Son will live on in hearts of joyous tots

Playground for disabled his gift

WESTFORD - A year ago this month, Ronan John McElligott was buried in a local cemetery before he ever had a chance to say his first words, pluck a Cheerio, ride a three-wheeler, snap his fingers, or learn to whistle.

The loss to his parents, Steve and Stephanie McElligott, and his sister, Brynn, was unspeakable.

"The whole vision of our family - one girl, one boy, and a white picket fence," said his mother, Stephanie - that changed after Ronan was gone."

Now when people ask how many children she has, McElligott offers a qualifying answer: "Two, but . . ."

Solace comes from telling his story, said McElligott, and offering a legacy in his memory.

"When I think of this time last year, I can't believe how far we've come."

Ronan, not even 6 months old, died Aug. 31, 2007, and the McElligotts buried him six days later. Soon after, Stephanie took Brynn to a playground and was instantly struck with an idea that has turned into the inspiration for her life today.

"I looked around and realized he couldn't do anything here if he had lived." Unlike the playground she and a team of about 30 volunteers are now planning to build, the site she visited that day was not designed to accommodate children with special needs.

The Ronan McElligott Memorial Playground will be built for children with disabilities, at Edwards Beach off Williams Avenue.

It will have a rubberized floor and ramps for children in wheelchairs and walkers, swings with back and neck support for children who cannot sit on their own, and quiet spaces for those who have cognitive sensory disabilities, such as autism.

The colors of the structure will be distinctive for those with impaired vision.

Last December, McElligott teamed with Boundless Playgrounds, a Bloomfield, Conn., nonprofit, got together with town officials to find a site, launched a website, and started telling her story to local newspapers.

On Friday, the McElligotts' efforts will culminate with a fund-raising auction and dinner at the Westford Regency Inn and Conference Center to help augment the $150,000 already collected toward the goal of $300,000.

Travis Roy, who was paralyzed in 1995 in a freak accident while playing his first college hockey game as a Boston University freshman, will present the keynote address.

Along with Brynn, who will turn 4 in November, "this playground keeps us going," said McElligott of the mission she and her husband share. "I read that when a parent loses a child, one of the losses is around what his future might have held."

Mary Walsh, a clinical developmental psychologist, said the playground is one more way for the McElligotts to keep Ronan's memory alive.

"Seeing other children on the playground may contribute to her imagining him in the future going through the various stages of childhood development," said Walsh, who is the Daniel E. Kearns Professor of Education and Innovative Leadership at Boston College.

Walsh said imagination connects people to the future, and memory connects them to the past.

McElligott recalled that when she was told she was pregnant with a boy, she and Steve joked about having the perfect family - a son, a daughter, a dog, and a new fence that they had just installed in their yard.

"But it didn't work out that way," she said.

Ronan was born March 5, 2007, a healthy-looking baby weighing 9 pounds, 2 ounces.

"As time went by," said McElligott, "there were things we noticed, and the doctors kept telling us it was colic or reflux. But he kept getting more symptomatic."

On a Sunday afternoon in July 2007, it became apparent that Ronan was suffering from more than a finicky stomach when his parents couldn't wake him from a nap.

A seven-week hospital stay at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, yielded the unthinkable - Ronan had Leigh's disease, a neurometabolic disorder that ravaged his nervous system and eventually left him dependent on a ventilator after he stopped breathing on his own. His body rapidly lost the ability to regulate his blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature.

The rare condition typically affects children between 3 months and 2 years, and death often occurs within two years of the diagnosis. However, some children live as long as seven years, and it was with that hope that McElligott and her husband envisioned bringing him home, despite the endless care he would have needed.

Instead, on Sept. 6, 2007, she and Steve buried him.

"At first, when we realized Ronan was going to die," she wrote recently in a first-person story for a regional magazine aimed at mothers, "I worried and feared that he was going to leave this earth before he had the chance to live, to really live. Now I realize that through this playground, Ronan will live on in the hearts of so many special children who visit this playground."

Tickets are $75 each for "An Evening of Boundless Inspiration," Sept. 19, 6 p.m. for cocktails, and 7 p.m. for dinner, at the Westford Regency Inn and Conference Center. Call 978-692-9065 or visit westford.com/ronansplayground.

Joyce Pellino Crane can be reached at crane@globe.com.