From Judy Martz

Just as everyone, I am shocked and saddened about the unexpected death of Jay Turnbull. While I never met Jay personally, I kept up with his life a bit over the last 20 years or so through my occasional involvements with Ann and Rud, first through the PTI movement and then through the National Down Syndrome Congress. Part of his story directly influenced the adult life of our own son, Todd. Ann and I have chatted about some of these on one or two occasions though she may not remember it now. I have written about it below.

As parents of adults with disabilities, I think we all feel especially vulnerable when an unexpected death like Jay's occurs.

Judy Martz
Littleton, Colorado

Here is my remembrance:
Jay Turnbull’s story about being part of a fraternity about 20 years ago at the University of Kansas rippled to Colorado. In the early 90’s my son Todd Martz who has Down syndrome was just leaving high school and was working and hanging out on the campus of Colorado College in Colorado Springs (groundbreaking in itself at the time) when, through some good luck, he became involved with the Kappa Sigma social fraternity on that campus.

Though he was not an enrolled student, he was eventually invited to go through rush, become a pledge and then be initiated fully into the fraternity. While this wasn’t one of my dreams for Todd, apparently it was Todd’s dream! Knowing Jay’s positive story with a fraternity at the University of Kansas made it much easier for my husband and me to trust that this experience could work out well, which it did, and Todd’s active involvement with the fraternity chapter continues to this day. In fact, his apartment-mate and support person is a fraternity alum.

We are grateful for Jay's pioneering on a college campus, for the risk-taking Ann and Rud allowed and for the way they shared those experiences so widely.