Anne Louise McGarrah 2/4/49–12/7/06
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Anne Louise McGarrah (February 4, 1949-December 7, 2006), who appeared with Oliver Sacks in his BBC documentary on Williams Syndrome and with CBS News correspondent Morley Safer in a 60-Minutes segment on the developmental disability, wrote poetry, played piano and became an advocate for the rights of the disabled.
While Williams Syndrome was identified in 1961 by JCP Williams, MD, it was not until 1990 that McGarrah learned that she had the disability. “I always knew I was different,” she said, “but now I have the key to unlock the secrets.”
Her parents, Robert and Barbara McGarrah, were early advocates of mainstreaming, rejecting advice from doctors and family members in 1953 to place her in an institution for the developmentally disabled, then standard practice. McGarrah’s musical and verbal skills enabled her to work as a teacher’s aide at the University of Massachusetts Child Care Center in Amherst, MA for several years until the heart, colon and eye problems associated with Williams Syndrome made work too difficult.
Anne McGarrah’s older brother, Rob, worked with her to discover her Williams Syndrome with the important work of Nina Scribanu, MD at the Georgetown Medical School’s Child Development Center and he helped her to successfully quality for Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) in 1991. Her younger brother, Doug, cared for her during his senior year in high school in Amherst, MA, while she worked at the University of Massachusetts Child Day Care Center.
Anne McGarrah’s musical abilities were cited by Oliver Sacks in his book Musicofilia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicophilia
and his BBC documentary, “The Mind Traveler,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J8YNyHIT64,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/tv/1998/08/23/the-mind-traveller/83e64261-d644-4edd-bbc2-7490848878c4/?utm_term=.46c0f3f2bd76 as well as 60 Minutes CBS 60 Minutes segment on Williams syndrome. This Peabody Award winning segment aired in both October 1997 and July 1998: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/cbs-news-60-minutes, where she played at the Tanglewood Music Camp.
Her tombstone in Amherst’s West Cemetery, not far from Emily Dickinson’s grave, reads, at her insistence, “She went out in a blaze of glory!”
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