Marriage is a big step for anyone. When the two spouses have Down syndrome, it’s the cornerstone of an incredible story

Where were you in July 2005? If you were reading Mishpacha during that long-ago summer, you might recall a story about a young girl from Los Angeles named Danielle Magady. What made Danielle’s story so special is not that she has Down syndrome, but that she had just graduated from L.A.’s Yeshiva Aharon Yaakov /
Ohr Eliyahu, where she had been a fully included member of her class since preschool. As she spoke about her hopes for the future, Danielle listed the dreams of any Bais Yaakov girl: seminary, a year in Israel, marriage.

Family First recently touched base with Danielle and her family to see where she — and her dreams — are today.

Welcome to DreamLand

There’s something about Los Angeles that encourages people to dream big. How else to explain how two down-to-earth transplanted Midwesterners dared to dream that their first child, born with Down syndrome in 1991, would grow up to be a happily married woman?

It took a while to get to that point, though. When Danielle’s parents, Holly and Terry Magady, first heard the news, they had to digest it. It was Pesach and Shabbos, just a few days after their new daughter’s birth, and they couldn’t reach out to family and friends or even speak to a social worker — there was no one on duty. They both remember feeling very alone.

“At first all I could see was her disability,” Holly recalls. “But she was my child. Little by little, as I got to know her, Down syndrome became just one of the parts of her. It wasn’t front and center anymore.”

Terry remembers walking through the halls of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center looking for someone to talk to. It was only after he returned to work that he received a first glimmer of hope — which came in the form of a phone call from Rav Noach Weinberg, founder of Aish HaTorah.

Terry, originally from Kansas City, Missouri, came to California to attend college. Holly, a Skokie, Illinois native, arrived there after finishing graduate school. They both ended up in L.A., and in the 1980s, they started attending classes at Aish HaTorah, which had only recently opened a branch in the city. They were one of the first couples to marry in the L.A. Aish community.

According to Terry, it wasn’t what Rav Weinberg said that gave him comfort; it was what he did: He put Terry in contact with Jeanne Warman. Mrs. Warman, who gave birth to a son with a severe disability in 1958, a time when there were few options for these children, had spearheaded a grassroots effort in the New York area to develop caring facilities for people with intellectual and developmental challenges. This became the basis for Makor Care and Services Network.

Terry says he still remembers the conversation very clearly. Mrs. Warman told him that one of Makor’s clients had just started a job as an aide in a kindergarten. Terry asked her, “Is it possible she could one day teach kindergarten?”

“I can honestly tell you I don’t know,” Mrs. Warman replied. “Because I thought this client couldn’t be a kindergarten aide.”

Wow. She doesn’t know, Terry recalls thinking. That means there’s potential.

Another early point of hope occurred when some friends told the Magadys that children with Down syndrome could be fully included in school — and eventually even get married.

The Magadys found this incredibly inspiring. “Danielle is also going to get married,” they told each other.