All aboard

After high school, Mike Rogoway spent all day every day in his bedroom watching television and drawing, legs curled under his 250-pound frame.

Rogoway has Down syndrome, a genetic condition that causes mental retardation and cognitive disabilities.

When his time in the public school system ended at age 22, so did his education, his social life and the last shred of normality for his family.

“I didn’t want him to be a vegetable,” said his father, Gene Rogoway of Everett, who cares for his son. “I wanted him to be smarter, know more, be a regular guy.”

Mike Rogoway couldn’t read or write but his father hoped there was something more: a job, more education or the ability to live independently.

For many adults with developmental disabilities, these are possibilities. For Mike Rogoway, it wasn’t.

So Gene Rogoway found a way to give his son a life.

In the process, he has helped hundreds of adults with developmental disabilities lead fuller lives.

Four years ago, Gene Rogoway started All Aboard, a program that offers art, music, dance and cooking classes, and a bowling program.

He started with an art class at Martha Lake Community Center in Lynnwood. Within weeks, word spread and dozens showed up.

The nonprofit program now serves about 200 people a week and the bowling program at Brunswick Majestic Lanes draws about 50.

On a recent afternoon, the bottom floor of the community center hummed with activity. In one room, friends ate sandwiches and chatted. In another, a group experimented with a karaoke machine.

In a third, musician Shannon Danks led a music class. Danks said people with little verbal skill open up and begin to sing when the music starts.

The program started as something for Mike Rogoway to do, but the growth Gene Rogoway sees in his son and others makes him believe something else is happening here. His son has friends and a job cleaning the community center each day.

“What we’re trying to do here is make sure our guys fit into normal society,” Gene Rogoway said.

He points to the bowling program as an example. In the beginning, some of the participants hid under the chairs or cried. Now, they look like any group of bowlers.

“They understand scoring. They know how to read the computers and act appropriately. They can take a turn, put on their own shoes, take a ball and put it away,” he said.

The program recently became designated as a nonprofit agency. Its leaders are searching for volunteers and ways to raise money.

In the long term, the program organizers hope to find their own building, hire more teachers and buy their own bus to help more people get to the program.

“It’s so hard for me to explain how important this is for them,” said Pearl Hawkinson, who cares for developmentally disabled adults who attend the program.

“This is their social life, they live for this, they love to do this.”

Before the program, Hawkinson did what she could to keep the people living in her Everett adult family homes busy. She took them on vacations and got them involved in volunteer work.

Even so, there wasn’t a whole lot to fill their time. The people living with her would complain of boredom and pick on one another.

“It gave everybody things to do, and it made them feel good about themselves,” she said. “They get to meet other people in community. Their lives have been enriched by it.”

Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@ heraldnet.com.