Woman with Down syndrome gets into the swim
Karen Gaffney, a tiny woman at 4 feet 9 inches and 95 pounds, who limps and cannot use her left leg when she swims, nevertheless churned 5 miles through the choppy waters of Boston Harbor yesterday.
Gaffney did it to prove a point, that people with Down syndrome have “tremendous capabilities.’’
“I did this swim to show people what people like me can do,’’ Gaffney, 31, of Portland, Ore., said as she warmed up after the swim at a celebration attended by friends, supporters, and advocates at the L Street Bathhouse.
Gaffney began swimming from the lighthouse at Little Brewster Island to the beach at the bathhouse, accompanied by two pace swimmers, a kayak, four other boats, and, at one point, the Coast Guard. Conditions were choppy, with the wind out of the west at 15 to 25 knots, said her father, Jim Gaffney.
After about 1 1/2 miles, the swimmers were pulled from the 56-degree water, partly because the Coast Guard had safety concerns, said Kayley Randall, executive director of the Karen Gaffney Foundation. They got back into the water shortly afterward and swam another 3 1/2 miles to the beach at the bathhouse.
Jim Gaffney, 60, said that his daughter has had problems with her left hip since she first began to walk as a toddler and that she has never been able to run. But that has not stopped her from developing the upper body strength of a long-distance swimmer.
“The conditions were really difficult,’’ said Elaine Kornbau Howley, one of the experienced open-water swimmers who paced Karen Gaffney. “She’s just a really inspiring person.’’
The swim was a fund-raiser for the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress, whose executive director, Maureen Gallagher, said: “We want our young people with Down syndrome to have every opportunity for a full and productive life. And we know they can.’’
Gaffney, whose foundation promotes full inclusion for Down syndrome children, is no stranger to long open-water swims. Her resume includes two approximately 5-mile legs of a relay race in the English Channel, a four-mile swim around Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, and a 9-mile swim across Lake Tahoe.
“It was really cold,’’ Gaffney said. “The first maybe half an hour to 45 minutes it started getting really rough, and then we kind of switched gears and shortened the route a little bit and made it a little easier.’’
