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Show With Love..• One unusual approach to the legislators was to invite them to a pot-luck luncheon, a Legislative Luncheon. Not as strange as first appeared because for years most of the social life of families of retarded children seemed centered around such potluck meals with similar families and the mothers had developed specialty dishes. The Mothers Guild of the Northwest Center went into action and the legislators found themselves sharing with the parents and friends of the handicapped, old fashion pot roast, buttery dill rolls, salads, varied vegetable dishes and many kinds of homemade bread and desserts. Two added features were that it was guaranteed to take only one hour out of their busy schedules and, due to seating by legislative district, they were sitting at a table with their constituents. At this luncheon, they found that there was much interest in mandatory education for the handicapped. The requested education survey revealed that at least 2800 children between three and twenty-one years had no educational program. The governor agreed to make the bill an executive request with $5.2 million in the budget to help those forgotten children. All of the work was done against the background of o el the severest recession' in Washington's history. Boeing Airplane Company had laid-off over 60,000 people and in Seattle, one person in seven was unemployed. As the struggle continued, resistance came from unexpected places. Some of the professionals in special education were not |