ABILITY Magazine: Joe Mantegna

The next prize is from Earnest Sports, a digital golf assistant.

If only it would help.

Today we had a golf tournament

...at North Ranch Country Club for ACT Today...

...which is an organization that helps military families

...with children with autism.

I have a child with autism. It's devastating.

It's like somebody shot a canon ball into your chest.

Those are words you don't want to hear,

whether it's autism, ...whether it's any sort of ailment.

You have all these hopes and dreams for your kid and

all of a sudden

all these hopes and dreams are somewhat dashed.

If one choice is to surrender and say,

"Wo is me. Now the glass is half empty."

Or you gotta say, "Well, the glass is half full.

How do we try to maybe fill it up a little more?"

You try to accept things for what they are

and push on.

One woman whom we met was a teacher -

...who really helped change our older daughter's life.

And the reason this teacher was able to do this is

...because she had a sister with autism.

We happened to be visiting this one school

hoping to enroll her in a school

...because I was going to be in this movie

for about 6 months.

We're looking for a school to put my daughter in.

Looking for a Special Education School.

This is a regular public school.

Basically it was the first time a teacher just said...

when we first tried to include her in her regular classes...

"Don't worry about it, I'm going to take this kid..."

She took her right up in front of the class.

Up until that time my daughter was in special education.

And this teacher said, "Don't worry about it. I can handle this."

And she takes my daughter in front of the class

and says,

"Here's Mia. She has autism. She's going to be a little different than the rest of you kids.

She's going to talk to herself.

She may walk up to the blackboard and start drawing.

She may sing.

We're all going to help her right?"

And the kids, all these 6 year olds, are like,

"Yeah, Okay!"

And we're like...My wife and I are like..."Aa-ah-ah!"

And she had a huge impact on our lives by doing that.

Everybody has a story. That's ours.