Terry Hagen - Recreation Programmer, City of Rock Hill

As you start to visit the Miracle Park and have questions you will most likely meet Terry.  She is coordinating the Miracle League and other sports out at the park for the City of Rock Hill's Parks, Recreation, and Tourism department.  Read her story below to learn more about this wonderful woman and how it's always been her dream to allow all people the opportunity to play together even since she was a little girl! 

Terry Hagen - Recreation Programmer

When I was little, my family moved to SC from New York.   My parents sent me to a church day camp one summer and there was a staff member who brought her daughter Denise to work with her.  Denise was much older than the campers but played with us and was very childlike. One day it was raining and for some reason we had our shoes off, and Denise needed help buckling her sandals.  When I realized that she didn’t know how to buckle her shoes, I spent the whole afternoon teaching her to buckle her own sandals.  She was SO happy when she finally did it on her own.  

When I got home, I asked my parents about her, they explained what Down Syndrome was and, in that conversation, I learned that when I was a young child, my father was a Special Education teacher at the inner-city schools.   I remember him being a teacher but didn’t know too much about his class because I was so young.   When we moved to South Carolina, he gave up teaching, so it never came up until I met Denise.  

After that summer, I began elementary school and our class had to walk past the Special Education class to get to the playground.  This was the very first day of school I asked the teacher why they couldn’t play too.   The response was something along the lines of “that’s the Special Ed class.”   It made me sad to see those children watch us go by and not be able to play too.   Then the next year, some of the classrooms moved and the Special Ed class was now in a room that had a window that looked out to the playground.  I hated seeing them watch us and not be able to join us.  I always remembered that and never understood why they couldn’t join us. 

At some point, the teachers must’ve been tired of my questions and they allowed me to “volunteer” in that class during recess one day a week.  That led to volunteering with Special Olympics as a teenager and I never stopped.

Flash forward several years and I had to get a “summer job” so I began working in a group home for adults with developmental disabilities.  I was 19 years old, and I worked 2-10pm Monday through Friday.   I took those women EVERYWHERE!    I absolutely fell in love and working with people with disabilities became my life.   Flash forward 34 years and I am still working with some of the same people I worked with at 19.  

I’ve worked in group homes, day programs, case management and recreation.  In each job, my motto has always been “Why can’t they do it too?”   Now, I get to make some of those why’s a reality.