.
“Not a notable achievement by most standards. But for Maria, it was a momentous step in her life, one made possible by something going on in the heart of Naperville, something which has been going on for nearly two dozen years,” the article said, referring to Little Friends.
Little Friends would provide her with various forms of support throughout that time, from housing arrangements to staff to help her with things like budgeting and groceries.
“Every time I would come to see her at her condo, I’d open the door and because she was very much into routine, every visit, she would hand me a picture that she colored because she loved the color and she would say, ‘I missed you,’ and that’s how I started every visit with her,” said Lisa Palermo, who worked with Maria at Little Friends beginning in 2009.
She would always be ready with her budget sheet and grocery list when Palermo arrived. Little Debbie snack cakes were always on the list, and anytime she could budget a meal out or a chance to go bowling, she would, Palermo said.
“She just had these quirky things about her, like phrases that she used all the time. If you said something that she didn’t agree with, she would say, ‘Oh brother,’” Palermo said, using an exaggerated voice. “If I had to tell her something she didn’t like, a change in plans or something that maybe she didn’t want to have to do, she would say, ‘Give me a break.’”
One of Palermo’s joys in her work with Maria was watching her relationship flourish with her partner Erik Barney, who was also served by Little Friends. They’d frequently use nicknames for each other — Maria liked to call Erik “handsome groom” and Erik would call Maria “cutie.”
While the couple never got legally married, they did have a commitment ceremony in 2015, officiated by a priest. The pair exchanged rings engraved with their nicknames, and they would live together until 2019, when Maria moved to a Little Friends group home for full-time supportive care. In 2023, she moved into the Park Ridge Healthcare Center.
Her last few years at Park Ridge were difficult as she struggled with her memory due to dementia, her sisters said. But even in her final years, they still saw her spirit, they said.
“(There) was a visit where I said to her as I’m leaving … ‘Maria, I love you.’ And she looked at me and said in plain words, ‘I know,’” Melissa said. “That just blew me and Mitzi away. We were just brought to tears. She said that. She just did that. I mean, that is what she did and she was in there the whole time.”
cstein@chicagotribune.com