How a Mother’s Stand, a Residential Campus and a Band of Bikers Shaped the Life Ronald Aubrey Lee Shares in I Am Chrissy
Chrissy Lee never spoke a word. In her father’s new book, a whole community speaks for her.
Ronald Aubrey Lee, a retired command sergeant major from South Carolina, spent decades caring for his daughter, Chrissy, who was born in 1978 with microcephaly and a profound intellectual disability. In I Am Chrissy, he tells her life story in her own imagined voice. Along the way, the book becomes a portrait of the people and places that made a full life possible for a girl who needed help with nearly every part of daily life.
It is a reminder that families raising a child with profound disabilities rarely do it alone, and that the support they find often has to be fought for, built and kept alive.
A Teacher Who Would Not Take No for an Answer
The first fight came in 1983. When Chrissy’s mother, Linda, a teacher trained in special needs education, tried to enroll her in their local school, an administrator said the district had no program and no funding for children who could not walk, talk or feed themselves. Linda taught in that same district and put her own job on the line. Her reply, as the book recounts it, was blunt: “I’ll see you and the school district superintendent in court!”
The district answered the next day with a classroom, a certified teacher, transportation and physical therapy. Within a couple of months, other children with disabilities had enrolled, partly because Linda sought out their families. The superintendent later thanked her personally, and years afterward she was named District Teacher of the Year.
Lee’s book raises a question every community should ask: Who speaks up for the children who cannot speak for themselves?
A Campus That Became Home
In 1985, after careful research and emotional family conversations, Chrissy’s parents enrolled her at Whitten Center, one of the state’s regional centers for people with developmental disabilities, about thirty miles from home. Lee describes a college-like campus where Chrissy had a roommate, a nurse, caregivers, teachers and a daily routine. She rode horses in an equestrian program, enjoyed therapy in the campus pool, graduated from Whitten Center Hallet School at 18 and was crowned queen at the annual spring prom.
• What does a full life look like for someone who will always need care?
• Who keeps the extras going when the funding runs out?
Bikers, Yard Sales and a Parents’ Club
That second question runs through the book. When state funding dried up, the equestrian program ended, and the pool closed. Then a motorcycle group calling itself Friends of Whitten Center stepped in, raising more than $20,000 for the Parents’ Club in its first year, Lee writes, through raffles, rides, auctions and poker runs. Later, the Woodlawn Ramblers, led by Bub Lollis, took up the cause and have raised funds for the campus for more than 36 years. Chrissy, whose father once drove her around a biker event in his golf cart, called them her heroes.
The Parents’ Club, founded in 1953, covers what state budgets do not, from birthday celebrations to the annual Christmas party, where Lee played Santa Claus. After retiring from teaching, Linda served as its president, advocating for every resident.
Caregivers at the Bedside
The final chapters cover the hardest years: COVID-19 restrictions that let Chrissy’s parents see her only once in nine months, repeated hospital stays, and her death on May 25, 2024, a month after her 46th birthday. Through each stay in intensive care, doctors and nurses bonded with her, sorry to see her go and glad every time she recovered. Even at the end, the circle held. Hospital nurses became what Chrissy calls her guardian angels, and Whitten Center caregivers gathered at her bedside in hospice beside her mother.
Lee closes by inviting readers to learn more about Whitten Center through Whitten Center Friends. For families just starting out on this road, his message is clear: find your people, and never stop speaking up for your child.
One mother’s stand can open a classroom…
One campus can become a home…
One community can be a voice for those without words…
In I Am Chrissy, it takes a village, and Chrissy had one of the very best!
Author Name: Ronald Aubrey Lee
Book Title: I Am Chrissy
Published By: Blue Crown Books
